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I think the wider death of P2P technology is really frustrating. Self-hosting is close to dying. Shoutcast style radio streaming is dying/dead. Torrenting as

I think the wider death of P2P technology is really frustrating. Self-hosting is close to dying. Shoutcast style radio streaming is dying/dead. Torrenting as mentioned is being suppressed. Even an excellent use of P2P software, Skype, was forced to switch to non P2P technologies because of legal concerns. Email is dying in favor of centrally owned IM services. P2P IM services are being replaced by centrally owned ones. P2P chat rooms like IRC are being replaced by centrally owned proprietary ones like Discord. If people contributed a fraction of the money towards maintaining and building out these P2P options that they spend for the proprietary commercial options replacing them, they’d still be extremely viable. But this is the tragedy of the commons the internet suffers from. Extremely valuable public goods are destroyed by billions of dollars of venture capital because those extremely valuable public goods have no mechanism to capture even the tiniest portion of the value they create to protect themselves from the onslaught of VC money which wants to privatize the value created by these public goods.

emporas 3y ago
Indeed P2P technologies seem to be fading out of existence. But i expect a comeback, not a small comeback, or a medium one, an earth shattering comeback. The key problem P2P technologies are going to solve, is monetizable self publishing. Self publishing is really the definition of P2P, and removing the middle-man is the name of the game. Bitcoin (not BTC) was invented exactly for the purpose of monetizing information, as the first sentence of the white paper defines it: "P2P cash for the internet." The ideal scenario of exchanging money is the real world, in which we exchange money directly with one another with 0 (zero) middlemen. The question which arises is, "What is the minimum number, of middle-men necessary for an internet transaction?" Could there be zero middle-men like in real life? The answer is no, zero middle-men are impossible, because someone has to keep the ledger data, and he requires a piece of the money transferred. With 1 (one) middle-man it is perfectly possible. The simplest such example are CBDC's issued by governments, but it could be a person, a P2P network or a company. One use-case to illustrate the incentives is if Guyneth Palltrow visits the Oscars and she desires to publish a hundred photos to her fans. These photos are high-res of 10 MB each, so she wants to publish 1 GB of files. The most obvious place to share the photos is to post on Insta. She gets monetized by Instagram for all the traffic she attracts, but there are too many middle-men involved in her getting monetized. First of all Instagram is a middle-man, banks, and in case of international transfers governments as well. And each one of them gets a cut of the profits. So Guyneth decides to publish her photos on torrents and getting monetized via Bitcoin. She effectively cuts out all middle-men, except one. But one problem remains: "How do we know who she is in the swarm of the peers, download the photos from her bandwidth and monetize her, instead monetizing random peers? We are her fans, amirite?" That's where digital identities using ECSDA and social graphs kept immutable on a blockchain come into play. Hierarchies of identities for each person, merged into unions of pseudonymous accounts will enable information to flow where it needs to be. Money will flow where it needs to be as well.
- rakoo 3y ago
  I believe it's the opposite. Money is what killed P2P. Why do people keep seeding a 20 years old torrent ? Why do people still run tor relays and escape nodes ? Why do people keep editing wikipedia ? It's absolutely not for the money, it's because they feel it is useful for humanity, and it indeed is. Money, or rather the greed that fuels willing to be financially rewarded, is the reason people stopped P2P and embraced individualism and centralized platforms. A central platform is comfy, it's cozy, it's easy, and it treats me right... at least in the beginning, but then it's too late. The value is in the money that can be extracted from the other. P2P is complicated, it's hard to understand, but everyone is at the same level, I can talk to people if something's wrong and anyone can improve the situation. The value is in the service provided to the community. Cryptocurrencies are the peak of individualism, they allow the commodification of not just the individual, but of interactions, of knowledge, of thoughts, of absolutely everything. It's the market everywhere, and now you need to have your wallet handy to write a message because you're going to pay for it. It's the illusion of equality and "all you need is a little bit of willpower" that the bourgeoisie inherently believes in but has never been true under a capitalist system, and capitalism actively fights against equality. The exchange of financial value is how inequalities are created; we must abandon the exchange of value and focus on growing usage value instead, the only system that ensures everyone is valued and keeps a little bit of control and power. P2P is digital socialism. Centralization is digital capitalism. Let's not make the mistake a second time, let's put cryptocurrencies where they belong: in the trash
  - emporas 3y ago
    When some people are seeding a torrent for 20 years, with no benefit or profit to extract, there is a good deal of idealism involved. That's admirable. I am not trying to downplay their effort. But money gives an answer to some problems, and in the absence of it, an efficient answer is not possible. Money gives the answer to the following problem: "Of all the producers of commodities, who is going to extend production?" Imagine that the whole of Earth, has 3 farmlands in total. In one farmland avocados are produced. In the second farmland olives are produced. Two very similar foods. The third farmland is just uncultivated field. So both farmers, of avocados and olives want to extend production and buy the uncultivated land. Which one will buy the uncultivated land? Let's suppose that avocados are more expensive than olives, and all 3 farmlands are of equal hectares. The producer of avocados, has bigger profits, so he is able to outbid the producer of olives. As soon as the farmer of avocados extends his production to the newly acquired land, he floods the market with more avocados, effectively making the avocados cheaper. The same exact formulation can be applied to torrent seeders. Which one of the seeders we want to buy new computers and better internet connection? The seeders of information who are the fastest and more reliable, we want to extend their production and sharing of information. In the information economy not all information has the same price. Information is the product. The farmland here is computers and optical fibres. So, money is an automation. Automation as in the "increase of production".
rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago
The crypto wave initially got me excited that P2P technology might catch on again, but nobody really ended up caring about the decentration part of it. We're overdue for a resurgence of punk rock style DIY tech culture IMO. The distrust and distain for the big technology companies is already there among young people.
- pas 3y ago
  there are many projects trying (tried) to take decentralization seriously, but ... drumroll it's fucking hard, and then they usually end up with some unusable piece of shit, due to the horribly misaligned incentives, easy money running out (or easy money pivoting to some even more insane project, cue network state)
- gs17 3y ago
  There's distrust but greater apathy. I have multiple friends who identify as leftists and could tell me how big corporations are bad all day long. We talk on Facebook Messenger because it's too much effort for them to move to something else. It's really bizarre, honestly, I've had multiple conversations of "you're the only person I talk to on Facebook" but zero interest in moving to something except Discord.
Axsuul 3y ago
Self hosting is not close to dying – it’s thriving. More and more startups are choosing to offer self-hosted options.

