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The case for the decentralization of online forums

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Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#131

Post by XorNot »

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…

I have a slightly different take on this, which is that the real problem is "expected load".

I pay for a certain amount of internet bandwidth - and depend on it! I work from home. Now I'd be willing to part with some amount of that, particularly in off-hours, to support a decentralized service - particularly a forum.

But I want to know what my commitment and loads are going to be upfront. I remember playing with IPFS and being extremely annoyed that just running the node ate something like 10mbps of my internet connection just by existing and doing nothing.

As far as I know none of the decentralized service ideas have a good answer as to how to spread the load or limit the load they'll impose on people hosting them - nor an answer as to how one can "help out" if they want (various "Raspberry Pi that takes care of it" proposals are not a bad idea).

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#132

Post by PrimeMcFly »

bigbillheck wrote: post #120
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.

> 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.

I was definitely still using it in 2004, I'd be surprised if it were still entirely dead in 2005.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#133

Post by PrimeMcFly »

shagie wrote: post #121
PrimeMcFly wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's a matter of pipes and storage. They could peer to each other. There were a number of private hierarchies (including my favorite - the bofh.* one) that had different peering relationships. http://usenet.trigofacile.com/hierarchies/index.py?status=pr... and https://web.archive.org/web/20220815151921/http://bofh.taron... Peering to larger ISPs was more of a matter of convince and that is often part of a business…

> The point is that the "little to big to bigger" was just convince - not code or enforced in any way.

But the same thing may well happen again, and that's a kind of flaw. A truly decentralized system to combat the things we want it to combat should enforce or be resistant to any de facto hierarchies.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#134

Post by jedberg »

I see a lot of people throwing out Usenet as an option, and I wonder, did anyone here ever have to admin a Usenet node? It's a huge pain in the ass. First off, the storage requirements are both unlimited and unpredictable. Someone might post some huge files to a group, and all of a sudden your server disk is full. You could set your server to drop large messages or attachments, but then you didn't have the complete message.

Then there was spam. Everyone had to do their own spam filtering. Or ... pay an upstream provider to do it for you. In which case they're basically the centralized solution.

The reason Internet forums took off was because it was way easier to let one central group manager the spam and load and network and disk and.... instead of everyone doing it themselves.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#135

Post by sholladay »

hayst4ck wrote: post #71
rsync wrote: post #17

We are holding this discussion on a classic, centralized, web1.0 forum which - from my vantage point - is one of the most valuable and enriching forums currently online. What's wrong with HN ? What's wrong with metafilter ? What's wrong with letsrun or doom9 ? The problem is the mistaken notion that these can be big businesses. If you can let go of the economics there is no technical - or usability - hurdle. We know…

Hacker news is a platform ultimately subsidized by a billionaire. A billionaire is choosing to be a responsible owner/patron of this platform, but ultimately this platform answers to him. HN is a "good king" platform, our king has invested in public works that we benefit from and we appreciate it. Hacker news is good insofar as it accomplishes our kings goals which align with our own, but we still have a king, even i…

Do you believe HN could work as well without a king? Even in fully democratic cooperatives, there always seems to be an inner circle of people who are more engaged, more knowledgeable, and thus more powerful / influential in practice.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#136

Post by bsder »

PrimeMcFly wrote: post #63
bsder wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usenet was decentralized, and Google (amazingly) didn't ruin it. Dejanews was the last man standing and they were going bankrupt . Nobody wanted to pony up. It's that simple. Nowadays, a bunch of people have gigabit to their house. Colo is $400/mo for a cabinet and gigabit. 3U servers are under $500 and probably under $200 if you dig. I can go on. You could resurrect Usenet easily , but nobody is doing it. Why? Becau…

Huh, I thought Groups was after Dejanews. Usenet was decentralized, but not in the current sense of the term IMO. 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. I think the free labor issue could be circumvented by users having their own killfiles, and a fediverse approach of only syncing w…

> Huh, I thought Groups was after Dejanews.

Groups was contemporaneous with Dejanews. But Dejanews was basically going under when Google bought them. If it hadn't been for Google, Dejanews would have gone poof and we wouldn't have had any archiving of Usenet stuff at all.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#137

Post by vGPU »

jjav wrote: post #103
edgyquant wrote: post #53

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.

> 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?

Last I heard HN ran on a single server with a second as a backup. Likely couple hundred/mo in electricity and bandwidth.

They do retain at least two full time staff members though, so that’s going to be 10k/mo+ at the minimum.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#138

Post by NoraCodes »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #69
NoraCodes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even decentralized architectures like Mastodon need that - and very few people actually want to pay for it. Every Fediverse instance I've used - and I've used quite a few - has been either so small that the total cost is a few dollars a month, or fiscally sustained by donations from users. The problem is when people want to make a profit on their internet community. Then, no amount of community support is enough, b…

The "fediverse" is a already absolutely overrun by bots and spam. Mastadon sites in particular. Nobody is running one of these things for longer than a few months until they just get tired of dealing with it.

The previous instance I was on was around since 2018. The one I'm on now has been around since 2019.

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#139

Post by NoraCodes »

janoc wrote: post #42
NoraCodes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even decentralized architectures like Mastodon need that - and very few people actually want to pay for it. Every Fediverse instance I've used - and I've used quite a few - has been either so small that the total cost is a few dollars a month, or fiscally sustained by donations from users. The problem is when people want to make a profit on their internet community. Then, no amount of community support is enough, b…

>Every Fediverse instance I've used - and I've used quite a few - has been either so small that the total cost is a few dollars a month, or fiscally sustained by donations from users. And that is somehow invalidating what I have said? Sure, if you have 10 users then your costs are going to be negligible and you can probably sustain it from your own pocket or donations. But good luck running a larger/popular service l…

Perhaps you misundstand. The ones with Because it's a federated system, there is no need for instances larger than that (and in my opinion, they are a net negative for the network).

Re: The case for the decentralization of online forums

#140

Post by vGPU »

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…

What exactly are you still reading on usenet? I’ve never been able to find anything that isn’t just spam.
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