I see what you mean. And yes I don't think it defines the future any longer. Unfortunately. But we passed that fork in the road a long time ago.
Most people are happy to store all their data with big tech and get snoothly marketed content designed to extract as much value as possible from themselves for corporate benefit. It is what it is.
I'm just happy it still exists and it doesn't have to take off for me either. It's similar to Linux. If it ever would take off on the desktop, it would be so corrupted that it wouldn't be Linux as we know it. So it would be the worst thing that could happen for me.
Perfectly reasonable take. "Taking off" is, I agree, a misguided expectation within this frame.
Desktop Linux (year of) is a great analogy. Had it happened, Linux would not have remained Linux as we know it. Differences would likely not to the liking of desktop Linux users irl.
Otoh... had Linux desktop really "taken off" circa 2008... it would have had a major impact on personal computing.
These are two, usually distinct desires. "Indie" generally goes with the niche, principled ethos.
> Most people are happy to store all their data with big tech and get snoothly marketed content designed to extract as much value as possible from themselves for corporate benefit.
Is this even a thought on people's mind? I don't think it's a choice people are explicitly making in their mind, but it's more like water and electricity that just takes the path of least resistance. It happens to be that centralized services are easy to join and get started with, and non-centralized services were harder to join, case in point being Mastodon where you need to first chose what server you want to join, then you can join the network itself. Same goes for IRC, torrents and a bunch of other things, it tends to just be harder to get into less centralized things, for better and worse.
But I still have the belief that we can figure out the UX to making it easier. Bluesky/ATProto is a step in the right direction, although it isn't 100% self-hostable and decentralized today, the foundation is there and the UX seems simple enough that when people have the choice, both paths have about the same friction today.
Most people are happy to store all their data with big tech and get snoothly marketed content designed to extract as much value as possible from themselves for corporate benefit. It is what it is.
I'm just happy it still exists and it doesn't have to take off for me either. It's similar to Linux. If it ever would take off on the desktop, it would be so corrupted that it wouldn't be Linux as we know it. So it would be the worst thing that could happen for me.