So Much for the Decentralized Internet | Hacker News Reader

So Much for the Decentralized Internet

theatlantic.com

14 pointspseudolus16 comments

I love the outsized importance applied to Twitter by journalists and news junkies who lazily rely on it.

The vast, overwhelming, majority of human beings would not notice if Twitter had disappeared last night if it weren't for lazy journalists and news junkies reporting on its disappearance.

Journalists writing about twitter remind me of novels about quirky authors, songs about musicians on the road, and movies about Hollywood: self-important inside baseball.

So true. Whats funny, is a perfectly good decentralized option exists and works great but they wont use it because usability and security are not things they care about. They want to write short stories based on tweets.

True, 5y ago it was Facebook and in 5y they relay on TikTok....lazy journalists...

I'm not advocating for or against blockchain / DLT here, but I find it kind of weird that this article explicitly talks about not just the lack of decentralization in the modern internet, but about cryptocurrency... and doesn't mention the claims from DLT companies that they're fixing that.

Ethereum is almost a household name as much as Bitcoin. IPFS is obviously more niche but if you were to spend an afternoon reading about blockchain you'd surely stumble upon it.

I just find it odd that this article presents a very clear problem, but doesn't present the thousands of people working on hundreds of projects who passionately feel that they have a solution.

Your tech bubble mentality is leaking.

Passionate feelings aren’t solutions.

To date, Ethereum and IPFS have yet to provide value to regular people. The blockchain/DLT space is focused on financial infrastructure, and until scaling is solved (“6 months away”) it just isn’t relevant to a general audience.

Ethereum is nowhere near the brand that Bitcoin is. Bitcoin at least enables people to commit crimes.

>And Ethereum is nowhere near the brand that Bitcoin is.

Wow and calling others out that they are in a bubble...

>Bitcoin at least enables people to commit crimes.

Like encryption, the internet and tor right?

Refer back to my comment where I explicitly said that I'm not advocating for blockchain / DLT, nor did I say that Ethereum / IPFS provide any value.

But, there are millions of dollars in investment and research being poured into these pieces of technology that attempt to address the problem stated in the article. I'm not saying they do or do not solve anything - my point was that it just struck me as odd that an article explicitly talking about crypto and the problems of centralization, didn't so much as mention that there are folks out there trying to fix it.

It would be like saying "fracking is a problem" without mentioning any group that's trying to address that problem. It's pointing out a problem without a call to action. Whether or not that call will actually fix that problem is a different story.

>nor did I say that Ethereum / IPFS provide any value.

Not true:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15367531

Bitcoin:

https://www.coindesk.com/blackballed-by-paypal-scientific-pa...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2019/04/26/how-bitco...

Okay, jeez, I can't win here. The second you start to advocate for blockchain or mention its potential utility, people will glom on and mock you for being a pipe dreaming gambler. The second you start to advocate against it or mention its overvaluation, people will glom on and mock you for your bootlicking close-mindedness.

Personally, I believe in blockchain. I think Ethereum and IPFS may one day be hugely successful. I own ETH, BTC, and a few other coins that I do believe in but also would not be surprised / upset if they went to $0.00 tomorrow. Yes, I know that's gambling.

BUT, MY POINT IN MY ORIGINAL COMMENT WAS THAT NOT TO DO WITH MY BELIEF IN BLOCKCHAIN.

I was literally just trying to point out, from a journalistic standpoint, that it was odd they made no mention of anything to do with blockchain / DLT.

Seriously, I feel like one of the most damaging things to the space as a whole is that it's almost impossible to find a level-headed conversation about it.

>Seriously, I feel like one of the most damaging things to the space as a whole is that it's almost impossible to find a level-headed conversation about it.

Just because you think that someone has to be for or against it, why not see it as plus and minus like every technology?

The Atlantic is an institution with a storied history and strong reputation. The blockchain is a wild west known for (at best) overpromising and underdelivering and (at worst) pump-and-dumps, fraud, and black-hat hacking.

If they mention a blockchain project, it's basically like sending some of their audience straight to Binance to get rekt.

Do you see why it's not a slam dunk for them to shoutout some project that's passionately trying (and unlikely) to solve these hard problems?

What...? I'm well aware of what The Atlantic is. People aren't (or shouldn't be) using it to guide how they spend their money.

The missing concept is trust. Blockchains are ideally trustless. Media brands are trustful.

In a high-trust environment, a mention is an implied endorsement.

If the Atlantic wanted to mention a blockchain project without encouraging their readers to invest, it would need to explicitly criticize it in the same piece.

This may seem weird but it’s how it is.

Interesting - I hadn't thought about it that way. I'm no journalist, so it just struck as a surprising omission. But, that being said, I have to imagine this would strike many other people (certainly not most, but a large amount) as a noticeable omission as well.

You're saying it's more just in their best interest, as a large and reputable source, to risk potentially bothering that small group in order to keep their hands clean from inadvertently endorsing anything?

Ya there is an asymmetry for sure.

If you already know about projects deep down the rabbit hole, you can go to their website/github/chain explorer/chat and do your own research.

But if you don’t know anything except that bitcoin is darknet money, the first mention of e.g. “smart contracts” may lead you down the rabbit hole...

I think that everyone who gets into distributed systems by reading news stories about blockchain goes through a “holy s* this is revolutionary!” phase, and for too many people that means buying tokens without performing due diligence.

Lol - I remember that phase well. Luckily I was still in college at the time so I had no money to sink on it.

I'm a believer in the tech, and have a little money in it now, but in terms of expected earnings... well, I treat it just as I would treat having money on Rushie winning Blue Grass Stakes. Just like I wouldn't bet anything I'm not comfortable losing on a horse, I treat any crypto "investments" the same way. I try to separate the money from the tech as much as I can.

All that aside, that's an interesting insight that really hadn't occurred to me before so I'm glad you pointed it out!

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