> Hard disagree with this. Email is the example I give people of how federation could work.
That depends on how one looks at it. If spam and illegal content are considered, it may not be "working" in the sense a public service needs to be.
Email works because it's private, so the requirements are much looser; a large part of the article is how to solve the bad actors problem, which doesn't apply to email (well, it applies, but spam is more or less accepted as fact of life, while fake news etc. isn't - and it may never be, independenly of being right or wrong).
> By that standard, centralized social networks have utterly failed us as well.
They're not on the same level; moderation of social networks like Twitter/Facebook can be considered insufficient, but it exists. Contrast to the very low barriers (if any) to send spam emails, where the filter is, ironically, in the hands of centralized services like Gmail.
No, the filter is in the hands of everyone who runs a mail server. Gmail et al. run the most centralized spam filters, but anyone running their own MX will almost certainly run their own spam filter as well. Likewise, Mastodon moderation falls to the servers.
That depends on how one looks at it. If spam and illegal content are considered, it may not be "working" in the sense a public service needs to be.
Email works because it's private, so the requirements are much looser; a large part of the article is how to solve the bad actors problem, which doesn't apply to email (well, it applies, but spam is more or less accepted as fact of life, while fake news etc. isn't - and it may never be, independenly of being right or wrong).