8 ms·

The internet the way is currently design will resulted in centralisation and end up with monopoly or oligopoly.

adrianN 6y ago
Any system in which network effects and winner-takes-all exist result in centralization and monopoly. I don't think you could design the Internet differently to avoid this.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
  Ban indirect monetization of private data if it is not an opt-in feature separated from the rest.
  - dandelo1953 6y ago
    This! I am completely confounded that I have not heard of any real legislative proposals to establish a clear separation of duties in regards storing data and selling it. There is an obvious conflict of interest if you both have my data and are granted free reign to do what you want with it (via click through agreements that modern society is now dependent upon) you have unfair leverage over me. If you are able to do this en mass without much competition... I'm thankful things haven't gotten worse than they are. Something similar to Glass-Steagall is desperately needed in the digital era. Hopefully somebody is working on it...
  - foepys 6y ago
    So, GDPR?
- creddit 6y ago
  What is the network effect for Google?
- deepstack 6y ago
  One thing off top of the head is For example: If the DNS was initially designed as such as https://handshake.org https://handshake.org could be a better place to lay the foundation of Internet.
  - warkdarrior 6y ago
    How would decentralized DNS and other decentralized protocols help with search, social, and recommendations? Those are fundamentally centralized systems.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  The winner-takes-all positive feedback loop exists because social networks are held in silos built on IP regulations. So I guess that's another reason the existing concept of intellectual property needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Would winner-take-all effect be so strong if all user-provided data was owned by users, and data processors (like social network) were forced to implement protocols allowing for easy and unconditional sharing of all data (including metadata forming a relationship graph) with any other service the user desires? That is, force services like Facebook or Twitter to be just UI frontends to what would become an implicitly federated social graph. Then, social media companies would hold no power over people. Right now this can't happen, because the companies own the data on their platform, so competitors are not free to create alternative services for perusing that data.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    If they depend upon another entity for doing the task they aren't competitors in the first place. That is like calling me a competitor to Exxon Mobile because I can get gas in my car at a gas station. The data siloing concept doesn't make any sense on a networking and design level in the first place. It would call for the user to implement all data desired by the service in their form and pass it back and forth - which in practice would involve a lot of redundant dataschelping, especialally if everything was designed to be stateless by making websites not store any data permanently! Indeed the only point to the design is as a passive aggressive way to tell them to "fuck off, if I wanted you to have it I would give it to you". On a technical level it is a bad reinvention/implementation of cookies and using them to store all state essentially.
    - TeMPOraL 6y ago
      > If they depend upon another entity for doing the task they aren't competitors in the first place. That is like calling me a competitor to Exxon Mobile because I can get gas in my car at a gas station. I'm thinking more of "your car only accepts Exxon's gas", or even more accurately, "your car's engine only runs on a very specific type of fuel, and Exxon has a complete monopoly on producing and distributing it". > especialally if everything was designed to be stateless by making websites not store any data permanently! That doesn't follow. Websites should be able to store the data from the moment I give them consent, process it within the scope of my consent, and delete it when I revoke my consent. That doesn't imply they need, or should, be stateless. > Indeed the only point to the design is as a passive aggressive way to tell them to "fuck off, if I wanted you to have it I would give it to you". It's not about them having it, but about them taking ownership of my data and siloing it in. And it's not (just) about telling them to fuck off, but about mitigating the strong positive feedback loop that causes