The hardest part of such a thing is getting adoption. Commercial players in the space have incentives to push their own offerings very hard. Technologically, there have been a number of fully distributed and decentralized systems. Financially, I guess nobody has really had enough incentive to popularize one.
Right. Probably the only way newer generations who've grown up in this context will come to embrace an alternative is if it at least looks like the centralized apps (on the centralized platforms) they're used to.
So you have to create a system that's decentralized and yet has the interface of a centralized application and which is distributed on centralized, mostly monopolized platforms.
So that's certainly an undertaking... but not necessarily impossible.
Of course the HN crowd is willing and able to grasp the long-term consequences of super-centralization. But we also recognize that for the vast majority of the population, some of the benefits that a centralized solution provides - such as UX, discoverability and 'it just works' - are essential, and so far none of the well-meaning open alternatives can compete on those parameters, no matter how much I cheer for their cause. For the vast majority of people, a platform plagued by relatively vague issues like censorship and privacy is still better than a platform that is too cumbersome for me to understand or get started with (and let's be honest, that I've probably never even heard about) - it's simply a non-starter.
I am sure you are somewhat correct that people don't know that they want this. However, there is more to it than that. This is actually a very hard problem to solve. How exactly do you propose we create a decentralized and extensible platform that can be improved without leading to competition. This seems like a pipe dream.
A lot of people complaining that this wouldn't be able to hold the load of the original thing like that. I'd argue that all platforms attempting to be all-encompassing is a big problem right now. Maybe a single instance of a platform should really just accept as much load as this could handle in this form. They could federate with eachother to replicate the massive connected structure.
It's new, so I don't think there are many out there yet. I do hope that this changes the landscape of the ecosystem for 'decentralization.' It's not supposed to be about tokens or organizational marketing hype. First, it's about free speech and freedom of information. "De-platforming" is now extinct. Only then, can you even begin to discuss anything else.
I'm very thankful to WebTorrent, DMT, Handshake and Electron for making things possible.
The reason distributed/decentralized things fail isn't because of the BS reasons this article gives. In my opinion it is about
- Usability: open source UI and UX sucks for the most part... build an amazing UI and user experience and users will come.
- Do NOT expect people to download and setup software and run nodes... Can you build it in the universal piece of software that everybody has today.. AKA browser ? I think whoever nails these challenges will win.
- I think somebody (maybe me) should build such a 'universal browser' that allows all of these decentralized things to happen. I was thinking Brave would be that browser.. but I'm not sure..
No it is not and it never will be. There is no business model for it. The business models are in centralization and those central points have the money to make an unbeatable user experience. Decentralized solutions can not compete and will thus never gain traction.
The downside of yet another anything is that unless it is an order of magnitude better than what already exists is that it will split the available human resources. Not only that, it also isolates the users to within their own language/framework, promoting a monoculture (now there's a pun that could be made here).
While it's better than other in-house alternatives, it's not better for the entire ecosystem as a whole. The need for hyperlocal reverse proxies is a problem on its own, generally only solved this way due to organisational dysfunction or a very niche requirement.
There's the Fediverse sphere of platforms that largely fit your ideals but fragmentation is a glaring problem that prevents it from much wider adoption.
Any centralized platform where data is hosted is going to cost an obscene amount of money to operate once it gains traction. So they need to find a way to monetize it in order to keep the lights on. Throw in some venture capital and you've got yourself yet another startup that thinks they can scale infinitely.
My biggest fear is Discord gating old convos behind a paywall like Slack. Discord doesn't do that because it is still technically a different product from Slack, but should monetization drives intensify I'm afraid that'd be one of the easy channels they are going to take a look at.
If there are no successful, extant examples, then I don't think it's a good basis for anything. As I said, it's a Utopian ideal. That's fine, but it's not practical (and it's not trying to be).
I think there are going to be incredibly valuable lessons-learned from these federated models, and interesting things will happen there. However, all of that will be capitalized by a nimble, forward-thinking, idealistic-yet-centralized model that gets rid of all the ideological cruft and polishes a real, useful, and engaging product.
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