Post B39ce8eHWp8qYNqbr6 by lunareclipse@snug.moe
 (DIR) More posts by lunareclipse@snug.moe
 (DIR) Post #B39ce8eHWp8qYNqbr6 by lunareclipse@snug.moe
       2026-02-09T18:39:45.637Z
       
       0 likes, 1 repeats
       
       The thing about Discord is that it has changed the meaning of "server" from "software running on some hardware, usually handling a single community" to "a community".It seems that people tend to flock to services with centralized identity because it simplifies things. You no longer need to deal with a separate account and username and profile for every community. You have a discord account and you can join any discord server. And discord servers are great for larger communities because they can support more channels and have good features for self-governing inside these communities.Any discord alternative that people would actually use will probably need centralized identity as a selling point. But unless you have the backing of VC funding or run at a loss as a public utility which is unlikely to happen at a global scale any time soon, it's not really sustainable to host whole communities.I think one possible solution would be to create a centralized identity service, perhaps with OIDC, maybe something similar to how Bluesky has the PLC identities. Then for actual chats you would have a selection of servers to host the community. However the trick to avoiding making this ridiculously complicated like say Matrix, is to not do federation. You connect to the server hosting the community you want to participate in and that server owns all the data. This would spread out the costs of running communities and the identity infrastructure, while avoiding making it overly complicated.This still leaves the problem of how to fund the central identity service. Should some features be paywalled? Should community host servers have to pay a fee if they exceed a certain user count? How to handle moderation in a scalable way?
       
 (DIR) Post #B39ceAKVHKVdlcbqIy by lumi@snug.moe
       2026-02-09T18:48:08.440Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @lunareclipse the thing making matrix complicated is that rooms are not on a single server, but instead spread over all of the participating servers. combined with needing access control, this is horribly complexi feel like, for smaller groups, where it's just a bunch of friends chatting, and you don't need moderation or access controls, this is really nicebut for big communities, having the community live on one of the servers and be completely under that servers control is likely betterhaving this split could simplify things so much
       
 (DIR) Post #B39ceC4GoeiF9r1uHQ by fluttersh@pony.social
       2026-02-09T19:14:40Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @lunareclipse @lumi https://support.delta.chat/t/spec-proposal-super-groups/4644 looks promising
       
 (DIR) Post #B39czfVEZa8cWusjb6 by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
       2026-02-09T19:18:39Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @lunareclipse what you're describing has a similar architecture to Minecraft servers.Also, BrowserID.
       
 (DIR) Post #B3B6G7aL1Thc5VQW8G by wolf480pl@mstdn.io
       2026-02-10T12:21:17Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @lunareclipse btw. thinking how more countries started adopting age verification laws, this approach has another advantage:Assuming these laws are like the UK one, where the requirements apply to the party that hosts user-generated content, they theoretically wouldn't apply to the centralized account service...