Decentralized Syndication — The Missing Internet Protocol

Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization

How Control Exists after DecentralizationIs the Internet a vast arena of unrestricted communication and freely exchanged information or a regulated, highly

Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards

Despite being designed and operated as a decentralized network-of- networks, the Internet is continuously subjected to forces that encourage centralization. This document offers a definition of centralization, explains why it is undesirable, identifies different types of it, catalogues limitations of common approaches to decentralization, and explores what Internet standards efforts can do to address it.

Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards

This document discusses aspects of centralization that relate to Internet standards efforts. It argues that, while standards bodies have a limited ability to prevent many forms of centralization, they can still make contributions that assist in the decentralization of the Internet.

The Decentralized Web: Defending Internet Freedom through Decentralization: Back to the Future? — MIT Digital Currency Initiative

In this report, we explore two important ways structurally decentralized systems could help address the risks of mega-platform consolidation: First, these systems can help users directly publish and discover content directly, without intermediaries, and thus without censorship. All of the systems we

Hypermedia

Welcome to the Hypermedia Protocol: a decentralized publishing and discussion network

#protocolsforpublishers #atproto #mcp #webapplets | Chad Kohalyk

Web publishing is facing its next challenge: a new iteration of centralizing platforms. BUT there is also a new wave of open protocols and standards that can help us gain our independence. Next month in NYC we are gathering a group of frontier technologists and popular web publishers to discuss how we can sail into this next platform shift as captains. #ProtocolsForPublishers Learn more and sign up here: https://pfp.unternet.co We will be hosting talks on #atproto #mcp #webapplets and web payments, and give publishers the opportunity to interact directly with developers working on these frontier technologies. Thank you to Unternet, Graze Social, Free our Feeds, and betaworks for their support.

The ecosystem is moving

Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize....

Rewilding the internet with ATProto

So far, many of the projects in the ATProtocol ecosystem have focused on bringing parity—making projects that replicate our existing tools and platforms, but with the affordances of the protocol instead. That's cool and we need to do that, but I think we can go much farther, and take this opportunity to challenge some of the biggest assumptions of what the modern internet is for, who builds it, and how we interact with it. This talk is in conversation with several of the talks from last year, and in I'll argue that we'll never get away from skeuomorphism until we've fundamentally changed the definition of what "the social internet" means in the first place.

Paradigm shifts for the decentralized Web

The answer to these questions varies with different degrees of decentralization:

Chad Kohalyk (@chadkoh@indieweb.social)

Web publishing is facing its next challenge: a new iteration of centralizing platforms. BUT there is also a new wave of open protocols and standards that can help us gain our independence. Next month in NYC we are gathering a group of frontier technologists and popular web publishers to discuss how we can sail into this next platform shift as captains. #ProtocolsForPublishers https://pfp.unternet.co

Practical Decentralization

The point of decentralization is to guarantee the rights of individuals and communities on the Internet. Pulling that off is a balancing act between practicality and ideology.

Practical Decentralization

The point of decentralization is to guarantee the rights of individuals and communities on the Internet. Pulling that off is a balancing act between practicality and ideology.

Minimum viable decentralization – John Backus – Medium

If you want people to use your product, decentralize the bare minimum. Lessons from Freenet, I2P, Darknet markets, and Reddit.

Seeing the Politics of Decentralized Social Media Protocols

Calls to decentralize feed-based social media have been driven by concerns about the concentrated power of centralized platforms and their societal impact. In response, numerous decentralized social media protocols have emerged, each interpreting “decentralization” in a different way. We analyze four such protocols (ActivityPub, AT Protocol, Nostr, and Farcaster) drawing on protocol documentation, media coverage, direct usage, and semi-structured interviews with protocol developers and experts to situate each protocol within its socio-technical goals. To support this analysis, we develop a grounded lexicon that facilitates the description and comparison of analogous components across each protocol. With it, we show how each protocol distributes control over key components differently, shaping who holds power over critical aspects such as user identity, curation, and infrastructural ownership. By examining protocols as socio-technical artifacts, we show how they prioritize different values and make distinct trade-offs, providing CSCW researchers with a lens to more effectively evaluate and design future decentralized social media systems.