Hi all - this is Allen Farrington, the author of the piece (not sure how to prove that but oh well. If only we had a public protocol for identity :P ) I just w

Hi all - this is Allen Farrington, the author of the piece (not sure how to prove that but oh well. If only we had a public protocol for identity :P ) I just wanted to say that of all the commentary on the article across the web that I am aware of, this is by far the most interesting and informed. I would really encourage the contributor of this post to copy and paste the whole thing onto the Quillette article itself as it may well get a great conversation going. In short, I am aware of all these issues and agree that the best way to frame the problem is not really in terms of 'technology' per se, but in terms of incentives. That folds in what I think is the all-important point about monetisation, which I completely agree with. Where I think I disagree slightly is the overly deterministic assertion that 'recentralisation will occur' due to social demands. I think this understanding underplays how much social interaction with technology is moulded by the technology itself. This is getting a bit subjective at this point, but I don't think society really does 'want' centralisation, at least not along the lines of such a sweeping declaration. I think they like the results of centralisation as they happen to exist on the web so far. But, as above, these are strongly determined by the available technology, and in turn what incentives are viable. As you say yourself lower down, there are cases at meaningful scale where the degree of decentralisation is increasing, and other more speculative cases in which the degree of decentralisation is a step change from current norms. My thought (/my hope) is that this provides enough leeway to enormously alter incentives such that social interaction with the technology can alter enormously as well. Fortunately for some, unfortunately for others, I covered these issues extremely briefly and overly rhetorically in the article as I am assuming that some 99% of the audience has never even considered these issues, never mind having the technical understanding to follow a discussion this in-depth. I was really using the hook of PewDiePie to meander towards this exact topic. That said, I am very happy that this discussion has got going here! Good job, and please spread it if you can!