5 ms·

I like the analogy, but in many cases the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a

I like the analogy, but in many cases the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a democracy-eroder). Also, the protectors of the status-quo are putting a lot of software people to work in protecting that status quo, so tempting them to the other side means compatibility with their skillset. Lastly, anyone who would overturn the status quo must provide the people with an alternative that's at least as good. As underdogs, we can't afford to out-hire the banks, so the only way forward is to be more effective on a smaller manpower budget--which probably means leaning on crowd-sourced solutions mediated by software. It's easy to fall into the trap you're describing, but that doesn't mean that that's what is happening. It looks like the battles here are genuinely shaping up to be fought in software.

UncleMeat 5y ago
How would decentralized finance affect the advertising driven business model of web applications?
- entropicdrifter 5y ago
  Perhaps even more relevantly, how would any sort of decentralization help when the issue is an excessively unregulated market simply moving to the logical conclusion of its evolution?
- yao420 5y ago
  I quite liked the coinhive approach of having the user run a blockchain workload as an alternative to ads. The project and economics didn’t work out for them but it was an interesting approach.
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    But that doesn't change a thing. Engagement is still the key metric for a service in this world. And that leads to the same problems.
- fragmede 5y ago
  Micropayments have been suggested since Internet was young, but now that's available on top of the right cryptocurrent (eg SOL). Whether that's actually a model people want (vs saying they want) remains to be seen, but Substack seems to be doing well enough for their writers. 3 cents from each of 100,000 likes on Twitter/Insta/tt starts to add up for those with a large enough following to make several of those a month. If the transaction costs are close enough to nil to make that worthwhile for everyone involved, that's a different web than we've grown up with, with 30-cent per-transaction fees being the industry standard for credit cards. If Web3 becomes popular, it frees the online tip jar from a particular platform (eg Patreon) and decentralizes it so anyone can set it up for themselves, with far lower network effects required.
  - DenseComet 5y ago
    Micropayments are an interesting topic. I don't want to pay 5 cents per article I read, I'd much rather pay $10 a month for unlimited articles, even if I end up paying more than I would with the first scheme just because with the first one, I make a decision to spend money with every click. I know there are projects trying to streamline this, but it really should be as close to the UX of the latter as possible, pay a set amount and never think about how many things I can read.
    - shebek 5y ago
      I though the point of personal computing was to make it easy to think, not to make it unnecessary? If you think the firehose of self-referential click-bait needs to be made even more addictive, I'm really not sure what Web3 can offer. OTOH, reintroducing the friction of having to decide whether the next click is worth your time and attention (i.e. money) is where it's at.
    - int_19h 5y ago
      I've been using Blendle for a long time now, and one interesting thing that I've noticed is that it doesn't make me think hard about the decision to spend money every time I read some article, even though that's technically what it is.
  - 5y ago
r00fus 5y ago
> the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a democracy-eroder). How in the world is DeFi supposed to help this? From my POV DeFi makes it worse (advertising funding can now be untraceable/unauditable).
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  If the entire platform (gmail, etc) is funded by ads, then removing the ads destroys the platform. In that space, advertising is a necessary evil, and the best we can do it try to make it less onerous. But if you're supporting your platform by any other means, you can just go without ads entirely. And DeFi is all about finding ways to support things that you like without giving untrustworthy middle men like Google or a bank custody over it. When a server gives you something other than what you asked it for with the aim of altering your behavior, that's called malware. We tolerate it in the form of ads because there aren't good alternatives available. If DeFi can fund an alternative, internet advertising can go die in a fire.
  - colonelxc 5y ago
    Advertising clearly wont "go die in a fire", no matter how frictionless the payments are. There was a conversation on hacker news just a few days ago about 'smart' TVs all getting ads, spying on the user, etc. This is an example where people do have a way to pay for TVs (no need for microtransactions, TVs cost hundreds of dollars already!). But the TV makers have decided they can make more money by adding Ads, so why would they not? This happened with cable TV too. You pay for the TV already, as a subscription even, why do you also get Ads? Because the cable company gets more money. Can companies live while just charging for their services? absolutely. Will a lot of companies try to add additional revenue flows anyways? Also yes. In theory a company could compete on a 'no ads' platform. In practice, industry after industry realizes that they can just make more money at the turn of a switch. DeFi doesn't fix that. The advertisers are still going to come calling with their checkbooks. I grant that DeFi does have some potential for micropayments that are hard with traditional finance. That could help make some blogs and small things ad free. But my point is that making payments has not at all stopped ads from invading every other industry. TV ads are not because your purchase had too much finance overhead. The advertisers will still be there, checkbook in hand.
ipaddr 5y ago
Before internet advertising everyone was concerned with newspapers being all ads, subway ads, billboards, naming stadiums, ads on buses, flyers being put everywhere, mail advertising plus everything you see on tv. Those things still exist. Focusing only on digital advertising when ads are being pushed everywhere is missing the point.
fragmede 5y ago
I get where defi is coming from, and the regulations are onerous, but also those regulations were hard-fought for, and came about on the backs of real problems for real people, often by being exploited by people most accurately described as conmen. Caveat emptor, sure, but on the way from "investing your play money" to someone close to retirement's 401k, there's a much bigger pitfall. The "battles" are shaping up to be fought the same way they were previously - regulations forcing big huge heavy disclaimers on financial products, cryptocoin-based or otherwise, that state that the returns stated are not actually guaranteed.
- dcow 5y ago
  I truly don’t think DeFi is, at its heart, anti-regulation. I do think a lot of early proponents are armchair anarchists, but that’s just the scene. I think it’s anti corruption/abuse of power by institutions too large to fail—often due to lack of meaningful regulatory political power, across the board. (You’ll probably easily find people playing with web3 dns also advocating for personal data regulations, for example.) No, software can’t fix all of the institutional and political problems, but it can present a more efficient modern system that helps generate the political clout people will need on the battlefield. We have systemic problems and no they’re not all going to go away with better software. But we need catalysts that motivate people, win hearts, and pierce through the apathetic menagerie.
  - supernovae 5y ago
    Today there was a crypto hack that cost over 110 million because the website's cloudflare key was hacked/leaked apparently. With 0 regulation and no recourse built into crypto, one poor soul lost 50.8 million in 900 bitcoins. You're not going to replace people problems with tech. Period.
    - walterbell 5y ago
      > You're not going to replace people problems with tech. Period. Sadly, there will always be people who benefit from misattribution of a people problem to tech.
indigochill 5y ago
> Lastly, anyone who would overturn the status quo must provide the people with an alternative that's at least as good Depends what "good" means. Something interesting about disruption is it often starts out worse than the incumbent in every way except one key one which people see value in. The incumbent then doesn't see it as a threat because it's so much worse, until a critical mass of users who value the one better thing builds up and the incumbent is disrupted. I'm a firm believer disruption of big tech will work that way. PeerTube is worse than YouTube in many ways, except that it's federated. Mastodon is harder to use than Twitter for the typical user. I believe in both of them because I believe the one thing they inarguably do better (putting power back in the hands of the people through federation) is sufficiently significant, especially as faith continues to erode in the status quo gatekeepers.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  Oh yeah, it's not that the new kids on the block need to be better than the old guard on all dimensions, but if we're really going to switch (rather than just having the disruptors as the occasional mistress), the switch has to be worth it. This is why I don't worry that crypto is going to release some kind of monster that can't be put back in its cage. To value something is a choice. People are going to chose to value whichever network/token/whatever is actually worth switching to.

