A fundamental problem with P2P maximalism is that it ignores the specialisation benefits that come with federated networks based on connecting Community-to-Community (C2C).
Think about a village in pre-modern times. If it's big enough to feed, clothe and house someone who isn't part of producing the bare essentials, it probably has a blacksmith. If they can, the villagers will make sure the blacksmith has a fulltime apprentice, to learn their skills and tools and replace them when they retire (or before if necessary). Ideally a few of them.
Why do they support all these extra people? Because the tools produced by a good blacksmith enables the villagers to produce more food with less work. As well as improving their chances of defending their crops and stores if they need to. But that requires a blacksmith to have a well-equipped smithy, and spend most of their time practicing the skills of making good tools.
Why doesn't everyone in the village just do their own blacksmithing, breaking their dependence on the village smithy? The Chinese quickly learned why during the Great Leap Forwards, as does anyone who tries it. Because when people with minimal experience set up a home forge, using whatever resources they can cobble together by themselves, they have to do more work, for worse results.
So what's all this talk about backwoods blacksmithing got to do with decentralised digital networks? The blacksmiths in our federated villages are our servers admins. People who specialise in the many and varied skills needed to run servers reliably, securely and efficiently. Providing our villages with tools that enable us to achieve more with the same work.
Purely P2P networks force everyone to manage their own identity keys, and make their personal computers accessible to anyone on the global internet. Ideally, without punching holes in the security of those computers, or the local network. If they screw up, there's no digital blacksmith to repair their tools for them.
Forcing everyone to be a blacksmith makes no sense in a village that can afford to have a dedicated one. For the same reasons, forcing everyone to be their own server admin makes no sense in a community that can afford to have one.
If there’s one thing I definitely agree with the P2P maximalists about, it’s this; having no relationship with the admin of a server you use is unwise. This is a habit imported from the DataFarming dinosaurs of the centralised platforms. Where the heavily skewed account-to-admin ratios make it impossible for the admins of their servers to have direct relationships with everyone using them. Or in some cases, even with each other.
So even if you create an account on a random fediserver, I highly recommend getting to know your admin. For the same reasons you’d be advised to get as friendly as possible with the blacksmith if you move to a new village. Also, if you can, pay them! With money or time, whichever you have more of. Maybe you could even become the apprentice who takes over admin duties when they move on?
But one reason we started Bridge Seat is that we think the best way to enter the fediverse is to already know your admin. Perhaps you got invited to their fediserver because you know them personally. Perhaps it was set up for an organisation you’re involved with, by someone they trust to do it reliably, securely and efficiently. Perhaps you *are* your own admin, because having the support of a fediverse hosting service makes that more achievable.
The problem of people being abused by centralised online services is not caused by trust. But rather by a lack of trust. Because the “transport protocol” for building trust is ongoing social relationships, and parasocial ones are all overgrown centralised services seem to support.
The solution to abusive centralised services is not to take the “social” out of social media by creating “trustless” P2P networks. But rather by restoring the direct relationships between server admins and the people they serve, and thus restoring trust in social media. While keeping the benefits of having people specialise in caring for servers, for the benefit of their communities.
Image:
"Croatia-00703 - Smither (Blacksmith)" by archer10 (Dennis), licensed CC BY-SA 2.0.
"Female Blacksmith" by Saio Jawara, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.