I’ve been thinking that from a practical point of view, there is probably something wrong with my conception that decentralization should be as fine-grained as a universe of individual servers in communication with one-another. I’ve had this conception for the last twenty years at least, so it’s hard to shake. But recent posts I’ve seen about the Fediverse seem to demonstrate that this conception is expensive in terms of resources: at least, with regard to the way that federation of instances works: the more instances, it seems, the more expense.
There are other arguments as well for a federation that would be built on communities; professional, by interest, geographical, linguistic, whatever. Human beings are tribal by nature. And yet, if this is the basis for division and affiliation, there will always be a choice to make, because we live in more than one world. Do we choose an instance based on locality, or upon profession, for example? Outside of Mastodon, this choice is mitigated by the existence of groups that one can join, regardless of the instance. Groups have been around since at least GnuSocial and Friendica I believe, and have worked quite well.
I hope that the Fediverse will be built upon co-ops and volunteers, rather than on companies. Yesterday I discovered Chatons.org, which enables one to find small servers that are not established on a profit motive. Internet co-ops have always been popular in France. I first hosted my blog on Ouvaton, an early co-op that still exists today. And disroot.org in Holland is similarly based on voluntary effort and good will. My other Fediverse instance is with them.
I still think that for websites, decentralization can exist at the level of the individual household, but there too, it is more practical to gang together and host a few websites on a single server; preferably one that uses renewable energy and has a low carbon footprint. If I didn’t have a personal interest in doing things myself, I would probably go with something like that. I still might, if I find a good offer.
Epicyon, meanwhile, has as its underlying philosophy the concept of small groups of no more than 10 people. Except for families and maybe small housing cooperatives, that’s probably too few. A hundred or two would probably make more sense – maybe larger, if one wants to establish a community server. For example, if we would create a Mastodon server for every member of our smallish community, we would need a few hundred accounts.
Zot versus Mastodon
I have no doubt that despite all the interest around Mastodon, the communities built upon the Zot networks are more friendly and durable. The tools are somehow more conducive to community-building: the mentioned groups; the cloning of channels upon each other’s servers, etc. make for a more connected group of people, though it is small. I would stay there, but seem to have jettisoned myself from the community by stops and starts, fickle changes of mind, as well as server troubles.
So for now I will stay with Epicyon. Its technological simplicity is attractive. Today I was experimenting with the Lynx terminal browser. Epicyon works very well with it. What websites, let alone other fediverse sites, work well with a terminal browser these days? Only the ones that do not depend upon Javascript and a lot of CSS styling. Bob Mottram is building something very nice here. I wonder how well it will be appreciated by those who he sees as its primary usership: small groups of community activists, neighbours and volunteers?
I’m not a very social person, but I have always believed in the value of community, indeed have lived all of my adult life in communities. Perhaps I should do more to help the community in which I live use free open source software; in that I have not succeeded. Everyone around me wants to use the conventional commercial products of the big companies.