Are Decentralised Platforms Really That Good?

One of the goals for any privacy advocate is to move away from centralised systems such as Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp et al. and opt for privacy respecting alternatives, they include:

This list is not comprehensive and I am sure many other options exist.

All of the software is self-hosted meaning you either set it up yourself on your own server, or you use a public instance somebody else has created - preferably someone you trust.

Whilst finding and implementing alternatives for friends and family is absolutely commendable! I cannot easily say that I have the wherewithal to be able to do it personally…

Social Media Wannabes

Regarding the social media alternatives, to put it bluntly I don’t really see the point. I never particularly liked Twitter in the first place, and whilst I was a long time Facebook user - I gave it up. Not only is it unhealthy, 95% of the content is a complete a waste of time. It’s also pretty creepy, a seemingly independent thought somehow manifests itself as a well timed advert in your news feed.

At the time, I did look at alternatives when I was weaning myself off the Zuck’s proverbial teat, but alas nobody cared enough to join me.

I don’t really understand why this is almost always the case. People can usually see various problems with all the big platforms, even if it’s not the same problems others perceive. Yet so many still continue to use these services. I guess it is down to conditioning and compliance.

Firstly, anyone using the service is being trained to post more and more content in exchange for the thrill that “likes” give you. However one will only garner likes if the content is socially acceptable. As a result posts become fairly mundane fairly quickly as anything controversial will be met with disapproval via comical little angry faces, thereby causing a low in the poster. In order to re-establish their buzz they must post something deemed acceptable again. It is this false sense of and desire to fit in that causes most to comply with the continued use of the service because nobody wants to be that oddball that uses something else, or no social media at all.

I am sure the alternatives are much better than big tech’s offerings, at least from a privacy perspective but I find it odd why these projects want to mimic so closely their mainstream counterparts, instead of making something new and compelling.

Video Streaming

This section will be as eventful as the subheading. Unless you already have an audience somewhere else on the internet, I don’t see the benefit in hosting videos for others to watch?

People very rarely venture off of YouTube and most search engines are geared to directing you back…

The only value such software may bring, is as a back up should you be deleted from YouTube, because let’s face it you’re probably already on YouTube.

XMPP Woes

I attempted to set up an XMPP/Jabber chat server. I read and watched a few tutorials and followed the instructions with no real issue. It did work and everything was set up on the server correctly according to said tutorials. However, I couldn’t seem to set the attachment size any larger than 1mb, making sharing most common files people want to share virtually useless. I’m sure that was user error, and not an issue with the software.

The real issue for me however is the selection of clients.

The go to android app is Conversations, well it’s the price of a coffee on the Play Store… I am by no means adverse to supporting the developer but considering I couldn’t increase the file size limit on my server, I’d rather try before I buy so to speak. I could have tried the free version from the F-Droid store, but I believe that version doesn’t support push notifications. In the end, I opted to use Snikket a fork of Conversations, from the Play Store (to get push notifications.) The app has a similarly outdated look to Conversations, only in yellow, as opposed to green. Looks aren’t always everything, and the app let’s you know which XMPP protocols are supported on your server, which is nice. Snikket is also available on iOS as well, which at least insures interoperability between the mobile platforms.

The other apps on iOS are either outdated (as in haven’t been updated in a while, not necessarily appearance.) Or have questionable policies considering they’re supposed to be private messengers - one app even logs chats in plain text!? Whilst it might not be sent directly to the developers, the option may present itself if the app were to crash - it doesn’t inspire confidence.

Ideally, I wanted to be able to let others use the android/iOS apps, meanwhile I could use a Linux client. At the command line, Profanity wouldn’t let me save any settings in the program itself. I’m okay with that, I don’t mind making/editing config files. After adding some settings, when I opened Prosody again nothing was applied and the config file had been overwritten. Mccabber, whilst working as expected, sadly doesn’t appear to have been updated in a while and so doesn’t support various XMPP protocols which are used by Snikket.

I’m sure a capable solution for Linux exists, but by this point I didn’t have the patience to continue and abandoned all efforts. I will maybe consider trying again in the future.

The Decentralisation Pipe Dream

I do believe the way the internet has evolved and the dependency some platforms have created is a sad thing. In an ideal world everyone would indeed host their preferred service and interact with others doing the exact same thing. Unfortunately we do not live in that world.

The fact is decentralised platforms such as those discussed today will rightly or wrongly almost always be for fringe audiences. That is not necessarily a bad thing, it could even be seen as an advantage. However if the goal is to push the masses toward better alternatives, either because they are technically superior or they just respect your privacy (or both even) - I personally don’t think it will happen and dare I say, it’s perhaps delusional to think it’s even possible.

The majority of people are all too happy to sacrifice privacy for ease of use and convenience. People also tend to want to stick with what they know. One reason I gave up on the XMPP idea wasn’t even the issues I described above, rather the sinking realisation (as I was trying to iron things out) that nobody I know would really use it. I know all to well how hard it is to get people to switch to something different. I had one friend who would flat out refuse to install Signal (a centralised, albeit privacy respecting chat app.) Allegedly, installing and signing up for an account was too difficult. Even though the same individual managed to download, install and set up an account for Telegram!?

My intention is not to trash these projects. Nor is it to dissuade anyone from using them. If you use them and they work for you, your friends and/or family, I think you have done an amazing job - like, seriously. My goal, I guess is to manage expectations and a reminder that all these alternatives are in reality only as good as the people you can convince to interact with and actually use them.