I agree with him that there is inevitably a strong tendency toward centralization, but I think a key feature to help with that would be the portability of one’s account to new instances. Even if the majority of users are in only a few instances, there is still a safeguard against one entity (I.e. corporation) directing the health of the whole system. If accounts were portable, when an instance went foul, people could move and the system as a whole would self-heal.
Nonetheless, it’s an interesting article. And the cost and challenges of running a web scale service are not conducive to small time players.
Basically it said to be a true decentralized system people have to be spread equally through the system so the power distribution is equal and not concentrated on one part of the system.
So mastodon is not truly decentralized because a lot of the users are on 3 instances. Also that’s where the fallacy lies - because people choose to be part of the larger instances
As long as the technology is not accessible to everyone from old folks to 5 year olds, the power is concentrated to those who understand and maintain it.
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