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The "People don't understand" is a condescending statement and is exactly the reason why the people who try to build these decentralized systems never succeed,

The "People don't understand" is a condescending statement and is exactly the reason why the people who try to build these decentralized systems never succeed, because they don't even understand why people use information silos. If you really think that's the problem and you think you know better than other people, you should quit using every single centralized system out there, like your bank (they take your money and invest it elsewhere! And most people don't even know about it!), credit card (It's just a small piece of plastic but you have to pay them money just to pay money, and they even track your purchase history, how ridiculous is that!), etc. Sure there are shitty aspects to this (and I don't like it either), but the reason they are still around is NOT because most people don't know, but because most people have better things to worry about. I know EXACTLY what's going on but still use centralized silos for certain things because it makes sense at the moment, even though there are many downsides. It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people.

JohnStrange 10y ago
Or maybe both of you are on the opposite sides of a false dichotomy. Just sayin'...
- walterbell 10y ago
  Yes. E.g. centralized Snapchat has a multi-billion market value based on marketing of ephemeral messaging and a fun UX. Despite technical limitations of the marketing claims, they have reduced the audience for their "historical conversations" from "all customers" to "malicious actors", which is a big step forward.
  - nickpsecurity 10y ago
    Snapchat created a multi-billion dollar market via centralized tech and money taken in on the promise they'll monetize it (or the data under EULA) somehow while giving app away for free and operating in a pseudo-police state. I was hesitant to think anything good would come of that after the main SMS and Facebook alternative I pushed for mass audience, WhatApp, was acquired by Facebook in one of largest acquisitions in history. (sighs) Also, WhatApp was losing incredible amount of money with its number of users despite using efficient, centralized tech. I bet they'd loose even more if people were mostly sending images. I've been thinking secure, decentralized apps with no advertising or acquisition will cost money to develop that will require paying users. Or some clever freemium model. Also, not in a police state. ;)
    - walterbell 10y ago
      There are perennial claims that consumers don't want privacy, yet Snapchat used the carrot of ephemeral messaging to gain a large initial audience at the expense of Facebook and other competitors. That data point of market demand for non-persistence is valuable, regardless of Snapchat's motivation or the consequences of their technical implementation. In the bigger picture, Snapchat can be viewed as Instagram v2, rather than WhatsApp v2. Instagram educated consumers on the use of filter-driven photography as content creation. Snapchat is extending that trajectory, with filter-driven videos being authored by kids in less than a minute. Where might that lead? AR in the style of Google-funded Magic Leap, i.e. animation overlays on filtered reality, which will inevitably be used for advertising, e.g. http://hyper-reality.co http://hyper-reality.co. They recently launched "connected" sunglasses. Have you looked at http://matrix.org http://matrix.org? They have telco funding and a long-term vision for OSS and decentralization, so are not subject to typical VC/startup pressures.
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        "There are perennial claims that consumers don't want privacy" There's perennial evidence that consumers won't act toward privacy except outside of very, narrow constraints. You're analysis of Instagram to Snapchat is correct. Yet, with the carrot of ephemeral messaging, they went to a centralized service who could keep all their stuff to sell to whoever with no security or assurances in the whole process. Similar with WhatApp in terms of assurances. That's the best we're seeing. Whereas, the usable, truly-private apps that jump into any of these markets get virtually no adoption. What you're seeing is the power of marketing rather than delivering privacy. Two very different things. Kind of like how many juices market themselves as healthy and natural while actually being a pile of sugar that might harm you if you consume enough. But people drink that 100% juice kool-aid. We've also seen where that went in the corporate space where virtually nothing is actually secure despite marketing claims and the fact that corporations try to hire people that can make an informed decision about that. Definitely money to be made pressing that button of "ephemeral" on devices that couldn't be that if you tried. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for those of us pushing or developing actual offerings that are secure or private. I think more can be done and even maybe widespread but the evidence indicates market will always be dominated by scheming oligopolies of evil companies pretending to protect people with their offerings. Because people don't do better as users or buyers.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  If you want to say something like this, at least back it up with something. Anyone can say "You two are both wrong" and sound smart. Also which part of "people don't understand" is not condescending? Funny enough, I watched this movie called Barton Fink last night, and it's a perfect depiction of this nonsense.
  - 35bge57dtjku 10y ago
    > Also which part of "people don't understand" is not condescending? How is asserting a fact like that in any way condescending?
    - cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
      Because it's not a fact
      - 35bge57dtjku 10y ago
        It is a fact. Some people don't understand. And even if it were false, that doesn't make it condescending. People are wrong about things all the time without it being condescending.
        cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
        Go back and re-read the original comment I replied to. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context.
        35bge57dtjku 10y ago
        > You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context. No... I specifically asked because I wanted to know why you thought it was condescending. That's a far cry from arguing for the sake of arguing. And it didn't come off at condescending to me.
  - 10y ago
zer0gravity 10y ago
