Narkain: in the way IPFS distributes data (on a concept level) it works like Torrent. Copies of CIDs are stored around the P2P network when people request them. Some of them temporary, some of them permanent. Fetching can get a copy from everyone, not just the pinned ones. So while content is on high demand, people will receive content from everywhere. When things have no demand, then from a persistent origin. When no persistent origin is left anymore, the content is gone.

That is decentralised, but not persistent. Everyone can pin content, everyone can unpin content and there is no central authority that can decide for how long content is kept around.

I mean, sure, it doesn't mean that `ipfs add` is not a remote write action. But I don't think anyone ever claimed that?

If you think that storage is only decentralised when adding content to it, automatically distributes this content onto peers (forever?), then yes, IPFS is not decentralised, but by that Definition, no decentralised storage networks exist. (Or at least none that I know about.)