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Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

coywolf.news

271–280 of 433 posts

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty cool that I can send a text message to someone without an authority intervening, not to mention that nobody can stop the transaction from happening. And then they can print that out onto a sheet a paper or share it with all their friends. Encryption is really great if you’re a terrorist or some kind of pervert.

How do you send a text message without any authority intervening these days? Email used to do that, I guess, but now if GMail doesn't like you there may be problems.

You can create a new email address if your previous one is blacklisted.

The idea is that no one needs permission in both cases, and the message can be sent only to the intended recipient without a middleman reading its contents. BTC is the same with money.

The same FUD was ignited against encryption back in the day, and "save the children" hysteria still is ablaze if you live in the UK.

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#272

I highly recommend Dan Olsen's documentary mentioned in the article. You'll have far more situational awareness after watching it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ_xWvX1n9g

It'll be interesting to see how it affects the mindshare in these discussions. For a long time environmental concerns have been the primary criticism of things like NFTs but he completely ignores this criticism and instead focuses on a broader anticapitalist criticism of the financialization of everything. This idea has been in the air for a while but hasn't ever really gained traction outside of a few thinkpieces.

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#273

Serious question: What problem does web3 or decentralization fix? - Oligopoly of the hyperscalers -> rent server from small provider like ovh/hetzner/netcup (there is plenty). The reason AWS, Azure and GCP are so popular is because people don't care. - Privavy intrusions -> Adblocker/DNS Blocker/Turn off JS/Use browser settings This won't be fixed by web3, ad monetization and tracking won't magically stop. They exist…

I think the steelman arg I've found for crypto as a general social media replacement is based on three pillars. 1. Ownership by default. NFTs are kinda a silly example, but since your wallet ("You") own your the token that represent your assets being able to transfer them around with you whenever you go somewhere new is cool. 2. Authentication with your wallet makes things much better. SSO for the whole web. 3. Align…

One of the biggest issues I have with this is, I don't want you to see my friend list. I don't want you to see my wall, I don't want you to glean my interests by reading the public ledger. If you say, well, all of that is stored locally, or can be imported and exported to any 'front end' such as facebook/twitter.

There's another big issue, what if your friends don't want to exist on that front end? Either events/posts are private, or they're on the public ledger and distributed. There's no way to keep interactions private.

In the end, if we think of having these messages sent to clients directly and stored locally, have the clients being able to subscribe to groups, have the clients maintain the friend list, and people being able to post to sets within that list. We have this already. Its called email.

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#274
post #60

The relentless number of anti-crypto and anti-web3 articles on HN is tiring. Nobody is forcing anyone to partake in this new technology. Skepticism is healthy, but criticism without being constructive is not. There are clearly _some_ novel ideas in the crypto space, even if you think the state of the community today is not healthy. Thousands of teams are exploring ideas on many different fronts (e.g. L1s, L2s, NFTs).…

Why is criticism without being constructive unhealthy? Isn't it possible to know that something is bad without having a clear answer of what to do instead other than simply stop?

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#275
post #60

The relentless number of anti-crypto and anti-web3 articles on HN is tiring. Nobody is forcing anyone to partake in this new technology. Skepticism is healthy, but criticism without being constructive is not. There are clearly _some_ novel ideas in the crypto space, even if you think the state of the community today is not healthy. Thousands of teams are exploring ideas on many different fronts (e.g. L1s, L2s, NFTs).…

However much these various blogs and such are right, which they seem to be, the continuing, constant, vitriol that at this point can only be for the chorus already singing it, starts to look like something in itself, something beyond just trying to "warn" people.

I can't help but feel it is, at least in part, coming from (perhaps unconscious) shame. We are at the sunset of a Californian Ideology where VC could save the world, Twitter could facilitate democracy, YouTube could democratize entertainment, culture. We are in a situation where any possible tech-minded business models can only promise to become so monolothic that they become de facto libertarian states, or be so fractured and specific that they inevitably prey on specific mental ticks of their users, or otherwise contrive value through subscriptions.

Everything has led to this, whether you all can accept that or not, whether you should feel "responsible" or not (you shouldn't). This almost comically absurd force of computers and money and energy now comes forward, with an army of infrastructure and knowledge and VC funding ready to greet it. You can see all our sins wrapped up into it, along with some newer things as well.

I think people are so angry because they see that, they see a likeness, even if distorted, in the macro structures of crypto, and in that they feel shame. It's as if there was quick a shortcut taken to the worst possible evolution of everything everyone was already working on in this space, big or small. And there is shame in realizing that this is what we were working towards, a secretly terrible teleology realized.

And so, to attempt to atone, you write a blog post about how evil it all is, as if it was something that literally came ex nihilo to threaten all our good work from before, denying that, in fact, it is merely a secret, forbidden wish granted. The logical culmination of this wild ride of capitalism and technology we have been riding. We are all guilty.

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#276

Serious question: What problem does web3 or decentralization fix? - Oligopoly of the hyperscalers -> rent server from small provider like ovh/hetzner/netcup (there is plenty). The reason AWS, Azure and GCP are so popular is because people don't care. - Privavy intrusions -> Adblocker/DNS Blocker/Turn off JS/Use browser settings This won't be fixed by web3, ad monetization and tracking won't magically stop. They exist…

I think the steelman arg I've found for crypto as a general social media replacement is based on three pillars. 1. Ownership by default. NFTs are kinda a silly example, but since your wallet ("You") own your the token that represent your assets being able to transfer them around with you whenever you go somewhere new is cool. 2. Authentication with your wallet makes things much better. SSO for the whole web. 3. Align…

You already own any assets that you create by default. If you type a message into a text editor, you own the copyright on it. Under Facebook's Terms of Use, you more-or-less give up that ownership when you paste it into a form on their website. There is no intrinsic limitation in Web 2.0 technology that robs us of ownership, it is business incentives that do it.

Please explain how adding a crypto wallet or blockchain into this mix changes anything meaningful.

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of evidence of this; there are proposals to move house deeds, drivers' licenses, elections, etc. onto the blockchain. These wouldn't be "oh, you can just not participate" sorts of scenarios.

A blockchain is not web3 or crypto.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

The Venn diagram of web3, cryptocurrency, and blockchain proponents is substantially similar to a circle.

Re: Web3 and crypto skepticism is growing and people are finally starting to listen

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> NFTs - yes you can right click and save as. No they haven't figured out at scale how to attach the image / work to the ledger. Yes hype and pyramiding is a fucking disaster and people would go to prison trying those antics in any other industry. But digital art, music, & culture has a real deficit in ownership, provenance, etc. There are several NFT "thought leaders" who have casually floated the idea of eliminatin…

Their solution is to change browser functionality? Good luck.

I think the idea was lobbying browser makers to do so. You could of course still pull the image in via cURL or whatever so its pretty dumb.
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