You can use a federated social network RIGHT NOW. Or you can just make your own website TODAY. No permission needed, you get complete ownership. It’s the amazing decentralised dream that was (and is) the internet. Only thing it won’t do is potentially make you rich (at the expense of others) just for getting in (and out!) at the right time.
- You need to remain out of the shitlist of a handful of “spam and anti-evil” authorities (getting on a list means your site gets blocked by all the big browsers and can be permanent or take a long time to resolve)
- You need permission to host your content from the: hardware / cloud provider, the datacentre if you self-host, and / or intermediary ISPs for peering (if no-one will peer, your site may as well not exists)
There are some other parties you need permission or blessing from that don’t come immediately to mind.
Web3 as it currently stands (as I said before it’s a slippery weasel word so no don’t you’ll change it to suite) also needs all that stuff. Most “web3” apps are served via Cloudflare ffs!
Most of the points mentioned are security features to shield people from bad actors, something that crypto does not seem very good at thus far, which is why I’m curious how web3 solves similar things.
Just like any paradigm change though, it's going to rely on the "killer implementation" to take off to kickstart the paradigm reaching mass appeal.
>You need to remain out of the shitlist of a handful of “spam and anti-evil” authorities
And the exact same will happen in the world of 'web3'. Except you won't sign your terms and conditions in English but in from of a smart contract. The internet is a distributed computer, blockchains are distributed computers. Whatever people built on top of it will be as permissioned and have as many authorities as anything else.
You think you can't do encrypted, peer-to-peer communication without authorities on the good old internet? Of course you can, there's nothing technically in the way of it at all. It's just that nobody runs a business that way and they won't do it in the world of 'web3' either.
Not exactly sure why you think TCP, the protocol, is relevant here? Creating or interacting with a web contract in a blockchain is a different ballgame to hosting a web site, and are treated as such by ISPs. One is indistuishable with normal web browsing, and the other is often treated as a business. The threat of having your ISP cut you off because they don't like what you are browsing remains a threat though, and hence a weakness by requiring their permission.
Do you think either site managed to purchase and control a domain name without the approval of a domain registrar?
Do you think either site is accessible without the approval of the ISP providing a connection to their server?
Etc. down the list I provided.
Both those domains at various times have had disagreements with their registrars, with their ISPs and with bodies on the internet more powerful than that. Hasn't made any difference to whether I can connect to them or not, because there are always alternative paths and vendors. Which is more or less what it means to be decentralised. In practice, being able to replace any party and keep on going is the capability that matters.
And that you think the alternative you’re arguing away from is investing in gold and silver is kind of hilarious. Precarious metal “investors” are just a different generation of poor fools.