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> The question's been raised in discussion elsewhere about whether or not smaller / cloistered discussions might also give rise to propaganda. My thinking is "p

> The question's been raised in discussion elsewhere about whether or not smaller / cloistered discussions might also give rise to propaganda. My thinking is "possibly, but likely to a lesser degree'. I'm convinced that if some developer had sought to replace svn by thinking directly in your terms-- i.e., how can I seek to decentralize this thing-- they would have ended up with a complicated mess of a system which would be even worse at handling issues of data integrity for the end user. I don't understand the fetish for decentralization. Why isn't the focus instead on finding the low hanging fruit of simple, centralized software which can be easily tested and quickly deployed to defend against the dark patterns we know are used to manipulate people online? With all the (duplicated) effort to build decentralized systems that necessarily rely on gold being found at the end of open research rainbows, we could instead already have a deep set of contingencies for, say, the impending milestone when Google finally defeats the ad blockers that keep HN in its cush little bubble.

rmrfstar 6y ago
I think most people agree with you. The problem is lock-in. I want to have some agility wrt the central nodes I use. Why cant you migrate your social graph off of Facebook, or route messages from your preferred node to someone who uses Facebook?
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Because the money is in the network effect and service mobility undermines that
Waterluvian 6y ago
Maybe I’m saying obvious things among people smarter than me, but I think the best world we can aim for is a federated solution. The benefits of centralization and the benefits of openness and competition.
dredmorbius 6y ago
I don't understand the fetish for decentralization. I have a love-hate relationship with the centralisation-decentralisation debate. Much radical decentralisation advocacy seems to embody little more than wishful thinking. Centralisation affords efficiencies, but at a cost of resilience, as has been widely realised of late, and of power control, if my notions here are accurate. One possible resolution is to accept necessary, or inevitable, network control points / monopolies, but to ensure that control is shared, distributed, democratic, and/or principled. Public utlities, multiple stakeholders, public input, and the like. Capture, corruption, apathy, mismanagement, incentives alignment, and the like, remain risks.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  I feel the same way and it might be we have a love hate relationship with these ideas because there is probably neither a perfect centralized or decentralized system, but rather there is goodness in the middle somewhere, and it's easy for said systems to shift to far to one side for various reasons.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Largely agreed, which makes for accord but lousy debate ;-) In light of the monopoly-power-control dynamic, though, I see frames for analysing and room for thinking about how federated systems should be structured to avoid creating cryptic control loci. As an example, Mastodon (on which part of this discussion is occurring) saw a remarkably bad interactiion two hears ago when a set of griefers followed Wil Wheaton from Twitter and swamped Mastodon's feeble harassment and abuse detection-and-mitigation systems (they've been improved, I'm given to understand). Diaspora, where I'd posted this article, has a nagging (though unclear if growing or just persisting) issue with disinformation and propaganda dissemination. On the one hand, effects are pretty limited without algorithmic amplification. On the other, blocking, reporting, and content- or account-removal seem ...underpowered. The worse forms of abuse seem infrequent, though, which is a good sign.
    - Nowado 6y ago

rmrfstar 6y ago

I think most people agree with you. The problem is lock-in. I want to have some agility wrt the central nodes I use. Why cant you migrate your social graph off of Facebook, or route messages from your preferred node to someone who uses Facebook?

paulryanrogers 6y ago
Because the money is in the network effect and service mobility undermines that

Waterluvian 6y ago

Maybe I’m saying obvious things among people smarter than me, but I think the best world we can aim for is a federated solution. The benefits of centralization and the benefits of openness and competition.

dredmorbius 6y ago

I don't understand the fetish for decentralization. I have a love-hate relationship with the centralisation-decentralisation debate. Much radical decentralisation advocacy seems to embody little more than wishful thinking. Centralisation affords efficiencies, but at a cost of resilience, as has been widely realised of late, and of power control, if my notions here are accurate. One possible resolution is to accept necessary, or inevitable, network control points / monopolies, but to ensure that control is shared, distributed, democratic, and/or principled. Public utlities, multiple stakeholders, public input, and the like. Capture, corruption, apathy, mismanagement, incentives alignment, and the like, remain risks.

bamboozled 6y ago
I feel the same way and it might be we have a love hate relationship with these ideas because there is probably neither a perfect centralized or decentralized system, but rather there is goodness in the middle somewhere, and it's easy for said systems to shift to far to one side for various reasons.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Largely agreed, which makes for accord but lousy debate ;-) In light of the monopoly-power-control dynamic, though, I see frames for analysing and room for thinking about how federated systems should be structured to avoid creating cryptic control loci. As an example, Mastodon (on which part of this discussion is occurring) saw a remarkably bad interactiion two hears ago when a set of griefers followed Wil Wheaton from Twitter and swamped Mastodon's feeble harassment and abuse detection-and-mitigation systems (they've been improved, I'm given to understand). Diaspora, where I'd posted this article, has a nagging (though unclear if growing or just persisting) issue with disinformation and propaganda dissemination. On the one hand, effects are pretty limited without algorithmic amplification. On the other, blocking, reporting, and content- or account-removal seem ...underpowered. The worse forms of abuse seem infrequent, though, which is a good sign.
  - Nowado 6y ago