It’s somewhat ironic that decentralized web is now considered a new concept, since that’s how the web started. Ultimately the problem is that not only does centralization have many benefits, it also aligns with human nature. The perfect system is a centralized one run by a benevolent entity, but the worst possible one is a centralized one run by a malevolent entity. Unfortunately as has been demonstrated time and again even if a company starts benevolent, given enough time and the corrosive nature of capitalism, it will eventually become malevolent (the so called enshittification). So we eventually arrive at a poor compromise, a mediocre distributed experience that struggles to attract and retain users, but which is resistant to the worst problems of centralized systems.

Lemmy and other federated systems will likely never be the platforms of choice for the majority of users, but what they’ll likely have is staying power. While centralized platforms rise and fall, decentralized platforms will just… keep existing. Nodes may die, new ones will rise, but the system as a whole will survive.