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The promise and paradox of decentralization

thediff.co

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Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#61

Post by thewakalix »

> The first downside to "Anyone can build anything" is that "anyone" means anyone, and the people to whom decentralized systems are the most attractive are the ones who are banned from other systems, often for good reasons.

A similar point was made by Scott Alexander:

> HL Mencken once said that “the trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

> There’s an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a strong committment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels. Declare that you’re going to stop holding witch hunts, and your coalition is certain to include more than its share of witches.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-central...

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#62

Post by StickyRibbs »

isodev wrote: post #21

It’s hilarious how a bunch of “investors” put together some money, invented a whole corpus of fictional vocabulary to replace existing concepts, slapped a web 3 label on it and voila - the most profitable global scam is born.

While there are legitimate scams in the space, calling the entire effort a scam is overgeneralized.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#63

Post by forgotmypw17 »

evancoop wrote: post #36
forgotmypw17 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The major difference between decentralized pyramids and centralized ones is the size. The bigger the size of a network, the more attractive it is to abusers, while at the same time being more difficult to manage.

That would suggest an oscillation - network effects to inflate network sizes, abuse, mismanagement, frustration, disruption, creation of a new paradigm. Lather, refactor, repeat?

I don't think it is always the case. There are many networks which remain small and do not over-grow, but you are less likely to know about them.

Typically, they are constrained by some limitation like being for an offline group or requiring a vouching process to join.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#65

Post by evandwight »

pessimizer wrote: post #52
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Good article that makes a good faith effort to discuss tradeoffs rather than glorifying or demonizing decentralization. > The first downside to "Anyone can build anything" is that "anyone" means anyone, and the people to whom decentralized systems are the most attractive are the ones who are banned from other systems, often for good reasons. This is an often overlooked point from the user perspective. Decentralizatio…

> Decentralization seems to work well for cases where individuals are privately interacting with other users they already know. It seems much more difficult to solve the problem of public forum websites where anyone can contribute content. But these don't actually need to exist. Decentralization doesn't have to mean a flat hierarchy, it could (against all trends) be a hierarchy with the user at the top, as social med…

What tools do you think would work?

I've been writing a Reddit clone that uses elected moderators, statistical sampling, and referendums to estimate the result of referendums. I'm curious what tools you think would work well.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#66

Post by preseinger »

nostrademons wrote: post #55
POiNTx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm hosting an IPFS node and I'm accidentaly hosting some content I'd rather not host, I should be able to remove that content from my node and let other nodes know, 'hey, this stuff seems illegal/unethical/unwanted'. Other nodes could then configure their node to automatically listen to you and remove the tagged content, with parameters of saying 'at least x amount of people tagged this content' and 'of those peo…

Sure, it works if your starting point is "If I'm hosting an IPFS node." There's a level of baseline tech-savvy that's implied by even knowing what that is. Understand that most of the general population operates on the level of "Somebody said something on the Internet that offends me; how could this have happened?" And that the maximum amount of effort they're willing to put in to rectify this situation is clicking a…

This is a naïve and dismissive perspective on the issue.

Moderation is a fundamental requirement of any social system, and it's one of the two things that Web3 can't yet address meaningfully -- the other being addressability.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#67

Post by preseinger »

zaphar wrote: post #24
qwerty2021 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

moderation is not censorship. punishing someone for breaking the rules - not vague "we reserve the right to fuck you in the ass for any reason or no reason at all" kind of bullshit rules employed by facebook/twitter/reddit/whatever - is not considered censorship even at the kinds of places where people are particularly sensitive to it - for example, people don't accuse moderators of censorship when someone posts porn…

One persons moderation is another persons censorship. The activity of moderation is indistinguishable from the activity of censorship. The only difference is which group decides the censorship is acceptable. If moderation is just the current group in power gets to decide what is moderation and what is censorship then I fail to see the difference. You just redefined the centralization because I guarantee that group wi…

> One persons moderation is another persons censorship.

Yes, but this isn't some kind of repudiation of the concept. One person's justice is another person's injustice. One person's virtue is another person's iniquity. Moderation is a necessary component of any civil social structure.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#68

Post by keiferski »

jcranmer wrote: post #59
keiferski wrote: post #53

Something that I never see discussed with regards to decentralization: it is more or less required if you want to have meaningful cultural diversity. This is, I think, a bit obvious if you look at history: centralized states with well-defined languages and laws end up swallowing all the smaller dialects, cultures, and kingdoms. Good for empire managers, bad for culture. English-language media is currently doing this…

> This is, I think, a bit obvious if you look at history: centralized states with well-defined languages and laws end up swallowing all the smaller dialects, cultures, and kingdoms. Good for empire managers, bad for culture. Except it's not obvious. There's very few examples of linguistic dialects and cultures being forcibly assimilated by larger imperial conquest before modern times (the French Revolution is a good…

Pre-19th century empires may have been more culturally diverse than those that came after, but they were still less diverse than the situation which came before. Centralization by nature will remove previous local elite culture, for instance, only allowing for any cultures that are subservient.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#69

Post by elevenoh »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #2

Good article that makes a good faith effort to discuss tradeoffs rather than glorifying or demonizing decentralization. > The first downside to "Anyone can build anything" is that "anyone" means anyone, and the people to whom decentralized systems are the most attractive are the ones who are banned from other systems, often for good reasons. This is an often overlooked point from the user perspective. Decentralizatio…

Decentalization != "anyone can build/do anything at the application-level"

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#70

Post by khimaros »

evandwight wrote: post #65
pessimizer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decentralization seems to work well for cases where individuals are privately interacting with other users they already know. It seems much more difficult to solve the problem of public forum websites where anyone can contribute content. But these don't actually need to exist. Decentralization doesn't have to mean a flat hierarchy, it could (against all trends) be a hierarchy with the user at the top, as social med…

What tools do you think would work? I've been writing a Reddit clone that uses elected moderators, statistical sampling, and referendums to estimate the result of referendums. I'm curious what tools you think would work well.

it sounds like Secure Scuttlebutt
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