How is RSS not decentralized? RSS is typically published alongside the content it is syndicating. There is no central RSS publisher. What central RSS reader there was decided to lay down and die, so there's no centralization there either.
I still don't understand. RSS may be sourced from a single server, but it is, like I said, also generally being run from the same entity that is sourcing the content going into the RSS feed. Some sort of additional "decentralization" would be bad.
RSS and the content it is syndicating being connected is a good thing overall; AIUI Mastadon ultimately advertises very similar types of control over data in terms of random entities not schlepping whatever data they like around under whatever pretenses they like. (RSS of course has no fine-grain controls, partially by design, partially because no other design was possible at the time.)
Let me put it this way: Being specific, how is my RSS feed at http://jerf.org/iri/rss.xml particularly "centralized"? I mean, yes, I'm the one serving it, but that's what I want, just like my email comes in to a server under my control by my choice. There's no central service, no central registry I had to register that with, no central consumer, no central authority to tell me they won't carry it or that it's going to censor me.
>> 'I still don't understand. RSS may be sourced from a single server, but it is, like I said, also generally being run from the same entity that is sourcing the content going into the RSS feed. Some sort of additional "decentralization" would be bad.'
Some of these hot new podcast startups are trying to do exactly this. Ben Thompson of Stratechery/Exponent talks about this often: he refuses to add his podcast to Google or Spotify because they control the relationship between audience and podcaster. Apple, for example, only provides discovery for podcast RSS feeds and hasn't tried to take control (yet).
The gmail problem refers to the centralization of email by large central providers like gmail. In theory email is a protocol that anyone you can setup on your own server, but in practice any email you send from there cant be read by anyone, because it will automatically be marked as spam by central providers like gmail/yahoo/outlook (what 99% of email users use).
Protocols like ActivityPub and email are highly susceptible to this, whereas blockchain based protocols like Bitcoin are immune to this problem.
