12 ms·

I really hope the current centralization of the web is an evolutionary step. At first, the web was decentralized with newsgroups as open as NNTP provided. Then,

I really hope the current centralization of the web is an evolutionary step. At first, the web was decentralized with newsgroups as open as NNTP provided. Then, the lack of controlling features killed the decentralized protocols and medium: namely the inability to control spam and the inability to have participants pay for the cost of the medium. Blogs suffered from the inability to provide a good reading platform, which is why the death of Google Reader was so mourned. GReader, not G+, was Google's best weapon against Facebook (with proper development, not stagnant as it was). It is easier to add features to centralized architectures, but it does not mean the death of distributed protocols. I do believe a distributed publishing platform will be born sometime in the future. It is unthinkable that Facebook will still be the top destination, say, 20 years from now.

pjc50 11y ago
Blogs suffered from the inability to provide a good reading platform I think you're going to have to explain what you mean by good here, given that you mention there was a good reading platform and it was killed in favour of the monetizable web by the chief web monetizer.
- sergiosgc 11y ago
  No, I don't think GReader was good. It had the potential to be great, but it was the bare minimum. It had, however, the necessary lead to leverage the distributed Web into something that could threaten Facebook. Instead they chose to start from scratch and do Facebook in shades of red.
Semaphor 11y ago
> Blogs suffered from the inability to provide a good reading platform, which is why the death of Google Reader was so mourned. It was mourned, but even then there were people saying it's a good thing. And they turned out to be right, we now have more and better RSS readers to choose from than ever before.
- summerdown2 11y ago
  Interesting, because my experience has been exactly the opposite. I used to read so many web articles via rss, but that's reduced month on month since the death of Google Reader. One of the main reasons is that I've found it hard to read on tablet, phone, laptop and desktop and know what I've read and what I haven't. I'd really like to get back into reading RSS, but found it really difficult to manage. What suggestion would you make for a good, free, cross-platform rss reader?
  - Semaphor 11y ago
    Sorry, don't really know about free. Back then I tried pretty much every solution there was, including the self hosted ones (which I assume are probably far better now then then), but stuck with NewsBlur.com which is not really usable for free (limited amount of feeds).
  - zufallsheld 11y ago
    I suggest TinyTinyRSS[0] (ttrss), a good and free rss-reader. It's open-source, so you can host it yourself (a short tutorial is on my blog[1]). Since it's a web-application, you can run it on any device that has a browser, ttrss even has an offical android client[2]. There's even a hoster that provides ttrss as a service [3]. [0] https://tt-rss.org https://tt-rss.org [1] https://www.zufallsheld.de/2013/11/03/tiny-tiny-rss-centos-nginx-mysql/ https://www.zufallsheld.de/2013/11/03/tiny-tiny-rss-centos-n... [2] https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss-android https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss-android [3] https://tinytinyrss-servers.com/ https://tinytinyrss-servers.com/
    - puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago
      I've been running it for years and heartily recommend it. Both the web and android clients are very robust. The killer feature for me is the ability to share arbitrary content to your own public feed provided by the ttrss instance. (https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/ShareAnything https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/ShareAnything) I'd recommend using Postgres as opposed to Mysql, as that is what author specifically recommends (mysql support has been a bit subpar)
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
Perhaps the centralization is a necessary function of technological progress. Once Web 2.0 was a thing, everybody had comment sections. Now the dial is being turned back, and comments sections are beginning to be seen as tacky. In some ways, the web is already decentralizing, or at least moving away from monolithic control by social networks. For younger people, Facebook is basically dead and snapchat does the job. I doubt we will see significant technological innovation in the next 20 years that matches the scale of interactivity the web brought for the first 20. Maybe VR will be that next step, but even that won't likely change the dynamics of casual web browsing in between work, for example. So in short, I think that since we've developed all the basics, the state of the web will start to resemble fashion, rather than technological progress.
- nly 11y ago
  > Once Web 2.0 was a thing, everybody had comment sections. Now the dial is being turned back, and comments sections are beginning to be seen as tacky. I suppose the 'Web 1.0' equivalent, if we persist in these ridiculous version numbers, would be Guestbooks.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    It depends on what the needs are. We have the infrastructure and libraries to do pretty much anything. Our limit is our imagination. Cheesy, I know, but it's true.
