Decrentralizing the web's software isn't good enough. We need to decentralize the hardware. Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP. That ISP has the power. The power to throttle, the power to block, the power to record. And that ISP can be pressured by other powers. We need to decentralize so that instead of looking like a hierarchical tree, the internet looks like a graph. With each building forming a node that connects to its neighbors.
Of course, the amount of work it would take to build such a web and move to it likely rules out the possibility of it ever happening. I mean, how do we go about forming a movement to build this? It only works, really, if everyone's on board.
It's time to decentralize the internet. There is no good reason why we can't have email, webpages, photos, even facebook-like social stuff housed on our own machines in our own homes (or some other place under our control).
The current situation is akin to having to travel to some centralized letter-reading facility in order to read letter mail. Your grandma sends you a letter in the mail and you have to go to a central facility downtown, then prove your identity, and then they hand over the (opened) letter.
We put a man on the moon more than 40 years ago. We must be able to sort this out.
I stand up and point my finger again in the direction of decentralization. Here we have this massive societal infrastructure, a huge education tool and a hub for culture, and the whole thing is under the control of a single entity whose primary motive is exclusively profit.
The core infrastructure of the internet (search, social media, archives, etc.) should not be under the influence of single companies. The internet was supposed to be decentralized but we ended up with individual companies taking huge monopolies over our standard internet experiences.
I don't think there is any tech out there today that can properly replace YouTube. Especially things like the recommendation engine. But I also don't think it's that far out of reach. We should putting greater effort into decentralizing the core parts of the internet.
Money, search, email, data storage, social media, DNS, ISP, and I'm sure dozens of other things. We don't need to be vulnerable like this.
A decentralised web is not viable until we can create an NP soft or better mesh network. Until then the network load to manage itself crushes it before it can walk.
It's not happening in a meaningful way. The technology for a decentralized web is already here -- it's just the normal web. Our artificial legal barriers are what keep it centralized, and those will be an issue regardless of technical innovation.
Legalize scraping and fix copyright law so that users can truly assert ownership over the content they generate, and this will quickly become a non-issue.
P2P technology is cool and it has its uses; I'm even developing a decentralized distribution thing as a side project. But it is more work, which means in the typical web browsing use case, it is slower and less convenient than a conventional 1:1 conversation with a stable endpoint.
Suggesting that everyone introduce four hops of latency or that we all participate in a multi-billion device DHT (which all just translate to "much slower" to the typical user) is just not a practical solution to these problems.
The good and correct solution is to look to the root cause and fix it. That root cause is the incentive structure, including legal and financial arrangements, that heavily encourages the "AOLizaiton" of the web and allows the AOLizers to use the courts to clobber the hackers that try to re-liberate it.
Decentralising the Internet is the only way we are going to be able to stop corporations from lobbying (aka bribing) the government to make decisions in their favour.
Check out https://substratum.net/ - they have an idea to do just that. As our computers get more and more powerful then there is no reason why we cant distribute more of what forces the internet to be centralised, if no one controls it then it can be free and open (which also raises a whole new set of problems but one step at a time!)
IIRC this current web technologies are already decentralized, we dont need an alternative. We need more nodes, so it can live up to its potentials. Perhaps start by buying a fixed computer, something that can be up 24/7 and then add services on top of it. But when 80% of the chatter even among developers is about how to use the latest centralizing cloud service, this is not going to happen.
Where the change will come is when we are no longer dependent on paying for network access. That will be the financial incentive.
A fully decentralized web would be delivered peer-to-peer via a mesh network or something similar. Anything else is a farce, because it's not just about who holds the data on the network, it's about the network itself. If any link in the chain of the communication can be controlled by some centralized power- it's not decentralized.
On a fully decentralized network, three things restricting freedom and privacy would be:
* the personal device used to (inter)connect, like malicious code hiding in firmware
* those controlling the power needed for the device
* those that can interfere with communication or alter data on the distributed network, either as a peer on the network, through malware/disruptive communication on the network, or those blocking communication
The problem with the decentralized web, though, is that when the web is fully free- if everyone stores part of the content from everyone else, then they could be storing things that are illegal and that they don't agree with. I personally don't want to participate in any network where I can't control what data is stored locally.
I believe in a decentralized web, but one that you don't need a data center to participate in; nor, a buy in to participate.
As at the end if the day, that's what the web was back in the day. And still is if you ignore the main stays.
It's silly really, but it's more of a question as to what is possible with access to a boundless tape of computers. How do you organize and for what purpose.
The web already is decentralized. It's literally possible for anyone to create their own content, platform etc.
It seems to me that these re-decentralizing attempts are really just marketing in open-source wolf-clothes.
Furthermore you don't re-decentralize the web my making a tool whos value proposition is just that. Create something which has value, which people want to use instead of something else. Thats decentralization in reality.
Yes, that is precisely my argument. Make the normal web sufficiently oppressive, and the freedom provided by decentralization becomes so compelling that people switch to it.
Of course, the amount of work it would take to build such a web and move to it likely rules out the possibility of it ever happening. I mean, how do we go about forming a movement to build this? It only works, really, if everyone's on board.
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