Genuine inquiry . Maybe I am not experienced enough with the various federated platforms but I am an avid user of matrix, and have dabbled in lemmy. From what I have seen is federation is on the path to decentralization but not fully there. It creates fiefdom, little kingdoms . Great yes you may find one that suites you better, but users now can end up isolated to their island, switch island sure but now you are isolated for the previous island and maybe others. Its stupid. On matrix you need to know the other island(server) to even find its rooms(communities). Some rooms block users from one server while others block users of other servers. You either have to run multiple accounts or accept the limits. Add in you are at the mercy of your home server, you can lose your account have it immitated, and more. The performance is horrible not sure why, but content is slow to update and spread. Matrix has the problem because of its design most people are on the matrix.org server and so the point of federation is largely lost. They are moving to p2p where it seems the solutions for federation now dont apply.
Anyway why is federation not stupid? Are these problems only with Matrix? Cause I look at lemmy and it seems far worse.
Federation is the most natural form of human society. We’ve developed to exist in small communities of a couple dozen people. Some groups talk to each other, some don’t, and every one has its own identity. Sometimes a member leaves and gets assimilated into another group.
Existing in large communities with thousands and millions of members - other species do that, like ants.
Ok weird analogy, but I think that’s the gist of it really.
Uniform places like Facebook, with one queen/master, perfectly organised, never really seeing outside, being just a cog - that’s a life of an ant.
Small, agile communities, sometimes a bit messy and complex, especially when it comes to outside interactions - we can handle that, because of our huge human brains.
It’s time for moving away from being ants back to being humans.