I think we might be operating on different definitions here - what would you regard as a "platform", and what would be an example of an equivalent "not a platform"?
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I see! Just to make sure I'm actually following you here - as I've seen your more recent tweet - what's your take on services like Matrix? Are they decentralised? What would be your alternative if not?
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Yeah - in that case I'm with you. I can see how that doesn't entirely solve the problem...
Do you have any potential solutions to that? It seems to all get very complicated with P2P and the speed / reliability issues that come with it, unless I'm missing something?
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It's not peer to peer but it can be used in a much more decentralized way than how people tend to use it. Rooms aren't tied to a specific server and it isn't a better experience talking to people on the same server beyond latency. Hosting a server with few users isn't demanding.
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It's nice to at least have the option of self-hosting and still being part of the same network, even if you don't leverage it. The ability to not use matrix.org and a dozen other major servers has a lot of meaning even if most people use matrix.org, etc.
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Simply having a dozen major servers is a huge improvement over having a single one too. Peer-to-peer isn't necessarily going to turn out well. The federated model already has serious problems with how it enables abuse. It's a reasonable compromise. Not great, but it seems okay.
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Ability to move to other servers or self-host is a check on the abuse of power by those servers. Way easier to move from matrix.org than it is to move from freenode because you wouldn't need to make new channels or get users to migrate. It's an individual choice.
If it was matrix.org not freenode, we could have made new accounts elsewhere and transferred moderation to those. That's it. Instead, we have to convince 1200 users to migrate to new Matrix rooms not tied to our freenode channels and we'll probably lose 15%+ of them.