If you haven’t heard about it, on August 31st 2024 Brasil banned Twitter/X nationwide (see BBC, NYTimes, TheVerge).
There are numerous debates about the whys etc. But for this post I don’t care. My point here is: it once more shows the massive downside of such a centralized system.
On the one hand, a single company (well single person) is setting up their rules for millions of users. On the other side, a single decision (I don’t say whose decision – Brasil’s decision to ban Twitter or Musk’s to ignore national laws) can take down such a communication platform for all users of a full nation.
About 21 million users (Statista, Oberlo) are affected because of … well … relying on a platform run by a single company – and in Case of Twitter/X – literally by a single person. Is this really what we want? Tying so much communication so tightly to a single company/person?
I wonder when / if a majority of users realizes that such a centralization is just simply a bad idea. It’s like if eMail was only possible using software from one company. Or if websites would have to be all hosted at one provider.
But of course, it’s just so convenient! But we currently also see the price for convenience. And convenience it is (okay – let’s ignore influencer monetization for a moment). Because there are alternatives like Mastodon or BlueSky.
At first I thought “The vibe on Mastodon might be different from what Twitter Users in Brasil are used to”. But it would be no problem at all if some / enough people in Brasil would fire up their own Mastodon instances and play along their own “rules”. THIS is the advantage of federation.
It comes by the price of people doing the hosting and moderation as well, but this is the price for independence.