emporas 3y ago

Indeed P2P technologies seem to be fading out of existence. But i expect a comeback, not a small comeback, or a medium one, an earth shattering comeback. The key problem P2P technologies are going to solve, is monetizable self publishing. Self publishing is really the definition of P2P, and removing the middle-man is the name of the game. Bitcoin (not BTC) was invented exactly for the purpose of monetizing information, as the first sentence of the white paper defines it: "P2P cash for the internet." The ideal scenario of exchanging money is the real world, in which we exchange money directly with one another with 0 (zero) middlemen. The question which arises is, "What is the minimum number, of middle-men necessary for an internet transaction?" Could there be zero middle-men like in real life? The answer is no, zero middle-men are impossible, because someone has to keep the ledger data, and he requires a piece of the money transferred. With 1 (one) middle-man it is perfectly possible. The simplest such example are CBDC's issued by governments, but it could be a person, a P2P network or a company. One use-case to illustrate the incentives is if Guyneth Palltrow visits the Oscars and she desires to publish a hundred photos to her fans. These photos are high-res of 10 MB each, so she wants to publish 1 GB of files. The most obvious place to share the photos is to post on Insta. She gets monetized by Instagram for all the traffic she attracts, but there are too many middle-men involved in her getting monetized. First of all Instagram is a middle-man, banks, and in case of international transfers governments as well. And each one of them gets a cut of the profits. So Guyneth decides to publish her photos on torrents and getting monetized via Bitcoin. She effectively cuts out all middle-men, except one. But one problem remains: "How do we know who she is in the swarm of the peers, download the photos from her bandwidth and monetize her, instead monetizing random peers? We are her fans, amirite?" That's where digital identities using ECSDA and social graphs kept immutable on a blockchain come into play. Hierarchies of identities for each person, merged into unions of pseudonymous accounts will enable information to flow where it needs to be. Money will flow where it needs to be as well.

