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Comment by lucideer | Hacker News Reader

> I am in the camp that there are alot of things we try to solve (and sacrifice things like usability) at a technical level that we should be solving at a social level.

I agree in theory but unfortunately I think we need both. I have little confidence in either on it's own. And I've been burned too much by vendor lock-in in the past to ever advocate for ANY service that isn't federated (I use many non-federated services but out of necessity, I would never sell others on them).

I should add that successful & popular federated online messaging services are something we've had since the 1960s so I have yet to see any compelling reason to be perpetuating the walled-garden approach beyond a preference for a totalitarian approach to ecosystem control.

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> I should add that successful & popular federated online messaging services are something we've had since the 1960s so I have yet to see any compelling reason to be perpetuating the walled-garden approach beyond a preference for a totalitarian approach to ecosystem control.

Touche, but if they were there before why aren't they "here" in popular adoption? I think, although it is perfectly technically feasible in a vacuum it is not in real life.

Because it requires that all your common contacts (friends, family) use it. The question isn't whether you can do but whether you can be easier to use and offer more feature then the competition. Most people don't care. You need to be competitive.

From a technical perceptive you will have to spend more, make less, and have decreased usability for privacy, and federation. So picking any one is already shooting your self in the foot. Pick two and you aren't going anywhere.

Simplified argument but Signal picks to minimum they feel they need to do to see change they want. And I am big fan of this method. I am tired of projects with good intentions not getting adoption.

> why aren't they "here" in popular adoption? I think, although it is perfectly technically feasible in a vacuum it is not in real life.

HN is likely not the best forum for this argument, but I'd have two answers to this:

1. Email is popularly adopted. It's difficult to add improvements because it's a federated protocol from the 60s, but it is still popular.

2. The reason we haven't had popular adoption since is because: (a) email was publicly developed, whereas most newer tech is private; the market favours easy (cheap) over better (hard, expensive) and federated is harder to do (with worthwhile benefits); and (b) the major downside of centralisation -vs- federated is vendor lock-in, which is bad for users but good for shareholders.

Email is good example of something that lasted. I think piecing it apart in more detail picking another few cases could let me clarify and solidify my arguments but like you HN is probably not the place for a detailed analysis.

Long term, I would hope that if Signal gets large enough market-share and stabilizes they would make the signal protocol federated.

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