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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

#251
This remains a bit of a silly argument. It is like saying we can wipe out poverty if only more people were able to get rich: the way that people progress is through collective provision.

That means the state, or associations of people who value privacy (who may not all be technically savvy!) who can pool their resources and offer something normal people can use. This, unlike the decentralised web, could engender the same kind of network effect that whatsapp and facebook benefit from.

I've written about this and heard more people make the same argument lately: it isn't technology that will bring about privacy on the internet, but a democratic organisation, founded by concerned citizens, governed by anyone who has an interest in promoting privacy and run on behalf of anyone who wants to benefit from it.

There are a lot of benefits to this approach: you lose the engineering challenges of VC backed companies (no data mining operation) and of cyberpunks setting out to let everyone be their own little island (protocols and amateur operators). Jurisdictions can offer different advantages, like company forms with regulated purposes written into their founding documents, or more favourable privacy laws.

Off the shelf software can scale all the way that is required for this sort of thing (think apache kafka as the basis for a messaging system like WhatsApp) and the organisation would only have to be financially sustainable like Mozilla, rather than profitable like Facebook.

It also puts privacy into the hands of normal people, who can take part in governance and protect their data that way, rather than having to learn techie things they don't care about.

Talking about the decentralised web is great, but we often forget what motivates people to want to decentralise in the first place: the fact that their desires are not something the market can cater for, and that what they believe should be their right is simply not available any other way. If we want privacy, we should think about all the means by which we can provide it in the general case, including by collectively owning the means of communication.

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

#252
post #101

A real barrier to a decentralised web is the difficulty of installing software on a server. I know that sounds really mundane and inconsequential in the broader debate about a decentralised web, but consider the following... Imagine if installing a server-side chat app, message board, project management app, or CMS were as easy as installing a desktop app. In a desktop app, it's usually one click to start the install…

> Who, other than technical folks, could possibly have the time, interest or inclination to set up a self-hosted solution when the barrier is so high? Some evolution of docker swarm could greatly simplify this.

Or an organisation people could freely join without being forced to learn system administration concepts and practices. Imagine WhatsApp, but owned and sustained by (a subset of) its users on a non-commercial basis.

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a fact. Some people don't understand. And even if it were false, that doesn't make it condescending. People are wrong about things all the time without it being condescending.

Go back and re-read the original comment I replied to. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context.

> You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context.

No... I specifically asked because I wanted to know why you thought it was condescending. That's a far cry from arguing for the sake of arguing. And it didn't come off at condescending to me.

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

#254
Also, interoperaibilty. The major problem of all these major services is not just centralization, but the fact that they can't even communicate with each other. Their stupid walled garden nature and the fact that they on purpose avoid open standards prevents it. That's what disgusts me the most about Whatsapp, Hangouts, Skype and etc. They are stuck in the non interoperable stone age of computing, while e-mail, much older technology managed to break through years ago as federated and interoperable standard.

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

#255
post #251

This remains a bit of a silly argument. It is like saying we can wipe out poverty if only more people were able to get rich: the way that people progress is through collective provision. That means the state, or associations of people who value privacy (who may not all be technically savvy!) who can pool their resources and offer something normal people can use. This, unlike the decentralised web, could engender the…

Where does the world wide web fit into your model of the world? (it didn't need "collective provision")

All the article proposes is that we don't have our data locked up, that it's not centralized, so that we have control.

This is a pretty simply concept I think you're the only one here who is confused. Your comparison to poverty doesn't make sense, privacy isn't constrained by resources.

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

#257
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked into Sandstorm? Their whole goal is to make installing server apps as easy as in mobile platforms, while securing them from the outside and each other, and allowing the user to switch providers bringing their apps and data along. It's really quite awesome: https://sandstorm.io/

Here's something from the first part of the install which is not something a normal person would ever do: Configure the EC2 security groups (firewall) to let you reach Sandstorm By default, Amazon EC2 protects your virtual machine from being reached over the Internet. In the above tutorial, we allow the virtual machine to be reached on port 80. By default, Sandstorm uses port 6080, so look through the above tutorial…

I've just installed Sandstorm to test it: Created a droplet in Digital Ocean, logged in ("ssh root@...", and they had my ssh key), the curl|bash, and it worked. It was way beyond awesome for an open-source Linux app. So the EC2 problem exists only because someone advised to use Amazon for a hobby installation.

I love the concept, and I'm looking forward the day a facebook alternative could be built into it. And if it had existed when Google Reader ditched the internet, everybody would be on Sandstorm today. I've just experienced the feeling of browsing my RSS feeds of porn without feeling watched and without being afraid of hitting a "share to facebook" button: It's a great experience.

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

#258
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data analysis required to improve search relevance, video recommendation, A/B testing, feature improvement - basically anything, relies on crunching data on as many users as possible. For example, you cannot get to Google or Facebook's level of artificial intelligence research and performance achievements without truly vast amounts of data. This criticism of decentralization is in addition to my parallel comment…

> For example, you cannot get to Google or Facebook's level of artificial intelligence research and performance achievements without truly vast amounts of data. This argument is self-defeating. If any significant plurality (e.g. a third) of people opt into the "privacy for analysis" setting then you still have "truly vast amounts of data" and there is no trouble. Whereas if so few people want to make that exchange wh…

If you depend on P2P to avoid centralized servers, you're just moving the data security issues to devices that are much, much harder to lock down. That can make privacy much worse in a practical sense.

Not to mention the difficulties of reindexing and fast retrieval over P2P. If I need to add an additional index on my centralized servers, the development cycle is much shorter than forcing every peer to reindex itself.

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

#259
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data analysis required to improve search relevance, video recommendation, A/B testing, feature improvement - basically anything, relies on crunching data on as many users as possible. For example, you cannot get to Google or Facebook's level of artificial intelligence research and performance achievements without truly vast amounts of data. This criticism of decentralization is in addition to my parallel comment…

> For example, you cannot get to Google or Facebook's level of artificial intelligence research and performance achievements without truly vast amounts of data. This argument is self-defeating. If any significant plurality (e.g. a third) of people opt into the "privacy for analysis" setting then you still have "truly vast amounts of data" and there is no trouble. Whereas if so few people want to make that exchange wh…

> Much the same way as we motivate development of Windows, Linux and Wikipedia.

Isn't one of those things rather unlike the other two?

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

#260
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data analysis required to improve search relevance, video recommendation, A/B testing, feature improvement - basically anything, relies on crunching data on as many users as possible. For example, you cannot get to Google or Facebook's level of artificial intelligence research and performance achievements without truly vast amounts of data. This criticism of decentralization is in addition to my parallel comment…

> For example, you cannot get to Google or Facebook's level of artificial intelligence research and performance achievements without truly vast amounts of data. This argument is self-defeating. If any significant plurality (e.g. a third) of people opt into the "privacy for analysis" setting then you still have "truly vast amounts of data" and there is no trouble. Whereas if so few people want to make that exchange wh…

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