While I am not a fan of centralized systems either and did initially perceive it as him justifying Signal's decisions I got a slightly more positive impression towards the end.
My takeaway is that he highlights that centralization makes moving fast easy (he's not wrong) and prods those who want to develop decentralized systems to be aware of the downsides. He holds up bitcoin OSS as a "fork to evolve" model as something that sortof works but isn't great either.
We need something better. Perhaps a stack that solves the fundamentals in a reusable manner (discovery, e2e encryption, hiding metadata, group management, ...) so that people don't have to sink man-years into every new project.
That said, there are also flaws in his arguments such as the "server goes down, everyone has to change identity" example seeming too simplistic since identity does not necessarily have to be tied to a single instance in a distributed environment.
My takeaway is that he highlights that centralization makes moving fast easy (he's not wrong) and prods those who want to develop decentralized systems to be aware of the downsides. He holds up bitcoin OSS as a "fork to evolve" model as something that sortof works but isn't great either. We need something better. Perhaps a stack that solves the fundamentals in a reusable manner (discovery, e2e encryption, hiding metadata, group management, ...) so that people don't have to sink man-years into every new project.
That said, there are also flaws in his arguments such as the "server goes down, everyone has to change identity" example seeming too simplistic since identity does not necessarily have to be tied to a single instance in a distributed environment.