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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

#61

Post by tdkl »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38
imglorp wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tha…

>> we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S. >Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. I think this effect can be best demonstrated by a conversation I had with a Google fan last week. In particular, I've had an ongoing banter with him about his choice to refer to The Verge as "iVerge". I find this very odd, that people believe The Verge has a strong Apple bias. You see,…

This brings up the larger view of the problem - exclusives.

If someone gets an exclusive review before the actual launch and doesn't even have the commodity to spend enough time with the product, that will absolutely have an effect to the review result.

The good old cool headed reviewing style like Anandtech, where they take the time, perhaps even wait for an software update or two, then state the verdict is more reliable. Or perhaps even some reviewers where they repeat the test after 6 months and review the unit how it stood the test of time and what's changed. That's proper, adult way to examine something.

But it sure as hell doesn't bring up all the marketing hype and SEO numbers. Modern media is SHIT.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#62

Post by kowdermeister »

keyle wrote: post #14
dcposch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. -- 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 wi…

I'm totally with you on number 2 - but don't those things require money? UX, design, consistent look, all require money. And honestly, the press is a lot more likely to talk about you if you have money invested and shiny offices. To get such things, you have to have a profoundly interesting argument to investors, which usually does not rhyme with "we want to free the people, privacy, etc". There are, of course, excep…

> but don't those things require money?

Congrats, you've found the reason why a 100% decentralized web is more like fairy tale. The reason why vast majority of people use services like Facebook, SnapChat or Uber is because they are so easy to use. Good UX is not free, service stability is not free and new features are also not free.

People don't care about the underlying technology. If one wants a decentralized web, they must demonstrate a 10x increase, not a tiny bit shitty alternative service.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#63

Post by gtirloni »

Gys wrote: post #56

To most people (99% ?) Facebook, Instagram, Google etc offer everything they want. So they do not feel a need for getting the 'power back'. It all comes down to perceived (!) value. Once people use one thing, they will only switch if something else offers a clear higher value. At that point offering the same value is not enough anymore. This higher value has to be something that makes every day life in a very obvious…

The public zeitgeist is finally catching up with the realisation that being entirely dependent on massive siloed community platforms is not entirely in the users’ best interests

I see zero evidence this happening.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#65

Post by infodroid »

Decentralized services have not been able to compete with their walled garden counterparts due to lack of resources and access to capital, as well as the coordination costs of federation. It's a structural and not a technical problem. I can't see how this will ever change.

Most decentralized services are open source projects maintained by volunteer developers. They are competing with centralized commercial projects with deep pockets and the ability to hire not only smart developers but also artists, testers, sysadmins, designers, marketers, researchers, and project managers - some of the things you need to deliver a best-in-class service to users. The odds are stacked against the decentralized service from the beginning.

Even when these projects attract commercial interest, such as Dat or Ethereum named in the article, it is not clear how their funding will be sustainable given that decentralized platforms are more difficult to monetize than centralized ones. And it's really hard to see Github as a "posterchild" for the decentralized web, since it is really a centralized service.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#66

Post by catscratch »

Gys wrote: post #56

To most people (99% ?) Facebook, Instagram, Google etc offer everything they want. So they do not feel a need for getting the 'power back'. It all comes down to perceived (!) value. Once people use one thing, they will only switch if something else offers a clear higher value. At that point offering the same value is not enough anymore. This higher value has to be something that makes every day life in a very obvious…

Where the change will come is when we are no longer dependent on paying for network access. That will be the financial incentive.

A fully decentralized web would be delivered peer-to-peer via a mesh network or something similar. Anything else is a farce, because it's not just about who holds the data on the network, it's about the network itself. If any link in the chain of the communication can be controlled by some centralized power- it's not decentralized.

On a fully decentralized network, three things restricting freedom and privacy would be:

* the personal device used to (inter)connect, like malicious code hiding in firmware

* those controlling the power needed for the device

* those that can interfere with communication or alter data on the distributed network, either as a peer on the network, through malware/disruptive communication on the network, or those blocking communication

The problem with the decentralized web, though, is that when the web is fully free- if everyone stores part of the content from everyone else, then they could be storing things that are illegal and that they don't agree with. I personally don't want to participate in any network where I can't control what data is stored locally.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#67

Post by ocdtrekkie »

tdkl wrote: post #61
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S. >Most conservatives would say the papers and media outlets are _all_ liberal. I think this effect can be best demonstrated by a conversation I had with a Google fan last week. In particular, I've had an ongoing banter with him about his choice to refer to The Verge as "iVerge". I find this very odd, that people believe The Verge has a strong Apple bias. You see,…

This brings up the larger view of the problem - exclusives. If someone gets an exclusive review before the actual launch and doesn't even have the commodity to spend enough time with the product, that will absolutely have an effect to the review result. The good old cool headed reviewing style like Anandtech, where they take the time, perhaps even wait for an software update or two, then state the verdict is more rel…

For the reason above, I'd say we should learn to treat an exclusively granted review or interview to be a sponsored post. Because an exclusive interview with Sundar Pichai is not substantially distinguishable from a paycheck in the long run for an ad supported blog.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#68

Post by aw3c2 »

Gys wrote: post #56

To most people (99% ?) Facebook, Instagram, Google etc offer everything they want. So they do not feel a need for getting the 'power back'. It all comes down to perceived (!) value. Once people use one thing, they will only switch if something else offers a clear higher value. At that point offering the same value is not enough anymore. This higher value has to be something that makes every day life in a very obvious…

You mention Google which is a search machine to gazillions of websites. Surely people actually want to be able to visit those sites!

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#69

Post by api »

gtirloni wrote: post #63
Gys wrote: post #56

To most people (99% ?) Facebook, Instagram, Google etc offer everything they want. So they do not feel a need for getting the 'power back'. It all comes down to perceived (!) value. Once people use one thing, they will only switch if something else offers a clear higher value. At that point offering the same value is not enough anymore. This higher value has to be something that makes every day life in a very obvious…

The public zeitgeist is finally catching up with the realisation that being entirely dependent on massive siloed community platforms is not entirely in the users’ best interests I see zero evidence this happening.

If anything I see the public and businesses going the other way toward the cloud to avoid the hassle of IT. For the average person a PC is a broken piece of time consuming junk that accumulates malware.

Edit: There's another comment in this thread where someone brings up the hassle of IT as a major centralizing force. Best comment so far in this thread.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#70

Post by zzzcpan »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #42
brador wrote: post #5

A 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.

+1 for bringing up mesh networks. I have been reading about mesh network projects in Germany and other places. What I think is needed to increase adoption is something like the raspberry Pi, a cheap and open mesh router that would allow setting up community networks, with hooks for volunteers to provide low bandwidth gateways to the web, tools for sharing locally hosted copies of Wikipedia, projects for local social…

There are many millions of people who don't have the problems, that can be solved by mesh networks. They live in countries, where ISPs are not overregulated and are very competitive, bringing cheap high quality high speed internet to every household. In fact, those ISPs and the whole broadband market there emerged from similar communities of local networks you describe, except they weren't mesh networks, but wired networks.

And yet there is no decentralized web there either. Because it's not technology, that's stopping it from happening.

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