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Moxie is wrong, he likes to project his own ideas as wisdom and always factually correct. P2P networks have flourished. Bittorrent, bitcoin, Tor just to name a

Moxie is wrong, he likes to project his own ideas as wisdom and always factually correct. P2P networks have flourished. Bittorrent, bitcoin, Tor just to name a few successful ones

jcgl 1y ago
The size of the whole pie has grown, and, yes, so have P2P networks. However, centralized networks of various kinds have grown too. From application-level networks (e.g. networks messengers from Signal to Discord; payment networks from Visa to AliPay) to transport- and network-layer networks (e.g. cloud-oriented client-server topologies; Tailscale), you see growth in the centralized world too. While I don’t have hard data, I’d casually assert that that growth is comparatively far larger than the P2P growth. Also, if you’re referring to Moxie’s classic post about centralization vs. decentralization[0], I think you’re mischaracterizing it; it doesn’t claim that P2P is altogether inferior, wrong, or any such thing. I’d summarize his point as being that anchoring your application to a decentralized P2P protocol makes your application development less agile. In other words, there are engineering tradeoffs there, between centralization and decentralization. When he weighed the tradeoffs for making Signal, he came down on the side of a centralized architecture. [0] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/
- fsflover 1y ago
  > When he weighed the tradeoffs for making Signal, he came down on the side of a centralized architecture. And as a result, Signal has a single point of failure and hacker/governments attacks.
  - jcgl 1y ago
    Due to its (afaik) unrivaled privacy-preserving architecture, the Signal servers have systematically less info on you than, e.g. a Matrix server. The risks of an attack should therefore be much lower. Oversimplifying a little bit here, but I believe the most likely outcome of a Signal hack would be downtime, rather than a data leak. Contrast that with e.g. matrix.org (where the majority of Matrix users are).
    - fsflover 1y ago
      > Contrast that with e.g. matrix.org (where the majority of Matrix users are) This effectively confirms that federation is important, i.e., you shouldn't use the same server as everyone else, for your security. > Due to its (afaik) unrivaled privacy-preserving architecture https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39445976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39445976 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13842 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42788647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42788647
fsflover 1y ago
This. There's a good reply to Moxie's article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936929
- waldopat 1y ago
  Thanks! There's a lot to chew on here, but it's a very important discussion.

Moxie is wrong, he likes to project his own ideas as wisdom and always factually correct. P2P networks have flourished. Bittorrent, bitcoin, Tor just to name a few successful ones

jcgl 1y ago

The size of the whole pie has grown, and, yes, so have P2P networks. However, centralized networks of various kinds have grown too. From application-level networks (e.g. networks messengers from Signal to Discord; payment networks from Visa to AliPay) to transport- and network-layer networks (e.g. cloud-oriented client-server topologies; Tailscale), you see growth in the centralized world too. While I don’t have hard data, I’d casually assert that that growth is comparatively far larger than the P2P growth. Also, if you’re referring to Moxie’s classic post about centralization vs. decentralization[0], I think you’re mischaracterizing it; it doesn’t claim that P2P is altogether inferior, wrong, or any such thing. I’d summarize his point as being that anchoring your application to a decentralized P2P protocol makes your application development less agile. In other words, there are engineering tradeoffs there, between centralization and decentralization. When he weighed the tradeoffs for making Signal, he came down on the side of a centralized architecture. [0] https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

fsflover 1y ago
> When he weighed the tradeoffs for making Signal, he came down on the side of a centralized architecture. And as a result, Signal has a single point of failure and hacker/governments attacks.
- jcgl 1y ago
  Due to its (afaik) unrivaled privacy-preserving architecture, the Signal servers have systematically less info on you than, e.g. a Matrix server. The risks of an attack should therefore be much lower. Oversimplifying a little bit here, but I believe the most likely outcome of a Signal hack would be downtime, rather than a data leak. Contrast that with e.g. matrix.org (where the majority of Matrix users are).
  - fsflover 1y ago
    > Contrast that with e.g. matrix.org (where the majority of Matrix users are) This effectively confirms that federation is important, i.e., you shouldn't use the same server as everyone else, for your security. > Due to its (afaik) unrivaled privacy-preserving architecture https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29888228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39445976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39445976 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13842 https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/13842 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42788647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42788647

fsflover 1y ago

This. There's a good reply to Moxie's article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936929 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21936929

waldopat 1y ago
Thanks! There's a lot to chew on here, but it's a very important discussion.