Ethan Zuckerman has a piece in Wired that says building decentralization tools is a sucker’s bet. He and his coauthors, Chelsea Barabas and Neha Narula, mention the FreedomBox, which I helped lead, as an example of how difficult this stuff is. They point to a list of things that make decentralized efforts prone to failure and conclude:
Our research—a combination of technical and historical analysis, and dozens of interviews with open web advocates—indicates that there is no straightforward technical solution to the problem of platform monopolies. Moreover, it’s not clear we can solve the nuanced issues of centralization by pushing for “re-decentralization” of publishing online. The reality is that most people do not want to run their own web servers or social network nodes. They want to engage with the web through friendlier platforms, and these platforms will be constrained by the same forces that drive consolidation today.
They point to a “better strategy” of policies aimed at “data portability, interoperability, and alternatives to advertising-based funding models”.
I’m no longer with FreedomBox, and none of what they write is wrong (I was one of the open web advocates they interviewed), but I wanted to chime in because there’s more to decentralization than seeking a “straightforward technical solution” and building a better social networking app. It’s true that we haven’t realized the grand vision of Diaspora and FreedomBox. They’re right that we need enlightened policy. We need the centralized platform monopolies to behave better. Those steps, though, won’t ever give people control over the means of communication. Without that control, we’ll always be at the mercy of Facebook or whatever comes next. Continue reading “Decentralization: Worth The Wait”