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Comment by danicgross | Hacker News Reader

Between this, Mastodon, Matrix, and others, I feel like we're witnessing the end of the centralized web era (everyone uses one network), and the return to a distributed Internet (lots of different services) with aggregators (Adium or NovaChat).

The recent Twitch/Reddit/Twitter bans should only magnify this effect. Congrats Eric! I'm very excited to use this.

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I hope that's the case, but I have trouble seeing a future where centralized applications (mostly Facebook, Instagram, and iMessage) will be thrown aside by the masses.

People still use Facebook after multiple proven privacy scandals. If that doesn't push people off the platform, what will?

An alternative with a strong existing network effect. I dont really use FB at all anymore, but Im not on Mastodon et al because no one else I know is.

It's a bad catch 22.

BeWelcome.org is trying hard to get that "critical mass". I won't explain the whole history of CouchSurfing demanding membership fees and locking people out of accounts, because I don't want to complain. The focus within the community is about volunteering and building a new future together. It's primarily about letting people stay in each others' houses for free, yet there's more to the community that just hosting and being a guest.

It's a very international group, with real-life weekly meetups in several cities. The management structure is like Wikipedia/Wikimedia. The website itself needs a lot of work though.

If BeWelcome gets the network effect it needs, I'm very hopeful that BeVolunteer could start more projects. (BeBook? BeMail? BeChat?)

It says its open source, but the only link to this in the faq says you should "get access" to the source via some developers circle(?) which goes to an apache "it works" page

Sorry that the link is wrong! This is the Github project:

https://github.com/BeWelcome/rox

There's no closed "developer's circle", it's an open group that anyone can join - I just made an account about a month ago.

I think you are exaggerating. I try out a lot of things and decentralized services don't seem to be catching my interest.

It's not about how something is build, it's about what is done with it.

I'm also pretty sure that the "silent majority" is pretty happy to have toxic people out and it's probable that they will move to these services. Giving the same problem to other stakeholders.

Additionally, decentralized services probably won't receive billions in funding.

Ehhhh maybe. I don't think the general population will be dropping Facebook/Twitter/Reddit anytime soon.

Facebook is actually dying. Ask people around you that younger than 20 years (+- a few). No one is using facebook at that age. Facebook is for boomer.

I'm 23 and about half my friends have and actively use Facebook. It's dying, but not _that_ quick. FB owns Instagram too, which is far more popular with the younger crowd.

Sure but they're using other appps with equally worrying privacy issues

I agree! While maybe it won't be everyone , it does feel like there's a cracking of positive energy around these decentralized, or at least federated efforts.

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