Check out Planetary.social or Manyverse, both using same protocol that uses no points of failure, no servers required. Tech is there but we still living the "everyone can host a forum" times like it's something new. This model is outdated and we should be aiming for something better.
I think that people would be rooting for freedom but here we are having this conversation. My account at Lemmy has years, I'm one of those that has no such frictions and tested Lemmy long time ago when was said that it was the return of Jesus. I agree people will be kind of stuck at Lemmy, for a brief moment, just until some trend shows up and there they go again, that's why they are here in the first place. I bet 99% of this influx will go back to Reddit like many of those that are back at Twitter. Most people couldn't care less what's happening at Reddit, Twitter or anywhere else. They will just get used to the official app and be done with it. Btw, care to explain why people would stay at Lemmy over Reddit? You mention friction, what else?
They will choose another instance? Or move on to something better and won't make the same mistake. The system as you call it is distributed but all those servers are points of centralization. Then you have P2P that is fully decentralized and has no servers.
Compare that with the 5 seconds it takes to install Manyverse or Planetary.Social on a smartphone and be done with it. Running docker containers is trivial for you and me but it isn't for most people. Also a public instance has to follow the law, soon will have to scan messages and content, follow privacy regulations, have proper backups and security, risk suffer hacks, risk have user data leaked, etc. This isn't a playground. All that trouble for what? Why not decentralize everything? This model is outdated and people should just avoid it, starting with the devs.
I selfhost many things. But makes no sense to selfhost a full insurance just for one user. Also is not as easy as installing an application. You likely have to provide a domain, SSL certs, open ports, deal with security and we are not in 2010 anymore. That form of communications is outdated.
I think owning our accounts would be actually good and saving a key pair is as simple as saving a password. Also, the server wouldn't be going down because there would be no servers.
Nowadays doesn't even make any sense to use servers. Everyone already have decent computers and/or smartphones able to host their own content (text) and their friends content. Doesn't require much. Why not create something better? We already have decentralized finance but we still using centralized social networks. How's this possible?!
@epical
@lemmy.ml