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It's a tragedy of the commons situation.

Even if you understand the downside of centralized systems (and most people really do not), you cannot individually do anything to stop them. So you use them out of convenience.

"Decentralized" people are out of touch only to the degree that they believe that they can change the world based on collective altruism. That is an uphill battle. They are not out of touch in realizing the dystopia that we are heading towards.

I imagine two possible scenarios for decentralized systems to take over:

a) Dystopia goes mainstream -- one scenario: "social credit scores" become common practice and people start to fear using the web to an extreme degree;

b) Someone comes up with a decentralized system that is able to do something, only possible with decentralization, that everyone really really wants.

I hope b) happens first.

People would change the way they use the web, not stop using it.

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.

Do you seriously expect that in dystopian scenario altenative going to be available? Even if decentralized services going to remain available do you think people will risk using them?

Most likely they won't going to do that. This is proved by China and more extreme example of North Korea also available.

Or just look at any country with totalitarian regime: they increase regulations really slowly so people "too busy" to think about that, but at some point they simply too scared to do anything.

You have a point. What I imagine is that some underground "resistance" would develop and use such systems, and once the authoritarianism eventually collapses, the mainstream will then be afraid of centralization.

Take as an example the Germans' insistence on privacy, to extents that even seem ridiculous to a lot of people (e.g. the right to blur your house in Google maps), and then consider their historical context.

China would seem to prove the opposite: extensive controls are in place, yet many people find ways around those controls.

Reportedly teenagers, who are much more aware of networks' downsides by having grown up with them, are trying harder and harder to turn off or at least reduce their network footprint. See for example the rise of ephemeral services like Snapchat, 4chan, pastebin and so on.

(B) is what Bitcoin did with drugs, assassination, etc. and BitTorrent did with file pirating.

That said I agree with you and that was exactly my point. Instead of coming from altruism they should build something genuinely useful that's only possible as a decentralized system.

> assassination

Do you have any evidence that this ever happened?

First, I am speaking from my own browsing experience on the now-dead silkroad.

Second, I'm not trying to disagree with you at all. It was to point out that there are definitely use cases for decentralized technologies where centralized systems can't go (although a lot have been negative so far)

I know you are not trying to disagree -- and if you were, that would also be fine, of course :)

Mine was not a rhetorical question. People keep mentioning assassination markets but it always sounds like a urban myth to me. I would like to know if there are documented cases or not.

Just because you see an advertisement on something like silk road, doesn't mean that it's not some kid playing pretend.

idk how legitimate they are, but hidden wiki does have entries for forums for this.

Trying to buy a hitman was how they caught the creator of the silk road.

It's possible to deploy SaaS software on-prem now. There's a c) solution that takes the middle path where we all win. Unfortunately it takes implementing a type of "suffering currency" to enable how people pay for it. If they are willing to slow down a little for reliability, they get more reliability. If they insist on running recursive workloads, and in general just chew up a bunch of resources for no gain, they get their workloads slowed a little. Works with the Open Source model too.

"The "People don't understand" is a condescending statement and is exactly the reason why the people who try to build these decentralized systems never succeed, because they don't even understand why people use information silos."

I've talked to at least hundreds, maybe a thousand, people (not techies) about these issues over past 10 years. Most don't understand the scope of the problem in terms of the tradeoff they're making. Many also think main suppliers couldn't, wouldn't, etc do sinister things X, Y, and Z because something would happen. Many think problems X, Y, and Z are inevitable since all the famous apps allow them for extra profit or growth. Vast majority don't know much about computers, privacy law, or U.S. history of surveillance states (eg Hoover) because they don't put time into learning. They will shout about minor things that are similar on TV they understand with little thought.

So, it's not condescending. It's a fact that "people don't understand," are apathetic, or terrible at long-term risk/reward tradeoffs. There's shitloads of empirical evidence confirming it in terms of what they adopt in the market vs what problems it causes them. And what crap they adopt next time. We definitely should put the share of blame on them that they earn.

"It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people."

A lot of them are, too, in fairness. They come up with all kinds of crazy, unrealistic solutions that ignore human nature, economics, etc. Best models are going to be hybrids.

1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people.

This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying..

2. In my post I'm not trying to make value judgements, but just offer a possible explanation why things are the way they are, and who may have better chances to change them.

3. I don't think that we should/can decentralize everything, but I do believe there is a worrying tendency towards extreme centralization. This may not neccessarily be a bad thing though. The world we live in is the expression of our choices, and if this is the result, then this is the result. We can observe and adjust if we feel the need, by changing our behaviour, if not, then that's that.

> 1 . > It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people. > This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying..

I don't think that's what condescending means.

