No. A better analogy would be like phone number portability. You can “own” your number, and if you want to change your company you can take the number with you.
Completely impractical for most people but this advice gets unironically thrown around all the time. And evangelists still wonder why regular people think the fediverse and particularly Mastodon are convoluted af.
I think people are confusing centralized with federated. Federation has benefits but Mastodon is not decentralized. There is duplication of data but it’s not the same.
Then users need to spin up their own instance, right? Then all their posts stay backed up if they choose?
Seems like a mediocre problem to get bent out of shape enough to move to a centralized platform.
No. A better analogy would be like phone number portability. You can “own” your number, and if you want to change your company you can take the number with you.
Completely impractical for most people but this advice gets unironically thrown around all the time. And evangelists still wonder why regular people think the fediverse and particularly Mastodon are convoluted af.
What are you calling centralized here?
I think people are confusing centralized with federated. Federation has benefits but Mastodon is not decentralized. There is duplication of data but it’s not the same.