UncleMeat 5y ago

How would decentralized finance affect the advertising driven business model of web applications?

entropicdrifter 5y ago
Perhaps even more relevantly, how would any sort of decentralization help when the issue is an excessively unregulated market simply moving to the logical conclusion of its evolution?
yao420 5y ago
I quite liked the coinhive approach of having the user run a blockchain workload as an alternative to ads. The project and economics didn’t work out for them but it was an interesting approach.
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  But that doesn't change a thing. Engagement is still the key metric for a service in this world. And that leads to the same problems.
fragmede 5y ago
Micropayments have been suggested since Internet was young, but now that's available on top of the right cryptocurrent (eg SOL). Whether that's actually a model people want (vs saying they want) remains to be seen, but Substack seems to be doing well enough for their writers. 3 cents from each of 100,000 likes on Twitter/Insta/tt starts to add up for those with a large enough following to make several of those a month. If the transaction costs are close enough to nil to make that worthwhile for everyone involved, that's a different web than we've grown up with, with 30-cent per-transaction fees being the industry standard for credit cards. If Web3 becomes popular, it frees the online tip jar from a particular platform (eg Patreon) and decentralizes it so anyone can set it up for themselves, with far lower network effects required.
- DenseComet 5y ago
  Micropayments are an interesting topic. I don't want to pay 5 cents per article I read, I'd much rather pay $10 a month for unlimited articles, even if I end up paying more than I would with the first scheme just because with the first one, I make a decision to spend money with every click. I know there are projects trying to streamline this, but it really should be as close to the UX of the latter as possible, pay a set amount and never think about how many things I can read.
  - shebek 5y ago
    I though the point of personal computing was to make it easy to think, not to make it unnecessary? If you think the firehose of self-referential click-bait needs to be made even more addictive, I'm really not sure what Web3 can offer. OTOH, reintroducing the friction of having to decide whether the next click is worth your time and attention (i.e. money) is where it's at.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    I've been using Blendle for a long time now, and one interesting thing that I've noticed is that it doesn't make me think hard about the decision to spend money every time I read some article, even though that's technically what it is.
- 5y ago

r00fus 5y ago

> the societal ills that defi is trying to solve were caused by software in the first place (e.g. internet advertising as a democracy-eroder). How in the world is DeFi supposed to help this? From my POV DeFi makes it worse (advertising funding can now be untraceable/unauditable).

