I am convinced that decentralisation and publicity and secure private chats are not mutually exclusive if you use the appropriate protocols: On the one hand you can have ActivityPub, which is suitable for communication and discoverability between instances, and on the other hand you could use a secure messaging protocol such as Matrix, which could then be used for private chats.

I mean in the end you want to be discovered by other people so you need to provide some info about you. The good thing is that you decide what personal information you want to share with everyone and what details you only want to talk about with certain people.

For your information: We already have a centralized, open source dating app. It's called Alovoa.

Especially the safety aspect. The big platforms have extensive moderation tools to keep the creepers out. And most dating apps are still widely unappealing to women because most men on them are creepy as fuck. That's also why you can't send pictures or even links on Tinder: guys just won't stop sending dick pics as if that's appealing.

I can't imagine if you can basically make a fully anonymous profile on an instance like exploding-heads and hexbear how fucking awful the experience would be, especially for women and minorities. And who do you trust to moderate your personal conversations going toxic, especially if the report propagates to the original also toxic enabling instance?

Or the sheer amount of spam, OnlyFans baits and escort services that would dominate such a platform.

You've gotta remember, just because the norm is one way - there's an audience out there for which this would be a safety improvement.

As for dating apps, do you think gender disparity would be a problem? Largely queer communities like !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone would rejoice but straight men don't stand much of a chance.

These are all valid points which I partially forgot about and I'd love to write a follow up post reagrding this exact issue.

I think that most of your concerns are addressable on a technical level. Others will rely on the instance's community to guarantee an even safer experience. This will also benefit these instances as they can advertise with this trust level they recieve from the users.

Wow that's great to hear! I will check it out.

Impressive. Framasoft seems to be holding up much of this space all by itself.

Ah yeah a federated wiki with instances for various topics. One focused on tech others on video games, ... Like a decentralized Fandom.

Not sure how a (de)federated Wiki would look like.

Partially defederated comment sections of Lemmy posts can be pretty confusing. Users coming from different instances can see entirely different comment / reply structures.

I'm not sure if that would be a problem with a Wiki, but it's certainly something to think through before starting.

Another point: Why? Who gains what if a Wiki is federated? What problem does that solve?

I would love a federated neopets clone, had an idea for a time for a federated gaia online style avatar website

You can integrate Mastodon comments into your website with a little bit of JavaScript.

Yep, I hate LinkedIn for their stupid ads and “premium” features.

I wonder if such a platform will gain acceptance beyond "nerdy techies" like us. There could be a working platform with apps and all, but if the suits find it "not professional enough"...

Federation is a part of decentralization. Instead of one server you have multiple user run ones. It is not distribution though as there is no P2P component.

Mailing lists tend to become very cluttered and confusing over time.