- dreamfactory2 11y ago
  Salmon protocol provides very powerful decentralised commenting - http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SWAT0 http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SWA...
wtbob 11y ago
> the inability to control spam Actually, I think that could have been fixed. If the originating site signed a message, and the each relaying site signed it, then one would be able to calculate a reputation score for sites. Spammy originating sites (or originating domains pretending to be relaying sites) would be easily identifiable, and thus blockable.
- the8472 11y ago
  That would require a central authority to verify signatures. Otherwise intermediate sites could just make up new identities once old ones became tarnished. And a central authority is not really all that decentralized, is it?
  - wtbob 11y ago
    > That would require a central authority to verify signatures. Nope. Each site would be its own verifying authority. All I care about as a site is that the sites which feed me are responsible for what they send me; all each of them cares about is the same. If any one site gets bad enough, I'll start to reject their articles.
    - the8472 11y ago
      doesn't work for things like email, especially for people who get lots of previously-unknown senders.
      - wtbob 11y ago
        > doesn't work for things like email Which is why I was writing about Usenet☺ Controlling spam in general is a much tougher problem, but in the directed cyclic graph which is Usenet, it could have been done.
- toyg 11y ago
  Time to dust off http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt "Here is why it won't work. (X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email (X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical (X) Blacklists suck (X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? Furthermore, this is what I think about you: (X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work."
roymurdock 11y ago
Centralization is a law of nature. It allows for more efficiency through economies of scale. It's not unthinkable that Facebook will be the top destination 20 years from now if they are (1) successful with internet.org and (2) first-to-market with a viable virtual reality product.
- amelius 11y ago
  > Centralization is a law of nature. It allows for more efficiency through economies of scale. However, as technology progresses, we might reach a point where "distributed" can be sufficiently efficient.
- lectrick 11y ago
  > if they are (1) successful with internet.org no self-respecting third-world intellectual is going to be satisfied by a catered whitelist of websites they can access. to me this seems like an attempt to repeat what we did with confusing "the web" with "the internet" by having third world people confuse "facebook" with "the web"
  - roymurdock 11y ago
    Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook. Galpaya, a researcher (and now CEO) with LIRNEasia, a think tank, called Rohan Samarajiva, her boss at the time, to tell him what she had discovered. “It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook,” he concluded. [1] It doesn't matter what intellectuals are satisfied with, the internet (like TV and Radio) will be driven by what the mass-market consumer wants. If they can get all they need from Facebook for free (running a business & talking to friends and family), then why pay more to develop a network that they don't want? [1] http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/ http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-ide...
    - dreamfactory2 11y ago
      This is even true with SE Asian web developers - if there isn't an active Facebook community, a technology can't get traction there
Sideloader 11y ago
Feedly does what GoogleReader used to do and it's based on the GoogleReader API. Unlike GoogleReader there is a subscription based premium membership available in addition to the basic ad supported service. I was an avid GR user and Feedly (basic) has served me very well after it was shuttered. (I am not affiliated in any way with Feedly. Have tried many RSS readers and Feedly IMO is the best of the bunch.)
- cxseven 11y ago
  One thing Google Reader did great was "sort by magic" where it somehow knew VERY well according to my individual tastes what article I'd be most interested in reading from my massive set of subscriptions. Feedly and other readers' auto-selected articles don't seem to have come close, but that may be a function of their reduced userbase and shrinking RSS activity.
  - sombremesa 11y ago
    In my opinion Feedly is hands down better than any other RSS reader I have ever used, including Google Reader. I don't read auto-selected articles, however, I subscribe to and curate feeds on my own. I'm afraid RSS readers aren't very popular, however, and Google was indeed in a better place to change that.
    - greggman 11y ago
      I would love to use Feedly but Feedly requires an extension to use who's only possible purpose is to spy on you. The extension provides zero features that could not be provided without it. Since it's required (as opposed to optional) the only logical explanation is its spying on you.
      - thomasmarcelis 11y ago
        What? I use feedly daily but don't have a feedly extension. You can just go to feedly.com
nota_bene 11y ago
