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The points about centralized power make sense, but why http, smtp, and social media became centralized in the first place wasn’t grappled with at all. Running

The points about centralized power make sense, but why http, smtp, and social media became centralized in the first place wasn’t grappled with at all. Running your own servers is attractive for some, but they aren’t the majority and never will be unless it requires something as simple as buying a $35 box and plugging it in at home with no additional setup. Social media is hard to accomplish without a centralized discovery server. See Torrents before they figured out a mechanism or Matrix. The author didn’t address these forces driving web content to centralized platforms, and web3 isn’t likely to avoid the same incentive structure from what I can tell. Bitcoin and Ethereum both have significant centralization problems for how people use them. More wallets are in Coinbase and other central providers than are run privately. Mining power is centralized among a small population as well. Even current crypto is driving toward centralization to get new people onto the technology, so how do you prevent it in web3?

fsflover 5y ago
> The author didn’t address these forces driving web content to centralized platforms, and web3 isn’t likely to avoid the same incentive structure from what I can tell. A decentralized system driving to centralization is much better than centralized overlords having a full control over users in a walled garden reinforced by network effects. As TFA says, "Decentralized networks aren’t a silver bullet that will fix all the problems on the internet. But they offer a much better approach than centralized systems." > Running your own servers is attractive for some, but they aren’t the majority and never will be And it's not necessary as the existing servers federate between each other and allow the users to register normally.
- Olreich 5y ago
  But that's how we got to the current situation with something like email: A bunch of people ran their own servers because they were tech saavy early adopters. Then, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc. started offering poor email service which most people adopted. Then Google came along and had an offer that was very impressive to consumers and everyone switched to gmail over the years. Sure, a competitor CAN exist, but it doesn't because Google's product was good enough and captured a large enough market share to become the default. We even have people trying to come up with them (see Hey!) Why wouldn't this happen with web3 servers? Why doesn't HTTP count as decentralized? Anyone can put a server on the network by buying an IP and domain name. And how does crypto help at all with these basic network effect problems that are the reason previous decentralized systems centralized?
  - fsflover 5y ago
    > Why wouldn't this happen with web3 servers? It can happen with them, and it does happen with Bitcoin to a degree. However, it's much better than full monopoly of Facebook and Youtube. By the way, there are still many alternative paid email providers which work fine for those who do not want to run their own server. >Why doesn't HTTP count as decentralized? To me it does. But we need more: we need decentralized services on top of it, like PeerTube.
gitfan86 5y ago
Wikipedia was mentioned in the article and it provides a great example of a product that was built in a decentralized way. Ironically, the author doesn't appreciate that Wikipedia's success had nothing to do with Web3 or crypto. The success of large companies isn't because of a lack of technology, it is due to human nature and economies of scale and network effects. Anti-trust is the way you fix this. Break youtube out of Google, Instagram out of FB, etc... Also, Wikipedia has shown that centralization is necessary sometimes. For example, political pages are frequently locked because people with the most extreme and inaccurate viewpoints are the most vocal.
- fsflover 5y ago
  But the page locking is a result of a democratic decision, not a single admin.
  - gitfan86 5y ago
    Exactly, and share holders vote for the leadership of public companies. Web3 isn't a new paradigm of governance.
    - fsflover 5y ago
      It's not working well with Facebook and Youtube, because actual users cannot vote.

fsflover 5y ago

> The author didn’t address these forces driving web content to centralized platforms, and web3 isn’t likely to avoid the same incentive structure from what I can tell. A decentralized system driving to centralization is much better than centralized overlords having a full control over users in a walled garden reinforced by network effects. As TFA says, "Decentralized networks aren’t a silver bullet that will fix all the problems on the internet. But they offer a much better approach than centralized systems." > Running your own servers is attractive for some, but they aren’t the majority and never will be And it's not necessary as the existing servers federate between each other and allow the users to register normally.

Olreich 5y ago
But that's how we got to the current situation with something like email: A bunch of people ran their own servers because they were tech saavy early adopters. Then, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, etc. started offering poor email service which most people adopted. Then Google came along and had an offer that was very impressive to consumers and everyone switched to gmail over the years. Sure, a competitor CAN exist, but it doesn't because Google's product was good enough and captured a large enough market share to become the default. We even have people trying to come up with them (see Hey!) Why wouldn't this happen with web3 servers? Why doesn't HTTP count as decentralized? Anyone can put a server on the network by buying an IP and domain name. And how does crypto help at all with these basic network effect problems that are the reason previous decentralized systems centralized?
- fsflover 5y ago
  > Why wouldn't this happen with web3 servers? It can happen with them, and it does happen with Bitcoin to a degree. However, it's much better than full monopoly of Facebook and Youtube. By the way, there are still many alternative paid email providers which work fine for those who do not want to run their own server. >Why doesn't HTTP count as decentralized? To me it does. But we need more: we need decentralized services on top of it, like PeerTube.

gitfan86 5y ago

Wikipedia was mentioned in the article and it provides a great example of a product that was built in a decentralized way. Ironically, the author doesn't appreciate that Wikipedia's success had nothing to do with Web3 or crypto. The success of large companies isn't because of a lack of technology, it is due to human nature and economies of scale and network effects. Anti-trust is the way you fix this. Break youtube out of Google, Instagram out of FB, etc... Also, Wikipedia has shown that centralization is necessary sometimes. For example, political pages are frequently locked because people with the most extreme and inaccurate viewpoints are the most vocal.

fsflover 5y ago
But the page locking is a result of a democratic decision, not a single admin.
- gitfan86 5y ago
  Exactly, and share holders vote for the leadership of public companies. Web3 isn't a new paradigm of governance.
  - fsflover 5y ago
    It's not working well with Facebook and Youtube, because actual users cannot vote.