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I agree in the decentralization mantra (though cryptocurrencies have not been a good public representative of the concept thus far), but this is the exact oppos

I agree in the decentralization mantra (though cryptocurrencies have not been a good public representative of the concept thus far), but this is the exact opposite of what you want to do to attract people to your cause. "What are you doing here, believing in centralization, on a centralized news site?"

ericd 4y ago
I don’t think the parent’s tone was good for discussion, but HN is literally all links off to other sites with some meta-discussion, it’s not “centralized”.
- yunwal 4y ago
  Could almost say the same thing about twitter. It’s mostly short quips and links to longer-form content.
  - robobro 4y ago
    If someone tries to argue that Twitter isn't centralized, I don't think they really understand what centralization means.
- TobyTheDog123 4y ago
  Twitter links out to content all the time - is that decentralized? Where's the line? - It's hosted on servers presumably operated by a centralized entity (YCombinator/AWS/etc) - It has moderation centralized to a specific set of people (which is weird sentence construction but I had to fit centralized in there for the point) - Post content (even links), comments, accounts, etc, are stored in a centralized database (might be sharded or whatever, but you get the point, the control is centralized) - It has a domain name and DNS records that are centralized to ICANN/whoever-hosts-the-dns Centralization, to me at least, is about how content is delivered, not about how likely the product is to bounce you to an external source.
- robobro 4y ago
  HN isn't just links. It's also discussion threads. It is centralized in that these links and discussions don't happen in some abstract cloud that's not strictly limited to this instance managed by our BDFL
  - ericd 4y ago
    Right, I mean more that it’s not actively trying to keep people on-site by eg hosting the content, it’s a jumping off point to the rest of the decentralized internet. But it’s not a federated service, its hosting is centralized. Two different aspects of centralization.

ericd 4y ago

I don’t think the parent’s tone was good for discussion, but HN is literally all links off to other sites with some meta-discussion, it’s not “centralized”.

yunwal 4y ago
Could almost say the same thing about twitter. It’s mostly short quips and links to longer-form content.
- robobro 4y ago
  If someone tries to argue that Twitter isn't centralized, I don't think they really understand what centralization means.
TobyTheDog123 4y ago
Twitter links out to content all the time - is that decentralized? Where's the line? - It's hosted on servers presumably operated by a centralized entity (YCombinator/AWS/etc) - It has moderation centralized to a specific set of people (which is weird sentence construction but I had to fit centralized in there for the point) - Post content (even links), comments, accounts, etc, are stored in a centralized database (might be sharded or whatever, but you get the point, the control is centralized) - It has a domain name and DNS records that are centralized to ICANN/whoever-hosts-the-dns Centralization, to me at least, is about how content is delivered, not about how likely the product is to bounce you to an external source.
robobro 4y ago
HN isn't just links. It's also discussion threads. It is centralized in that these links and discussions don't happen in some abstract cloud that's not strictly limited to this instance managed by our BDFL
- ericd 4y ago
  Right, I mean more that it’s not actively trying to keep people on-site by eg hosting the content, it’s a jumping off point to the rest of the decentralized internet. But it’s not a federated service, its hosting is centralized. Two different aspects of centralization.