> I really hope the current centralization of the web is an evolutionary step. In our Western economic system, the question boils down to: Can a company make more money based on the concept of centralization or decentralization? The answer seems obvious (to me).
- wolfgke 11y ago
  Skype was originally (before being bought by Microsoft) very decentralized (though the software was heavily obfuscated, so that "decentralized" did not mean "user has much control"). This saved the company the money to build an expensive infrastructure. So for me the answer is not obvious, whether there is more money to be made on the concept of centralization or decentralization. So I think the problem is rather in terms of "amount of user control" instead of centralization or decentralization.
xanderjanz 11y ago
Signed, Sillicon Valley's Collective Naivite
nbadg 11y ago
Agreed, and I think the critical inflection point will be the development of an open, decentralized hosting+sharing+identity protocol. Why all three? Well, I can't imagine an open hosting protocol without the hosted information being private by default (otherwise the proverbial cat starts outside of the bag, and good luck getting it back in). That implies end-to-end encryption. To do that and still be able to communicate requires a key exchange system -- that's the sharing bit. And to know who you're sharing with requires an identity definition, which has to be stored somewhere. And now we've closed the loop. There are definitely people working on that problem (I know, because I'm one of them).
- wildster 11y ago
  Is there anything open source like this?
  - Kalium 11y ago
    Yes. There is. Several, in fact. It shouldn't surprise you that in practical terms, nobody outside of tech cares enough to use them.
    - nbadg 11y ago
      Can you give some examples? I'm not aware of any protocols that fit the storage+identity+sharing triad I mentioned above (except the one I'm working on).
      - dublinben 11y ago
        You can do all of that today on Freenet.
  - nbadg 11y ago
    That effectively implement storage+sharing+identity? Not that I'm aware of, which is why I'm working on one (https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse). Plenty of things try and tackle one or two of those but I've never seen anything address all three. I would really, really like to know if one exists so I can pick it apart and learn from it. A big part of the difficulty is that you truly can't be everything for everyone, but you really need to be something for anyone. If you approach it as a distributed social networking problem (which is most of what I've seen) then you're really missing the indescribably large forest for one specific tree. The blackbox I've focused on for this protocol is (arbitrary insecure physical bytestream in) -> [box] -> (arbitrary private, authenticated, integrity-verified bytestream out). We use networks to communicate between persons/services/things, not between IP addresses -- the right place to address the problem is between network and application.
iamcurious 11y ago
I really hope the current centralization of the web is an evolutionary step. The degree of centralization is directly correlated with its reach. It was decentralized when most people in it were tech savvy, it became centralized as more people got in that are not tech savvy. To make it decentralized again we could 1) expel all non tech savvy people 2) increase the level of tech savvyness 3) create a parallel web where mostl people are tech savvy. I don't see either 1 or 2 happening any time soon. (3) is happening with bitcoin and tor, but as soon as they get popular enough they get centralized again.
- nightpool 11y ago
  So you're saying its impossible to have decentralized software that non-tech-savvy people can use? That seems a little backwards from a cause and effect perspective. Making software centralized makes it easier for non-tech-savvy people to use, as there are incentives to people to make their websites more accessible (larger profits). Decentralized services aren't somehow fundamentally incompatible with usability—its just a challenge we haven't tackled yet.
  - iamcurious 11y ago
    So you're saying its impossible to have decentralized software that non-tech-savvy people can use? Decentralized services aren't somehow fundamentally incompatible with usability—its just a challenge we haven't tackled yet. I don't say it is impossible. Just a lot harder due, for example, to the CAP theorem and friends. But that isn't that important because... Making software centralized makes it easier for non-tech-savvy people to use, as there are incentives to people to make their websites more accessible (larger profits). Yes! It isn't a matter of usability but of incentives. By having more tech savvy people you change the incentives, there is less to win by centralization (because they can do it alone) and more to lose (for instance they can't fiddle with it any longer). Also it is less attractive to make a centralization because a larger percent of the users will work around the attempts to control them.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I think it's more like, non-tech-savvy people don't care about centralization. And decentralized things are harder to build. So, the natural tendency is to do the easier thing (build a centralized service) if-and-when the people you want to target will put up with it.

