- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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.
I really don’t think that would scale at all. A reasonably popular community could have tons of simultaneous posts, and if everyone needs to sync before posting, that would suck. You could probably avoid the worst of it by having posts use uuids, but you’re going to have IO issues at scale. Also, would you need the full repo cloned? That can get big, and you generally only care about recent posts.
Also, if you’re doing the UUID thing, you’d have sort everything every time locally. That’s fine if you only have a few thousand posts, but if you get into millions or billions, it’ll get bad, especially if you’re dealing with files.
Databases solve these problems really well. Even a simple SQLite dB would be much better than a filesystem, like orders of magnitude better.
Agreed, I didn’t it through much, I just really like markdown