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What do web3 and crypto moneys have anything to do with the discussion? Decentralized protocols have existed for a very long time. Email have existed since the

by jraph 2y ago

What do web3 and crypto moneys have anything to do with the discussion? Decentralized protocols have existed for a very long time. Email have existed since the 70s. Telephone is also arguably decentralized and have existed for even longer.

EGreg 2y ago
The technology has potential to be decentralized, but telephones were famously considered a "natural monopoly" and ended up centralized under Ma Bell. Government split Ma Bell into multiple smaller pieces, but they still operated as a cartel and kept prices high. They had centralized telephone switchboard operators etc. It is only when authors of decentralized file-sharing networks like Kazaa (who built them to get around yet another government-enforced centralized regime of Intellectual Property, RIAA, MPAA etc.) went clean did we get Skype, and other Voice over IP consumer products. And seemingly overnight, the prices dropped to zero and we got packed-switched networks over dumb hubs, that anyone can run. That's the key. We need to relegate these centralized platforms (X, Meta, etc.) into glorified hubs running nodes and earning some crypto, akin to IPFS nodes earning filecoin, or BitTorrent nodes earning BTT, etc. Everything centralized gets enshittified Clay Shirky gave a talk abot this in 2005: https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_institutions_vs_collaboration?subtitle=en https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_institutions_vs_collab... And Cory Doctorow recently: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04-teach-me-how-to-shruggie-kagi-caaa88c221f2 https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04...
- jraph 2y ago
  > and earning some crypto You are not answering my main concern. Again, you snick in crypto into the discussion. Why? We have decentralized stuff. Email, xmpp, matrix, the fediverse, all this works without this web3/crypto stuff. Those things are not perfect, including their decentralized aspect (sometimes to the point of doubting that decentralization really works well, although I personally think decentralization is a good thing). I didn't downvote you but I suspect this is exactly why you are being downvoted. Since you asked. Many of us just think cryptos and this web3 stuff is bullshit and gets mentioned totally off topic without any convincing link to the discussion every single time.
  - EGreg 2y ago
    Because crypto is literally how entities on a decentralized network get paid in an autonomous network. It's not via cash transfers. It's not via bank transfers. Or having accounts in some central bank. Look at FileCoin and IPFS, for instance. Once you automate the micropayments and proofs of spacetime, it becomes a cryptocurrency. And then the providers of services can sell it to the next consumers. Just because you hear the word "crypto" doesn't mean it's automatically off-topic, when it's literally the thing that is inevitably used by decentralized systems to do proper accounting and reward the providers for providing any services. Without it, you'll still be sitting -- as you are -- with no viable alternatives to Twitter and Facebook.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      > it's literally the thing that is inevitably used by decentralized systems to do proper accounting and reward the providers for providing any services. Or just like, advertisement. ActivityPub, Matrix, PeerTube, NextCloud and Urbit are all fully decentralized and let any instance host monetize themselves however they want. Decentralized services, even for-profit ones, are not synonymous with cryptocurrency. Stop spreading misinformation to promote an unrelated topic.
      - EGreg 2y ago
        Urbit uses NFTs as IDs, which can be transferred "Urbit IDs aren’t money, but they are scarce, so each one costs something. This means that when you meet a stranger on the Urbit network, they have some skin in the game and are less likely to be a bot or a spammer." https://urbit.org/overview https://urbit.org/overview Who pays for the hosting of ActivityPub and Matrix instances? What if one instance abuses other instances too much? How do you prevent it? What if some spammer abuses Nexcloud? Oh, look at that, Nextcloud and Sia announce "cloud storage in the blockchain": https://nextcloud.com/blog/introducing-cloud-storage-in-the-blockchain-with-sia-and-nextcloud/ https://nextcloud.com/blog/introducing-cloud-storage-in-the-... Now we come to your ActivityPub stuff, including PeerTube. The question is, who pays for storage? What are the economics of storage? I literally go into detail here: https://community.intercoin.app/t/who-pays-for-storage-nfts-and-other-digital-content-in-2022/2326 https://community.intercoin.app/t/who-pays-for-storage-nfts-... I met the founders of LBRY / Odysee and other tokens that are actually being used for actual streaming. LBRY is a genuine utility token being used for instance. You are totally ignoring the part that people need to get paid for storing stuff, and at the same time the payment needs to happen automatically. Any other examples?