pjc50 11y ago

Blogs suffered from the inability to provide a good reading platform I think you're going to have to explain what you mean by good here, given that you mention there was a good reading platform and it was killed in favour of the monetizable web by the chief web monetizer.

sergiosgc 11y ago
No, I don't think GReader was good. It had the potential to be great, but it was the bare minimum. It had, however, the necessary lead to leverage the distributed Web into something that could threaten Facebook. Instead they chose to start from scratch and do Facebook in shades of red.

Semaphor 11y ago

> Blogs suffered from the inability to provide a good reading platform, which is why the death of Google Reader was so mourned. It was mourned, but even then there were people saying it's a good thing. And they turned out to be right, we now have more and better RSS readers to choose from than ever before.

summerdown2 11y ago
Interesting, because my experience has been exactly the opposite. I used to read so many web articles via rss, but that's reduced month on month since the death of Google Reader. One of the main reasons is that I've found it hard to read on tablet, phone, laptop and desktop and know what I've read and what I haven't. I'd really like to get back into reading RSS, but found it really difficult to manage. What suggestion would you make for a good, free, cross-platform rss reader?
- Semaphor 11y ago
  Sorry, don't really know about free. Back then I tried pretty much every solution there was, including the self hosted ones (which I assume are probably far better now then then), but stuck with NewsBlur.com which is not really usable for free (limited amount of feeds).
- zufallsheld 11y ago
  I suggest TinyTinyRSS[0] (ttrss), a good and free rss-reader. It's open-source, so you can host it yourself (a short tutorial is on my blog[1]). Since it's a web-application, you can run it on any device that has a browser, ttrss even has an offical android client[2]. There's even a hoster that provides ttrss as a service [3]. [0] https://tt-rss.org https://tt-rss.org [1] https://www.zufallsheld.de/2013/11/03/tiny-tiny-rss-centos-nginx-mysql/ https://www.zufallsheld.de/2013/11/03/tiny-tiny-rss-centos-n... [2] https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss-android https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss-android [3] https://tinytinyrss-servers.com/ https://tinytinyrss-servers.com/
  - puzzlingcaptcha 11y ago
    I've been running it for years and heartily recommend it. Both the web and android clients are very robust. The killer feature for me is the ability to share arbitrary content to your own public feed provided by the ttrss instance. (https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/ShareAnything https://tt-rss.org/gitlab/fox/tt-rss/wikis/ShareAnything) I'd recommend using Postgres as opposed to Mysql, as that is what author specifically recommends (mysql support has been a bit subpar)

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

Perhaps the centralization is a necessary function of technological progress. Once Web 2.0 was a thing, everybody had comment sections. Now the dial is being turned back, and comments sections are beginning to be seen as tacky. In some ways, the web is already decentralizing, or at least moving away from monolithic control by social networks. For younger people, Facebook is basically dead and snapchat does the job. I doubt we will see significant technological innovation in the next 20 years that matches the scale of interactivity the web brought for the first 20. Maybe VR will be that next step, but even that won't likely change the dynamics of casual web browsing in between work, for example. So in short, I think that since we've developed all the basics, the state of the web will start to resemble fashion, rather than technological progress.

nly 11y ago
> Once Web 2.0 was a thing, everybody had comment sections. Now the dial is being turned back, and comments sections are beginning to be seen as tacky. I suppose the 'Web 1.0' equivalent, if we persist in these ridiculous version numbers, would be Guestbooks.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  It depends on what the needs are. We have the infrastructure and libraries to do pretty much anything. Our limit is our imagination. Cheesy, I know, but it's true.
dreamfactory2 11y ago
Salmon protocol provides very powerful decentralised commenting - http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SWAT0 http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/wiki/SWA...

