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Comment by EGreg | Hacker News Reader

Actually, the problem is centralization, as Tim pointed out. The early pioneers are often proprietary systems (Windows, IE, Britannica) followed by open source software (Linux, WebKit, Wikipedia) which are better in tons of ways. For one, the long tail is served better (Linux has even been known to run on toasters, Wikipedia has way more articles). For another, people own their own data, identity and brand.

Look, you are writing this on YOUR domain because Wordpress gave you that ability. It powers 20% of all new websites. What we need as a society is a Wordpress for social networking.

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Exactly! The peer-to-peer file sharing services prove that we can have nice things and not pay for them too.

(Although there is a problem if you want to make nice things and get paid for them...)

There already are P2P social network platforms, the problem is how do you get mass adoption?

We built such a platform. Our company already has mass adoption.

There are various ways to get it. I would say viral expansion is the best way.

Qbix, eh? It looks great, congratulations!

Thank you!

Feel free to reach out by email if you want to get help getting started with the FOSS platform

Cheers! Will do.

My hunch is that there is a critical mass in number of active users, that once achieved, Network effects make it more expensive to be left out of the network than opt in to it.

What the magnitude of such metric actually is, probably depends as much on cultural aspects of your target demographic as the quality and usefulness of the network provided services.

Surely there is an academic paper on the subject, but if there isn't, then the real question is Why?!

I think it is important to realize that you are actually paying for the service, and that that is actually the right way to pay for it: You pay for the infrastructure of the internet by paying your ISP, and for the processing and storage of your own hardware by buying it. That is the service that someone actually has to operate for us, and it is a product everyone does already buy.

Yes, distributed infrastructure, including mesh networking in a hypothetical ideal world.

The actual cost of what e.g. FB does for its users is tiny.

I don't know if that's true. At least with a centralized social network we have someone to yell at, and Congress potentially has an ability to regulate it.

Imagine a de-centralized Facebook with the same engagement-optimized feed. Maybe it runs over the Web, maybe it runs on something like Ethereum.

What if we built that, and wound up with the same set of problems? Except now there's no off button, nobody to petition, and government can't intervene.

Decentralization is not a silver bullet. And in this case I might worry that the medicine is worse than the disease.

Why would a decentralized Facebook have the same engagement-optimized feed? That’s an artifact of wanting to keep users around as long as possible so as to put ad after ad after ad in front of their eyeballs.

That's like argueing that dictatorship might be better than democracy because at least there is someone to hold accountable.

Well, there is someone who is responsible, but the problem is that you cannot hold them accountable. Which is why democracy avoids the same concentration of power in the first place.

Which is also the whole point of decentralization. You avoid the concentration of power that would allow any single party or small minority to turn against you without any way out for you.

If you email provider starts selling your emails to the highest bidder, you don't need to regulate your email provider. You simply switch to a different one. Or run your own server. Decentralization is about keeping the power your hands.

I would say my comparison is more akin to dictatorship vs anarchy. Obviously neither choice is ideal, so the specifics of how these systems are implemented is vital.

I'm a big fan of decentralization in general, but I think it's worth pointing out where things could go wrong at scale.

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