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The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It takes hard work to subvert this. Yet w

The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It takes hard work to subvert this. Yet we don't do it. A sort of digital rigor mortis has descended upon the land. A comatose capitulation, complete lack of vital signs, let alone the lust for life that characterized the early period of the Web when everything seemed possible. The "network effect" is really a psychological and economic mind game. Once a sufficient number of people were conditioned (tricked by novelty and lack of education and regulation) to consider it a "reality" it became a runaway self-financing monopoly. A collective digital hallucination that is actually against the self-interest of the vast majorities, based on rather dodgy foundations and atypical of how societies are generally organized. It was never a perfect world but it never flirted so closely with a surveillance dystopia. This state of affairs becomes very puzzling when it is now almost a point-and-click exercise to setup the equivalent of the early facebook or twitter or skype etc (#fediverse, #matrix, you name it). Either this is the darkest hour before dawn or it is the darkest hour, period.

iteria 3y ago
We can't do it until literally everyone is willing to maintain multiple platforms. There's always people who don't and you end up on a situation where either that person is Isolated or what usually happens, people bend to them because it's just easier. Facebook won the moment elders got there because grandma uses Facebook and it's just easier to interact with her there instead of trying to convince her to do something different. As long as these kind of anchors exist centralization is basically predestined
api 3y ago
I don’t really agree about the causes. The big problem is economic. It’s a business problem not a technology problem. The problem is that good software that ordinary people can easily use is extremely labor intensive to produce. Software is very expensive. This means you have to have an economic model and there has to be a toll booth somewhere or an indirect way of generating revenue like ads. Centralized services make those parts easy. Everything else can be built in a decentralized manner. Many times it’s even easier to build that way. But how do you build it if there’s no funding available and nobody pays for anything? It can’t all be volunteer. People need to be paid. There’s nowhere near enough volunteer open source labor available to build really polished usable systems for everyone. It’s similar to the dynamic in other areas of media. Media is usually a deflationary race to the bottom. The best media has no funding.
- nologic01 3y ago
  > nobody pays for anything? We pay for almost everything in tech. Part of the digital hallucination that oppresses us is to have this self-flagellating view. Nobody gets any free hardware of any kind. Nobody gets any free network infrastructure and bandwidth of any kind. Its all paid, by purchases, monthly subscriptions etc. With real, hard earned money by people from all walks of life and economic means. Not to mention that historically people happily paid for newspapers, TV licenses and they still do for streaming. The deceit of big tech is propagating the idea that after you have shelled for the all the above, you really don't have to pay for certain very specific pieces of software and services - oh just pay with your reduced privacy and agency (which you don't even know is important). What is happening is that the masses can't tell they are being ripped off (and the potential risks to individuals and society) and nobody in authority does warn them either. In such a situation it is indeed impossible to have a normal economic model to compete. Bad business models repelled good business models. But there is just the slightest glimmer of light at the end of this dark tunnel. While you are right, the volunteer open source enthusiasts can't substitute for the absence of healthy funding they achieved something very important: they showed that alternatives are possible, they don't require trillions, they just require a society with basic decency.
  - api 3y ago
    People don’t pay for software unless they have to, which means they only pay for software that restricts their freedom… because that is the software you have to pay for. This is what I mean. You can build high quality open freedom and privacy first software. Then you will probably go bankrupt. Lots of people will use it but nobody will pay for it. Mastodon is used by millions. I’ve heard the devs make way below market rates and the foundation behind it is cash starved. That’s just one example.
    - nologic01 3y ago
      > Mastodon is used by millions. I’ve heard the devs make way below market rates and the foundation behind it is cash starved. That’s just one example. Yes, the funding situation around mastodon is very transparent and many other interesting projects in this space are total labor of love. I will forever admire those people whether they manage to make the world better or not. Well, politicians could create a healthy market for software overnight by outlawing various targeted advertising practices. Once personal data gathering and use for advertising (and who knows what else - who ever reads and understands these manipulative "terms and conditions") is prohibited, any software supported by generic ad technology will be unsufferable. Ten years ago you could excuse politicians, regulators and the lot that is supposed to work on our behalf as not being informed. Today there is no excuse.
lotsofpulp 3y ago
>The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It takes hard work to subvert this. The network is currently download only for most households. We need iCloud and YouTube and other companies hosting our content because of ipv4/CGNAT and lack of upload bandwidth. Ideally, we would be able to host our own content on our own NAS at home and access it from anywhere, but the market or people who have an internet connection capable of that is not worth addressing.
deleted 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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skydhash 3y ago
> The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. I don't think we need to subvert the network. What we need to do is foster interest-specific community. As a child, I did not have access to the internet. I spent my days playing with friends and my communities were my family, the street I lived in, and my school. Now my most used mobile app is WhatsApp where I interact only with people I know (I pruned my contact book) and because SMS and calls are not cheap. They added something called Channels that I'm not enabling. The other platform I visit is Hacker news, for tech related discussions. I don't care about Facebook, Twitter, or Google. The majority of people that does use them do not understand what is HTML or a domain name (based on my entourage). I don't know if we can evade their grasps on our data (shadow profiling), but I know I'm not using them. And I try to evangelize people about them. But I don't have faith that the majority of people will abandon those social platforms. But I've done and now I'm purposely seeking more specific communities online.
barrysteve 3y ago
The 'network effect' of facebook started at prestigious universities. When the educated are not pulling in your direction... it becomes much more expensive to get traction. We already have experienced facebook, why would we re-experience facebook 1.0?? We need geniunely new concepts. We cannot share geniunely new concepts because the internet has locked itself down and any leaks of new concepts are stolen or blocked (at some point). Big tech feels entitled to own the internet, and it has got exactly what it wants. The daytime TV of networks. First link clicked sells some product, high quality evidence and knowledge hard to find and moral culpability hidden behind complex laws. It appears dark, because the light is trapped. Work on your new-ness in private, it is the only way.