centralization of the web - which is the topic in this subthread. On a more abstract level, I'm thinking of ways in which "data intermediaries" could be made more transparent. For instance, I see no reason why Facebook should own the social network - which is defined fully by the graph of connections between its users. So e.g. if I friend you on Facebook, that edge in the graph is data that belongs to us both. If I share some photo to "friends only", you should be able to see it through an interface of your choosing. What happens instead is that it's Facebook that decides what interface you can or cannot use, and trying to disagree can cause them to terminate your account (and take away access to your data) or even sue you.
- LeonB 6y ago
  There’s a little truth in what you say but a very fatalist part too which is quite untrue. We could say that roads are a natural monopoly (since they have to intersect everywhere it would be inefficient to have competitors fight and negotiate about every intersection) ...however, the consequences of that natural monopoly can be limited or extreme. For example: do we get to own private cars that drive on those roadways? Or must we all rent a national transportation vehicle at a non-competitive price? etc. where exactly does the “natural monopoly” begin/end and how natural is it? I caution against letting your thoughts rest on the words “natural monopoly”. (I think it’s natural for gravity to bring things down to earth. It’s physics. But the NTSB don’t seem to be satisfied with the notion of “natural plane crashes” just being unavoidable.)
nix23 6y ago
>The internet the way is currently design It's not the design but the users and to a extend Europe itself. The US is one problem, but that Europe is not even capable to create it's own "cloud" is a sign...just look at Germany they really think 4600 euros is a good payment for top-IT personnel...that says everything. Having Internet-speeds like in the year 2000 too. It's impressive how slow, complicated and lame Europe is (in this sector).
- photonios 6y ago
  Depends on where in Europe you live. The more east you go, the faster it gets. Fiber and 1 Gbps is standard and cheap here. I pay €15/month for that (TV included). 4G is everywhere. I pay €8/month for unlimited data usage and phone calls.
  - nix23 6y ago
    It's not about in which part the net is fast, it's about that the biggest economy in Europe is sleeping.
tboyd47 6y ago
It already happened, but the fix is simple and remains possible at any time: repeal the CDA.
- qtplatypus 6y ago
  That would kill almost every internet company. For example if the CDA was repealed then this site would go away almost overnight.
  - tboyd47 6y ago
    There were internet companies before the CDA came along. I don't consider actively moderated, special interest forums like this one to be dependent on the CDA for survival. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and any company with a business model that precludes active content moderation would be threatened. Those are exactly the companies that everyone complains about.
    - qtplatypus 6y ago
      Before the CDA came around there was real fear that Internet forums getting sued for libel as a publisher. This was before the internet was a mainstream thing. Any comment on HN could be libel and ycombinator would risk being sued over it.
      - tboyd47 6y ago
        Right, but we really don't know if that fear was justified or not. The CDA came very early on and created a legal shield around these companies that prevented these problems from reaching the court system. We don't know how courts would have dealt with forums like HN, nor do we know how forum moderators would have operated in that legal environment. There's something slightly disturbing about the idea that a group of businesses who feel threatened by the public can rely on Congressional diktat to protect them from the law. Speaking in 2020, I think we can say that giving all internet companies blanket immunity to lawsuits from the public was clearly not a good decision. Everything people complain about today on the internet, from censorship, surveillance, addictive design, and centralized control, is being implemented by companies that would never exist without the CDA. With all the bitching and moaning people do about large internet companies, it's not a fair assumption that the internet we have now is the only internet possible or even the best internet possible. Sure, HN may not exist without the CDA. But we don't know that for sure, and it's shortsighted to limit our thinking to just one website or subculture of society.