1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying.. 2. In my post I'm not trying to make value judgements, but just offer a possible explanation why things are the way they are, and who may have better chances to change them. 3. I don't think that we should/can decentralize everything, but I do believe there is a worrying tendency towards extreme centralization. This may not neccessarily be a bad thing though. The world we live in is the expression of our choices, and if this is the result, then this is the result. We can observe and adjust if we feel the need, by changing our behaviour, if not, then that's that.
- cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
  > 1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. > This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying.. I don't think that's what condescending means. Decentralization/Centralization is nothing new. In fact the entire history of humanity is about pendulum swinging back and forth between centralization and decentralization. And in 100% of the cases when this happens it's not because of some elites convince people to switch, but because it makes sense for people. "Normal" human beings are not as dumb as these elites think. So we don't have to worry about decentralization never happening. It will happen. And probably back to centralization. And then back to decentralization again. Just not through these efforts to "educate" people. It's because these elites are so out of touch with how real people think that their attempts at convincing people don't work.
  - zer0gravity 10y ago
    > I don't think that's what condescending means. Not a native speaker, so maybe I got that wrong, but this is the definition Google gives: "having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.", and this is what I was referring to. Agree with what you say about the varying degrees of centralization/decentralization throughout history, but don't think that these changes happen out of the blue. Education is usually needed to bring about change and not because people are dumb, but because information doesn't always gets to them easy. So maybe this is what's happening now. You can think of it as a balancing force...
normalhuman 10y ago
It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Even if you understand the downside of centralized systems (and most people really do not), you cannot individually do anything to stop them. So you use them out of convenience. "Decentralized" people are out of touch only to the degree that they believe that they can change the world based on collective altruism. That is an uphill battle. They are not out of touch in realizing the dystopia that we are heading towards. I imagine two possible scenarios for decentralized systems to take over: a) Dystopia goes mainstream -- one scenario: "social credit scores" become common practice and people start to fear using the web to an extreme degree; b) Someone comes up with a decentralized system that is able to do something, only possible with decentralization, that everyone really really wants. I hope b) happens first.
- jfoster 10y ago
  People would change the way they use the web, not stop using it.
  - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
    Yes, that is precisely my argument. Make the normal web sufficiently oppressive, and the freedom provided by decentralization becomes so compelling that people switch to it.
    - SXX 10y ago
      Do you seriously expect that in dystopian scenario altenative going to be available? Even if decentralized services going to remain available do you think people will risk using them? Most likely they won't going to do that. This is proved by China and more extreme example of North Korea also available. Or just look at any country with totalitarian regime: they increase regulations really slowly so people "too busy" to think about that, but at some point they simply too scared to do anything.
      - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
        You have a point. What I imagine is that some underground "resistance" would develop and use such systems, and once the authoritarianism eventually collapses, the mainstream will then be afraid of centralization. Take as an example the Germans' insistence on privacy, to extents that even seem ridiculous to a lot of people (e.g. the right to blur your house in Google maps), and then consider their historical context.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
"The "People don't understand" is a condescending statement and is exactly the reason why the people who try to build these decentralized systems never succeed, because they don't even understand why people use information silos." I've talked to at least hundreds, maybe a thousand, people (not techies) about these issues over past 10 years. Most don't understand the scope of the problem in terms of the tradeoff they're making. Many also think main suppliers couldn't, wouldn't, etc do sinister things X, Y, and Z because something would happen. Many think problems X, Y, and Z are inevitable since all the famous apps allow them for extra profit or growth. Vast majority don't know much about computers, privacy law, or U.S. history of surveillance states (eg Hoover) because they don't put time into learning. They will shout about minor things that are similar on TV they understand with little thought. So, it's not condescending. It's a fact that "people don't understand," are apathetic, or terrible at long-term risk/reward tradeoffs. There's shitloads of empirical evidence confirming it in terms of what they adopt in the market vs what problems it causes them. And what crap they adopt next time. We definitely should put the share of blame on them that they earn. "It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people." A lot of them are, too, in fairness. They come up with all kinds of crazy, unrealistic solutions that ignore human nature, economics, etc. Best models are going to be hybrids.
SXX 10y ago
> It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. There are plenty of countries in the world where "ordinary people" and "political active people" are two different groups. Ordinary people there have better things to worry about than politics. Many of them also know what exactly going, but do nothing to prevent it. Usually this end up really really bad.
- type0 10y ago
  > There are plenty of countries in the world where "ordinary people" and "political active people" are two different groups. These "ordinary people" often end up allowing "extraordinary" things to happen to these "political active people".
golemotron 10y ago
> It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. Exactly. I'm still not sure how we ended up in this world where people no longer understand market competition and consumer value choices. People choose platforms and products based upon what is convenient for them, not necessarily best for them. In the 90s AOL became the internet for many people because it met their wants and needs, much like Facebook has today. Consumers/users are not idealists with regard to their choices and they never will be.

