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"Web 2" provides tools for "user and community sovereignty", indeed that was "web0". (Which also, by analogy repeats the 'adaptive front-end' trend whereby web

"Web 2" provides tools for "user and community sovereignty", indeed that was "web0". (Which also, by analogy repeats the 'adaptive front-end' trend whereby web2 had to reinvent scaling pages to fit screens that was already native to web0). The trend of returning to "web0" has always been present, and likely always will be. It doesnt require new technology. It requires people to want to pay the implicit transaction and communication costs (time, skill, etc.) inherent in that, original, vision of the web. To "bring back web0" one only needs to peel back everything else and provide simplified interfaces, etc. to using it. These do exist. But of course, they arent popular. Blockchain is popular, and that is as far away from this spirit as you can get. It's a trick. A con. A technological sideally full of people with knives. Decentralisation is already how everything is built. Crypto is a means of rent seeking on the worst possible version of that you can imagine.

chrisco255 4y ago
Blockchain is one technology that has a myriad of use cases. One of the critical ones is value transfer infrastructure. You cannot "decentralize the web" if you cannot monetize it in a non-censorable way. Otherwise you get situations like Paypal, which recently added a $2500 threat to its TOS that if you speak incorrectly, they will fine your account. Or the Canadian trucker protest earlier this year, where their bank accounts were frozen because tyrants run the world right now. You cannot have real freedom without the ability to transact freely. You also cannot fund decentralized infrastructure, like data storage nodes, without creating decentralized, permissionless incentives to run and operate file storage hardware. That's where token incentives come in. It's not rent seeking, it's effective Tell me how you would effectively archive censor-resistant data without blockchain? How could you guarantee that a file was stored and available for many years and do so such that no central party could arbitrarily take the content down?
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > How could you guarantee that a file was stored and available for many years and do so such that no central party could arbitrarily take the content down? As far as I can tell there’s no guarantee that blockchain data will be available without people actively sharing it…which makes it absolutely no different than something like BitTorrent which, ironically enough, is exactly what people who want their data to survive being taken down use to ensure it doesn’t go away. Those big leaks of government data? BitTorrent. Those digital libraries of questionable legally? BitTorrent.

chrisco255 4y ago

Blockchain is one technology that has a myriad of use cases. One of the critical ones is value transfer infrastructure. You cannot "decentralize the web" if you cannot monetize it in a non-censorable way. Otherwise you get situations like Paypal, which recently added a $2500 threat to its TOS that if you speak incorrectly, they will fine your account. Or the Canadian trucker protest earlier this year, where their bank accounts were frozen because tyrants run the world right now. You cannot have real freedom without the ability to transact freely. You also cannot fund decentralized infrastructure, like data storage nodes, without creating decentralized, permissionless incentives to run and operate file storage hardware. That's where token incentives come in. It's not rent seeking, it's effective Tell me how you would effectively archive censor-resistant data without blockchain? How could you guarantee that a file was stored and available for many years and do so such that no central party could arbitrarily take the content down?

UncleEntity 4y ago
> How could you guarantee that a file was stored and available for many years and do so such that no central party could arbitrarily take the content down? As far as I can tell there’s no guarantee that blockchain data will be available without people actively sharing it…which makes it absolutely no different than something like BitTorrent which, ironically enough, is exactly what people who want their data to survive being taken down use to ensure it doesn’t go away. Those big leaks of government data? BitTorrent. Those digital libraries of questionable legally? BitTorrent.