Decentralization/Centralization is nothing new. In fact the entire history of humanity is about pendulum swinging back and forth between centralization and decentralization. And in 100% of the cases when this happens it's not because of some elites convince people to switch, but because it makes sense for people. "Normal" human beings are not as dumb as these elites think. So we don't have to worry about decentralization never happening. It will happen. And probably back to centralization. And then back to decentralization again. Just not through these efforts to "educate" people. It's because these elites are so out of touch with how real people think that their attempts at convincing people don't work.

> I don't think that's what condescending means.

Not a native speaker, so maybe I got that wrong, but this is the definition Google gives: "having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.", and this is what I was referring to.

Agree with what you say about the varying degrees of centralization/decentralization throughout history, but don't think that these changes happen out of the blue. Education is usually needed to bring about change and not because people are dumb, but because information doesn't always gets to them easy. So maybe this is what's happening now. You can think of it as a balancing force...

>Not a native speaker, so maybe I got that wrong, but this is the definition Google gives: "having or showing an attitude of patronizing superiority.", and this is what I was referring to.

Well, who is patronized? Those decentralized groups that think that the masses "don't know what's best for them", or someone pointing out that such groups are out of touch with reality?

In the end, any critique can be though as "patronizing" -- it implies the one making it knows better than those he criticizes. But I think that's too low a barrier.

>This statement seems a bit condescending, just saying..

It's usually a safer bet to dismiss the assumptions of some small group of people than think that the whole general population are idiots.

Just saying...

http://i.imgur.com/oTBYE5r.jpg

I agree, it's usually a small group of idiots that conflate high IQ with not being an idiot.

If that was really true, it's be a safer bet to dismiss what experts in a given field think and just go with what the uninformed population's opinion is on the matter.

E.g. to dismiss scientific opinion on a topic to go instead with lay opinions on it

By all means, we should dismiss what experts in a given field think too.

What we should respect are hard results and proofs from said experts.

Science is not about trusting experts, it's about trusting a methodology (the scientific method) to produce results.

Yes, but I was responding to a claim that equated to "go with the most broadly held view".

Or maybe both of you are on the opposite sides of a false dichotomy. Just sayin'...

Yes.

E.g. centralized Snapchat has a multi-billion market value based on marketing of ephemeral messaging and a fun UX. Despite technical limitations of the marketing claims, they have reduced the audience for their "historical conversations" from "all customers" to "malicious actors", which is a big step forward.

Snapchat created a multi-billion dollar market via centralized tech and money taken in on the promise they'll monetize it (or the data under EULA) somehow while giving app away for free and operating in a pseudo-police state. I was hesitant to think anything good would come of that after the main SMS and Facebook alternative I pushed for mass audience, WhatApp, was acquired by Facebook in one of largest acquisitions in history. (sighs)

Also, WhatApp was losing incredible amount of money with its number of users despite using efficient, centralized tech. I bet they'd loose even more if people were mostly sending images. I've been thinking secure, decentralized apps with no advertising or acquisition will cost money to develop that will require paying users. Or some clever freemium model. Also, not in a police state. ;)

There are perennial claims that consumers don't want privacy, yet Snapchat used the carrot of ephemeral messaging to gain a large initial audience at the expense of Facebook and other competitors. That data point of market demand for non-persistence is valuable, regardless of Snapchat's motivation or the consequences of their technical implementation.

In the bigger picture, Snapchat can be viewed as Instagram v2, rather than WhatsApp v2. Instagram educated consumers on the use of filter-driven photography as content creation. Snapchat is extending that trajectory, with filter-driven videos being authored by kids in less than a minute. Where might that lead? AR in the style of Google-funded Magic Leap, i.e. animation overlays on filtered reality, which will inevitably be used for advertising, e.g. http://hyper-reality.co. They recently launched "connected" sunglasses.

Have you looked at http://matrix.org? They have telco funding and a long-term vision for OSS and decentralization, so are not subject to typical VC/startup pressures.

"There are perennial claims that consumers don't want privacy"

There's perennial evidence that consumers won't act toward privacy except outside of very, narrow constraints. You're analysis of Instagram to Snapchat is correct. Yet, with the carrot of ephemeral messaging, they went to a centralized service who could keep all their stuff to sell to whoever with no security or assurances in the whole process. Similar with WhatApp in terms of assurances. That's the best we're seeing. Whereas, the usable, truly-private apps that jump into any of these markets get virtually no adoption.

What you're seeing is the power of marketing rather than delivering privacy. Two very different things. Kind of like how many juices market themselves as healthy and natural while actually being a pile of sugar that might harm you if you consume enough. But people drink that 100% juice kool-aid. We've also seen where that went in the corporate space where virtually nothing is actually secure despite marketing claims and the fact that corporations try to hire people that can make an informed decision about that.

Definitely money to be made pressing that button of "ephemeral" on devices that couldn't be that if you tried. Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence for those of us pushing or developing actual offerings that are secure or private. I think more can be done and even maybe widespread but the evidence indicates market will always be dominated by scheming oligopolies of evil companies pretending to protect people with their offerings. Because people don't do better as users or buyers.