JohnStrange 10y ago

Or maybe both of you are on the opposite sides of a false dichotomy. Just sayin'...

walterbell 10y ago
Yes. E.g. centralized Snapchat has a multi-billion market value based on marketing of ephemeral messaging and a fun UX. Despite technical limitations of the marketing claims, they have reduced the audience for their "historical conversations" from "all customers" to "malicious actors", which is a big step forward.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  Snapchat created a multi-billion dollar market via centralized tech and money taken in on the promise they'll monetize it (or the data under EULA) somehow while giving app away for free and operating in a pseudo-police state. I was hesitant to think anything good would come of that after the main SMS and Facebook alternative I pushed for mass audience, WhatApp, was acquired by Facebook in one of largest acquisitions in history. (sighs) Also, WhatApp was losing incredible amount of money with its number of users despite using efficient, centralized tech. I bet they'd loose even more if people were mostly sending images. I've been thinking secure, decentralized apps with no advertising or acquisition will cost money to develop that will require paying users. Or some clever freemium model. Also, not in a police state. ;)
  - walterbell 10y ago
    There are perennial claims that consumers don't want privacy, yet Snapchat used the carrot of ephemeral messaging to gain a large initial audience at the expense of Facebook and other competitors. That data point of market demand for non-persistence is valuable, regardless of Snapchat's motivation or the consequences of their technical implementation. In the bigger picture, Snapchat can be viewed as Instagram v2, rather than WhatsApp v2. Instagram educated consumers on the use of filter-driven photography as content creation. Snapchat is extending that trajectory, with filter-driven videos being authored by kids in less than a minute. Where might that lead? AR in the style of Google-funded Magic Leap, i.e. animation overlays on filtered reality, which will inevitably be used for advertising, e.g. http://hyper-reality.co http://hyper-reality.co. They recently launched "connected" sunglasses. Have you looked at http://matrix.org http://matrix.org? They have telco funding and a long-term vision for OSS and decentralization, so are not subject to typical VC/startup pressures.
    - nickpsecurity 10y ago
      "There are perennial claims that consumers don't want privacy" There's perennial evidence that consumers won't act toward privacy except outside of very, narrow constraints. You're analysis of Instagram to Snapchat is correct. Yet, with the carrot of ephemeral messaging, they went to a centralized service who could keep all their stuff to sell to whoever with no security or assurances in the whole process. Similar with WhatApp in terms of assurances. That's the best we're seeing. Whereas, the usable, truly-private apps that jump into any of these markets get virtually no adoption. What you're seeing is the power of marketing rather than delivering privacy. Two very different things. Kind of like how many juices market themselves as healthy and natural while actually being a pile of sugar that might harm you if you consume enough. But people drink that 100% juice kool-aid. We've also seen where that went in the corporate space where virtually nothing is actually secure despite marketing claims and the fact that corporations try to hire people that can make an informed decision about that. Definitely money to be made pressing that button of "ephemeral" on devices that couldn't be that if you tried. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for those of us pushing or developing actual offerings that are secure or private. I think more can be done and even maybe widespread but the evidence indicates market will always be dominated by scheming oligopolies of evil companies pretending to protect people with their offerings. Because people don't do better as users or buyers.
cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
If you want to say something like this, at least back it up with something. Anyone can say "You two are both wrong" and sound smart. Also which part of "people don't understand" is not condescending? Funny enough, I watched this movie called Barton Fink last night, and it's a perfect depiction of this nonsense.
- 35bge57dtjku 10y ago
  > Also which part of "people don't understand" is not condescending? How is asserting a fact like that in any way condescending?
  - cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
    Because it's not a fact
    - 35bge57dtjku 10y ago
      It is a fact. Some people don't understand. And even if it were false, that doesn't make it condescending. People are wrong about things all the time without it being condescending.
      - cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
        Go back and re-read the original comment I replied to. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context.
        35bge57dtjku 10y ago
        > You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context. No... I specifically asked because I wanted to know why you thought it was condescending. That's a far cry from arguing for the sake of arguing. And it didn't come off at condescending to me.
- 10y ago

zer0gravity 10y ago

1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying.. 2. In my post I'm not trying to make value judgements, but just offer a possible explanation why things are the way they are, and who may have better chances to change them. 3. I don't think that we should/can decentralize everything, but I do believe there is a worrying tendency towards extreme centralization. This may not neccessarily be a bad thing though. The world we live in is the expression of our choices, and if this is the result, then this is the result. We can observe and adjust if we feel the need, by changing our behaviour, if not, then that's that.

