@evan interesting take! Perhaps "refocusing" it on ourselves, not on the platforms.

@evan

Polycentrism rather than centralization: interesting concept, worth a deeper reasoning.

@evan I had some similar thoughts in 2023 and expressed them in this blog post: https://fietkau.blog/2023/another_blog_resurrection_fediverse_new_comment_system (section “A Shift in Complexity”)

The idea is that federation doesn't inherently make online interactions more complex, but it slices the innate complexity of many-to-many communication into differently shaped parts than centralized platforms do. Some of the perceived complexity is just unfamiliarity.

I don't know if my ideas on this are very mature, but I think I stand by the core thesis.

@evan I think distributed versus decentralized might not be the best lens.

I think what people really care about is agency and the decentralization is a means to help accomplish that. I also want ownership (or partial ownership) but even then it’s really about agency.

@evan I think you should name this “me-centralisation” (kind of a pun on re-centralisation)

@evan I think that's really interesting, but I think it's also important to realize that people show many different sets of faces to the world. They have different sets of friend groups, and often those don't overlap.

So while focusing on you is good, you also should have control of "which you" they're looking at and dealing with.

@evan This inspires me to take a perspective from Yvonne Agazarian. I think the correct word would be self-centeredness. And then, to not only take things personally (which is dysfunctional self-centeredness), we need a connection to our various memberships in communities (friends, neighbors, colleagues, topics). The life force comes from the body and is at the center (self), but development of that energy happens when we go out and take a membership in community with others.

@evan I had a slide a million years ago (that Kaliya dug up recently, otherwise I would have forgotten) that contrasted 1) a big company/platform in the middle, with all its users around it connecting 1-N vs 2) me in the middle, with all the companies/platforms I interact with around it, connecting 1-N.

The original form of user centricity rather than company centricity.

@evan PEOPLE 👏🏼 NOT 👏🏼 PLATFORMS 👏🏼

I like the out-of-the-box provocation but...

@evan
> social networking is *already* decentralised; our data, our connections, and our attention are spread across a dozen social platforms

Decentralised is not the same as fragmented. But I can imagine DataFarmers using this as an attack line to defend platform monopolies against the 'verse.

> We need RE-centralisation; I want my social networking experience to be centred on *me*

Logical centralisation on a physical mesh. Intriguing.

@box464