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The argument to re-decentralise the web wildly confuses economic, technical and political concerns. The reason that Facebook runs a centralised system isn't tha

by pudo 10y ago

The argument to re-decentralise the web wildly confuses economic, technical and political concerns. The reason that Facebook runs a centralised system isn't that it cannot figure out a technical alternative, it does so for economic reasons. To assume that making incremental advances in decentralised technologies will somehow fundamentally alter those economics is wishful thinking. Instead, we need to recognise the fact that all of this is not ultra-new and never-seen-before, but rather an issue of market failure and growing monopolies and that there's an existing mechanism to deal with it: government regulation. We can treat Facebook & co as utilities, as monopolies - there's a whole range of regulatory options and those in relevant agencies could really use the help of the tech community to figure out how to apply these tools. Instead, the web community is out on the playground building DHT sandcastles with a bitcoin moat. Let's grow up.

niftich 10y ago
This, but also, they run a centralized system for intellectual property reasons. Facebook Inc. offers a product, called Facebook, where you post content and make connections with other nodes in a large graph. It was built on prior art, but arranging and packaging them together in their particular way was novel. You could wholesale copy Facebook's public APIs and implement your own "Facebook-compatible clone", in the sense that a third-party unofficial Facebook client could connect to you instead and operate 100% identically. Of course, you can't actually do this, as you'll be threatened with legal action. Gmail, another frequent example of decentralization overcome by centralization, isn't nearly as egregious in its domain. Gmail is simply an Email-as-a-Service with a bundled webmail client, albeit with a very large market share of email traffic. You can get (most of) your data out of Gmail, and use another email client instead. But Facebook operates over the "Facebook protocol", and no one else can do so. These proprietary protocols are the real threat, not 'centralization'.
- danjoc 10y ago
  >Gmail, another frequent example of decentralization overcome by centralization How did Gmail do that though? I suspect it largely had something to do with ISPs blocking port 25 for anyone except expensive "business class" users under the auspices of stopping spam. Well, spam never stopped, but about 80% of email in the US runs through 10 domains now. Further "stopping spam" measures meant that those big 10 basically block email from small servers by default and anyone wishing to send email to them has to jump through numerous hoops, further solidifying this centralization. Centralization starts at the ISP. It starts with asymmetric bandwidth where you get 4x to 10x max download speed vs upload. It starts with port blocking. Centralization is monopoly. As you pointed out, nobody can compete with these large companies because of "intellectual property" laws. If there will be change, it has to start with legislation. You can't code around this unless you have billions of dollars in patents to fight with.
  - niftich 10y ago
    An often-overlooked point. For the last 10-15 years, most home ISPs no longer let you host your own services on well-known ports.
woodman 10y ago
> ...there's an existing mechanism to deal with it: government regulation. Lay your hopes on a monopoly on force to solve an economic monopoly? That doesn't seem like a well founded long term solution.
- abiox 10y ago
  this seems like equivocation.
  - woodman 10y ago
    Is this a funny joke, a possible accusation of equivocation with no further information?
  - djschnei 10y ago
    What about that was ambiguous? He's pretty clearly pointing out the logical missteps of attempting to use a monopoly to regulate "monopolies".
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
icebraining 10y ago
Saying "we can regulate" is true, but so vague as to be an empty statement, in my opinion, and previous regulatory actions against tech giants (mainly Microsoft) have been - again, in my opinion - simply exercises of extracting money with no benefit to the consumers. Which regulations would you like to see implemented on Facebook & co? And by the way, I'd love to see a definition of "market failure" as commonly used that isn't essentially "the market doesn't do what I consider best". People like to (rightly) criticize the liberal right by pointing out that markets are just a tool, but that should come with the realization that a bad outcome can arise without being a flaw in the tool. If the allocation of goods and services is efficient, the market didn't fail, even if the outcome is not socially optimal. We just didn't use it correctly.
imjustsaying 10y ago
>"growing monopolies" How are Facebook & co monopolies?
ashitlerferad 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEU632_Em3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEU632_Em3g

by pudo 10y ago

niftich 10y ago

This, but also, they run a centralized system for intellectual property reasons. Facebook Inc. offers a product, called Facebook, where you post content and make connections with other nodes in a large graph. It was built on prior art, but arranging and packaging them together in their particular way was novel. You could wholesale copy Facebook's public APIs and implement your own "Facebook-compatible clone", in the sense that a third-party unofficial Facebook client could connect to you instead and operate 100% identically. Of course, you can't actually do this, as you'll be threatened with legal action. Gmail, another frequent example of decentralization overcome by centralization, isn't nearly as egregious in its domain. Gmail is simply an Email-as-a-Service with a bundled webmail client, albeit with a very large market share of email traffic. You can get (most of) your data out of Gmail, and use another email client instead. But Facebook operates over the "Facebook protocol", and no one else can do so. These proprietary protocols are the real threat, not 'centralization'.

danjoc 10y ago
>Gmail, another frequent example of decentralization overcome by centralization How did Gmail do that though? I suspect it largely had something to do with ISPs blocking port 25 for anyone except expensive "business class" users under the auspices of stopping spam. Well, spam never stopped, but about 80% of email in the US runs through 10 domains now. Further "stopping spam" measures meant that those big 10 basically block email from small servers by default and anyone wishing to send email to them has to jump through numerous hoops, further solidifying this centralization. Centralization starts at the ISP. It starts with asymmetric bandwidth where you get 4x to 10x max download speed vs upload. It starts with port blocking. Centralization is monopoly. As you pointed out, nobody can compete with these large companies because of "intellectual property" laws. If there will be change, it has to start with legislation. You can't code around this unless you have billions of dollars in patents to fight with.
- niftich 10y ago
  An often-overlooked point. For the last 10-15 years, most home ISPs no longer let you host your own services on well-known ports.

woodman 10y ago

> ...there's an existing mechanism to deal with it: government regulation. Lay your hopes on a monopoly on force to solve an economic monopoly? That doesn't seem like a well founded long term solution.

abiox 10y ago
this seems like equivocation.
- woodman 10y ago
  Is this a funny joke, a possible accusation of equivocation with no further information?
- djschnei 10y ago
  What about that was ambiguous? He's pretty clearly pointing out the logical missteps of attempting to use a monopoly to regulate "monopolies".
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

icebraining 10y ago

Saying "we can regulate" is true, but so vague as to be an empty statement, in my opinion, and previous regulatory actions against tech giants (mainly Microsoft) have been - again, in my opinion - simply exercises of extracting money with no benefit to the consumers. Which regulations would you like to see implemented on Facebook & co? And by the way, I'd love to see a definition of "market failure" as commonly used that isn't essentially "the market doesn't do what I consider best". People like to (rightly) criticize the liberal right by pointing out that markets are just a tool, but that should come with the realization that a bad outcome can arise without being a flaw in the tool. If the allocation of goods and services is efficient, the market didn't fail, even if the outcome is not socially optimal. We just didn't use it correctly.

imjustsaying 10y ago

>"growing monopolies" How are Facebook & co monopolies?

ashitlerferad 10y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEU632_Em3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEU632_Em3g