A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
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Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#2"A decentralized web would be very slightly inconvenient to the people so forget about your freedom and privacy who cares about that."
More realistic title. It would make for a shorter article though.
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#3Because Techcrunch didn't link to any of the projects they're talking about, here they are:
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#4The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content, unless it's distributed under an open license. Otherwise advertising-supported businesses will always be able to outcompete everyone else via dumping, and these businesses always benefit from being increasingly centralized. That's why we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S., because ad supported papers put them all out of business.
At the very least people need to be trained that it's unethical to surf the web without using an adblocker.
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#5A decentralised web is not viable until we can create an NP soft or better mesh network. Until then the network load to manage itself crushes it before it can walk.
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#6The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content, unless it's distributed under an open license. Otherwise advertising-supported businesses will always be able to outcompete everyone else via dumping, and these businesses always benefit from being increasingly centralized. That's why we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S., because ad supported papers put them all out of busines…
The centralization is a good point, but I wanted to ask about why
> we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S.
Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. Would you expand on that spectrum?
> it's unethical to surf the web without using an adblocker
It's also unethical to insert malware into ads, or to hire syndication services that allow it. I'll continue to block until that's fixed.
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#7Do they even have proofreaders at TechCrunch? They keep repeating paragraphs!
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#8The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content, unless it's distributed under an open license. Otherwise advertising-supported businesses will always be able to outcompete everyone else via dumping, and these businesses always benefit from being increasingly centralized. That's why we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S., because ad supported papers put them all out of busines…
Newspapers have always been ad supported. They charged for the paper, yes, but they always depended on ad revenue to survive.
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#9A decentralised web is not viable until we can create an NP soft or better mesh network. Until then the network load to manage itself crushes it before it can walk.
decentralized routing is a problem separate from decentralized hosting on a core-shell topology network, i.e. the current internet.
Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online
#10"A decentralized web would be very slightly inconvenient to the people so forget about your freedom and privacy who cares about that." More realistic title. It would make for a shorter article though.
Switching from Facebook to, say, Diaspora or something is more than just "slightly inconvenient". One of them has all of my friends on it and the other has none.
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Two ideas for how we can help decentralization win.
1. Don't just clone an existing app.
The two decentralized protocols with the most adoption by far are Bitcoin and BitTorrent. Both of them have capabilities that no centralized system can match. Same with Ethereum, Namecoin, etc. So the goal of a decentralized system should be to exceed the functionality of what came before, not just to clone an existing centralized service.
2. Run your open source project like a startup.
That means gathering metrics, tracking week-on-week growth, getting press hits, creating a brand, caring about product and UX.
I've seen cool decentralized projects get no adoption because the people running them focus on the technical aspects and ignore things like usability. BitMessage, for example, is impressive technology, but the client is called "PyBitMessage" and it looks lolbad: http://i.imgur.com/ydY6PIX.png
