6 ms·

If you have to ask, then it is a scam.

by i386 5y ago

capableweb 5y ago
This seems incorrect very quickly. When the internet and the web was first encountered, lots of people asked themselves that question. Turns out, protocols and concepts aren't scams, it's people who do the scamming.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  I don't think anyone thought the internet was a scam. Some people thought it was useless, but that's different.
  - wruza 5y ago
    I second this. Can't remember when anyone said that internet is a scam. Some people said "it's only usable as an electronic business card", meaning only the html/browser part of it.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    No, I remember clearly people in my environment claiming that the web was just to fool people for their money, spending it on things that are worth nothing in real life, like domains for example. Many claimed only criminals would use the internet, or "weird" people, because the rest of us are "normal" hard-working people that can use paper and documents just fine already.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  This is partly correct. Many people indeed thought that buying stuff on the internet was a scam. It was a common joke on TV and on newspapers. Why its partly correct is that the internet back then was almost entirely not about buying and selling things at all. It was information. Web3 seems today to be entirely about buying and selling. It seems to have none of the original web ideas about it but has the market at it's very centre. Where are the people on web3? Where are the forums, comments, discussions on the network? They are consumers, participants in a market. That is why it may not be a scam, but it is un-human.
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    Very much this. I want to talk to the people running the servers. Consensus, Ledger, etc... servers. I want to know who owns what percentage of those servers. I stumbled into this question when watching people go through the development process of implementing blockchain and a few lights came on. It isn't clear to me that web3 could not actually run by the same banking cartels and that they are not just using web3 as a way to side step some regulations, insurance and other protections that have been baked into the banking industry over a long period of battle hardening and mishaps. People speak of blockchain as if distributed encryption makes it impossible for malfeasance but like any implementation of encryption the devil is in the implementation details and can render encryption into obfuscation by math. Coordinated out-of-band communication between the distributed servers could lead to collusion and that is why knowing who runs these servers matters and that is just the first step.
yawnxyz 5y ago
most things are scams to some degree (the US educational system, degrees from mediocre institutions, US health insurance, corporations like Amazon and Facebook, the meat industry, the prison industry), yet we have to live with them

If you have to ask, then it is a scam.

by i386 5y ago

If you have to ask, then it is a scam.

This seems incorrect very quickly. When the internet and the web was first encountered, lots of people asked themselves that question. Turns out, protocols and concepts aren't scams, it's people who do the scamming.

IshKebab 5y ago
I don't think anyone thought the internet was a scam. Some people thought it was useless, but that's different.
- wruza 5y ago
  I second this. Can't remember when anyone said that internet is a scam. Some people said "it's only usable as an electronic business card", meaning only the html/browser part of it.
- capableweb 5y ago
  No, I remember clearly people in my environment claiming that the web was just to fool people for their money, spending it on things that are worth nothing in real life, like domains for example. Many claimed only criminals would use the internet, or "weird" people, because the rest of us are "normal" hard-working people that can use paper and documents just fine already.
thinkingemote 5y ago
This is partly correct. Many people indeed thought that buying stuff on the internet was a scam. It was a common joke on TV and on newspapers. Why its partly correct is that the internet back then was almost entirely not about buying and selling things at all. It was information. Web3 seems today to be entirely about buying and selling. It seems to have none of the original web ideas about it but has the market at it's very centre. Where are the people on web3? Where are the forums, comments, discussions on the network? They are consumers, participants in a market. That is why it may not be a scam, but it is un-human.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  Very much this. I want to talk to the people running the servers. Consensus, Ledger, etc... servers. I want to know who owns what percentage of those servers. I stumbled into this question when watching people go through the development process of implementing blockchain and a few lights came on. It isn't clear to me that web3 could not actually run by the same banking cartels and that they are not just using web3 as a way to side step some regulations, insurance and other protections that have been baked into the banking industry over a long period of battle hardening and mishaps. People speak of blockchain as if distributed encryption makes it impossible for malfeasance but like any implementation of encryption the devil is in the implementation details and can render encryption into obfuscation by math. Coordinated out-of-band communication between the distributed servers could lead to collusion and that is why knowing who runs these servers matters and that is just the first step.

yawnxyz 5y ago

most things are scams to some degree (the US educational system, degrees from mediocre institutions, US health insurance, corporations like Amazon and Facebook, the meat industry, the prison industry), yet we have to live with them