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Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

ruben.verborgh.org

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Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#71

Post by crucini »

I skimmed this and see two big problems.

First, this idealistic idea that "we" are going to take back our data. Who is this we? Only the smart, high-agency people who have time to spare. The commercial web is increasingly tuned to the normal user, who is low-agency and easily led around. Who will win a battle of user acquisition and retention? Facebook or the rebels? Facebook of course. So any solutions proposed here are just for a tiny percentage of users who will then be isolated from the real and useful social networks. Or more realistically use both.

Or maybe if the infrastructure is built, a layer of savvy entrepreneurs can emerge to monetize it? I'm thinking of reaganemail, selling an anti-google email account to the AM radio crowd.

Second, the idea of somehow eliminating censorship. De facto censorship will always exist, even if you sugar coat it as Twitter has tried - "your content is still there, but only if someone explicitly looks for it". Any platform without censorship will just be flooded by every marketer and political zealot, for starters.

Also, I think he is conflating filter bubbles with centralization. Without centralization, wouldn't we still have filter bubbles as people self-select into their online communities?

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#72

Post by blacksmith_tb »

amelius wrote: post #47
smhenderson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data caps on upload as well not to mention many ISP's have terms that prevent you from running services on your account. If you want that from them you need a business account which typically costs quite a bit more. At least that's how Comcast and Verizon are in my neighborhood...

Perhaps the definition of net neutrality could be extended to cover this problem. I mean, if we want an internet where everybody is treated equally, then symmetric upload/download speeds are a basic requirement.

The tricky thing is that ISPs have traditionally offered symmetrical service, but only as "business class". So they would protest that they already sell that, customers just need to pay (double, triple) to get it. That said, my (just residential) fiber connection consistently tests slightly faster upstream than down.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#73

Post by ArtDev »

thsealienbstrds wrote: post #62
sliken wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when mobile devices were rare, skype used p2p and was very popular and novel. But then an increasing percentage of nodes were mobile with limited power, limited bandwidth, and much less storage. Even being a member of a DHT (a nice way for distributed peers to keep track of each other) is a prohibitive from a battery life and bandwidth perspective for phones. So Microsoft moved skype to a centralized service and…

I don't know, if people could buy a 'personal cloud box' that is as user friendly as an iphone, for less than a 100 dollars, a substantial number of them might possibly do that.

I love my Synology NAS server :)

Though its not really simple enough for non-technical people to set up.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#74

Post by cortesoft »

StreamBright wrote: post #5

"In order to regain freedom and control over the digital aspects of our lives" Nothing proves his point more than:

How is that not freedom? Each site owner has the freedom to use google analytics or not, no one forces them to. And each user has the ability to block requests to google analytics if they want, or avoid sites that use it.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#75

Post by the_common_man »

kodablah wrote: post #8

I think the part ignored by so many is the need to decentralize the computers into the home. I'm not talking meshes or shared resources. For the majority of use cases, we don't need distributed storage, compute, etc. Just start making these self-hosted "servers", "data pods", etc as easy to install as desktop software and make it clear that they are inaccessible when the computer is off. People that aren't already wi…

Try Cloudron. https://cloudron.io/blog/2018-04-13-home-server.html

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#76

Post by Tecuane »

pbalau wrote: post #69
peterwwillis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both DNS and TLS PKI (nothing uses SSL) are decentralized by design.

Who decides I can or cannot get foobar.tld?

That would probably be ICANN[1], and most authoritative name servers follow the policies set out there as the guiding committee is part of ICANN[2].

There are alternative DNS roots, though. I participated in running one myself for a time.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server#Root_server_s...

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#77

Post by amiga-workbench »

pbalau wrote: post #69
peterwwillis wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both DNS and TLS PKI (nothing uses SSL) are decentralized by design.

Who decides I can or cannot get foobar.tld?

You are perfectly free to run your own nameserver, nobody has to use it though.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#78

Post by stephenhuey »

carlosdp wrote: post #66
thsealienbstrds wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, if people could buy a 'personal cloud box' that is as user friendly as an iphone, for less than a 100 dollars, a substantial number of them might possibly do that.

These products have existed for a while and don't really make a dent.

I don't think I've encountered any super simple appliance I can plug into my home network and move data onto and then easily give online services I trust access to its data. Ever since I heard about Tim Berners Lee's new project, the Solid POD (Personal Online Datastore), I've been thinking about how to make it friendly enough to people that they'd actually use it in large enough numbers to gain traction. It always seemed like people would have to learn to start paying at least a little money to make privacy work without advertising dollars. I just Googled around for the latest and noticed that the MeWe social network (which emphasizes privacy) which Tim is working with offers a free tier on data but then charges above 8 GB. I wonder if their long game on being sustainable is to just make money on add-ons above the free tier. Here's hoping it catches on...

https://mewe.com/faq

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#79

Post by tmcw »

It puzzles me that the linked data future is still discussed, as if we didn't already try it, and didn't already discover that developers dislike arcane RDF standards and the academic-rooted designers of the specifications have a terrible track record of solving real-world problems. And that now they're presenting linked data as some critical component of the decentralized web while skipping out on the debates that everyone else in the space is having - like whether decentralization can be fast, or how to ensure data authenticity, or whether a 'local server / pod' can be built that doesn't get hosed by hole-punching through a home Comcast connection.

Instead, it's just 'what about old-fashioned websites, plus lots of xml schema and long spec documents'? It just tastes like a rehash of Berners-Lee's existing '5-star open data' schpiel ( https://5stardata.info/en/ ) but now with the billing that it'll fix the internet. 5-star open data has been around for years now, and, well, the linked data future isn't here. When's the last time you consumed RDF in an application?

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#80

Post by TuringTest »

thsealienbstrds wrote: post #62
sliken wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back when mobile devices were rare, skype used p2p and was very popular and novel. But then an increasing percentage of nodes were mobile with limited power, limited bandwidth, and much less storage. Even being a member of a DHT (a nice way for distributed peers to keep track of each other) is a prohibitive from a battery life and bandwidth perspective for phones. So Microsoft moved skype to a centralized service and…

I don't know, if people could buy a 'personal cloud box' that is as user friendly as an iphone, for less than a 100 dollars, a substantial number of them might possibly do that.

A 'personal' cloud box is not enough. We need a 'social' cloud box which can talk to the equivalent boxes at the homes of our relatives and acquittances, and which are as easy to set up as logging into a centralized social network.
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