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> Tech is inherently monopolistic due to network effects and infinite scaling. The so called "network effect" is entirely artificial. When the FAANG-level com

by znpy 1y ago

> Tech is inherently monopolistic due to network effects and infinite scaling. The so called "network effect" is entirely artificial. When the FAANG-level companies did not exist yet, services were designed to be interoperable, and those system stood the test of time. Trivial example: e-mail/SMTP and BGP.

seydor 1y ago
Gmail and few other email providers have largely taken over. If you are not on good terms with them , email does not get delivered. Hence why every professional uses a cloud mailers. And BGP ... the reason why everyone uses cloudflare. In an ideal world we d all be decentralized but the world is not ideal. The world has gravitated towards centralization in all the networking levels
- imiric 1y ago
  > Gmail and few other email providers have largely taken over. That's not true. There are _many_ other, not few, email providers to choose from besides Gmail. > If you are not on good terms with them , email does not get delivered. It's not like all email goes through Gmail... If for some reason your mail server is flagged by Gmail's systems, then it only won't reach Gmail users. > Hence why every professional uses a cloud mailers. That's not true either. Many people self-host their email servers, and don't have any issues. Protocols like DKIM, DMARC, and SPF ensure the integrity of the sender, and all major providers obey them. These days with projects like Mox and Mail-in-a-Box it's also trivially easy to run your own server. So services built on decentralized protocols remain decentralized precisely because decentralization was a key design choice. This idea that the world gravitates towards centralization is false.
  - lenzm 1y ago
    > If for some reason your mail server is flagged by Gmail's systems, then it only won't reach Gmail users. This is a deal breaker for most people and organizations. Not being able to send email to the largest email provider is orders of magnitude more important than upholding some values about decentralization and independence.
    - imiric 1y ago
      Sure, but that's a problem with that provider, not with the service or protocol. If you're not allowed to shop at Walmart, that might be an inconvenience, but it doesn't stop you from shopping anywhere else. That is the point of decentralized protocols. They prevent a single entity from creating a monopoly over the entire market. It's not just a philosophical argument about independence. Besides, even Gmail obeys standard email features like DKIM, DMARC and SPF. As long as your server is not on the same network as known spammers, and doesn't have the usual spam signals, there is little chance that your emails will be blocked.
      - lesfts 1y ago
        But if Walmart has a monopoly over certain goods, it is more than an inconvenience to be banned from Walmart. If your email server cannot deliver mail to 25% of all active email addresses, that's more than an inconvenience.
        imiric 1y ago
        We can quibble about semantics, but those examples are not caused by centralization. Yes, any company can take advantage of their position to influence the market, and in most cases this is illegal. If a manufacturer only offers their products in Walmart, and some users can't access Walmart, then that's a problem specific to that provider and manufacturer. And the same applies for Gmail. *This is not because decentralized protocols "trend" towards centralization.* It is because there will always be popular providers that people gravitate towards for whatever reason. But again, this doesn't prevent anyone from using email without depending on Google _at all_. The difference from that situation and issues caused by actual centralization is night and day. I'll stop replying to this kind of rebuttal, since it seems people struggle to understand the difference.
      - ethbr1 1y ago
        > That is the point of decentralized protocols. They prevent a single entity from creating a monopoly over the entire market. Eh, I would phrase it differently -- decentralized protocols ensure that new competition can stand up services. There's nothing about them that inherently prevents monopolies from forming, as this thread discusses re:Gmail. Usually there are enough value adds around the decentralized protocol that a smart first mover can establish a de facto monopoly.
mindslight 1y ago
> The so called "network effect" is entirely artificial. Your framing is wrong - network effects exist. Before the surveillance industry took over, the network effects accrued to protocols. Hence the popularity of SMTP (et al). Competitive regulation, on either side of the pond, wouldn't focused on blindly "breaking up" tech companies. Rather it starts with declaring that hosted services and client software are separate products/markets, and that tying the two types of products together is anti-competitive. Thus any hosted server functionality that a proprietary webapp or mobileapp front end uses, must be through a openly published API for other competing apps to also access. Users can then choose competing apps, and services have an incentive to make their APIs match existing apps (to facilitate easy switching to them). And with that same API, competing hosted services can access content published on the original hosted service - federation naturally falls out. In other words, preventing companies from creating friction so that network effects accrue to themselves will make the network effects accrue to protocols/interfaces again.

