Centralized Wins. Decentralized Loses
I think there are 2 issues at play here.<p>The first one, the article touched on obliquely:<p>&gt; Back in those days of high adventure hosts were far more than mere pets, they were golden temples where crusaders came to worship speaking prayers of code.
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&gt; Today, servers aren&#x27;t even cattle, servers are insects connected over fast networks. Centralization is not only possible now, it&#x27;s economical, it&#x27;s practical, ...<p>&quot;Back in those days&quot; users were administrators of one sort or another because that was the barrier to entry. But administrating systems sucks, even if it&#x27;s just a PC. The rise of server-less is just another testament to this: being able to outsource the boring, tricky bits to experts is great as long as the principle-agent problem doesn&#x27;t rear its head too often.<p>The second issue is that distributed (I suppose some people might call them federated) identity systems don&#x27;t work very well. Look at the vast gulf between the spam problem on Facebook and the spam problem with email.<p>If you&#x27;ve signed up with a centralized identity system, it&#x27;s pretty convenient to use a bunch of services synced up with that identity: all of the social media stuff is probably the tip of the iceberg.