A few months ago, I posted here about my excitement for Plebbit and the promise it held for decentralization. I was convinced that a p2p social platform with a unique UI could be the future, with different UI of all social media…including Lemmy, a true alternative to centralized services. I saw the potential, and I wanted to believe in it.
Plebbit promised a lot of an innovative interface, decentralization, community driven governance. But after months of delays, vague updates, and little to no progress, it’s clear they never delivered. They had the right ideas but lacked the follow through to make them a reality. What was once an exciting project quickly turned into an example of what can go wrong when the hype overshadows the substance.
I wanted Plebbit to succeed, but in the end, I’ve realized that I’m better off sticking with what actually works.
If Plebbit had actually followed through on its promises especially with its vision of being a decentralized Reddit alternative. it could have been the best. The idea of a selfhosted platform, where users had true control over their content and communities, was a dream for those of us who wanted more than just another centralized app. It had the potential to be the go-to solution for anyone seeking real decentralization and p2p freedom. But unfortunately, that potential was never realized. Instead of delivering on its ambitious promises, Plebbit became just another project that failed to meet expectations, and the opportunity for a truly revolutionary platform faded away.
Each community (equivalent of subreddit) is essentially a keypair, and whoever runs the community and has access to the keypair can do whatever they want. They can ban people + assign moderators + etc, there are no global admins.
Sure, I’m just worried it’ll have similar problems as reddit, just without global admins to fix/enforce things. The creator of a community is rarely the right person make decisions long term. Moderation should be based on trust and merit, not first come first served because moving everyone to a new community is hard.
We had similar problems here on Lemmy when most of the popular communities were on Lemmy.ml and subject to their moderation.
But maybe it’s fine. It’s probably an improvement on Reddit, and maybe an improvement on Lemmy if it actually encourages more diversity in community ownership. I’ll certainly check it out!