wtbob 11y ago

> the inability to control spam Actually, I think that could have been fixed. If the originating site signed a message, and the each relaying site signed it, then one would be able to calculate a reputation score for sites. Spammy originating sites (or originating domains pretending to be relaying sites) would be easily identifiable, and thus blockable.

the8472 11y ago
That would require a central authority to verify signatures. Otherwise intermediate sites could just make up new identities once old ones became tarnished. And a central authority is not really all that decentralized, is it?
- wtbob 11y ago
  > That would require a central authority to verify signatures. Nope. Each site would be its own verifying authority. All I care about as a site is that the sites which feed me are responsible for what they send me; all each of them cares about is the same. If any one site gets bad enough, I'll start to reject their articles.
  - the8472 11y ago
    doesn't work for things like email, especially for people who get lots of previously-unknown senders.
    - wtbob 11y ago
      > doesn't work for things like email Which is why I was writing about Usenet☺ Controlling spam in general is a much tougher problem, but in the directed cyclic graph which is Usenet, it could have been done.
toyg 11y ago
Time to dust off http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt "Here is why it won't work. (X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once (X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business Specifically, your plan fails to account for (X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email (X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves and the following philosophical objections may also apply: (X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical (X) Blacklists suck (X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually (X) Why should we have to trust you and your servers? Furthermore, this is what I think about you: (X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work."

roymurdock 11y ago

Centralization is a law of nature. It allows for more efficiency through economies of scale. It's not unthinkable that Facebook will be the top destination 20 years from now if they are (1) successful with internet.org and (2) first-to-market with a viable virtual reality product.

amelius 11y ago
> Centralization is a law of nature. It allows for more efficiency through economies of scale. However, as technology progresses, we might reach a point where "distributed" can be sufficiently efficient.
lectrick 11y ago
> if they are (1) successful with internet.org no self-respecting third-world intellectual is going to be satisfied by a catered whitelist of websites they can access. to me this seems like an attempt to repeat what we did with confusing "the web" with "the internet" by having third world people confuse "facebook" with "the web"
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook. Galpaya, a researcher (and now CEO) with LIRNEasia, a think tank, called Rohan Samarajiva, her boss at the time, to tell him what she had discovered. “It seemed that in their minds, the Internet did not exist; only Facebook,” he concluded. [1] It doesn't matter what intellectuals are satisfied with, the internet (like TV and Radio) will be driven by what the mass-market consumer wants. If they can get all they need from Facebook for free (running a business & talking to friends and family), then why pay more to develop a network that they don't want? [1] http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/ http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-ide...
  - dreamfactory2 11y ago
    This is even true with SE Asian web developers - if there isn't an active Facebook community, a technology can't get traction there

Sideloader 11y ago

Feedly does what GoogleReader used to do and it's based on the GoogleReader API. Unlike GoogleReader there is a subscription based premium membership available in addition to the basic ad supported service. I was an avid GR user and Feedly (basic) has served me very well after it was shuttered. (I am not affiliated in any way with Feedly. Have tried many RSS readers and Feedly IMO is the best of the bunch.)

cxseven 11y ago
One thing Google Reader did great was "sort by magic" where it somehow knew VERY well according to my individual tastes what article I'd be most interested in reading from my massive set of subscriptions. Feedly and other readers' auto-selected articles don't seem to have come close, but that may be a function of their reduced userbase and shrinking RSS activity.
- sombremesa 11y ago
  In my opinion Feedly is hands down better than any other RSS reader I have ever used, including Google Reader. I don't read auto-selected articles, however, I subscribe to and curate feeds on my own. I'm afraid RSS readers aren't very popular, however, and Google was indeed in a better place to change that.
  - greggman 11y ago
    I would love to use Feedly but Feedly requires an extension to use who's only possible purpose is to spy on you. The extension provides zero features that could not be provided without it. Since it's required (as opposed to optional) the only logical explanation is its spying on you.
    - thomasmarcelis 11y ago
      What? I use feedly daily but don't have a feedly extension. You can just go to feedly.com

nota_bene 11y ago

> I really hope the current centralization of the web is an evolutionary step. In our Western economic system, the question boils down to: Can a company make more money based on the concept of centralization or decentralization? The answer seems obvious (to me).

