Fediverse Report is a blog about federation, it is right there in the name. I say that I write about decentralized social networks. But why do I care about the concepts of decentralization and federation? What do they even mean?
There are two different approaches to looking at the value of this new generation of social network: the individual perspective and the governance perspective:
Individual
The individual perspective on social networks is about user agency. Gordon Brander wrote a blog about ‘a minimal definition of user agency’. Brander says that for a person to have agency in a network, they need the following:
- Own your ID
- Own your content
- Own your contacts
As Brander explains:
- Having agency over your content is the point, you need to own it.
- You need to own your contacts otherwise you cannot switch to another network. You get locked indue to network effects
- Owning your ID is a necessary requirements for the others to have. If you own your contacts but not your ID, the owner of your ID still has ultimate control over your contacts.
Brander describes it as a minimal definition, and for a wider definition I would add some more: for full user agency you need the above requirements, but you need to have them in a wider network where other people also meet these requirements for user agency. Owning your contacts and moving to a new network is great, but if nobody else can move with you because the rest is still locked in, its kinda pointless.
If you design a network like this, decentralization and federation are assumed to follow. This is why people care about federated and decentralize social networks, it gives them power and user agency.
over the last years, with the rise of ATproto, this assumption is getting a bit more unclear. Federation is not a great term to describe how interoperability on ATProto actually works, even though it meets the requirements for user agency arguably better than ActivityPub does.
That is an argument to focus less on decentralization and federation as good values in itself. Instead these often follow from a network that is designed with user agency in mind.
Governance
Another perspective is to focus on governance. Big Tech platforms like X, TikTok or Instagram are autocratic in their governance structure. There is one CEO who has the ultimate authority over the platform. This means that there are a few tech oligarch who have final control over the speech of billions of people. There might still be some people who are such the believers in the Market who point out that technically the shareholders have ultimate authority, but those are silly people.
The argument for alternative social networking is that they provide a different governance structure. Networks like the fediverse do not have a single oligarch in charge, and this is by design. By basing networks such as the fediverse or the ATmosphere on an open protocol where everyone can join, it means that nobody is in charge. There is no CEO of the fediverse. Making sure there is no single person in charge is done by making a social network that is decentralised and federated.
This makes decentralisation and federation downstream from what people care about: other governance structures that are less hierarchical and do not have a single person in final control of the entire network.