Facebook down? Why decentralisation matters

Published 2021-10-04 | Written by koyu


Facebook went down today and this got me thinking. The fediverse which is decentralised and opposes itself as an alternative to the centralized magasites like Facebook doesn’t seem to have a problem like this.

What is decentralization?

Decentralization is the concept of not having a central authority controlling all in- and outgoing transactions. In less broader terms this means that while Facebook is owned and controlled by Mark Zuckerberg and his gang, decentralised networks like the fediverse are owned and operated by the people for the people. This means if one node fails it wouldn’t bring the whole network down and completely ruin all of your communications.

This means if one node fails it wouldn’t bring the whole network down and completely ruin all of your communications.

Read: A quick introduction to the fediverse

But why does it matter then?

I think it matters in the terms of why we should trust a single person with all of our data. Do you want to let your communications depend on someone who lives somewhere in America and is essentially a total stranger? I think individual people like your IT specialist next door you call when you infested your computer with toolbars are a lot more trustworthy than some random people on earth. Also if you really want to start digging you’d just read the documentation and get your server set up by yourself.

Read: How to plan and host a Mastodon instance

Conclusion

I wonder why people still want to depend all of their communication on one singular entity which is definitely prone to fail. Such people are still a mystery to me.