this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026

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Why are all services centralised? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Hello,

There are loads of people who dislike centralised services, like facebook, twitter, dropbox and so on, yet still no one seems to be very curious about decentralised systems. How come?

Lemmy scratches the surface with lots of centralised servers, but pushing it, everyone could have their own soft that, for example, is their "user". A user having "facebook"/twitter/dropbox/sharing capabilities. Still no one seems to even pursue those kind of ideas. Even in theory.

Is it because the dopamine triggering algorithm wins everyone over? The fear of using a soft that communicated on an open port on your device? Or what might it be? But that doesn't make sense to me, because people don't even discuss it. Or am I not invited to those discussions 😁?

It should be trivial to spin up a sharing system, for example (harboring laws would protect you), or some "friends, and friends friends only" network a la facebook in tje early days.

It's not limited by technology, and people are smart and curious.

So where are they?

Edit: I know that even if the service existed, most people wouldn't use it and prefer Facebook et al. But that absolutely nobody has spun up one is what baffles me. Thousands work on the Linux kernel, where are the hardcore network nerds?

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[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

There are loads of people who dislike centralised services, like facebook, twitter, dropbox and so on

Are there? It seems more like 90% of people don't care, and 9.9% say they dislike big tech, but don't really feel it strongly enough to seriously look for alternatives.

Edit: I know that even if the service existed, most people wouldn’t use it and prefer Facebook et al. But that absolutely nobody has spun up one is what baffles me. Thousands work on the Linux kernel, where are the hardcore network nerds?

Oh, I see, by "people" you mean a few hardcore nerds just to run the server. Sure, they exist, and whatever indie version of Facebook exists. But, without people moving away from Facebook to it, there's not much to do on them. Lemmy was a ghost town before the API Rexodus, for example, and now it's just active enough that the large communities are rolling nicely.

Here, read this. When it comes to if a social media service is useful, the servers are like the smallest component. And, as a result, whichever server goes first has a huge advantage, and whoever started it becomes Mark Zuckerberg.