The internet has been stolen from you. Take it back, nonviolently

This isn't a felt need. I don't feel inconvenienced by this. I don't feel the loss of something I once owned or had the benefit of.

> The solution is to decentralize further,

The solution solves a very abstract problem. I would go so far as to say it's a religious or spiritual need only that is solved by this. Decentralization will not improve my life or meet any felt need (I am not less hungry, less lonely, more clothed, more sheltered, or more socially connected as a result of this product). The only benefit I could have is if I had a religious belief in the moral need for this type of system, and that system satisfied that moral belief. I think that's a very small minority of users.

"When you live in a capitalistic society, the currency of the dissemination of information goes through capitalistic channels. Would Noam Chomsky object to his works being sold at Barnes & Noble? No, because that's where people buy their books. We're not interested in preaching to just the converted. It's great to play abandoned squats run by anarchists, but it's also great to be able to reach people with a revolutionary message, people from Granada Hills to Stuttgart."

Email is federated. Does it give us any more control over our data? No, because one company controls the largest email service and monitors not just that user's emails but also the ones I send to them.

XMPP is federated. One company managed to get a large enough market share, at the first opportunity they lock other federation servers out and change the protocol.

Federation for established websites is long a thing, CDNs are taking care of that for them. Central points of contact combined with P2P distribution like WebTorrent is the worst of both worlds: The centralized site still owns all your data, and in addition you're paying with your bandwidth and CPU resources to reduce their bill.

A fully client-centric model isn't anywhere near likely to make it big in the near future. However, client-first (with personal servers provided by friends & non-profits) is the only feasible approach for reclaiming ownership of our data.

For-profit companies don't have any incentives to let you store large amounts of encrypted data on their servers for free, at best they'll use it for cross-selling. At worst they'll push for a modified protocol version that relies on the central company server for crucial functionality, scheming the next lock-in.

If the past is any indication, the future looks bleak for idealists who (merely?) want a user-controlled alternative to those data-driven monopolist platform ecosystems.

The technology might be getting there, but the average user's priorities make it a super hard sell. In the face of the Google/Apple duopoly, open standards are more and more an optional gimmick - instead of standard data transfer protocols we get CarPlay and Dropbox, instead of wireless standards we get Chromecast and Apple Multipeer, instead of mini-computer smartphones we get constrained consumption devices with tracking built in as a core feature.

The value of client-first P2P is really not about censorship or failure. It's about control. By giving control over protocols and platforms to a handful of large service providers, we got more convenience in exchange for our opportunities to tinker and improve on the status quo. Instead of being able to change things as a society, now we have to rely on shareholder-controlled entities to decide what's good for us. It used to be just code and Windows vs. Linux, now it's data and Google vs. basic assumptions of privacy.

And the user doesn't even know the difference.

What follows are a few blockers, or possible failure modes for Swadeshi. The biggest potential issues are not with the technology, but with the ecosystem it has to live in.

Network Size - Facebook, Twitter, et al. have the great advantage of having huge numbers of users. To use an alternative requires not only that I adopt the alternative, but that that I convince some significant part of my friends/family/society to use the same.

It's like Bitcoin - Bitcoin is not that difficult to use, and has a number of features missing from traditional currencies. But the great potential utility of Bitcoin comes from having nearly everyone use it. Currencies, like social networks, require large numbers of users to be widely useful.

One important exception is for users who can't or won't participate in "normal" currencies or networks. Which is why Bitcoin became the de-facto currency the Silk Road and other black markets. And why, initially, Swadeshi will most likely be used by those groups who can't openly participate the normal social networks - child pornographers, white nationalists, islamic fundamentalists, freedom fighters, revolutionary groups, etc.

The danger here is that "stink" or "danger" of these out-groups will be associated with the project in popular consciousness. The network may be de-centralized, but people still think hierarchically. Swadeshi could easily become "the kid-toucher's social network" much like "Bitcoin is the Sewer Rat of Currencies"

Capture - Swadeshi is de-centralized, so there's no single entity controlling the state of the network. But that doesn't rule out capture. Look again at Bitcoin. The idea was to create a virtual currency (which it did). But it was quickly captured by speculators to the point of crippling the network. Control and capture are two different things, and solving for one doesn't preclude the other.

Facebook can still win - Suppose the Swadeshi project gains millions of active users. That's real momentum for a Facebook replacement. But Facebook can still win by embracing and extending the technology behind Swadeshi. Facebook could be all-Swadeshi under the hood, but present the familiar FB interface, with their value-adds of Photos, Groups, Pages, etc. Moderation could be FB's major advantage. If Swadeshi is the wild-west of social networks, FB could bolt on their anti-spam and abuse reporting mechanisms to tame the unruly bits.