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I'm glad to see this post, as it says exactly what I thought when I read the referenced sections in Moxie's post. I know I live in a particular echo chamber but

I'm glad to see this post, as it says exactly what I thought when I read the referenced sections in Moxie's post. I know I live in a particular echo chamber but owning two ISPs has meant a sizeable proportion of my Dunbar's Number are those who gladly host their own servers, run their own infrastructures, and decline the ongoing consolidation of the Internet. We generally consider being part of The Internet for example to mean being part of the DFZ (Default Free Zone), and anything less is to be a consumer. I know we are the extreme minority of users, but it's users like us who keep the world connected and accessible. Without people running their own ASNs, hosting their own infrastructures, etc, we would all be reliant on a small (relatively) number of huge scale businesses. And these users permit disruptive Internet infrastructure businesses to exist. Take for example the rural WISPs in the US or South and Eastern Europe who provide coverage for huge quantities of users in otherwise unserved locations. Or the organisations running Wikipedia and The Internet Archive. Hosters like OVH, Hetzner, even Digital Ocean. Broadcasters like BBC and Netflix. Fibre providers like B4RN and even new ISP models like Starlink. If people didn't want to run their own infrastructure the underpinnings of the Internet would become stagnant and opaque owned by a small quantity of hyper scale businesses. This isn't the Internet promise that I grew up through.

tsimionescu 5y ago
This is entirely missing the point of Moxie's original article. The promise of web1 and web3 was that people like you wouldn't be needed at all - it would be easy for literally everyone to participate in the distributed internet and run their own stuff, just like people run their own browsers today. Web2 quickly showed that web1's promise was false: to participate in the distributed network, you had to run a server of your own, or use someone else's server - and this is what the overwhelming majority of people did - at first, the gigantic masses of amateurs, and finally even most professionals. Anyone can publish a picture on the open WWW: just get a DNS name, a static IP, a TLS certificate, and run your own HTTPS server, then simply give your friends and anyone else who might be interested the address over email. Oh, you'll have to run your own email server as well, but that's easier now that you have a DNS name and certificates and all that - don't forget about a few simple things like DKIM and whatever else is required, set up some spam filters, and you're golden. You shouldn't need to spend more than a few days every month making sure everything is up to date, reading logs for signs of trouble, and maybe reading the occasional forum or five for troubleshooting. Or, you can make an Instagram account, give them all the data they ask for, and post a picture. You may want to change your password once a year, and make sure your Gmail app is configured for safe 2fa. Moxie's point was that the same thing is currently happening with web3: interacting with the base networks directly is complex and requires larger investments, and it's much easier to interact with a nice service run by someone else on a proprietary platform that spares you all this trouble.
- simonjgreen 5y ago
  Reiterating the fundamentals of Moxie's post doesn't change anything, and I agree with the way you've described it, except you've missed MY point entirely. I'm not trying to be elitist and deny access to everyone to contribute, but there is a vast difference in outcome between your examples you gave. In no way would I ever propose that if someone wants to post a picture (the example you gave) that they should go to all the efforts you described hosting their own server for that purpose. That's ridiculous. That problem is well solved with Web2. What I'm saying is that for the Internet to exist you need people prepared to get their hands dirty (sometimes quite literally) and build low level infrastructure. Instagram and other platforms can't get fibre in to people's homes, or backhaul cities together, or get signal to your mobile phone.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    > What I'm saying is that for the Internet to exist you need people prepared to get their hands dirty (sometimes quite literally) and build low level infrastructure. I think no one is contesting this. > That problem is well solved with Web2. Maybe this is the major disagreement? Many are dissatisfied with Web 2 because it has concentrated the web, for the vast majority of people, in the hands of 2-5 platforms owned by major corporations (Facebook and all its apps, Google and YouTube, Microsoft's Office 365). The promise of web 3 is a decentralized Web - same capabilities, but provided by distributed apps run and financed by blockchain techs. This is the promise that Moxie likes, but that hasn't matched his actual experience with the actual technologies being implemented - which seem to resemble Web 1 / Web 2 much more than the promise of Web 3.

tsimionescu 5y ago

This is entirely missing the point of Moxie's original article. The promise of web1 and web3 was that people like you wouldn't be needed at all - it would be easy for literally everyone to participate in the distributed internet and run their own stuff, just like people run their own browsers today. Web2 quickly showed that web1's promise was false: to participate in the distributed network, you had to run a server of your own, or use someone else's server - and this is what the overwhelming majority of people did - at first, the gigantic masses of amateurs, and finally even most professionals. Anyone can publish a picture on the open WWW: just get a DNS name, a static IP, a TLS certificate, and run your own HTTPS server, then simply give your friends and anyone else who might be interested the address over email. Oh, you'll have to run your own email server as well, but that's easier now that you have a DNS name and certificates and all that - don't forget about a few simple things like DKIM and whatever else is required, set up some spam filters, and you're golden. You shouldn't need to spend more than a few days every month making sure everything is up to date, reading logs for signs of trouble, and maybe reading the occasional forum or five for troubleshooting. Or, you can make an Instagram account, give them all the data they ask for, and post a picture. You may want to change your password once a year, and make sure your Gmail app is configured for safe 2fa. Moxie's point was that the same thing is currently happening with web3: interacting with the base networks directly is complex and requires larger investments, and it's much easier to interact with a nice service run by someone else on a proprietary platform that spares you all this trouble.

simonjgreen 5y ago
Reiterating the fundamentals of Moxie's post doesn't change anything, and I agree with the way you've described it, except you've missed MY point entirely. I'm not trying to be elitist and deny access to everyone to contribute, but there is a vast difference in outcome between your examples you gave. In no way would I ever propose that if someone wants to post a picture (the example you gave) that they should go to all the efforts you described hosting their own server for that purpose. That's ridiculous. That problem is well solved with Web2. What I'm saying is that for the Internet to exist you need people prepared to get their hands dirty (sometimes quite literally) and build low level infrastructure. Instagram and other platforms can't get fibre in to people's homes, or backhaul cities together, or get signal to your mobile phone.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  > What I'm saying is that for the Internet to exist you need people prepared to get their hands dirty (sometimes quite literally) and build low level infrastructure. I think no one is contesting this. > That problem is well solved with Web2. Maybe this is the major disagreement? Many are dissatisfied with Web 2 because it has concentrated the web, for the vast majority of people, in the hands of 2-5 platforms owned by major corporations (Facebook and all its apps, Google and YouTube, Microsoft's Office 365). The promise of web 3 is a decentralized Web - same capabilities, but provided by distributed apps run and financed by blockchain techs. This is the promise that Moxie likes, but that hasn't matched his actual experience with the actual technologies being implemented - which seem to resemble Web 1 / Web 2 much more than the promise of Web 3.