MUSHROOM PDS SHAMER (@shame.evil.gay)

The “De” In “Decentralization” Stands For “Democracy”

There’s a certain dark irony in watching tech billionaires who built their empires on the “democratizing power of technology” now actively working to dismantle democratic institut…

Decentralization: Worth The Wait — Open Tech Strategies | Blog

Ethan Zuckerman has a piece in Wired that says building decentralization tools is a sucker's bet. He and his coauthors, Chelsea Barabas and Neha Narula, mention the FreedomBox, which I helped lead, as an example of how difficult this stuff is. They point to a list of things that make decentralized efforts prone to failure and conclude:

Nobody cares about decentralization until they do

A recurring line in discussion of federated, decentralized social media is that no one cares about it. They just want their Twitter without the Nazis. Which is okay. But how it looks on the backend matters. When the illusion of a unified user experience breaks, how accessible the escape pod

Decentralized Moderation | The Paper Pilot

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology

Decentralisation as a shifting mental framework

Programming note: every week I send out an email newsletter. It contains all the articles I published that week, as well as an additional essay that has been not been published elsewhere yet. This is a republication of last week’s essay I send out. If you’re interested, subscribe below to get all the updates directly […]

Department of Decentralization | Department of Decentralization

The website for the Department of Decentralization

a practical guide to decentralization (for my friends) - tim's tinkerings

Decentralized Social Media | The Paper Pilot

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology

On discourse and decentralisation

Over the last year, as Bluesky got more popular, conversations about whether Bluesky and ATProto are really ‘decentralised’ have gotten more “popular” as well. These conversations ranged from high-quality, productive back-and-forth articles to people just saying a lot of dumb stuff on the internet (shocker, I know). As time went on, this discourse has grown […]

The politics of decentralization and the libertarian allure of Mastodon – Structural Integrity

I am currently reading the fabulous “Hayek’s Bastards” by Quinn Slobodian. It made me think about decentralisation in Mastodon (yes, the federated social network). And it made me think about the lack of a coherent progressive vision for the digital age. I will explain what that book has to do with both. But let’s go back to the political meaning of “decentralisation” in digital discourse first.

Hackathon on Decentralised Media - TEP (Trusted European Platforms) Bluesky, Nostr · Luma

Every year, thousands of developers of free and open-source software from all over the world gather at FOSDEM. For two weeks around this event – from the 26th…

Decentralized Identity | The Paper Pilot

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology

How’s That Open Source Governance Working for You? | HackerNoon

Isn’t it weird that the radically democratic miracle of open-source collaboration is so full of monarchical dictatorships?

Threat models

Or, what do we talk about when we talk about decentralization? People were up in arms recently in Bluesky about the reported censorship of an account, on request of The Turkish government.