Google. They had such a noble cause and potential - to organize the world’s information so that everyone could search it effectively. There was a point I thought of them as the epitome of academia, a huge force in the quest for the advancement of the world.
Now they’ve become the exact opposite.
Scientists should consult tech people about stuff like this just like we should consult scientists for science stuff. Unfortunately a lot of tech people also aren’t conscious of this stuff either.
Instances are stores (think Amazon or Etsy). Products are posts. Sellers are users.
Stores aren’t protected from being defederated. You can still search Google or whatever, still visit the site and buy stuff. It just will not be a unified search, just like how anything else works with ActivityPub.
The good stores would be run by admins who don’t have an incentive to defederate from others. Stores don’t make money or take a cut from sellers anyway. The sellers aren’t in charge of the instance, just like an Etsy seller can’t do anything about the fact that they have competitors on Etsy.
The need for decentralization is that the store / Amazon / Etsy is broken up but the search and interactions, reviews, etc. are unified.
I think it makes sense. It would allow a decentralized unified search across all stores. With Lemmy I can search posts as long as the instance is federated. With this I could find products.
Ecosia is building a custom search engine index, ETA summer 2025