4 ms·

> 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

by 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.
  - Ntrails 5y ago
    >This happened with cable TV too. You pay for the TV already, as a subscription even, why do you also get Ads? Drives me batshit that amazon does this on Prime. Play the fucking film you bastards
    - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
      Too bad we can't just fork a copy without ads and use that instead.
      - acdha 5y ago
        The reason you can't fork it is because the copyright owner wants to maintain control. That means that the content will never be on a blockchain even if we see the 8+ orders of magnitude efficiency improvements which would be needed to do so and when you've built the systems which would be necessary to hold and authorize access you don't get anything except expense and support burden from a blockchain.
        __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
        Oh, my point was that we can and already have (ok, a DHT is not a blockchain, but it's the same sort of deal). I pay for Prime for the shipping, so I could stream it, but I still torrent the content because it's just more convenient to have the file. The only thing that DeFi changes about this scenario is that it's going to get easier for me to pay the people who make the content available in the format that I prefer. When it's sufficiently mature, that'll mean paying the artists as well. It's just a shame that we're not there yet.
  - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
    Frictionless payments are a relatively small part of it. The bigger part is figuring out who needs to be paid for what. Consider gitcoin, for instance. Yeah, it processes payments, but more importantly it tracks developer reputation, user donations, and facilitates aggregate decision making (re: voting on how to spend the money). Are you saying that eventually, the users will vote to have ads included in their open source software? I think not. It's only when somebody is able to exploit a privileged position as owner-of-the-medium that you get greed-driven service degradation like that. But we're learning how to build ownerless mediums. Whatever problems they have, I don't think they'll be the same-old middleman problems that we're used to.

by r00fus 5y ago

__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.
- Ntrails 5y ago
  >This happened with cable TV too. You pay for the TV already, as a subscription even, why do you also get Ads? Drives me batshit that amazon does this on Prime. Play the fucking film you bastards
  - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
    Too bad we can't just fork a copy without ads and use that instead.
    - acdha 5y ago
      The reason you can't fork it is because the copyright owner wants to maintain control. That means that the content will never be on a blockchain even if we see the 8+ orders of magnitude efficiency improvements which would be needed to do so and when you've built the systems which would be necessary to hold and authorize access you don't get anything except expense and support burden from a blockchain.
      - __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
        Oh, my point was that we can and already have (ok, a DHT is not a blockchain, but it's the same sort of deal). I pay for Prime for the shipping, so I could stream it, but I still torrent the content because it's just more convenient to have the file. The only thing that DeFi changes about this scenario is that it's going to get easier for me to pay the people who make the content available in the format that I prefer. When it's sufficiently mature, that'll mean paying the artists as well. It's just a shame that we're not there yet.
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  Frictionless payments are a relatively small part of it. The bigger part is figuring out who needs to be paid for what. Consider gitcoin, for instance. Yeah, it processes payments, but more importantly it tracks developer reputation, user donations, and facilitates aggregate decision making (re: voting on how to spend the money). Are you saying that eventually, the users will vote to have ads included in their open source software? I think not. It's only when somebody is able to exploit a privileged position as owner-of-the-medium that you get greed-driven service degradation like that. But we're learning how to build ownerless mediums. Whatever problems they have, I don't think they'll be the same-old middleman problems that we're used to.