Just wanted to ask your opinion before I waste too much time in a new open source project that nobody wants.

Lemmy, Mastodon and Co are federated but users are concentrated on a few large instances which somewhat contradicts the original idea.

What do you think of a truly decentralised app where each instance is one user.

I am aware that there many reasons why this is a bad idea but I would like to hear from you why I should leave it, or encourage me to try it out.

  • Rimu@piefed.social
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    12 hours ago

    For Lemmy and PieFed much of the server load comes from communities, not users. It’s communities that do the activity fan out, not users.

  • anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    20 hours ago

    If there are no groups, everyone has to be their own mod. The amount of shit will quickly overwhelm any one persons abilities to deal with, so people will share their blocklists.
    This recreates similar structures to what we have now, except the moderation power is even less transparent. (Ask your local email admin how much fun it is to get un-blacklisted)

      • HubertManne@piefed.social
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        17 hours ago

        Im replying to your reply of another person. I have to say what they describe is exactly what I would like to see. sharing and even subscribing to blocklists. Sure its a recreation of a similar structure but thats fine because the user controls it and the transparency thing to me is not an issue because again the user controls it. I really don’t see an issue in what they said. That being said I think I looked into nostr before and might again. Honestly I think keeping track of the key is the main thing.

  • HubertManne@piefed.social
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    18 hours ago

    The main problem here is persistance. Most users are on machines that get turned off. I could kinda see it for chat. If you think about walkie talkies people on on or not. A chat where each instance was a user would be like that. You get on and participate or not. CB’s even have channels yeah.

    • mbirth 🇬🇧@lemmy.ml
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      18 hours ago

      The main problem here is persistance. Most users are on machines that get turned off.

      This! It only works if you have a server that’s online 24/7. Can be a VPS in a data centre, can be some Raspberry Pi running at your home with a DNS name pointing to it.

    • kivarada@programming.devOP
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      17 hours ago

      I did not mean to run locally. Every user has to deploy somewhere (like Hetzner) with public domain, tls, etc. Deployment should be simplified with a single command. But still the user has to create an account, buy a domain and needs to be somewhat familiar with command line.

      • zonico@discuss.tchncs.de
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        17 hours ago

        Sounds like a good idea if you want to have around 5 active users.

        Sorry for the sarcasm but I don’t like the idea that only people privileged with a VPS can join.

        • kivarada@programming.devOP
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          17 hours ago

          No worries :) it is very likely true. Alternatively I could think of a managed option where each user has an instance in a separate container with separate sqlite database and with different subdomain.

  • Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    16 hours ago

    I have built a network that can be used for that, the tenfingers sharing network. It’s completely decentralised, and each user can host or share its own webpage/presence.

    HMU if you try something.

    PS. It solves ‘the offline user’ among other things, and would be perfect for a distributed social network.

  • emerald@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    20 hours ago

    Sounds almost but not quite like what holos is working on

    Also to answer your question, there are other projects that exist that offer a better single-user instance experience (gotosocial comes to mind). But unless you can make the setup as easy as installing an app on your phone, actually running a single-user instance will still be something for hobbyists and enthusiasts. Far be it from me to dissuade someone from starting a project, I’m the proud owner of two partial activitypub server implementations myself, but unless you’re doing it for fun I’d suggest contributing to an existing project instead.