That response is basically "nothing he said is strictly speaking wrong, but we value freedom above everything else." Well, they're allowed to take that position, but I prioritize being able to use a free / open source messaging application with as many people as possible over being able to choose exactly which federated client I can use to talk to the two people I know who go to PGP key exchange parties. Sometimes I want to make a video call with two other people on my phone without using software written by Google, Apple or Facebook. Signal does that. I don't even know how feasible that is with Matrix.
That isn't an accurate summary, because he's refuting a number of the points. fake "we" to summarize, I'm not affiliated:
* yes it's harder to build
* harder to evolve, which is why we invested in a spec process to get it right, and you can see we push out features at a comparable pace
* does tend toward centralization, so we're working on p2p/nomadic identity
* the freedom to switch apps involves paying the costs of your history and your network, so that's a very weak freedom
And then the point about freedom is really only being balanced against the security/privacy risks of fragmented implementation.
His point would really be that you're not getting a "free" "free / open source messaging application" in a meaningful sense.
(oh, while I'll cede to you the UX has historically been crap, it's really not at "PGP key exchange parties" levels these days; my server has some non-tech friends and it's fine)
The "freedom" vibe was weird. I'm all for freedom and maximizing negative rights, but there's some compromises we have to make. I don't think this argument is ever going to work, just like it hasn't worked in politics. At the end of the day people do realize there are some compromises that make sense. It's about finding that ground where we maximize negative rights while still having those conveniences.
I also found it strange they ignored one of the largest arguments that Moxie made. Federation becomes centralization. We've seen this happen time and time again. It makes sense by pareto distributions. Just the same way one city has way more people than most others (e.g. NYC has half the population of NY state). This is a natural phenomena. We saw it on the web, email, internet providers, telephones, cryptocurrencies, everything (we'll see it with web3 too). It's because if there isn't an explicit hierarchy there's an implicit one. Eventually that implicit one becomes explicit. Moxie's argument here isn't "federation sucks" it is "why fight the centralization effort? It is better to take control of it than let it run wild."
> I also found it strange they ignored one of the largest arguments that Moxie made.
They didn't, at all, and I find it strange you're claiming that.
After
> It’s also fair that in a multi-server federated model, users naturally tend to sign up on the most prominent server(s) (e.g. the matrix.org homeserver in the case of Matrix). In practice, the matrix.org homeserver currently makes up about 35% of the visible Matrix network by active users.
they explain how they are working to counter the effect:
> In practice, we’re looking into solving metadata protection in Matrix by experimenting with hybrid P2P / Client Server models - letting users store their metadata purely clientside if they so desire, and potentially obfuscating who’s talking to who via mixnets of blinded store & forward servers (more about this coming up at FOSDEM). Combined with nomadic accounts, this would let us eventually turn off the matrix.org server entirely and eliminate the pseudo-centralisation effect - the default ‘server’ would be the one running on your client.
> I also found it strange they ignored one of the largest arguments that Moxie made. Federation becomes centralization.
You're right in some ways. It always tends to be the official project instance. For example, the dominant Mastodon instance is mastodon.social. Eugen, the owner of that instance, did something though: he restricted registrations to the instance and encouraged people to sign up at other instances. Sadly Matrix did nothing of the sort, and it continues to allow sign-ups even though (IMO) it's quite clear that they can't handle the moderation workload.
Your city analogy exposes the defects of this argument. As noted, federation does not prevent centralization. And there is no reason to fight against centralization. It's ok for NYC to contain 1/2 the population of the state. What your argument seems to gloss over is that in _only_ contains 1/2. Nobody is forced to live there. They can go upstate, or to any other part of the state. People who want to can live in NYC and still be part of the entire state, enjoying all the benefits. People can live in the state capital, or Buffalo, or the best part of New York: Stamford.
Ok, even if that wasn't funny, it illustrates that the biggest centers of federated systems interact perfectly with smaller centers. You don't have to be part of New York to be part of the federation. And if the NYC hub walls itself off and demands tolls to interact? So be it. Let the market bear what it will.
I think you're giving my comment an unfair characterization. I'd appreciate it if we discussed in good faith with one another. If you read carefully I talk about trying to maximize negative rights and a balance. The political equivalent is saying that I like democracy but a pure democracy is chaos. This does not mean I'm remotely in favor of autocracy. There's a spectrum here and it isn't a dichotomy.
Of course you can say it about democracy. The basis for democracy as we know it is the modern nation state, a fundamentally centralized institution. Democracy without a high degree of centralization tends to decay. Even the dictator in its original sense as an institution acts on behalf of the people, appointed during times of exception. (many presidents in presidential republics today actually have comparable emergency powers).
So centralization is not an insult to democracy at all. Decentralization aligns if you want to make a political analogy, much closer with democracy's predecessor, feudal society in which sovereign fiefdoms compete with each other. (It's not surprising that this is also a popular form of organization among libertarian decentralization advocates).
