@shazow.eth

What does "sufficiently decentralized social network" actually mean? There seems to be some confusion, where people assume it means more than it actually does. @v wrote this essay in 2022, arguing that a core tenet should be oriented around censorship resistance. "A social network achieves sufficient decentralization if two users can find each other and communicate, even if the rest of the network wants to prevent it." The essay makes some plausible assumptions of what such a social network may look like but really the core tenet makes no claims about any other power structures of the social network. If we can construct a network with these properties that is owned by one company with one client that encourages one kind of use case, we can still credibly claim it's "sufficiently decentralized". Who knows, with innovations in cryptography this may become more plausible. "Sufficient decentralization" as defined here adds no real constraints about who owns the network, who funds it, who controls what use cases it encourages/discourages, etc. It's a tightly scoped claim, and that is useful. It's a good essay, everyone should read it. I think a lot of people on Farcaster want "sufficient decentralization" to mean something more than it does, but it's important to be on the same page. https://www.varunsrinivasan.com/2022/01/11/sufficient-decentralization-for-social-networks

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