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The promise and paradox of decentralization

thediff.co

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Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#81

Post by hippich »

> we're all fighting against entropy, which is a hard fight to win, but there are long and fascinating stalemates ahead

Lately, I think of entropy as a friend more than a foe. all of the examples of privatization of technology he brought up, I think will eventually fall down due to the entropy. All these privatizations are attempt at optimization (hence the value extracted). But it is not free at all - optimization means specialization, and specialization means decreased flexibility and decreased chances of persevere the tendency of the world to digest systems and spit out chaos.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#82

Post by cbsmith »

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…

A hierarchy with the user on top is pretty much exactly what he's describing. It's a perfect environment for grifters & manipulators; to the extent that they get filtered out by people smart enough to recognize them for who they are, that's doing them a favour.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#83

Post by cbsmith »

roenxi wrote: post #56
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…

I think this goes a bit deeper to the actual benefit of decentralised platforms (and open protocols). When the major player in the space goes haywire there is an option to leave. Using Twitter as an example - they are going to be purposefully and continuously ejecting users. As long as the users are people who nobody wanted to listen to anyway then that is fine. But the situation changes because sooner or later (pote…

"But the situation changes because sooner or later (potentially already happened) Twitter will eject actual community leaders and a community will need to reform somewhere else."

"Actual community leaders" is a matter of perspective though. "Actual community leaders" don't need a megaphone like Twitter, because they're already leaders that have an audience. Social media is a way to tap in to a broader distribution platform, and it seems appropriate that said platform would restrict that access to those that serve the interests of that broader audience.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#84

Post by cbsmith »

throw10920 wrote: post #39
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…

> The sheer volume of spam or even just angry/abusive users on public platforms these days is hard to describe if you haven't been on the spam/abuse prevention side of a popular website. I haven't been on one of those teams, so I hope you'll forgive the naivety, but: These seem like solvable problems with decentralized systems. In both cases, someone has to go through the work of manually identifying the bad content,…

> what prevents a decentralized system from taking the same approaches that a centralized system would employ, packaging them into blocklists, and then allowing users to choose which of those they employ? Same tech, different level of control.

Because the incentives are misaligned; bad actors have, if anything, more incentive than the good actors.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#85

Post by cbsmith »

jacobobryant wrote: post #46
WalterSear wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get spam mail and scams all the time.

Me too, and the vast majority of time they're delivered to the spam folder--seems to be working pretty well.

Again, because of the incentives, the vast majority of them being delivered to the spam folder still means a significant chunk of e-mail that does not go in to the spam folder is spam, and that a bunch of e-mail that is not spam ends up there.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#86

Post by bullen »

evandwight wrote: post #80
bullen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to it?

It's not done yet. There's a discord link if you want to chat about how to improve it. https://efficientdemocracy.com New name needed

I also made a reddit clone, but on top of my own HTTP server and database: http://talk.binarytask.com

Democracy only works when you have more energy available than people and that is about to not be the case after 200 years of extracting sunshine from the earths crust. The only thing we're efficient at is to waste energy!

Also "sign in with google"?

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#87

Post by jacobobryant »

cbsmith wrote: post #85
jacobobryant wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too, and the vast majority of time they're delivered to the spam folder--seems to be working pretty well.

Again, because of the incentives, the vast majority of them being delivered to the spam folder still means a significant chunk of e-mail that does not go in to the spam folder is spam, and that a bunch of e-mail that is not spam ends up there.

> a significant chunk of e-mail that does not go in to the spam folder is spam, and that a bunch of e-mail that is not spam ends up there.

Maybe for you, but not for me.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#88

Post by evandwight »

bullen wrote: post #86
evandwight wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not done yet. There's a discord link if you want to chat about how to improve it. https://efficientdemocracy.com New name needed

I also made a reddit clone, but on top of my own HTTP server and database: http://talk.binarytask.com Democracy only works when you have more energy available than people and that is about to not be the case after 200 years of extracting sunshine from the earths crust. The only thing we're efficient at is to waste energy! Also "sign in with google"?

> http://talk.binarytask.com

Your own http server/database!?! Do you mean you implemented them from scratch? I'm just using nginx/expressjs & postgres. Edit: rupy! interesting! Does ssl kill it's efficiency?

> Democracy only works ...

Energy limitations seem beyond my lifetime. I just want to see how to run a community based on the will of it's members. Efficiently using their time.

> sign in with google

It's not ideal. I originally implemented my own authentication, however implementing it "securely" is a huge task. My main problem is unknown unknowns. Even big companies have non-perfect authentication, like leaking emails during recovery/login. If the site gets any traction I'll expand the authorisation options.

What do you think I could do to improve the site?

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#89

Post by cbsmith »

jacobobryant wrote: post #87
cbsmith wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, because of the incentives, the vast majority of them being delivered to the spam folder still means a significant chunk of e-mail that does not go in to the spam folder is spam, and that a bunch of e-mail that is not spam ends up there.

> a significant chunk of e-mail that does not go in to the spam folder is spam, and that a bunch of e-mail that is not spam ends up there. Maybe for you, but not for me.

Well, that's great for you, but the systemic realities are nonetheless a very real problem.

Re: The promise and paradox of decentralization

#90

Post by bullen »

evandwight wrote: post #88
bullen wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also made a reddit clone, but on top of my own HTTP server and database: http://talk.binarytask.com Democracy only works when you have more energy available than people and that is about to not be the case after 200 years of extracting sunshine from the earths crust. The only thing we're efficient at is to waste energy! Also "sign in with google"?

> http://talk.binarytask.com Your own http server/database!?! Do you mean you implemented them from scratch? I'm just using nginx/expressjs & postgres. Edit: rupy! interesting! Does ssl kill it's efficiency? > Democracy only works ... Energy limitations seem beyond my lifetime. I just want to see how to run a community based on the will of it's members. Efficiently using their time. > sign in with google It's not ide…

HTTPS is garbage, but you can put a HAProxy with SSL in front of it if you want to waste energy... :D

I made my own secure user handling using this: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc2289

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