rakoo 3y ago
I believe it's the opposite. Money is what killed P2P. Why do people keep seeding a 20 years old torrent ? Why do people still run tor relays and escape nodes ? Why do people keep editing wikipedia ? It's absolutely not for the money, it's because they feel it is useful for humanity, and it indeed is. Money, or rather the greed that fuels willing to be financially rewarded, is the reason people stopped P2P and embraced individualism and centralized platforms. A central platform is comfy, it's cozy, it's easy, and it treats me right... at least in the beginning, but then it's too late. The value is in the money that can be extracted from the other. P2P is complicated, it's hard to understand, but everyone is at the same level, I can talk to people if something's wrong and anyone can improve the situation. The value is in the service provided to the community. Cryptocurrencies are the peak of individualism, they allow the commodification of not just the individual, but of interactions, of knowledge, of thoughts, of absolutely everything. It's the market everywhere, and now you need to have your wallet handy to write a message because you're going to pay for it. It's the illusion of equality and "all you need is a little bit of willpower" that the bourgeoisie inherently believes in but has never been true under a capitalist system, and capitalism actively fights against equality. The exchange of financial value is how inequalities are created; we must abandon the exchange of value and focus on growing usage value instead, the only system that ensures everyone is valued and keeps a little bit of control and power. P2P is digital socialism. Centralization is digital capitalism. Let's not make the mistake a second time, let's put cryptocurrencies where they belong: in the trash
- emporas 3y ago
  When some people are seeding a torrent for 20 years, with no benefit or profit to extract, there is a good deal of idealism involved. That's admirable. I am not trying to downplay their effort. But money gives an answer to some problems, and in the absence of it, an efficient answer is not possible. Money gives the answer to the following problem: "Of all the producers of commodities, who is going to extend production?" Imagine that the whole of Earth, has 3 farmlands in total. In one farmland avocados are produced. In the second farmland olives are produced. Two very similar foods. The third farmland is just uncultivated field. So both farmers, of avocados and olives want to extend production and buy the uncultivated land. Which one will buy the uncultivated land? Let's suppose that avocados are more expensive than olives, and all 3 farmlands are of equal hectares. The producer of avocados, has bigger profits, so he is able to outbid the producer of olives. As soon as the farmer of avocados extends his production to the newly acquired land, he floods the market with more avocados, effectively making the avocados cheaper. The same exact formulation can be applied to torrent seeders. Which one of the seeders we want to buy new computers and better internet connection? The seeders of information who are the fastest and more reliable, we want to extend their production and sharing of information. In the information economy not all information has the same price. Information is the product. The farmland here is computers and optical fibres. So, money is an automation. Automation as in the "increase of production".

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 3y ago

The crypto wave initially got me excited that P2P technology might catch on again, but nobody really ended up caring about the decentration part of it. We're overdue for a resurgence of punk rock style DIY tech culture IMO. The distrust and distain for the big technology companies is already there among young people.

pas 3y ago
there are many projects trying (tried) to take decentralization seriously, but ... drumroll it's fucking hard, and then they usually end up with some unusable piece of shit, due to the horribly misaligned incentives, easy money running out (or easy money pivoting to some even more insane project, cue network state)
gs17 3y ago
There's distrust but greater apathy. I have multiple friends who identify as leftists and could tell me how big corporations are bad all day long. We talk on Facebook Messenger because it's too much effort for them to move to something else. It's really bizarre, honestly, I've had multiple conversations of "you're the only person I talk to on Facebook" but zero interest in moving to something except Discord.

Axsuul 3y ago

Self hosting is not close to dying – it’s thriving. More and more startups are choosing to offer self-hosted options.