Decentralization is about preventing power asymmetries. Power asymmetries tend to find new shapes and forms, which are difficult to detect in the early stages and nearly impossible to change later on. They were latent in Twitter as long as it had benevolent dictators. When that changed, there was and a flow of energy into the decentralized media and decentralized movements. It didn't take long before fragmentation set in. (Bateson would call that phenomenon "schismogenesis," In hashtag#LoF terms, there was a re-entry of the centralization/decentralization distinction decentralization.)

Since decentralized protocols are a direct manifestation of the value of their proponents and builders, they have given new fuel to the ongoing decentralization discourse. So we have extreme decentralists and others supporting hybrid, switching, and other flavors.

However, there are two fundamental problems with the decentralization discourse:

1. Decentralization tends to become a surrogate of the motivation for it and a goal in itself.

2. Decentralization is too neat to absorb the messy social world.

Preventing power asymmetries is a cause worth fighting for. But decentralization is not a good hill to die on. You may not be able to imagine how power asymmetries can be avoided without decentralization, but lack of imagination is not an argument.

Details in my latest article https://www.linkandth.ink/p/beyond-decentralization

#decentralized #protocols