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
If the entire platform (gmail, etc) is funded by ads, then removing the ads destroys the platform. In that space, advertising is a necessary evil, and the best we can do it try to make it less onerous. But if you're supporting your platform by any other means, you can just go without ads entirely. And DeFi is all about finding ways to support things that you like without giving untrustworthy middle men like Google or a bank custody over it. When a server gives you something other than what you asked it for with the aim of altering your behavior, that's called malware. We tolerate it in the form of ads because there aren't good alternatives available. If DeFi can fund an alternative, internet advertising can go die in a fire.
- colonelxc 5y ago
  Advertising clearly wont "go die in a fire", no matter how frictionless the payments are. There was a conversation on hacker news just a few days ago about 'smart' TVs all getting ads, spying on the user, etc. This is an example where people do have a way to pay for TVs (no need for microtransactions, TVs cost hundreds of dollars already!). But the TV makers have decided they can make more money by adding Ads, so why would they not? This happened with cable TV too. You pay for the TV already, as a subscription even, why do you also get Ads? Because the cable company gets more money. Can companies live while just charging for their services? absolutely. Will a lot of companies try to add additional revenue flows anyways? Also yes. In theory a company could compete on a 'no ads' platform. In practice, industry after industry realizes that they can just make more money at the turn of a switch. DeFi doesn't fix that. The advertisers are still going to come calling with their checkbooks. I grant that DeFi does have some potential for micropayments that are hard with traditional finance. That could help make some blogs and small things ad free. But my point is that making payments has not at all stopped ads from invading every other industry. TV ads are not because your purchase had too much finance overhead. The advertisers will still be there, checkbook in hand.

ipaddr 5y ago

Before internet advertising everyone was concerned with newspapers being all ads, subway ads, billboards, naming stadiums, ads on buses, flyers being put everywhere, mail advertising plus everything you see on tv. Those things still exist. Focusing only on digital advertising when ads are being pushed everywhere is missing the point.

fragmede 5y ago

I get where defi is coming from, and the regulations are onerous, but also those regulations were hard-fought for, and came about on the backs of real problems for real people, often by being exploited by people most accurately described as conmen. Caveat emptor, sure, but on the way from "investing your play money" to someone close to retirement's 401k, there's a much bigger pitfall. The "battles" are shaping up to be fought the same way they were previously - regulations forcing big huge heavy disclaimers on financial products, cryptocoin-based or otherwise, that state that the returns stated are not actually guaranteed.

dcow 5y ago
I truly don’t think DeFi is, at its heart, anti-regulation. I do think a lot of early proponents are armchair anarchists, but that’s just the scene. I think it’s anti corruption/abuse of power by institutions too large to fail—often due to lack of meaningful regulatory political power, across the board. (You’ll probably easily find people playing with web3 dns also advocating for personal data regulations, for example.) No, software can’t fix all of the institutional and political problems, but it can present a more efficient modern system that helps generate the political clout people will need on the battlefield. We have systemic problems and no they’re not all going to go away with better software. But we need catalysts that motivate people, win hearts, and pierce through the apathetic menagerie.
- supernovae 5y ago
  Today there was a crypto hack that cost over 110 million because the website's cloudflare key was hacked/leaked apparently. With 0 regulation and no recourse built into crypto, one poor soul lost 50.8 million in 900 bitcoins. You're not going to replace people problems with tech. Period.
  - walterbell 5y ago
    > You're not going to replace people problems with tech. Period. Sadly, there will always be people who benefit from misattribution of a people problem to tech.

indigochill 5y ago

> Lastly, anyone who would overturn the status quo must provide the people with an alternative that's at least as good Depends what "good" means. Something interesting about disruption is it often starts out worse than the incumbent in every way except one key one which people see value in. The incumbent then doesn't see it as a threat because it's so much worse, until a critical mass of users who value the one better thing builds up and the incumbent is disrupted. I'm a firm believer disruption of big tech will work that way. PeerTube is worse than YouTube in many ways, except that it's federated. Mastodon is harder to use than Twitter for the typical user. I believe in both of them because I believe the one thing they inarguably do better (putting power back in the hands of the people through federation) is sufficiently significant, especially as faith continues to erode in the status quo gatekeepers.

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
Oh yeah, it's not that the new kids on the block need to be better than the old guard on all dimensions, but if we're really going to switch (rather than just having the disruptors as the occasional mistress), the switch has to be worth it. This is why I don't worry that crypto is going to release some kind of monster that can't be put back in its cage. To value something is a choice. People are going to chose to value whichever network/token/whatever is actually worth switching to.