Any system in which network effects and winner-takes-all exist result in centralization and monopoly. I don't think you could design the Internet differently to avoid this.

rcMgD2BwE72F 6y ago
Ban indirect monetization of private data if it is not an opt-in feature separated from the rest.
- dandelo1953 6y ago
  This! I am completely confounded that I have not heard of any real legislative proposals to establish a clear separation of duties in regards storing data and selling it. There is an obvious conflict of interest if you both have my data and are granted free reign to do what you want with it (via click through agreements that modern society is now dependent upon) you have unfair leverage over me. If you are able to do this en mass without much competition... I'm thankful things haven't gotten worse than they are. Something similar to Glass-Steagall is desperately needed in the digital era. Hopefully somebody is working on it...
- foepys 6y ago
  So, GDPR?
creddit 6y ago
What is the network effect for Google?
deepstack 6y ago
One thing off top of the head is For example: If the DNS was initially designed as such as https://handshake.org https://handshake.org could be a better place to lay the foundation of Internet.
- warkdarrior 6y ago
  How would decentralized DNS and other decentralized protocols help with search, social, and recommendations? Those are fundamentally centralized systems.
TeMPOraL 6y ago
The winner-takes-all positive feedback loop exists because social networks are held in silos built on IP regulations. So I guess that's another reason the existing concept of intellectual property needs to be torn down and rebuilt. Would winner-take-all effect be so strong if all user-provided data was owned by users, and data processors (like social network) were forced to implement protocols allowing for easy and unconditional sharing of all data (including metadata forming a relationship graph) with any other service the user desires? That is, force services like Facebook or Twitter to be just UI frontends to what would become an implicitly federated social graph. Then, social media companies would hold no power over people. Right now this can't happen, because the companies own the data on their platform, so competitors are not free to create alternative services for perusing that data.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  If they depend upon another entity for doing the task they aren't competitors in the first place. That is like calling me a competitor to Exxon Mobile because I can get gas in my car at a gas station. The data siloing concept doesn't make any sense on a networking and design level in the first place. It would call for the user to implement all data desired by the service in their form and pass it back and forth - which in practice would involve a lot of redundant dataschelping, especialally if everything was designed to be stateless by making websites not store any data permanently! Indeed the only point to the design is as a passive aggressive way to tell them to "fuck off, if I wanted you to have it I would give it to you". On a technical level it is a bad reinvention/implementation of cookies and using them to store all state essentially.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    > If they depend upon another entity for doing the task they aren't competitors in the first place. That is like calling me a competitor to Exxon Mobile because I can get gas in my car at a gas station. I'm thinking more of "your car only accepts Exxon's gas", or even more accurately, "your car's engine only runs on a very specific type of fuel, and Exxon has a complete monopoly on producing and distributing it". > especialally if everything was designed to be stateless by making websites not store any data permanently! That doesn't follow. Websites should be able to store the data from the moment I give them consent, process it within the scope of my consent, and delete it when I revoke my consent. That doesn't imply they need, or should, be stateless. > Indeed the only point to the design is as a passive aggressive way to tell them to "fuck off, if I wanted you to have it I would give it to you". It's not about them having it, but about them taking ownership of my data and siloing it in. And it's not (just) about telling them to fuck off, but about mitigating the strong positive feedback loop that causes centralization of the web - which is the topic in this subthread. On a more abstract level, I'm thinking of ways in which "data intermediaries" could be made more transparent. For instance, I see no reason why Facebook should own the social network - which is defined fully by the graph of connections between its users. So e.g. if I friend you on Facebook, that edge in the graph is data that belongs to us both. If I share some photo to "friends only", you should be able to see it through an interface of your choosing. What happens instead is that it's Facebook that decides what interface you can or cannot use, and trying to disagree can cause them to terminate your account (and take away access to your data) or even sue you.
LeonB 6y ago
There’s a little truth in what you say but a very fatalist part too which is quite untrue. We could say that roads are a natural monopoly (since they have to intersect everywhere it would be inefficient to have competitors fight and negotiate about every intersection) ...however, the consequences of that natural monopoly can be limited or extreme. For example: do we get to own private cars that drive on those roadways? Or must we all rent a national transportation vehicle at a non-competitive price? etc. where exactly does the “natural monopoly” begin/end and how natural is it? I caution against letting your thoughts rest on the words “natural monopoly”. (I think it’s natural for gravity to bring things down to earth. It’s physics. But the NTSB don’t seem to be satisfied with the notion of “natural plane crashes” just being unavoidable.)

nix23 6y ago

>The internet the way is currently design It's not the design but the users and to a extend Europe itself. The US is one problem, but that Europe is not even capable to create it's own "cloud" is a sign...just look at Germany they really think 4600 euros is a good payment for top-IT personnel...that says everything. Having Internet-speeds like in the year 2000 too. It's impressive how slow, complicated and lame Europe is (in this sector).

photonios 6y ago
Depends on where in Europe you live. The more east you go, the faster it gets. Fiber and 1 Gbps is standard and cheap here. I pay €15/month for that (TV included). 4G is everywhere. I pay €8/month for unlimited data usage and phone calls.
- nix23 6y ago
  It's not about in which part the net is fast, it's about that the biggest economy in Europe is sleeping.

tboyd47 6y ago

It already happened, but the fix is simple and remains possible at any time: repeal the CDA.

qtplatypus 6y ago
That would kill almost every internet company. For example if the CDA was repealed then this site would go away almost overnight.
- tboyd47 6y ago
  There were internet companies before the CDA came along. I don't consider actively moderated, special interest forums like this one to be dependent on the CDA for survival. Facebook, Google, Twitter, and any company with a business model that precludes active content moderation would be threatened. Those are exactly the companies that everyone complains about.
  - qtplatypus 6y ago
    Before the CDA came around there was real fear that Internet forums getting sued for libel as a publisher. This was before the internet was a mainstream thing. Any comment on HN could be libel and ycombinator would risk being sued over it.
    - tboyd47 6y ago
      Right, but we really don't know if that fear was justified or not. The CDA came very early on and created a legal shield around these companies that prevented these problems from reaching the court system. We don't know how courts would have dealt with forums like HN, nor do we know how forum moderators would have operated in that legal environment. There's something slightly disturbing about the idea that a group of businesses who feel threatened by the public can rely on Congressional diktat to protect them from the law. Speaking in 2020, I think we can say that giving all internet companies blanket immunity to lawsuits from the public was clearly not a good decision. Everything people complain about today on the internet, from censorship, surveillance, addictive design, and centralized control, is being implemented by companies that would never exist without the CDA. With all the bitching and moaning people do about large internet companies, it's not a fair assumption that the internet we have now is the only internet possible or even the best internet possible. Sure, HN may not exist without the CDA. But we don't know that for sure, and it's shortsighted to limit our thinking to just one website or subculture of society.