by jraph 2y ago

EGreg 2y ago

The technology has potential to be decentralized, but telephones were famously considered a "natural monopoly" and ended up centralized under Ma Bell. Government split Ma Bell into multiple smaller pieces, but they still operated as a cartel and kept prices high. They had centralized telephone switchboard operators etc. It is only when authors of decentralized file-sharing networks like Kazaa (who built them to get around yet another government-enforced centralized regime of Intellectual Property, RIAA, MPAA etc.) went clean did we get Skype, and other Voice over IP consumer products. And seemingly overnight, the prices dropped to zero and we got packed-switched networks over dumb hubs, that anyone can run. That's the key. We need to relegate these centralized platforms (X, Meta, etc.) into glorified hubs running nodes and earning some crypto, akin to IPFS nodes earning filecoin, or BitTorrent nodes earning BTT, etc. Everything centralized gets enshittified Clay Shirky gave a talk abot this in 2005: https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_institutions_vs_collaboration?subtitle=en https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_institutions_vs_collab... And Cory Doctorow recently: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04-teach-me-how-to-shruggie-kagi-caaa88c221f2 https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-04-04...

jraph 2y ago
> and earning some crypto You are not answering my main concern. Again, you snick in crypto into the discussion. Why? We have decentralized stuff. Email, xmpp, matrix, the fediverse, all this works without this web3/crypto stuff. Those things are not perfect, including their decentralized aspect (sometimes to the point of doubting that decentralization really works well, although I personally think decentralization is a good thing). I didn't downvote you but I suspect this is exactly why you are being downvoted. Since you asked. Many of us just think cryptos and this web3 stuff is bullshit and gets mentioned totally off topic without any convincing link to the discussion every single time.
- EGreg 2y ago
  Because crypto is literally how entities on a decentralized network get paid in an autonomous network. It's not via cash transfers. It's not via bank transfers. Or having accounts in some central bank. Look at FileCoin and IPFS, for instance. Once you automate the micropayments and proofs of spacetime, it becomes a cryptocurrency. And then the providers of services can sell it to the next consumers. Just because you hear the word "crypto" doesn't mean it's automatically off-topic, when it's literally the thing that is inevitably used by decentralized systems to do proper accounting and reward the providers for providing any services. Without it, you'll still be sitting -- as you are -- with no viable alternatives to Twitter and Facebook.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    > it's literally the thing that is inevitably used by decentralized systems to do proper accounting and reward the providers for providing any services. Or just like, advertisement. ActivityPub, Matrix, PeerTube, NextCloud and Urbit are all fully decentralized and let any instance host monetize themselves however they want. Decentralized services, even for-profit ones, are not synonymous with cryptocurrency. Stop spreading misinformation to promote an unrelated topic.
    - EGreg 2y ago
      Urbit uses NFTs as IDs, which can be transferred "Urbit IDs aren’t money, but they are scarce, so each one costs something. This means that when you meet a stranger on the Urbit network, they have some skin in the game and are less likely to be a bot or a spammer." https://urbit.org/overview https://urbit.org/overview Who pays for the hosting of ActivityPub and Matrix instances? What if one instance abuses other instances too much? How do you prevent it? What if some spammer abuses Nexcloud? Oh, look at that, Nextcloud and Sia announce "cloud storage in the blockchain": https://nextcloud.com/blog/introducing-cloud-storage-in-the-blockchain-with-sia-and-nextcloud/ https://nextcloud.com/blog/introducing-cloud-storage-in-the-... Now we come to your ActivityPub stuff, including PeerTube. The question is, who pays for storage? What are the economics of storage? I literally go into detail here: https://community.intercoin.app/t/who-pays-for-storage-nfts-and-other-digital-content-in-2022/2326 https://community.intercoin.app/t/who-pays-for-storage-nfts-... I met the founders of LBRY / Odysee and other tokens that are actually being used for actual streaming. LBRY is a genuine utility token being used for instance. You are totally ignoring the part that people need to get paid for storing stuff, and at the same time the payment needs to happen automatically. Any other examples?