Counter-Anti-Disintermediation | Hacker News Reader

Counter-Anti-Disintermediation

wiki.p2pfoundation.net

37 pointsfabianhjr7 comments

> "Since information technology products work in systems, switching any single product can cost users dearly. The lock-in that results from such switching costs confers a huge competitive advantage to firms that manage their installed base of customers effectively."

Note that this still applies in the world of free-libre software, such as when installing a printer forces you to change your init system:

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=863974

This is what that bug report says:

> HPLIP requires PolicyKit, PolicyKit requires libpam-systemd. And it does not switch init systems, it just installs the systemd package.

> requires libpam-systemd

which depends[0] on systemd-sysv, which "will overwrite /sbin/init with a link to systemd."[1]

[0] https://packages.debian.org/sid/libpam-systemd

[1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/systemd-sysv

> Central to the counter-anti-disintermediationist design is the End-to-End principle: platforms must not depend on servers and admins, even when cooperatively run, but must, to the greatest degree possible, run on the computers of the platform’s users.

So, to run a social media site for arbitrary known-friendly or anonymous figures, do I need to provide my own infrastructure, including VPN connectors, just to have confidence that I can't be deplatformed?

> a social media site

Counter-anti-desintermediation is against websites (www-server-client protocols) so that is already not what is being advocated.

Secure Scuttlebutt is a decentralized _protocol_ that is counter-anti-desintermediated and used for social purposes since it cannot be run as a server-client. Distributing your blog/personal site via IPFS protocol would also be a measure of counter-anti-desintermediation since there is no "server" hosting the site.

I would say no because I understand the definition of "VPN" to mean something like "host-to-network" not peer-to-peer. The user connects to some "VPN gateway" so that she can reach a private, remote network. Further, "VPN" software tends to be application layer. Every application needs to be compatible with the VPN software/standard. I use a P2P solution that does not fit this definition of "VPN". It operates on the network layer instead of the application layer. Nodes are all on the same Layer 2 overlay. Unlike, say, creating a Wireguard interface that only provides the means to reach one peer, this creates a TAP interface and a means to reach every peer.

The catch is one needs supernodes that are world-reachable, not to pass traffic but just to allow peers to discover each others' listening IP:port. I guess as long as one uses a middlemen (hosting provider) to obtain a world-reachable address on which to run a supernode, disintermediation is possible.

The fault in part rests with IP itself. If the Internet as a whole functioned more as a self-healing mesh network rather than as routable nodes and super-nodes, the dependency on addressable supernodes is reduced.

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