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Fraud is probably a harder problem than discoverability. You can always exchange (maybe through an automated pairing) IPv6 addresses if nothing else. Supporting

Fraud is probably a harder problem than discoverability. You can always exchange (maybe through an automated pairing) IPv6 addresses if nothing else. Supporting chargebacks, eliminating spam, blocking phishing, etc. if both harder and more important to a functioning culture.

zrm 7y ago
Fraud and spam are two separate problems. One of the best solutions for spam for a new system is to impose a proof of work requirement on sending the first message between any pair of users, or any (new username, hosting service) pairing for federated services. For any normal pairing that happens only once, but for a spammer they have to pay the cost for every message or else you can trivially block every message from that sender. Fraud protection is harder, but it's also something that lends itself well to being an independent service. If you're buying from someone trustworthy or dealing in small value amounts then you don't need it. If you're not, you require the seller to carry insurance from someone you do trust (or don't buy from them), and then it's the insurer's problem to deal with fraud.
- Jasper_ 7y ago
  Spammers have large networks of computers they aren't paying for (botnets), so they aren't paying the cost of sending messages. Proof of work really doesn't solve spam anymore.
  - zrm 7y ago
    What makes it work is the asymmetry. With normal human communication you talk to the same person thousands of times, or send thousands of messages from the same account, so spending computation equivalent to something like $1 worth of Bitcoin for that is totally reasonable. Spending the equivalent of $1 worth of Bitcoin to send one spam to one person, isn't. Even if you had access to a large number of computers, you'd make much more money by using the same computational resources to mine cryptocurrency. The opportunity cost makes spamming uneconomical, and if it doesn't then you raise the cost until it is. You can also allow users to pre-approve each other to avoid paying anything so that most legitimate communication doesn't require proof of work, which makes it a lot easier to put a high price on the remaining instances.
zelly 7y ago
Agreed. More broadly, decentralization is less equipped to counteract bad actors. You really are on your own, but isn't that what you asked for when you wanted to abandon Facebook/Google/government. A decentralized network cannot be trusted by nature. Anyone can join and lie. Successful decentralized networks need some cryptographically-secure checksum to verify its inputs: BitTorrent uses SHA-1; Bitcoin uses Merkle trees. The network participants are just dumb mirrors to provide redundancy and compute. This solves the problem of the integrity of the information, but there is no such analogue for verifying the behavior of humans using the network. For example, you can download a valid BitTorrent file that is also a trojan (virus databases are centralized), or you could send Bitcoin to a Nigerian prince (third-party escrow layers are centralized). There is no algorithm to make sure what you're doing is ethical. Imagine running reCAPTCHA as a decentralized service that runs on random people's machines. Impossible. There is no way to flip a switch and change everything from centralized to decentralized without making major sacrifices. No one wants to go back to the dial-up era. Much of the lauded results of the internet are actually a result of its centralization.
- bjornjaja 7y ago
  The dialup era makes more sense actually—services are designed more bandwidth-conscious and ad networks don’t masquerade on every website in existence. As for streaming media, well people consume too much media to begin with so less is more.
- tpxl 7y ago
  Decentralized networks lend themselves to far better moderation than centralized. Private forums have always had better moderation than something like reddit. Well, not all, but you can ignore those ;)
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Usenet?
- yarg 7y ago
  BitTorrent uses SHA1 only? That seems deeply flawed. Edit: https://www.quora.com/Does-bittorrent-support-SHA-2-256-512-or-future-SHA-3 https://www.quora.com/Does-bittorrent-support-SHA-2-256-512-...

zrm 7y ago

Fraud and spam are two separate problems. One of the best solutions for spam for a new system is to impose a proof of work requirement on sending the first message between any pair of users, or any (new username, hosting service) pairing for federated services. For any normal pairing that happens only once, but for a spammer they have to pay the cost for every message or else you can trivially block every message from that sender. Fraud protection is harder, but it's also something that lends itself well to being an independent service. If you're buying from someone trustworthy or dealing in small value amounts then you don't need it. If you're not, you require the seller to carry insurance from someone you do trust (or don't buy from them), and then it's the insurer's problem to deal with fraud.

Jasper_ 7y ago
Spammers have large networks of computers they aren't paying for (botnets), so they aren't paying the cost of sending messages. Proof of work really doesn't solve spam anymore.
- zrm 7y ago
  What makes it work is the asymmetry. With normal human communication you talk to the same person thousands of times, or send thousands of messages from the same account, so spending computation equivalent to something like $1 worth of Bitcoin for that is totally reasonable. Spending the equivalent of $1 worth of Bitcoin to send one spam to one person, isn't. Even if you had access to a large number of computers, you'd make much more money by using the same computational resources to mine cryptocurrency. The opportunity cost makes spamming uneconomical, and if it doesn't then you raise the cost until it is. You can also allow users to pre-approve each other to avoid paying anything so that most legitimate communication doesn't require proof of work, which makes it a lot easier to put a high price on the remaining instances.

zelly 7y ago

Agreed. More broadly, decentralization is less equipped to counteract bad actors. You really are on your own, but isn't that what you asked for when you wanted to abandon Facebook/Google/government. A decentralized network cannot be trusted by nature. Anyone can join and lie. Successful decentralized networks need some cryptographically-secure checksum to verify its inputs: BitTorrent uses SHA-1; Bitcoin uses Merkle trees. The network participants are just dumb mirrors to provide redundancy and compute. This solves the problem of the integrity of the information, but there is no such analogue for verifying the behavior of humans using the network. For example, you can download a valid BitTorrent file that is also a trojan (virus databases are centralized), or you could send Bitcoin to a Nigerian prince (third-party escrow layers are centralized). There is no algorithm to make sure what you're doing is ethical. Imagine running reCAPTCHA as a decentralized service that runs on random people's machines. Impossible. There is no way to flip a switch and change everything from centralized to decentralized without making major sacrifices. No one wants to go back to the dial-up era. Much of the lauded results of the internet are actually a result of its centralization.

bjornjaja 7y ago
The dialup era makes more sense actually—services are designed more bandwidth-conscious and ad networks don’t masquerade on every website in existence. As for streaming media, well people consume too much media to begin with so less is more.
tpxl 7y ago
Decentralized networks lend themselves to far better moderation than centralized. Private forums have always had better moderation than something like reddit. Well, not all, but you can ignore those ;)
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Usenet?
yarg 7y ago
BitTorrent uses SHA1 only? That seems deeply flawed. Edit: https://www.quora.com/Does-bittorrent-support-SHA-2-256-512-or-future-SHA-3 https://www.quora.com/Does-bittorrent-support-SHA-2-256-512-...