The Vision for Decentralized Web

Some of the Blockstack apps work on mobile as well (I haven't tested them all but a saw some good progressive web app designs).

the problem with decentralization is that, for an average Joe, it's just a bunch of loonies wearing tin foil hats who have something to hide, and besides, what has Facebook done to me (average Joe) personally? People, ultimately, don't care about privacy that much, not until they see obvious consequences of corps having their data that affect them greatly in their lives. Privacy against employers/old school friends/fiancees is something they care about, that's why Snapchat, Instagram Stories and private groups are replacing the public newsfeed. Decentralization must offer some clear advantages over fb, that an average person might appreciate. Those advantages must offset the UX problems, of which there are plenty, most of them pretty hard to fix. In my opinion, the worst one is the ubiquitous use of smartphones over PCs, as any decentralized stuff on smartphones is a nightmare, mostly due to systems relying on servers for stuff like push and background app refresh. This is particularly important on iOs. Also true decentralization, NOT federation, with checks and balances, possibly with nodes that only connect to other nodes that have signed a sort of license / legal agreement, is the only way to ensure it won't turn into mail, AKA one big Gmail that doesn't care, and the rest which doesn't matter.

I think equating "the internet" and "the web" is sloppy; the author does this in the first paragraph and throughout the article.

> It [The Internet/The Web] took off with hackers running independent servers in their basements.

Is that true? Maybe if we're talking "the internet", things like MUD, IRC, Usenet, or BBS servers were run by individuals, but looking at the "List of websites founded before 1995"[1] it seems like there were big players outside of labs/universities pretty early on in the history of The Web. I'm asking a legitimate question here: was www successful (at least in part) due to websites from individuals (let's maybe say "students on university networks" rather than "hackers in basements") over large institutions (like the magazines)?

> The informational landscape today shifted from people sharing personal websites to sharing social posts.

Again, I question the accuracy. Did more people have personal websites than BBS/Usenet/Web-Forum accounts?

Regarding the dpage.io site this article is promoting:

> As you can see, there are no ads, no clutter, only information that was created by the user.

This is a problem I think the "distributed web" community has to deal with: What if the user wants to monetize their content, perhaps with ads? Either people are going to do some "pay per view" of articles on your network (which seems to be antithetical to "information for the masses" that I have a feeling most decentralized developers identify with), or they use ads. Want your ads to do better? well don't fund the network that has reader anonymity built in.

> The domain name system enables any person on earth to have his human-readable address on the web. This system is decentralized by design and is owned by nobody.

So they want to fork DNS from ICANN so your identity is always linked to your website?

> Dpage.io is not a website builder, and it is not a blogging platform.

Design your own website, upload it to us and we'll host it for free.

Reading the contents of the strange little iPad on https://dpage.io/ it says:

> Your user profile details along with your data are by default stored on a free Blockstack's Gaia storage hub. DPAGE doesn't store your data on its own servers. You can run your own storage hub on a server of your choice.

So it is that kind of distributed server: the one you run yourself.

The phrase "a free Blockstack's Gaia storage hub" is strange and feels very corporate, being sure to indicate that it's not just any Gaia server, but the one OWNED by Blockstack. Sometimes it's the little things that show you how much control the marketing department has.

I'm not going to comment on their blockchain stuff.

I'm only criticizing because I think people are putting lots of effort into solutions that are misguided: "The people WANT to have their own websites! This is the platform they'll want for sure!". I very well may be missing the point here, but inaccuracies and romanticizing the past lead me to skepticism.

XAMPP[2] is still around after 17 years, (last updated 4 days ago), which I remember being super easy to setup your own site, and I have a feeling it's even easier now. CMS platforms like Wordpress.com, SquareSpace, etc, do allow you to own your own content, easily use themes/plugins, and backup/export everything if you want to move (for a price, because they're providing a service, which is reasonable).

I think the most interesting decentralized platform is dat/beakerbrowser, because

A) There's already a tangible working product (Beaker)

B) There's no login/user-admin: your browser upon startup is a node in the network

C) Backwards compatible with http(s), so it's not like there's a hard fork of the DNS namespace and links no longer work.

D) No concept of privacy/encryption (that I'm aware of). You really don't own your data, you publish it and the system is designed to allow anyone/everyone with the link to copy it, change it, host it, seed it. If you don't like that, don't use it.

Of course you have to seed your site, so again there's a chicken and egg problem of hosting your own server (but if it's just running the browser until your friend says they've downloaded the site, it's easy, right?)

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant, but I guess it did.

I wish dpage/decentus/blockstack/gaia good luck because I think distributed webs do have a future and every player can bring something to the table, but I hope their message/intentions become a little more focused.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_befor...

[2] https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

Some decentralized discovery method for interesting tech content would be nice. Something simple, like if you could put a list of websites you like to:

    https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/recommended.list
    -------
    https://friend1.domain/ Blogs about electronics
    https://friend2.domain/ Blogs about knitting
    -------

    https://friend1.domain/.well-known/distributed/recommended.list
    -------
    https://my.domain/ Blogs about hacking SBCs
    https://friend3.domain/ Nice website
    -------

And you could write a bot that would walk through this, avoid loops, and construct a graph, and give you a search or RSS. RSS feeds could be also discoverable.

    https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/my-feeds.txt
    --------
    https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/feed-blog.xml My blog posts
    https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/feed-announce.xml My announcements
    --------

Just something that helps with discovery of interesting content in a decentralized way, outside of search engines, aggregators, HTML pages, etc. You would be able to select search distnace from certain domains, blacklist domains, etc.

And if you assume person == domain, this would build an open, distributed, searchable social graph (of people with domains :) and something to say). You'd be able to see weights of domains by how many people recommend them, etc.

There would be no central storage for the graph.

This is a really cool idea. I might spend some time hacking on something like this after dweb camp. If you're on Scuttlebutt I can CC you on my progress.