Decentralization is more powerful than you think. If I open a social network that is just like Facebook, it will go under. But if it is also properly decentralized (=federated), meaning you can have account at my site but interact with every Facebook user as if you had an account there, Facebook immediately looses it&#x27;s network effect. And if I offer an additional silly feature, say let users customize the color of their home page, my decentralized net is at an advantage.<p>Unfortunately, Facebook explicitly forbids that kind of interaction, of course.<p>I see two options how decentralized nets could win:<p>1) Legislation that forces large sites like Facebook to federate (makes sense if you argue that FB has become infrastructure) or without that:<p>2) Lots of people try to build federated sites, and fail... but one day, Facebook goes the way of Yahoo and MySpace, and one of the decentralized contenders happens to be the new Facebook by chance.