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Same, I wish we could contribute content (posts, comments, votes, etc) in a redistributable way. I'd like to a P2P-backed service to exist, where people can ow

Same, I wish we could contribute content (posts, comments, votes, etc) in a redistributable way. I'd like to a P2P-backed service to exist, where people can own all the data. I guess that abuse would be a challenge, but there's probably enough good ideas around bittorrent and cryptocurrency to make sharing and trust/voting possible. My dream is that people could have a ~raspberry at home helping host the internet in a sparse way. Would it be more inefficient than a centralized service? sure, but decentralization is inherently more expensive, yet better thanks to true shared ownership.

zrm 3y ago
Inefficiency was always a red herring. $ curl https://www.reddit.com https://www.reddit.com > /dev/null % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 970k 0 970k 0 0 840k 0 --:--:-- 0:00:01 --:--:-- 840k That's just the index, not images or anything pulled in by scripts. That page takes longer to download on a gigabit internet connection than the <5kB page it ought to be could be uploaded from some asymmetric 10Mbps up cable connection. The biggest problem is actually funding. The centralized site puts ads on it or tells VCs they could, and then has money to pay for developers or other things that increase the user base. It's the same reason Linux is used by programmers and not graphic designers. If there is anything deficient about it in the programmer's workflow they fix it for everybody. If there is anything deficient about it in the graphic designer's workflow, they don't know how to fix it so they get a Mac and run Adobe. Social media sites work more like the latter than the former until someone finds a way around that.
- dietr1ch 3y ago
  I'm not too concerned about efficiency either. Growing with slow and spotty rural internet taught me the hard way that data locality is key. Also, with enough data, having to get only what you care about is probably faster.

zrm 3y ago

Inefficiency was always a red herring. $ curl https://www.reddit.com https://www.reddit.com > /dev/null % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed 100 970k 0 970k 0 0 840k 0 --:--:-- 0:00:01 --:--:-- 840k That's just the index, not images or anything pulled in by scripts. That page takes longer to download on a gigabit internet connection than the <5kB page it ought to be could be uploaded from some asymmetric 10Mbps up cable connection. The biggest problem is actually funding. The centralized site puts ads on it or tells VCs they could, and then has money to pay for developers or other things that increase the user base. It's the same reason Linux is used by programmers and not graphic designers. If there is anything deficient about it in the programmer's workflow they fix it for everybody. If there is anything deficient about it in the graphic designer's workflow, they don't know how to fix it so they get a Mac and run Adobe. Social media sites work more like the latter than the former until someone finds a way around that.

dietr1ch 3y ago
I'm not too concerned about efficiency either. Growing with slow and spotty rural internet taught me the hard way that data locality is key. Also, with enough data, having to get only what you care about is probably faster.