[crucini]

I skimmed this and see two big problems.

First, this idealistic idea that "we" are going to take back our data. Who is this we? Only the smart, high-agency people who have time to spare. The commercial web is increasingly tuned to the normal user, who is low-agency and easily led around. Who will win a battle of user acquisition and retention? Facebook or the rebels? Facebook of course. So any solutions proposed here are just for a tiny percentage of users who will then be isolated from the real and useful social networks. Or more realistically use both.

Or maybe if the infrastructure is built, a layer of savvy entrepreneurs can emerge to monetize it? I'm thinking of reaganemail, selling an anti-google email account to the AM radio crowd.

Second, the idea of somehow eliminating censorship. De facto censorship will always exist, even if you sugar coat it as Twitter has tried - "your content is still there, but only if someone explicitly looks for it". Any platform without censorship will just be flooded by every marketer and political zealot, for starters.

Also, I think he is conflating filter bubbles with centralization. Without centralization, wouldn't we still have filter bubbles as people self-select into their online communities?

[gerbilly]

Well, when I got on the internet in 1988, we were all 'smart, high-agency people who have time to spare'

Supposing we manage to solve this problem, what's to say average people can't participate in 10 years or so or so when the tech has been made easier to use?

[flixic]

Early web was quite decentralized already. Many separate Bulletin Boards, later forums. Many people writing there had an idea how to create their own.

It didn't start centralized. Centralization happened. I might be more cynical than I should be but as a designer I struggle to see the future in which we have social dynamics that favor decentralization instead of convergence into a less self-managed system (i.e. all current centralized networks).

[TuringTest]

> Without centralization, wouldn't we still have filter bubbles as people self-select into their online communities?

Perhaps, but those would be self-selected, not imposed by the provider. Big difference.