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Comment by vkk8 | Hacker News Reader

I'm also puzzled by the fact that EU is funding this. Usually states and state-like entities are exactly the ones who don't want people to use decentralized technologies, because they often make laws difficult or impossible to enforce.

In fact, wanting to circumvent laws is the only reason why people en mass would ever want to use decentralized technologies. I'm not necessarily always against this (there are some really stupid laws that should be broken), but I'm pretty annoyed by how people try to pretend that there is demand for these technologies for any other reason.

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>>I'm also puzzled by the fact that EU is funding this. Usually states and state-like entities are exactly the ones who don't want people to use decentralized technologies, because they often make laws difficult or impossible to enforce.

Ideally, the state represents the interests of the people, and it's in the interest of the people for decentralized technologies to be better funded, so that abusive government and corporate power can be checked.

Therefore, one of the activities of a truly democratic government will be to contribute to the creation and enhancement of technologies and institutions that act as non-political checks on government and concentrated corporate power, like privacy and decentralized communication protocols, physical and electronic cash, etc.

The EU sprays grant money around like candy. They'll fund more or less anything that appeals to academic sensibilities - at the scale it subsidizes things there's no time to consider the impact on political strategy.

This one was pitched as, "a European initiative for a Human Internet that respects the fundamental values of privacy, participation and diversity". So the EU would have just seen the buzzwords "privacy" and "diversity" and said great, have some money.

Sounds awful (/s)

EU is way behind in tech. Centralized web means centralized web in US or China. Probably the push for decentralized web will fail, but at least it appears that EU does something to reduce dependence on foreign superpowers.

The EU could also subsidize centralized EU-based tech. What are the largest tech companies in the US and China based around? Ads, payments, cloud computing, and media consumption ("FAANG"). Europe already has solid, utility-priced payment infrastructure. Ads are arguably toxic (especially Facebook), and cloud computing is relatively straightforward to implement with talent and funding.

Europe could even take a page from China and use regulation to strongly encourage European customers and businesses to not use US products and services (GDPR, for example).

> The EU could also subsidize centralized EU-based tech [...] cloud computing is relatively straightforward to implement with talent and funding.

Exactly this is already happening with Gaia-X[0]. Its mostly pushed by German companies, along with French ones. But because of huge involvement of Deutsche Telekom, BMW and such I dont have high expectations.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAIA-X

I agree with the degree of your expectations. Europe needs a DARPA/YC model led by doers, not entrenched corporate interests or bureaucrats. Europe and America are their own worst enemies, in different ways.

Then again, perhaps political tropes about the role and motivations of state actors only partly capture reality, and the dynamics of public vs private interests are not necessarily zero-sum games.

> In fact, wanting to circumvent laws is the only reason why people en mass would ever want to use decentralized technologies.

There are plenty other reasons, like not wanting private corporations to be gatekeepers of society.

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