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I believe the internet is naturally drifting to "governed countries" (e.g. Google or Facebook) and one of the biggest drivers is not just convenience, but decre

by dgudkov 10y ago

I believe the internet is naturally drifting to "governed countries" (e.g. Google or Facebook) and one of the biggest drivers is not just convenience, but decreasing security of the web in general. Just like the wild West eventually became a number of states with borders, police and government. It became especially relevant in the recent years, when harvesting exploits en masse has become a huge industry. Yes, centralized "web governments" have exponentially increasing attractiveness for attackers although they can benefit from scale, applying good security practices more consistently than multiple decentralized self-governed "nodes". The criminals tend to self-organize and centralize. Why? because it's more effective. As long as there are centralized "bad guys" "good citizens" don't have any other choice than unite and develop a centralized policed "country". And "the bad guys" won't go anytime soon. The decentralized web is like youth -- it's a wonderful idealistic time but it's gone and will never return back.

pessimizer 10y ago
Very cynical, but I tend to agree. I think the idea of the libertarian individualistic decentralized web is a non-starter for the general public. If you see the decentralized web as a matter of degree of centralization of individual services, however, a continuum where you can have a web for your family, a web for your job, your own personal web, a web run by your neighborhood, a web for your government etc. and conventions/interfaces to allow strictly regulated communication between those levels, I think you see it as an inherent quality of the web. The problem isn't that Facebook mediates the relationship between you and the people you went to high school with, or that twitter mediates the relationship between you and Washington Post reporters; it's that once those relationships have been well-established and don't need any more protection (or need protection from Facebook itself), there's nowhere to take them to on the web. It shouldn't be easier to send baby pictures to my mother and aunts through Facebook. If one of us wants to make the effort to get some off the shelf appliance (or appliance that needs Debian installed and apt-get run periodically) and hook it to the web, and establish a hub for the family that provides most of what facebook provides, it would be better if it were both possible and easy to create and access.

by dgudkov 10y ago

pessimizer 10y ago

Very cynical, but I tend to agree. I think the idea of the libertarian individualistic decentralized web is a non-starter for the general public. If you see the decentralized web as a matter of degree of centralization of individual services, however, a continuum where you can have a web for your family, a web for your job, your own personal web, a web run by your neighborhood, a web for your government etc. and conventions/interfaces to allow strictly regulated communication between those levels, I think you see it as an inherent quality of the web. The problem isn't that Facebook mediates the relationship between you and the people you went to high school with, or that twitter mediates the relationship between you and Washington Post reporters; it's that once those relationships have been well-established and don't need any more protection (or need protection from Facebook itself), there's nowhere to take them to on the web. It shouldn't be easier to send baby pictures to my mother and aunts through Facebook. If one of us wants to make the effort to get some off the shelf appliance (or appliance that needs Debian installed and apt-get run periodically) and hook it to the web, and establish a hub for the family that provides most of what facebook provides, it would be better if it were both possible and easy to create and access.