Here is a more detailed explanation.
The internet was originally developed as a peer-to-peer decentralised architecture and many things on the internet including podcasting, websites and many underlying internet protocols still operate that way.
However the problem with a distributed, decentralised architecture is "How the hell do you find anything?".
It was to fulfill this need to find things that centralised search engines and later the many other centralised platforms that today dominate the online space arose.
Both people and programs need to be told where to look or where to start looking for something they need. Even when the actual content is transferred in a peer-to-peer manner, the central point is always vulnerable to control and censorship.
A practical example is Napster. People shared songs in a peer to peer manner but Napster provided the central point where people and programs looked to find the song they were looking for.
Because it was a centralised company it could be attacked and shut down.
Podcasts are peer-to-peer but people need a central place to look for the location of RSS feeds they are interested in. Many of the more popular podcast indexes such as that run by Apple are now beginning to censor content.
What is needed for podcasting and has wide applicability is a centralised point for people and programs to look for the particular type of information they want (be that a RSS feed, a livestream, a song or video or whatever) but which is on a properly decentralised platform that cannot be censored, controlled or shut down.
This is what @podping does, using Hive, very elegantly and requiring very minimal computer resources.
This changes everything.
The point re livestreaming is that it is currently all platform specific, siloed and controlled by censorious Big Tech. There is no place a person can say to the world "I am going LIVE!" in a platform independent way.
Once such a place exists then content creators can easily switch platforms from Facebook to Vimm, to 3Speak etc without being trapped in a particular centralised ecosystem. They can take their followers with them as they move to the best platform.
So the notification system is what is being decentralized, not the platforms themselves. I think I understand what you mean by a decentralized pointer now. I haven't really taken the time to look into the blogging/podcasting systems out there like RSS, and maybe I should. It'll probably help me understand podping more.
Hey, thank you for taking the time to write this out! I understand it a bit more now, even if I had to read both comments a couple times, kudos to you my dude.
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