No, it's not marketing. That's back to the condescending attitude again.

The people who use Snapchat have a threat model that includes the ordinary people around them: parents, friends, friends of friends, etc. It does not include governments or the provider of Snapchat itself. Given such a threat model it makes perfect sense to use something like Snapchat - it isn't the result of "marketing" (do services like Instagram and Snapchat advertise at all? I've never seen an advert for them).

The reason decentralised crypto-to-the-hilt products never succeed is they misunderstand the threat models ordinary users are using. Most people fear privacy violations by people who know them in some way - not remote faceless programmers an ocean away who, they figure, don't care about them at all.

"The people who use Snapchat have a threat model that includes the ordinary people around them: parents, friends, friends of friends, etc"

Who were downloading apps that could keep Snapchat pics at the time Snapchat users were telling me they went away and nobody could retrieve them. The Snapchat company could also sell them to the same people. That means, due to no attempts to learn about online privacy, they falsely believed that what the marketing told them was true. Or their friends who spread the same propaganda.

So, let's recap. They had a false belief due to a lack of knowledge of and apathy for the most basic information on digital privacy of the devices they ran their whole lives through. They believed these incorrect things about their own threat model because they listened to a marketing team or their friends' repetition of a marketing team without due diligence. Even mainstream media was posting articles citing security professionals saying its claims were false. Snapchat users were spreading knowledge on Facebook that someone could keep the Snapchats. They still stayed on the bandwagon.

Conclusion: it's entirely accurate, not condescending, to say these people didn't know crap about privacy of the apps they were using and/or were too apathetic to research better options. They continued to do so after lies were revealed since the app was fun and popular. They don't care about privacy in practice.

Meanwhile, easy-to-use, private solutions were available and making the media. Hardly any uptake. Speaks for itself.

Making sure nobody can screenshot a snap or save it is an entirely client side programming problem, it's got nothing to do with cryptography, so all the other 'easy to use, private solutions' wouldn't be any different in that respect.

Our point is it's a lie to even tell users that if it's so easy to beat it. Stronger privacy would require a DRMed endpoint where it was a real pain to get those screenshots. Stronger privacy than that is not using the app at all or for anything private. That it's a company whose business is likely to sell out their users is the biggest reason why they don't really get it. Apathy to learning about these fundamental things is what lets such companies get them with false promises.

If you want to say something like this, at least back it up with something. Anyone can say "You two are both wrong" and sound smart.

Also which part of "people don't understand" is not condescending?

Funny enough, I watched this movie called Barton Fink last night, and it's a perfect depiction of this nonsense.

> Also which part of "people don't understand" is not condescending?

How is asserting a fact like that in any way condescending?

Because it's not a fact

It is a fact. Some people don't understand. And even if it were false, that doesn't make it condescending. People are wrong about things all the time without it being condescending.

Go back and re-read the original comment I replied to. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context.

> You're just arguing for the sake of arguing by taking the words out of context.

No... I specifically asked because I wanted to know why you thought it was condescending. That's a far cry from arguing for the sake of arguing. And it didn't come off at condescending to me.

Maybe you think the web can only be totally decentralized or totally centralized, but I don't think so and that's why I made the comment. Someone can be fine with centralized banks and still favor decentralized social networks and running your own p2p servers, for instance. If you disagree, fine, but don't pretend that my post was condescending.

Take it easy.

I don't know where you got the idea that I think the world can be totally centralized or decentralized, honestly.

The bank analogy was about how there are upsides and downsides to everything, and the society is not as stupid as to have no clue what's going on. For things like this the world follows the collective intelligence.

Even the people who have no idea how a bank works still use bank with no problem because of the collective knowledge. We know that a bank is safe enough and provides more upsides than downsides.

But this is not always the case. In countries where people have low confidence in their government, even the "ignorant people" who have no idea how Bitcoin works learn about the benefits and move away to it. This is not a result of some intellects trying to convince the "uninformed" how the world should work. It's a result of the collective intelligence recognizing how the pendulum has swung and now there's more downsides than upsides.

> It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people.

Exactly. I'm still not sure how we ended up in this world where people no longer understand market competition and consumer value choices. People choose platforms and products based upon what is convenient for them, not necessarily best for them. In the 90s AOL became the internet for many people because it met their wants and needs, much like Facebook has today. Consumers/users are not idealists with regard to their choices and they never will be.

> It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people.

There are plenty of countries in the world where "ordinary people" and "political active people" are two different groups.

Ordinary people there have better things to worry about than politics. Many of them also know what exactly going, but do nothing to prevent it. Usually this end up really really bad.

> There are plenty of countries in the world where "ordinary people" and "political active people" are two different groups.

These "ordinary people" often end up allowing "extraordinary" things to happen to these "political active people".