A look at the issues fomented by a decentralized web, including a rise in conspiratorial thinking due to more siloed online spaces and increasing app fatigue
From social networks to crypto, independently run servers are being touted as a solution to the internet's problems. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to , @kissane@mstdn.social , @PrivacyDigest@mas.to , and @jerry@infosec.exchange Tweets: @ohmdee , @drjessmaddox , and @dimariebragg Mastodon: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life@mas.to : Decentralized social networks are bad because we now get app fatigue because of too many apps and it's harder to fight misinformation because you can't just nag Jack or Zuck to shadow ban or suspend some user? — Wow. … Erin Kissane / @kissane@mstdn.social : This article on decentralization as conspiracy-thinking magnet is extremely weird https://www.wired.com/... I feel like there's a real story there on paranoia and bitcoin and ct but like … @PrivacyDigest@mas.to : The Hidden Dangers of the #Decentralized Web — From #socialnetworks to #crypto , independently run servers are being touted as a solution to the internet's problems. But they're far from a magic bullet. … @jerry@infosec.exchange : I have some bad news everyone: the fediverse isn't working out. Guess we should pack it up and move back to Facebook. — https://www.wired.com/... Tweets: @ohmdee : But I thought Twitter's and Facebook's algorithmic filter bubbles were the ultimate conspiracy theory, anti-democracy machines!! 🤔 #openweb #bluesky #mastodon https://twitter.com/... Dr. Jess Maddox / @drjessmaddox : In my latest for @WIRED, I wrote about the downsides of decentralized social media in the turn toward Web 3.0, including inaccessibility, inherent conspiratorial ideology, and app fatigue. https://www.wired.com/... @dimariebragg : @drjessmaddox writes about decentralization. “App fatigue” is a thing, y'all. https://www.wired.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Wired piece lands mid-arc: after [[a:841739|Twitter imposed limits, Reddit alienated its users, and Instagram drifted toward entertainment]], decentralized networks like Mastodon and nostr got their moment despite real complexity, pitched as an escape from platform dependence on figures like Jack and Zuck.
But the critique here runs against the grain of the optimism — it echoes the older dark-forest thesis about online life retreating into private, less visible spaces, and anticipates the later argument that federated networks plus paying for content may be what actually repairs discourse, not server independence alone. A longtime Mastodon user had already catalogued thin networks, little diversity, and tone policing as the lived cost of decentralization.
First-order effects
- Users moving off big platforms must now run or choose among many separate apps and servers, producing the app-fatigue effect Dare Obasanjo describes rather than a single replacement feed.
- Instance moderators lose the leverage of escalating problems to a central authority like Jack or Zuck, so misinformation handling varies server by server instead of platform-wide.
Second-order effects
- Moderation quality and curation become the competitive differentiator between independent instances, pushing users toward whichever servers invest most in trust practices — the same dynamic the dark-forest coverage identified in private groups.
- Big platforms can position centralized enforcement as a feature against fragmented alternatives, while federated advocates respond by building features like cross-network reach (e.g., Mastodon's newsletters reaching non-account readers) to offset fragmentation.
Third-order effects
- If the siloing pattern holds, the social web structurally splits into many small governed spaces where conspiratorial thinking spreads faster precisely because there is no shared public square to correct it.
- Regulators and advertisers lose a single point of accountability, making trust — who moderates what, under whose rules — the core infrastructure question of the next phase of the social web.
The trend: Decentralization is trading the concentrated moderation power of big platforms for fragmentation costs — app fatigue, siloed belief communities, and uneven safety — forcing trust itself to become the product.