5 ms·

I'm not re-asserting anything, I'm just saying that our children won't really have an option NOT to work in the bitcoin mines.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
I think the point is that the alternative where the developer needs the user's permission in order to push out an update that the user actually wants is already the scenario where the user is in control, as opposed to the status quo. You don't need the ability to force something on them that they actually want, so the ability to force something on them can only be used for evil. The good update would be accepted without coercion.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  I wasn't talking about updates. The user maybe hates using the platform at all. Or maybe doesn't think about it. But either way, knows there's no choice. Network effect, or else some other monopoly, determines where you have to go to find jobs, where you go to meet girls, what kind of currency you have to pretend has value, etc.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Yes - even in what language you speak, what sort of fashion is appropriate, etc. To put it bluntly, because humans only want to interact with other humans, people will always be forced to change their ways and adapt to whatever the status quo is to participate in that human-to-human interaction (lest you decide to slice your tongue and go live in the woods, isolated from any other human). Without the conformity, nobody will be able to interact as they all want to interact in a different way. The real potential solution to all this is standardization. It's conformity, but only on the communication layer itself and not the backend. For example, in online dating, if you want to use Tinder, go for it, but someone else might want to use something else while still matching with people who use Tinder. This is, of course, entirely impractical as of now given all of the side-effects nobody is willing to make (giving up user data, DoS threats, general increased infra costs with no real ROI), but perhaps a stopgap solution is to have a regulating body determine standards for specific types of services (eg. short-form blog platforms like Twitter), and they enforce products to conform to the shared standard if it's a similar enough experience to existing products in the category. This would still allow innovation in new areas, while ensuring giants can't form a monopoly via network effects in easy-enough-to-replicate platforms. This still leaves the issue of "all my users' PII is in 1000 different companies' servers" so maybe the body would have to vet & impose legal data restrictions on companies that want to federate with the incumbents, but that would impose on the goal of allowing new players to enter the market with low friction and further entrench the dominance of these incumbents.
    - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
      > (giving up user data, DoS threats, general increased infra costs with no real ROI) I'm starting to think the best way to solve this is to bifurcate it. Create a P2P system which is free-as-in-beer but is possibly susceptible to DoS attacks etc., then have an option which is more robust than that where you pay Cloudflare or someone to host your data in exchange for money, but it's still part of the same network and interacting with the same people. That way you can acquire new users without shoving a payment prompt in their face on day one but someone who just wants to hand a fistful of cash to a third party to take care of their problems still has that option. > This still leaves the issue of "all my users' PII is in 1000 different companies' servers" so maybe the body would have to vet & impose legal data restrictions on companies that want to federate with the incumbents, but that would impose on the goal of allowing new players to enter the market with low friction and further entrench the dominance of these incumbents. This is the kind of problem that gets solved much better by smart cryptographers than government bureaucrats. Encrypt the data. Use a kind of cryptosystem where only the people who are supposed to be able to have it (i.e. your friends, not Mark Zuckerberg) can decrypt it. Now some servers can host it so it's not offline when your phone is, but those servers can't read it, only the intended recipient(s) can. Obviously this is only even necessary for posts that aren't intended to be completely public.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

I think the point is that the alternative where the developer needs the user's permission in order to push out an update that the user actually wants is already the scenario where the user is in control, as opposed to the status quo. You don't need the ability to force something on them that they actually want, so the ability to force something on them can only be used for evil. The good update would be accepted without coercion.

DarylZero 5y ago
I wasn't talking about updates. The user maybe hates using the platform at all. Or maybe doesn't think about it. But either way, knows there's no choice. Network effect, or else some other monopoly, determines where you have to go to find jobs, where you go to meet girls, what kind of currency you have to pretend has value, etc.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Yes - even in what language you speak, what sort of fashion is appropriate, etc. To put it bluntly, because humans only want to interact with other humans, people will always be forced to change their ways and adapt to whatever the status quo is to participate in that human-to-human interaction (lest you decide to slice your tongue and go live in the woods, isolated from any other human). Without the conformity, nobody will be able to interact as they all want to interact in a different way. The real potential solution to all this is standardization. It's conformity, but only on the communication layer itself and not the backend. For example, in online dating, if you want to use Tinder, go for it, but someone else might want to use something else while still matching with people who use Tinder. This is, of course, entirely impractical as of now given all of the side-effects nobody is willing to make (giving up user data, DoS threats, general increased infra costs with no real ROI), but perhaps a stopgap solution is to have a regulating body determine standards for specific types of services (eg. short-form blog platforms like Twitter), and they enforce products to conform to the shared standard if it's a similar enough experience to existing products in the category. This would still allow innovation in new areas, while ensuring giants can't form a monopoly via network effects in easy-enough-to-replicate platforms. This still leaves the issue of "all my users' PII is in 1000 different companies' servers" so maybe the body would have to vet & impose legal data restrictions on companies that want to federate with the incumbents, but that would impose on the goal of allowing new players to enter the market with low friction and further entrench the dominance of these incumbents.
  - AnthonyMouse 5y ago
    > (giving up user data, DoS threats, general increased infra costs with no real ROI) I'm starting to think the best way to solve this is to bifurcate it. Create a P2P system which is free-as-in-beer but is possibly susceptible to DoS attacks etc., then have an option which is more robust than that where you pay Cloudflare or someone to host your data in exchange for money, but it's still part of the same network and interacting with the same people. That way you can acquire new users without shoving a payment prompt in their face on day one but someone who just wants to hand a fistful of cash to a third party to take care of their problems still has that option. > This still leaves the issue of "all my users' PII is in 1000 different companies' servers" so maybe the body would have to vet & impose legal data restrictions on companies that want to federate with the incumbents, but that would impose on the goal of allowing new players to enter the market with low friction and further entrench the dominance of these incumbents. This is the kind of problem that gets solved much better by smart cryptographers than government bureaucrats. Encrypt the data. Use a kind of cryptosystem where only the people who are supposed to be able to have it (i.e. your friends, not Mark Zuckerberg) can decrypt it. Now some servers can host it so it's not offline when your phone is, but those servers can't read it, only the intended recipient(s) can. Obviously this is only even necessary for posts that aren't intended to be completely public.