Post · Bonfire

Johannes Ernst @J12t@social.coop · 7 months ago

I'm thinking we are missing a term, or a concept when talking about the #Fediverse and #decentralized social networking vs. #centralized platforms.

The concept of "middleman" is good. We don't want a #middlemn. But then, most of us don't run our own Mastodon instances, so we have middlemen in the fediverse, too. And our e-mail providers are, and our hosting companies for our personal websites.

But those are a kind of different middleman, not as dangerous. We need a new term. (cont'd/)

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Johannes Ernst @J12t@social.coop · 7 months ago

So what about we distinguish between "enforced middleman" and "voluntary" or "service provider" "middlemen". (There may be better terms.)

The "enforced middleman" is that one we cannot avoid. We cannot fire, we cannot control, that does things we don't approve of but cannot do anything about other than leave.

While the "voluntary middleman" is somebody we hire because it makes our lives more convenient, but they aren't in a position of power to meddle because we can find/replace them any time.

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ShadSterling @ShadSterling@mastodon.social · 7 months ago

@J12t makes me think of the difference between renting and having a landlord, and owning and hiring someone to do the useful things a landlord should do (appliance repair, groundskeeping, etc)