by znpy 1y ago

seydor 1y ago

Gmail and few other email providers have largely taken over. If you are not on good terms with them , email does not get delivered. Hence why every professional uses a cloud mailers. And BGP ... the reason why everyone uses cloudflare. In an ideal world we d all be decentralized but the world is not ideal. The world has gravitated towards centralization in all the networking levels

imiric 1y ago
> Gmail and few other email providers have largely taken over. That's not true. There are _many_ other, not few, email providers to choose from besides Gmail. > If you are not on good terms with them , email does not get delivered. It's not like all email goes through Gmail... If for some reason your mail server is flagged by Gmail's systems, then it only won't reach Gmail users. > Hence why every professional uses a cloud mailers. That's not true either. Many people self-host their email servers, and don't have any issues. Protocols like DKIM, DMARC, and SPF ensure the integrity of the sender, and all major providers obey them. These days with projects like Mox and Mail-in-a-Box it's also trivially easy to run your own server. So services built on decentralized protocols remain decentralized precisely because decentralization was a key design choice. This idea that the world gravitates towards centralization is false.
- lenzm 1y ago
  > If for some reason your mail server is flagged by Gmail's systems, then it only won't reach Gmail users. This is a deal breaker for most people and organizations. Not being able to send email to the largest email provider is orders of magnitude more important than upholding some values about decentralization and independence.
  - imiric 1y ago
    Sure, but that's a problem with that provider, not with the service or protocol. If you're not allowed to shop at Walmart, that might be an inconvenience, but it doesn't stop you from shopping anywhere else. That is the point of decentralized protocols. They prevent a single entity from creating a monopoly over the entire market. It's not just a philosophical argument about independence. Besides, even Gmail obeys standard email features like DKIM, DMARC and SPF. As long as your server is not on the same network as known spammers, and doesn't have the usual spam signals, there is little chance that your emails will be blocked.
    - lesfts 1y ago
      But if Walmart has a monopoly over certain goods, it is more than an inconvenience to be banned from Walmart. If your email server cannot deliver mail to 25% of all active email addresses, that's more than an inconvenience.
      - imiric 1y ago
        We can quibble about semantics, but those examples are not caused by centralization. Yes, any company can take advantage of their position to influence the market, and in most cases this is illegal. If a manufacturer only offers their products in Walmart, and some users can't access Walmart, then that's a problem specific to that provider and manufacturer. And the same applies for Gmail. *This is not because decentralized protocols "trend" towards centralization.* It is because there will always be popular providers that people gravitate towards for whatever reason. But again, this doesn't prevent anyone from using email without depending on Google _at all_. The difference from that situation and issues caused by actual centralization is night and day. I'll stop replying to this kind of rebuttal, since it seems people struggle to understand the difference.
    - ethbr1 1y ago
      > That is the point of decentralized protocols. They prevent a single entity from creating a monopoly over the entire market. Eh, I would phrase it differently -- decentralized protocols ensure that new competition can stand up services. There's nothing about them that inherently prevents monopolies from forming, as this thread discusses re:Gmail. Usually there are enough value adds around the decentralized protocol that a smart first mover can establish a de facto monopoly.

mindslight 1y ago

> The so called "network effect" is entirely artificial. Your framing is wrong - network effects exist. Before the surveillance industry took over, the network effects accrued to protocols. Hence the popularity of SMTP (et al). Competitive regulation, on either side of the pond, wouldn't focused on blindly "breaking up" tech companies. Rather it starts with declaring that hosted services and client software are separate products/markets, and that tying the two types of products together is anti-competitive. Thus any hosted server functionality that a proprietary webapp or mobileapp front end uses, must be through a openly published API for other competing apps to also access. Users can then choose competing apps, and services have an incentive to make their APIs match existing apps (to facilitate easy switching to them). And with that same API, competing hosted services can access content published on the original hosted service - federation naturally falls out. In other words, preventing companies from creating friction so that network effects accrue to themselves will make the network effects accrue to protocols/interfaces again.