There is a disdain for federated protocols but I hardly see how this is any different except that there are no explicit federation features.
The "subplebbit" owner acts like the operator of a Mastodon or Matrix instance except as mentioned above, those were designed to aggregate data across instances.
The fundamental problem with these decentralised platforms is that they want to get rid of the human element but if you just let anyone get away with anything and everyone rehosts everyone else's data unconditionally, then you get something like zeronet which has its own Reddit clone. The problem with zeronet is that people advertise their illegal porn on your supposedly "family friendly" Reddit clone and your users involuntarily download it and make themselves criminally liable. Whether something should be legal or not is a philosophical question, someone has to make a decision and then enforce it. Any platform where users are allowed to upload arbitrary information requires moderation. There is no way around this. The only benefit of a decentralized app is that you can have smaller self hosted communities.
I spent a lot of time evaluating the technical viability of decentralised apps and honestly you should avoid it even if your use case requires it.
>The "subplebbit" owner acts like the operator of a Mastodon or Matrix instance
- Mastodon and lemmy instances can delete your account/community data (they own your data), on plebbit you own your data, it's on your device and you seed it P2P, community owners cant delete it
- Mastodon and lemmy instances can block you from accessing and interacting with other instances through their client, which forces you to use multiple clients to interact with all instances you want, on plebbit, the client accesses all content directly and p2p, community owners can't block you from accessing any content. You only have to use a single client.
- Mastodon and lemmy instances require a domain name, a static, public HTTP endpoint, an SSL certificate, DDOS protection to run. All which are complicated to set up, cost money, sometimes require KYC, sometimes require the command line and linux. Your server, domain, ssl and ddos protection provider are intermediaries that delete/block your account.
Whereas plebbit is a GUI executable like a bittorrent client, you download it, open it, that's it, you're done. No payments, no kyc, no command line, no config, no intermediaries that can shut down your account.
The "subplebbit" owner acts like the operator of a Mastodon or Matrix instance except as mentioned above, those were designed to aggregate data across instances.
The fundamental problem with these decentralised platforms is that they want to get rid of the human element but if you just let anyone get away with anything and everyone rehosts everyone else's data unconditionally, then you get something like zeronet which has its own Reddit clone. The problem with zeronet is that people advertise their illegal porn on your supposedly "family friendly" Reddit clone and your users involuntarily download it and make themselves criminally liable. Whether something should be legal or not is a philosophical question, someone has to make a decision and then enforce it. Any platform where users are allowed to upload arbitrary information requires moderation. There is no way around this. The only benefit of a decentralized app is that you can have smaller self hosted communities.
I spent a lot of time evaluating the technical viability of decentralised apps and honestly you should avoid it even if your use case requires it.