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Decentralization always fails, centralization is inherent to society and human nature. That's why we generally centralize around areas that turn into huge metro

Decentralization always fails, centralization is inherent to society and human nature. That's why we generally centralize around areas that turn into huge metropolitan cities, and why 99% of git usage is on Github, Gitlab or Bitbucket. We're a centralization-loving race. So OAuth 1.0's dream of decentralization resulted in only a few OAuth providers ever lasting long.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
azinman2 7y ago
Except that TCP/IP, email, and the web has shown that it can also be otherwise. Big sites come and go. I don’t think you can always state general rules along these lines (cities are different from hosting source code). You have to look at the friction vs advantages per scenario. The web, for example, has little friction due to Google providing the grease, and massive long-tail advantages in decentralization. OpenID has a lot of friction in its implementation, and few known identity providers exist for most individuals... not to mention trade offs in the implementation and profile details available per provider create incentive for developers to only put a “sign in with Facebook/google” button on their sites/apps.
- tracker1 7y ago
  On the last point... in general, a lot of sites, in order to let users participate only really care about having a name and email address or phone for contact needs. Most don't really even care about that. Why not let any number of other systems take care of that. For that matter, they also handle validation. I'd rather let FB/Google/Twitter and now Apple deal with verification details, and let them participate in a site. It also means, on doesn't have to deal with persisting or dealing with passwords (that can be breached) etc. Of course, I'm still inclined to allow local/passworded accounts and ensure salt+hashing of passphrases, etc. It's just in a lot of ways much easier as a user. Depending on the site, I'd often prefer Twitter (until my short account ban/lock, which made life more difficult for a few days... FYI, don't rile up the communists too much).
vokep 7y ago
Its a mix, fully centralized takes power away from people and sucks. Fully decentralized is not stable enough to survive as something useful. The trick is finding the right balance between. Generally its safe to bias towards decentralization because so much historically has overly tended towards centralization.
saagarjha 7y ago
> why 99% of git usage is on Github, Gitlab or Bitbucket I doubt it.
- xvector 7y ago
  I don’t.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    There are a lot of corporate or "free" projects that are on self-hosted platforms; plus, there are a number of other players with smaller but non-negligible share such as SourceForge.
slezyr 7y ago
Do you have a second to talk about real p2p - bittorrent? It doesn't fits in your believe at all.
- tracker1 7y ago
  The biggest issue with bittorrent is discovery channels and search.
ultrarunner 7y ago
I wonder if people "centralize", i.e. gather, around cities to enjoy the more and varied (decentralized, even?) opportunities afforded. Many rural areas force centralization of, say, one grocery store or one hardware store. There is generally one town center, whereas in larger metropolitan areas one can choose from many, many different social circles, markets, and to some extent even governmental centers. That strikes me as a big win for decentralization. Even your example of git seems counter to your point— can you imagine if all version control ground to a halt whenever GitHub went down? I realize this is off-topic, but it is an interesting thought.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

azinman2 7y ago

Except that TCP/IP, email, and the web has shown that it can also be otherwise. Big sites come and go. I don’t think you can always state general rules along these lines (cities are different from hosting source code). You have to look at the friction vs advantages per scenario. The web, for example, has little friction due to Google providing the grease, and massive long-tail advantages in decentralization. OpenID has a lot of friction in its implementation, and few known identity providers exist for most individuals... not to mention trade offs in the implementation and profile details available per provider create incentive for developers to only put a “sign in with Facebook/google” button on their sites/apps.

tracker1 7y ago
On the last point... in general, a lot of sites, in order to let users participate only really care about having a name and email address or phone for contact needs. Most don't really even care about that. Why not let any number of other systems take care of that. For that matter, they also handle validation. I'd rather let FB/Google/Twitter and now Apple deal with verification details, and let them participate in a site. It also means, on doesn't have to deal with persisting or dealing with passwords (that can be breached) etc. Of course, I'm still inclined to allow local/passworded accounts and ensure salt+hashing of passphrases, etc. It's just in a lot of ways much easier as a user. Depending on the site, I'd often prefer Twitter (until my short account ban/lock, which made life more difficult for a few days... FYI, don't rile up the communists too much).

vokep 7y ago

Its a mix, fully centralized takes power away from people and sucks. Fully decentralized is not stable enough to survive as something useful. The trick is finding the right balance between. Generally its safe to bias towards decentralization because so much historically has overly tended towards centralization.

saagarjha 7y ago

> why 99% of git usage is on Github, Gitlab or Bitbucket I doubt it.

xvector 7y ago
I don’t.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  There are a lot of corporate or "free" projects that are on self-hosted platforms; plus, there are a number of other players with smaller but non-negligible share such as SourceForge.

slezyr 7y ago

Do you have a second to talk about real p2p - bittorrent? It doesn't fits in your believe at all.

tracker1 7y ago
The biggest issue with bittorrent is discovery channels and search.

ultrarunner 7y ago

I wonder if people "centralize", i.e. gather, around cities to enjoy the more and varied (decentralized, even?) opportunities afforded. Many rural areas force centralization of, say, one grocery store or one hardware store. There is generally one town center, whereas in larger metropolitan areas one can choose from many, many different social circles, markets, and to some extent even governmental centers. That strikes me as a big win for decentralization. Even your example of git seems counter to your point— can you imagine if all version control ground to a halt whenever GitHub went down? I realize this is off-topic, but it is an interesting thought.