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The case for the decentralization of online forums

viksit.com

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Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#111

Post by jjav »

edgyquant wrote: post #107
jjav wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hacker News is in the same camp as any of the big platforms-it’s entirely subsidized by a billionaire VC or it would not exist the way it does. Do you know the operating costs of HN? How can you judge it takes a billionaire to subsidize it?

It’s literally a pet project of Paul Graham, a billionaire. That was my point.

That's not really relevant. The question is how much are the operating costs to run it? I know it doesn't take a billionaire.

I can't find it right now but I remember some of the infrastructure details have been posted in the past and it was quite minimal. It doesn't take much to run an efficient site like this one.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#112

Post by PrimeMcFly »

jjav wrote: post #106
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before Reddit, almost immediately before, that's what Usenet was for. Google kind of ruined it by hijacking it with Groups, then Reddit took over. Weed need a decentralized equivalent to Usenet.

> Weed need a decentralized equivalent to Usenet. That is ... Usenet. That's exactly what Usenet is (not was, because it's still there, even if not many people use it. I still read it on many days.)

It's not decentralized in the modern sense, and doesn't offer the functionality I would want from a modern decentralized solution.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#113

Post by PrimeMcFly »

jjav wrote: post #108
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. When I think of 'decentralized', and what I meant, was something offering anonymity and resistance to takedown orders, which are things it didn't have real protection against.

> what I meant, was something offering anonymity and resistance to takedown orders, which are things it didn't have real protection against. Who would you issue a takedown order on a Usenet post? Remember it's peer to peer distribution. There is no central repository.

The ISP, and most people tend use use one of a few large ISPs.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#114

Post by viksit »

hayst4ck wrote: post #47
janoc wrote: post #37

The problem is that people think that decentralization somehow solves the problem. It doesn't. In most cases, like Reddit or Twitter or Mastodon or whatever the issue isn't that something is centralized but that things actually do cost money to build and run . Even decentralized architectures like Mastodon need that - and very few people actually want to pay for it. That is why the various efforts to monetize the con…

> and very few people actually want to pay for it. I think this is a core assumption that I'm not sure I believe in. Works for the public deserve public (distinct from government) funding. There are many things that say "if you don't give us money, we can't continue to exist." "We need enough money to function" is a completely different sell than "we want to 1000x our investors investments." Reddit's enshitification[…

not sure if it’s clear yet tbh. capitalism is alive and well, and public goods funding will not scale internationally if it’s controlled by the us.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#115

Post by PrimeMcFly »

shagie wrote: post #110
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anonymity is key in the sense that it shouldn't require linking to a real life identity. The same way now I can sign up for reddit 'anonymously' for example. There should be some reputation, some kind of check the person is human, maybe other things, but there needs to be the freedom to post separate from a real life persona, without fear of being doxxed. For so many different reasons. Usenet, I think, has a strong h…

> Usenet, I think, has a strong hierarchy structure rather than just being a 'web', although it is that as well. So if the takedown order is directed at a server in high enough position, it is essentially removes it from all of Usenet - and it's not just takedown orders, but actors with the ability to remove content unilaterally. There were some sites that had bigger pipes and more tolerance for storage requirements…

> but there wasn't any hierarchy as such.

My memory was that smaller ISPs would peer from the larger ISPs, that's the type of hierarchy I was thinking of. Maybe not in design, but in practice.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#116

Post by ilyt »

jjav wrote: post #104
ilyt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there are fundamentally 2 problems here: * someone needs to pay for it * whoever is doing and managing that can turn bad and want more. How do you solve that to be immune to the reddit/stackoverflow disruption ? Even if it could be covered by donations it there is still problem of any inevitable management of it deciding to push it in direction different than community wishes. > We are holding this discussion o…

> someone needs to pay for it This is centralized thinking. In a decentralized open protocol system, everyone pays for their own way, but it's very cheap at an individual level. There's no central "it". > Not web 1.0. Usenet and mailing lists(mostly) died for that, as did many "traditional" forums. I'm on several email groups where I've been a participant since the very early 90s. Every so often there's the "oh have…

> This is centralized thinking. In a decentralized open protocol system, everyone pays for their own way, but it's very cheap at an individual level. There's no central "it"

It is if you want to have central page for people to visit. Someone needs to pay for hosting that else you will have no users if everyone needs to host their bit

> I'm on several email groups where I've been a participant since the very early 90s. Every so often there's the "oh have you seen this new shiny thing, let's move to that!"