iteria 3y ago

We can't do it until literally everyone is willing to maintain multiple platforms. There's always people who don't and you end up on a situation where either that person is Isolated or what usually happens, people bend to them because it's just easier. Facebook won the moment elders got there because grandma uses Facebook and it's just easier to interact with her there instead of trying to convince her to do something different. As long as these kind of anchors exist centralization is basically predestined

api 3y ago

I don’t really agree about the causes. The big problem is economic. It’s a business problem not a technology problem. The problem is that good software that ordinary people can easily use is extremely labor intensive to produce. Software is very expensive. This means you have to have an economic model and there has to be a toll booth somewhere or an indirect way of generating revenue like ads. Centralized services make those parts easy. Everything else can be built in a decentralized manner. Many times it’s even easier to build that way. But how do you build it if there’s no funding available and nobody pays for anything? It can’t all be volunteer. People need to be paid. There’s nowhere near enough volunteer open source labor available to build really polished usable systems for everyone. It’s similar to the dynamic in other areas of media. Media is usually a deflationary race to the bottom. The best media has no funding.

nologic01 3y ago
> nobody pays for anything? We pay for almost everything in tech. Part of the digital hallucination that oppresses us is to have this self-flagellating view. Nobody gets any free hardware of any kind. Nobody gets any free network infrastructure and bandwidth of any kind. Its all paid, by purchases, monthly subscriptions etc. With real, hard earned money by people from all walks of life and economic means. Not to mention that historically people happily paid for newspapers, TV licenses and they still do for streaming. The deceit of big tech is propagating the idea that after you have shelled for the all the above, you really don't have to pay for certain very specific pieces of software and services - oh just pay with your reduced privacy and agency (which you don't even know is important). What is happening is that the masses can't tell they are being ripped off (and the potential risks to individuals and society) and nobody in authority does warn them either. In such a situation it is indeed impossible to have a normal economic model to compete. Bad business models repelled good business models. But there is just the slightest glimmer of light at the end of this dark tunnel. While you are right, the volunteer open source enthusiasts can't substitute for the absence of healthy funding they achieved something very important: they showed that alternatives are possible, they don't require trillions, they just require a society with basic decency.
- api 3y ago
  People don’t pay for software unless they have to, which means they only pay for software that restricts their freedom… because that is the software you have to pay for. This is what I mean. You can build high quality open freedom and privacy first software. Then you will probably go bankrupt. Lots of people will use it but nobody will pay for it. Mastodon is used by millions. I’ve heard the devs make way below market rates and the foundation behind it is cash starved. That’s just one example.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    > Mastodon is used by millions. I’ve heard the devs make way below market rates and the foundation behind it is cash starved. That’s just one example. Yes, the funding situation around mastodon is very transparent and many other interesting projects in this space are total labor of love. I will forever admire those people whether they manage to make the world better or not. Well, politicians could create a healthy market for software overnight by outlawing various targeted advertising practices. Once personal data gathering and use for advertising (and who knows what else - who ever reads and understands these manipulative "terms and conditions") is prohibited, any software supported by generic ad technology will be unsufferable. Ten years ago you could excuse politicians, regulators and the lot that is supposed to work on our behalf as not being informed. Today there is no excuse.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

>The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. It is intrinsically decentralized by design. It takes hard work to subvert this. The network is currently download only for most households. We need iCloud and YouTube and other companies hosting our content because of ipv4/CGNAT and lack of upload bandwidth. Ideally, we would be able to host our own content on our own NAS at home and access it from anywhere, but the market or people who have an internet connection capable of that is not worth addressing.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

skydhash 3y ago

> The sad part is that nobody really prevents us from seizing the network. I don't think we need to subvert the network. What we need to do is foster interest-specific community. As a child, I did not have access to the internet. I spent my days playing with friends and my communities were my family, the street I lived in, and my school. Now my most used mobile app is WhatsApp where I interact only with people I know (I pruned my contact book) and because SMS and calls are not cheap. They added something called Channels that I'm not enabling. The other platform I visit is Hacker news, for tech related discussions. I don't care about Facebook, Twitter, or Google. The majority of people that does use them do not understand what is HTML or a domain name (based on my entourage). I don't know if we can evade their grasps on our data (shadow profiling), but I know I'm not using them. And I try to evangelize people about them. But I don't have faith that the majority of people will abandon those social platforms. But I've done and now I'm purposely seeking more specific communities online.

barrysteve 3y ago

The 'network effect' of facebook started at prestigious universities. When the educated are not pulling in your direction... it becomes much more expensive to get traction. We already have experienced facebook, why would we re-experience facebook 1.0?? We need geniunely new concepts. We cannot share geniunely new concepts because the internet has locked itself down and any leaks of new concepts are stolen or blocked (at some point). Big tech feels entitled to own the internet, and it has got exactly what it wants. The daytime TV of networks. First link clicked sells some product, high quality evidence and knowledge hard to find and moral culpability hidden behind complex laws. It appears dark, because the light is trapped. Work on your new-ness in private, it is the only way.