> So I believe the answer to that question is to build better, easy to use, decentralized platforms. I think that given a real choice, people would be happy to use open systems. Up until now they haven't been given easily usable alternatives that do all the things they want to do.
The problem is that decentralized systems are always going to be less usable than the centralized systems they compete with. Centralization is what makes better usability possible.
> Centralization is what makes better usability possible.
I disagree with this premise.
There's less opportunity for monetary gain, so less effort has been invested in decentralized systems.
I don't think it's an actual inherent technical limitation of decentralized systems. In fact decentralized systems promise many technical benefits. Of course there are also challenges, but in my opinion, not insurmountable ones.
There's a kernel of truth in that premise, in that centralization enables better usability by making things within a centralized system consistent, and thus interoperable.
When you let people run away with their creative freedom, you get the Web. That is, nothing talks to anything else in any reasonable way.
I don't think so. Standardisation is what makes decentralisation possible. The only one thing that the likes of Facebook really do well compared to decentralised is spam detection.
And by the way - spam is a problem that those platforms don't solve themselves either as they use their communities to filter that out. So it's only a matter of time before those communities realise they might as well work outside those platforms.
