3 ms·

Reading the yesterweb criticism page of crypto/web3 that is linked to by the OP makes me think this movement is not going to gain much momentum. The criticism i

Reading the yesterweb criticism page of crypto/web3 that is linked to by the OP makes me think this movement is not going to gain much momentum. The criticism is somewhat accurate, but extremely shallow and makes no attempt to steel man potential benefits. Not that I expect this to land well with the HN crowd, but web3/crypto has the tyrannical effects of capitalism/growth on its side as a force for the “future of the web”. Going up against that with the non-profit model seems… quaint.

kelseyfrog 4y ago
Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO."
- scyclow 4y ago
  I'm looking forward to the NFT bear market where Ethereum moves to Proof of Stake, and people realize that unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them.
  - Fargoan 4y ago
    We already do that on Tezos
  - hypertele-Xii 4y ago
    > unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them. There's no such thing as a "unique digital asset". Networked computers are good at sharing copies. Any developments against this nature are manufactured, artificial scarcity, for the gains of the controlling party, at the expense of everyone else; and probably in the name of security. If you like them so much I can roll a die and tell only you which number I got, but that wouldn't affect the world in any way unless we're gambling, nor make it any less "unique" than crypto - it's just more bits/dice.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO." The answer is "Yes, but at a cost". One must subsidise the parasitic nature of digital capitalism. Many of the comments here are about the style or mechanisms of the web, but don't talk much about the values - which are sharing. The object is to give some value to the world, sharing a little of the creation you do. I've set up websites with HOWTO essays, code examples, mp3 files of sound effects I collected, interesting images etc. In the early days it was popular and well regarded amongst a music coding community, but within 10 years it was inoperable. Bots crawling all over it constantly sucked the life out of the server, and literally tens of thousands of parasitic links from commercial entities, spamdexers and SEO trash attached themselves. My site was like a ship dragged down by barnacles and weeds. When I shut down the site I got angry emails from entitled assholes who had embedded sound effects in their applications by linking to my site as if it were an infinite free resource. This story has been told a million times by people who set up websites for fun in the 90s and 00s, and pulled them down after realising the cost (often in time spent reading logs, defending, blocking, banning, rate-limiting etc) What is to be done? In the digital world capitalism does not create value but extracts or appropriates it from creators. To be a digital creator means paying a constant tax to support those who want to make money from you. While cryptocurrency type Web3.0 seems to offer a solution it only fights fire with fire, wrapping the web in a framework of mutual extraction and appropriation. Ultimately I think that only plays into the hands of the extractors who will use it to find ever more effective ways to thrive as parasites.

kelseyfrog 4y ago

Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO."

scyclow 4y ago
I'm looking forward to the NFT bear market where Ethereum moves to Proof of Stake, and people realize that unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them.
- Fargoan 4y ago
  We already do that on Tezos
- hypertele-Xii 4y ago
  > unique digital assets are fun to create, collect, and trade without having to make money on them. There's no such thing as a "unique digital asset". Networked computers are good at sharing copies. Any developments against this nature are manufactured, artificial scarcity, for the gains of the controlling party, at the expense of everyone else; and probably in the name of security. If you like them so much I can roll a die and tell only you which number I got, but that wouldn't affect the world in any way unless we're gambling, nor make it any less "unique" than crypto - it's just more bits/dice.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Yesterweb asks a simple question, "Can't we have one thing, one measly crumb-of-a-thing, not tainted by capitalism?" And the resounding response is "NO." The answer is "Yes, but at a cost". One must subsidise the parasitic nature of digital capitalism. Many of the comments here are about the style or mechanisms of the web, but don't talk much about the values - which are sharing. The object is to give some value to the world, sharing a little of the creation you do. I've set up websites with HOWTO essays, code examples, mp3 files of sound effects I collected, interesting images etc. In the early days it was popular and well regarded amongst a music coding community, but within 10 years it was inoperable. Bots crawling all over it constantly sucked the life out of the server, and literally tens of thousands of parasitic links from commercial entities, spamdexers and SEO trash attached themselves. My site was like a ship dragged down by barnacles and weeds. When I shut down the site I got angry emails from entitled assholes who had embedded sound effects in their applications by linking to my site as if it were an infinite free resource. This story has been told a million times by people who set up websites for fun in the 90s and 00s, and pulled them down after realising the cost (often in time spent reading logs, defending, blocking, banning, rate-limiting etc) What is to be done? In the digital world capitalism does not create value but extracts or appropriates it from creators. To be a digital creator means paying a constant tax to support those who want to make money from you. While cryptocurrency type Web3.0 seems to offer a solution it only fights fire with fire, wrapping the web in a framework of mutual extraction and appropriation. Ultimately I think that only plays into the hands of the extractors who will use it to find ever more effective ways to thrive as parasites.