An interesting article I saw (from 2019) describing the potential intrinsic tendency for decentralized platforms to collapse into de facto centralized ones.
Author identifies two extremes, “information dictatorship” and “information anarchy”, and the flaws of each, as well as a third option “information democracy” to try and capture the best aspects of decentralization while eschewing the worst.
Someone said the link is broken so here it is: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html
There are no “thoughts” behind that, and anything other than that would be “communism” (actually the word used would be socialism, but that exactly and precisely equals communism by those who would say that, leaving no room at all for interpretation, nuance, or subtlety, most especially how the most revered USA institutions are socialist i.e. sharing like schools, the post office prior to it being crippled 40 some odd years ago, police, firefighters, etc.).
I find it ironic that the situation with Reddit is starting to parallel the decline of US democracy - it’s crumbling, but nobody cares. Sorry, I didn’t mean to get all political - but it’s hard not to when you talk about things like this, b/c that’s what governs our laws, at any scale.