Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad
I don't mean to be Old Man Yells at Cloud, but the more I see talk about the "instance thing" regarding these decentralized services, it makes me think about how most people today would be completely lost trying to use the internet of just 20 years ago when a small handful of mega-corporations didn't hand-hold and control all the major services. The "instance thing" feels no different to me than picking an email service. How did anyone possibly function back then, having to pick a provider/domain for their email and remember that domain and tell people about it before Gmail came along?
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Well, they mostly
didn't. This also frustrates me about conversations regarding browsers: almost nobody actually actively chooses a piece of software among alternatives.
People used whatever e-mail provider their ISP had, or whatever the neighbor's son's cousin recommended. Gmail didn't spread because millions of people said, "boy, that's such a great offering", but because of word of mouth as well as aggressive ad campaigns.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Brad
Yes, I know the answer is lot more complicated than I'm implying. Some people got their email through their ISP by default instead of deliberately choosing a domain, and running your own required (and still does) a very high tech skill level, but guess what? It worked. Thousands of mail servers with different "instance" names working around the globe using the same protocol, and most people don't think twice about it.
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Well, it kind of worked, yes. It also had big spam problems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ryan
It's like trying to join reddit by first having to pick a sub.
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Yeah, well, Reddit is owned by a media conglomerate, and Msatodon / the Fediverse is very much not that.