cocktailpeanuts 10y ago
> 1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. > This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying.. I don't think that's what condescending means. Decentralization/Centralization is nothing new. In fact the entire history of humanity is about pendulum swinging back and forth between centralization and decentralization. And in 100% of the cases when this happens it's not because of some elites convince people to switch, but because it makes sense for people. "Normal" human beings are not as dumb as these elites think. So we don't have to worry about decentralization never happening. It will happen. And probably back to centralization. And then back to decentralization again. Just not through these efforts to "educate" people. It's because these elites are so out of touch with how real people think that their attempts at convincing people don't work.
- zer0gravity 10y ago
  > I don't think that's what condescending means. Not a native speaker, so maybe I got that wrong, but this is the definition Google gives: "having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.", and this is what I was referring to. Agree with what you say about the varying degrees of centralization/decentralization throughout history, but don't think that these changes happen out of the blue. Education is usually needed to bring about change and not because people are dumb, but because information doesn't always gets to them easy. So maybe this is what's happening now. You can think of it as a balancing force...

normalhuman 10y ago

It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Even if you understand the downside of centralized systems (and most people really do not), you cannot individually do anything to stop them. So you use them out of convenience. "Decentralized" people are out of touch only to the degree that they believe that they can change the world based on collective altruism. That is an uphill battle. They are not out of touch in realizing the dystopia that we are heading towards. I imagine two possible scenarios for decentralized systems to take over: a) Dystopia goes mainstream -- one scenario: "social credit scores" become common practice and people start to fear using the web to an extreme degree; b) Someone comes up with a decentralized system that is able to do something, only possible with decentralization, that everyone really really wants. I hope b) happens first.

jfoster 10y ago
People would change the way they use the web, not stop using it.
- TelmoMenezes 10y ago
  Yes, that is precisely my argument. Make the normal web sufficiently oppressive, and the freedom provided by decentralization becomes so compelling that people switch to it.
  - SXX 10y ago
    Do you seriously expect that in dystopian scenario altenative going to be available? Even if decentralized services going to remain available do you think people will risk using them? Most likely they won't going to do that. This is proved by China and more extreme example of North Korea also available. Or just look at any country with totalitarian regime: they increase regulations really slowly so people "too busy" to think about that, but at some point they simply too scared to do anything.
    - TelmoMenezes 10y ago
      You have a point. What I imagine is that some underground "resistance" would develop and use such systems, and once the authoritarianism eventually collapses, the mainstream will then be afraid of centralization. Take as an example the Germans' insistence on privacy, to extents that even seem ridiculous to a lot of people (e.g. the right to blur your house in Google maps), and then consider their historical context.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

"The "People don't understand" is a condescending statement and is exactly the reason why the people who try to build these decentralized systems never succeed, because they don't even understand why people use information silos." I've talked to at least hundreds, maybe a thousand, people (not techies) about these issues over past 10 years. Most don't understand the scope of the problem in terms of the tradeoff they're making. Many also think main suppliers couldn't, wouldn't, etc do sinister things X, Y, and Z because something would happen. Many think problems X, Y, and Z are inevitable since all the famous apps allow them for extra profit or growth. Vast majority don't know much about computers, privacy law, or U.S. history of surveillance states (eg Hoover) because they don't put time into learning. They will shout about minor things that are similar on TV they understand with little thought. So, it's not condescending. It's a fact that "people don't understand," are apathetic, or terrible at long-term risk/reward tradeoffs. There's shitloads of empirical evidence confirming it in terms of what they adopt in the market vs what problems it causes them. And what crap they adopt next time. We definitely should put the share of blame on them that they earn. "It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people." A lot of them are, too, in fairness. They come up with all kinds of crazy, unrealistic solutions that ignore human nature, economics, etc. Best models are going to be hybrids.

SXX 10y ago

> It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. There are plenty of countries in the world where "ordinary people" and "political active people" are two different groups. Ordinary people there have better things to worry about than politics. Many of them also know what exactly going, but do nothing to prevent it. Usually this end up really really bad.

type0 10y ago
> There are plenty of countries in the world where "ordinary people" and "political active people" are two different groups. These "ordinary people" often end up allowing "extraordinary" things to happen to these "political active people".

golemotron 10y ago

> It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. Exactly. I'm still not sure how we ended up in this world where people no longer understand market competition and consumer value choices. People choose platforms and products based upon what is convenient for them, not necessarily best for them. In the 90s AOL became the internet for many people because it met their wants and needs, much like Facebook has today. Consumers/users are not idealists with regard to their choices and they never will be.