...do you know how mailing lists work ? It's a central server that distributes it to the members. Pretty light one, sure, but it is still something someone have to host and manage. There is no "distributed mailing list"

> Also, I still read Usenet on most days, just like I've been doing since the late 80s. It's alive (if not very active) because nobody owns it.

Central servers managed by people again. Yeah they are federated but still rely on a bunch of institutions to throw some servers at it.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#117

Post by imiric »

janoc wrote: post #37

The problem is that people think that decentralization somehow solves the problem. It doesn't. In most cases, like Reddit or Twitter or Mastodon or whatever the issue isn't that something is centralized but that things actually do cost money to build and run . Even decentralized architectures like Mastodon need that - and very few people actually want to pay for it. That is why the various efforts to monetize the con…

The main problem, as with most centralized web services, is scale. In order to serve an increasing amount of users, the cost and complexity of maintaining the service grows exponentially. Most of the problems Big Tech is solving are related to scale.

What decentralization does is distribute this cost and complexity to more granular and manageable levels, so that instead of a single company having to carry the maintenance burden, a number of individuals or groups can do so instead. Of course, if the individual instance or whatever distributed unit grows too large itself, then you run into the same problem on a smaller scale. But it's more manageable, each instance can decide how it should be handled, and in practice most instances won't grow to have this problem.

That said, decentralization is not meant to solve the cost of running and maintaining infrastructure. That is an inescapable fact of the internet. What it does address is the problem of large companies controlling vast amounts of the internet, and getting to decide how information is shared online, and who gets to have a voice. Twitter and Reddit are prime examples of what we don't want to happen again, and there's no way to accomplish that with a centralized service.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#118

Post by edgyquant »

jjav wrote: post #111
edgyquant wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s literally a pet project of Paul Graham, a billionaire. That was my point.

That's not really relevant. The question is how much are the operating costs to run it? I know it doesn't take a billionaire. I can't find it right now but I remember some of the infrastructure details have been posted in the past and it was quite minimal. It doesn't take much to run an efficient site like this one.

That was your question and not related to the point though. They don’t matter, HN is what it is because a well connected rich person pays for it out of pocket and associates his giant seed fund with it.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#119

Post by hayst4ck »

viksit wrote: post #114
hayst4ck wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and very few people actually want to pay for it. I think this is a core assumption that I'm not sure I believe in. Works for the public deserve public (distinct from government) funding. There are many things that say "if you don't give us money, we can't continue to exist." "We need enough money to function" is a completely different sell than "we want to 1000x our investors investments." Reddit's enshitification[…

not sure if it’s clear yet tbh. capitalism is alive and well, and public goods funding will not scale internationally if it’s controlled by the us.

I am not sure why a non profit in the style of Wikipedia could not work.

Wikipedia seems to be scaling fine, even to other languages (correct me if I'm wrong).

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#120

Post by bigbillheck »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #38
Miraste wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with them, but reddit's size lets it gather a lot of extremely specific knowledge that, were all subreddits separate forums, would be lost. Sure, many of these communities are strong enough to run their own infrastructure, but more of them are not.

Before Reddit, almost immediately before, that's what Usenet was for. Google kind of ruined it by hijacking it with Groups, then Reddit took over. Weed need a decentralized equivalent to Usenet.

> almost immediately before

Reddit didn't come along until 2005, and the way I remember it is by then usenet--binary groups aside--was was pretty much dead.

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