> I'm exactly in the target demographic that desperately wants a a return to the old, decentralized, protocol-based internet. We need working alternatives to Twitter to prevent a single mentally unstable billionaire from having this kind of power. But everything about Mastodon seems badly designed and engineered. The focus on "servers" seems technologically anachronisticm.
I don't understand what decentralized internet service you would prefer then? The ability for anyone to host their own decentralized instance is exactly what a return to the protocols of old would look like. They may not have had anime avatars, but you were just as susceptible to the whims of your IRC admin. Either you trust in the faceless centralized conglomerate or in your smaller devop. What third option is there?
Peer to peer networks, with servers being purely optional for convenience (for convenient access from mobile, for example). Nothing about the social experience -- including your identity -- being tied to the "server" you're using to access the network. Technology has advanced since the invention of IRC.
Yet nobody really showed how to solve p2p in a way that supports: moderation, not downloading massive amount of data, account recovery, safe protocol upgrades. For example scuttlebutt exists and the initial connection involves "This “inital syncing” process can take up to an hour and use a fair amount of data.", you can't lose your keys, and unless something changed, moderation is still just wishful thinking "Presently, there is a "flag" feature, which is an extremely strong negative signal. If somebody is behaving poorly, feel free to flag them."
I acknowledge that Mastodon is not perfect, but raising that as "badly designed and engineered" seems weird, when it's the most decentralised, actually working solution we've got.
I don't understand what decentralized internet service you would prefer then? The ability for anyone to host their own decentralized instance is exactly what a return to the protocols of old would look like. They may not have had anime avatars, but you were just as susceptible to the whims of your IRC admin. Either you trust in the faceless centralized conglomerate or in your smaller devop. What third option is there?