wolfgke 11y ago
Skype was originally (before being bought by Microsoft) very decentralized (though the software was heavily obfuscated, so that "decentralized" did not mean "user has much control"). This saved the company the money to build an expensive infrastructure. So for me the answer is not obvious, whether there is more money to be made on the concept of centralization or decentralization. So I think the problem is rather in terms of "amount of user control" instead of centralization or decentralization.

xanderjanz 11y ago

Signed, Sillicon Valley's Collective Naivite

nbadg 11y ago

Agreed, and I think the critical inflection point will be the development of an open, decentralized hosting+sharing+identity protocol. Why all three? Well, I can't imagine an open hosting protocol without the hosted information being private by default (otherwise the proverbial cat starts outside of the bag, and good luck getting it back in). That implies end-to-end encryption. To do that and still be able to communicate requires a key exchange system -- that's the sharing bit. And to know who you're sharing with requires an identity definition, which has to be stored somewhere. And now we've closed the loop. There are definitely people working on that problem (I know, because I'm one of them).

wildster 11y ago
Is there anything open source like this?
- Kalium 11y ago
  Yes. There is. Several, in fact. It shouldn't surprise you that in practical terms, nobody outside of tech cares enough to use them.
  - nbadg 11y ago
    Can you give some examples? I'm not aware of any protocols that fit the storage+identity+sharing triad I mentioned above (except the one I'm working on).
    - dublinben 11y ago
      You can do all of that today on Freenet.
- nbadg 11y ago
  That effectively implement storage+sharing+identity? Not that I'm aware of, which is why I'm working on one (https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse https://github.com/Muterra/doc-muse). Plenty of things try and tackle one or two of those but I've never seen anything address all three. I would really, really like to know if one exists so I can pick it apart and learn from it. A big part of the difficulty is that you truly can't be everything for everyone, but you really need to be something for anyone. If you approach it as a distributed social networking problem (which is most of what I've seen) then you're really missing the indescribably large forest for one specific tree. The blackbox I've focused on for this protocol is (arbitrary insecure physical bytestream in) -> [box] -> (arbitrary private, authenticated, integrity-verified bytestream out). We use networks to communicate between persons/services/things, not between IP addresses -- the right place to address the problem is between network and application.

iamcurious 11y ago

I really hope the current centralization of the web is an evolutionary step. The degree of centralization is directly correlated with its reach. It was decentralized when most people in it were tech savvy, it became centralized as more people got in that are not tech savvy. To make it decentralized again we could 1) expel all non tech savvy people 2) increase the level of tech savvyness 3) create a parallel web where mostl people are tech savvy. I don't see either 1 or 2 happening any time soon. (3) is happening with bitcoin and tor, but as soon as they get popular enough they get centralized again.

nightpool 11y ago
So you're saying its impossible to have decentralized software that non-tech-savvy people can use? That seems a little backwards from a cause and effect perspective. Making software centralized makes it easier for non-tech-savvy people to use, as there are incentives to people to make their websites more accessible (larger profits). Decentralized services aren't somehow fundamentally incompatible with usability—its just a challenge we haven't tackled yet.
- iamcurious 11y ago
  So you're saying its impossible to have decentralized software that non-tech-savvy people can use? Decentralized services aren't somehow fundamentally incompatible with usability—its just a challenge we haven't tackled yet. I don't say it is impossible. Just a lot harder due, for example, to the CAP theorem and friends. But that isn't that important because... Making software centralized makes it easier for non-tech-savvy people to use, as there are incentives to people to make their websites more accessible (larger profits). Yes! It isn't a matter of usability but of incentives. By having more tech savvy people you change the incentives, there is less to win by centralization (because they can do it alone) and more to lose (for instance they can't fiddle with it any longer). Also it is less attractive to make a centralization because a larger percent of the users will work around the attempts to control them.
- derefr 11y ago
  I think it's more like, non-tech-savvy people don't care about centralization. And decentralized things are harder to build. So, the natural tendency is to do the easier thing (build a centralized service) if-and-when the people you want to target will put up with it.