It’s not centralized by implementation, but that’s what it does in practice. matrix.org is by far the biggest instance and now all the other public rooms will be hidden on there unless someone manually approves it. If more instances move to the same offered default preference now, discoverability is dead.
I don’t think discoverability would be dead even if there were no other Matrix servers.
Rooms/spaces can be announced and found in other places. I generally find them through various projects’ own web sites, just as I do forums, email lists, IRC channels, etc. They could also be catalogued separately, much as is done for Lemmy, which has terrible built-in discovery.
Lack of discoverability was always the primary issue for federated services adoption. Sure you can still find it from somehwere else, but that is not what most people expect. They type in the search and they expect to find it, and if they don’t then it doesn’t exist.
Heck, even Discord who for most of its existance swore to never implement public server list (due to their inability to deal with spam) caved because it’s a mandatory feature for any platform focused on social communications.
Your examples just proves my point.
IRC is a niche protocol because of its unfriendliness to new users.
Forums died to be replaced by social media because those centralized platforms offered easy discoverability.
Lemmy communities are dominated by lemmy.world for the same lack of discoverability.
Email being the exception due to lucky timing of it becoming mandatory ID for all internet services.
You or me can work around it, regular Joe/Jane won’t bother and move to something else.
im just going to say, obsession with things like discoverability and growth are mistaken lessons from corporate social media. they have their place, but are not in fact all that important.
It’s not centralized by implementation, but that’s what it does in practice. matrix.org is by far the biggest instance and now all the other public rooms will be hidden on there unless someone manually approves it. If more instances move to the same offered default preference now, discoverability is dead.
I don’t think discoverability would be dead even if there were no other Matrix servers.
Rooms/spaces can be announced and found in other places. I generally find them through various projects’ own web sites, just as I do forums, email lists, IRC channels, etc. They could also be catalogued separately, much as is done for Lemmy, which has terrible built-in discovery.
Lack of discoverability was always the primary issue for federated services adoption. Sure you can still find it from somehwere else, but that is not what most people expect. They type in the search and they expect to find it, and if they don’t then it doesn’t exist.
Heck, even Discord who for most of its existance swore to never implement public server list (due to their inability to deal with spam) caved because it’s a mandatory feature for any platform focused on social communications.
Your examples just proves my point.
lemmy.worldfor the same lack of discoverability.You or me can work around it, regular Joe/Jane won’t bother and move to something else.
im just going to say, obsession with things like discoverability and growth are mistaken lessons from corporate social media. they have their place, but are not in fact all that important.
https://matrixrooms.info/