commit d2082b44baac41c443fe55aa356ccb32eb9f61bd
parent 1933838426396d3767999e92f3f08f5904897c81
Author: pyratebeard <root@pyratebeard.net>
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2022 22:20:22 +0000
disperse_together
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 20 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
diff --git a/entry/disperse_together.md b/entry/disperse_together.md
@@ -1,10 +1,25 @@
-## the land before time
-The history of the Internet is a fascinating story. In the relatively short time it has been around, dating back to the 1960s, it has become one of the greatest technological achievements in human history. It wasn't until the early 1990s and the birth of the World Wide Web (WWW) that things really took off, and since then has grown to effect many aspects of the modern world.
+## the earth that was
+The history of the Internet is a fascinating story. In the relatively short time it has been around, dating back to the 1960s, it has become one of the greatest technological achievements in human history.
-These days a lot of "the internet" is centralised on a few social media sites or apps, a number of these owned by the same companies. Back when the internet was starting to spread if you wanted to be a "content creator" (cringe) you had to run a website yourself, probably even hosted from your home. You could also go looking for forums, bulletin board systems (BBS), Usenet groups, or other locations which were of interest to you.
+
+It wasn't until the early 1990s and the birth of the World Wide Web (WWW) that things really took off, and since then has grown to effect many aspects of the modern world.
+
+An over simplification, but these days a lot of "the internet" is centralised on a few social media sites or apps, a number of these owned by the same companies. Back when the internet was starting to spread if you wanted to be a "content creator" (cringe) you had to run a website yourself, probably even hosted from your home. You could also go looking for forums, bulletin board systems (BBS), Usenet groups, or other locations which were of interest to you and find or post content.
## you can't take the sky
-The Internet began decentralised, free from central control and ownership. This is good for the Internet and the WWW.
+The Internet began decentralised, free from central control and ownership. Parts are still decentralised but this is changing. Governments, companies, all trying to get a handle on the internet and make sure people use it the way _they_ want. If you rely on one company, what happens when they decide to change their policies, or simply disappear?
+
+What if, instead of uploading all your content to a centralised social media platform, you could run your own little copy of that social media platform? It could be made available to everyone, or to only friends and family. You have more control.
+
+So groups of people break away from the centralised social media platform. Create their own instance to post content amongst their friends, and these little silos are created.
+
+Once you've seen all the cat pictures and memes your friends have you may want to break out of your instance. You find a other group of friends that had also broke away from the main centralised social media platform but you don't want to have to create an account on their instance when you already have one on yours. What if the two instance could be linked so content could be shared without having to join every instance. This is known as federating, and has been very common in technology.
+
+Take email, for example. Do you think email would be the same if gmail users could **only** email other gmail users? Email is based on a protocol which anybody can use. So gmail can send to protonmail, because they both use the same protocol.
+
+Another good analogy is the telephone network. Imagine picking up the phone to call a friend only to find out they use a different provider, so you can't talk to them.
+
+Now we have decentralised our social media people or groups can have more control over their data. They can also federate with other users of the same social media platform and build a little web of content. If you decide one such federated instance is not showing content you want to see, you can remove them from your federation.
## no power in the 'verse
-While decentralising data is good for the reasons above, having the content you want to consume spread out so far can become too much. That is where federation comes in.
+Social media using a decentralised federation model already exists. There are popular alternatives to twitter, instagram, reddit, and more. These alternatives allow you to join instances or create your own and then federate with other instances.
