What to do once you admit that decentralization never seems to work (2018)
Decentralization the way the crypto crowd wants can only happen if everyone has a server at home, some consumer-grade ARM box that you plug in and forget. It should be configured to work out of the box without the customer ever having to use the shell.• your own Nextcloud server to replace Dropbox, GCal• email server (replace Gmail)• torrent seedbox (replace Netflix, Spotify, etc.)• personal Bitcoin node (replace banking and reliance on centralized Bitcoin miners)• ActivityPub/Mastodon (replace FB/TWTR)If you want to message someone, you don't use WhatsApp--you talk directly to their self-hosted XMPP server. You verify your own monetary transactions on your Bitcoin node without having to rely on a third-party service. You and your friends participate in your own ActivityPub social network.There are a lot of problems with this obviously. You lose out on the discoverability that centralized hubs give you. On centralized networks, you can find someone on the other side of the world just as easily as you could find your neighbor. A decentralized world brings you back in time to where you are more limited to the people in your physical area or the online niches you run in. Do you want to sacrifice globalization to have decentralization?