Comment by shwouchk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shwouchk | Hacker News Reader

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I understand your claim though dont agree on several counts -

1. To start, if decentralization does not "solve the problem" then what do all AP platforms bring to the table? There was already a decentralized facebook before mastodon - it used to be called a "web site". You could get a feed with just what you wanted by subscribing to rss feeds, which were also decentralized. You were not tied to 140 characters per post either, and nothing stopped someone from making an rss client that clipped posts at 140 characters in the the feed or whatever. What problem does AP solve for me? Indexing all that content? The hosting? If the whole thing is about getting banned from the domain twitter.com, open your own domain and publish your content - problem solved.

2. If we're solving a solved problem, why not bring something new to the table? eg anonymity of nosr.

3. If "decentralization is not the solution", how come other protocols - eg mentioned above - claim (convincingly imho) to offer an actual improvement if not solution?

4. You claim "decentralization is not the solution" then define some ad hoc line in the sand regarding what is "decentralized" and then make some bold claims based on that. Decentralized could mean many things: could be like ssh keys, could be like gpg keys with directories and web of trust, could be like dns or certificate authorities. Could be like email. Like torrents or like i2p, or kad. All of these are slightly different. Heck, could even mean like fb vs twitter - you are free to move to a different platform. Takeout your data, import contacts - done.

Where you claim that decentralization is not the answer i will say maybe insufficient decentralization is not the answer - with email, AP, and many other protocols, the platform ("domain") is the first class citizen so you get strong platforms and weak users. Regulation will help here just like it helped with banking - ie wont. What makes banks cooperate is mutual desire for profit.

Banks are truly fungible for the most part - make users first class and you will get the same for platforms

> 1. To start, if decentralization does not "solve the problem" then what do all AP platforms bring to the table? There was already a decentralized facebook before mastodon - it used to be called a "web site". You could get a feed with just what you wanted by subscribing to rss feeds, which were also decentralized

Personal websites still soundly lost to the Yahoo, MSN and AOL home pages (remember those?) Pareto distributions are everywhere, even with systems whose decentralized nature is as unquestionable as websites - I'm probably sounding like a broken record now, but it's clear as day to me.

You mention of old-school websites crystalized some inchoate thoughts I had. The fediverse is the spiritual successor to Web 2.0 / the blogoshpere in the age of social media and mobile apps. Instead of RSS feeds, loosey goosey comment and pingback implementations, everything is in a fairly well-defined spec that allows the conversations to be viewed on one web application or app by simply scrolling. What AP brings to the table are:

A. the ability to own the platform as an individual, or as a collective of like-minded people. There's a qualitative difference between r/math and Mathstodon, even both are on on the surface self-moderated Math communities. Even if such communities are blocked and defederated from the rest of the world, I think there's incalculable value in the community self-reliance as an end to itself without being mediated by a profit-seeking entity. I acknowledge this is an ideological proclivity, YMMV.

B. gives more editorial power to users over what they see (though this is woefully underspecified, but apps can and do fill the gap)

C. Better aggregation and discovery than websites. Closed and centralized social platforms are inherently great at this, but RSS feeds, not so much. If you find a website commenter particular insightful, you can't "subscribe to their newsletter" - you can with AP.

2. why not bring something new to the table? eg anonymity of nosr.

It's good to have many approaches tried out and available to people. I want the balance of power to be shifted more towards people - protocols are just implementation details. Id people choose to fo with the megacorp-hosted implementation of an interoperable standard (like Threads is claiming to aspire to), so be it. The existence of AP does not preclude nostr or AT, or Wordpress or Ghost

3.If "decentralization is not the solution", how come other protocols - eg mentioned above - claim (convincingly imho) to offer an actual improvement if not solution

I suppose everyone has well-reasoned and well-intended bases for their opinions, even when we disagree. I don't believe any protocol can counteract economies of scale without detrimental effects to smaller players, which is why I don't they can solve it - it'd be fantastic if they pull if off - I don't think they will - but I'm glad someone is trying. I wish nothing but the best to each project

> 4. You claim "decentralization is not the solution" then define some ad hoc line in the sand regarding what is "decentralized" and then make some bold claims based on that. Decentralized could mean many things: could be like ssh keys, could be like gpg keys with directories and web of trust, could be like dns or certificate authorities. Could be like email. Like torrents or like i2p, or kad

I don't know what kad is, but most of the things you list on your spectrum of decentralization had dominant players, whether it's DNS, gpg keys, CAs, or torrent trackers. I'm not going to split hairs on whether the dominance of keybase meant gpg is not really decentralized.

You raise some good points regarding benefits of integration in AP. I mentioned some classic technologies that could be packaged well together to form something cohesive, you claim this is it. Ok, i concede - i think i would be interested in a “platformless”, websitelike protocol but that doesn’t preclude something like an interoperable forumlike protocol from being useful.

That being said, > I don't know what kad is, but most of the things you list on your spectrum of decentralization had dominant players, whether it's DNS, gpg keys, CAs, or torrent trackers. I'm not going to split hairs on whether the dominance of keybase meant gpg is not really decentralized.

Most of what i mentioned is indeed semi centralized - but also semi decentralized. it and that was the point - there is no one true way to “decentralize” - is the star trek federation decentralized? is banks’ culture?

You make some very general claims regarding what decentralized systems don’t solve, but whatever your argument, you base it off some specific model of what is decentralized (you define a binary criterion). Whatever you claim, you can claim only for that model and indeed! that model doesn’t attempt to solve many problems that found in previous decentralized models and that are desirable to solve, and hence my criticism.

We’ve designed a slightly more advanced wordpress. Let’s celebrate! I would hope for something more imaginative. And indeed some are trying.

And, people are free to work on what they like of course - who am i to judge? Well, unfortunately i find myself to not be in the position and with a strong enough passion about this to do something myself, but im affected just as everyone alive is.

I do see seemingly better attempts as we’ve discussed, and in this particular case im worried that worse is the enemy of better, due to network effects. Any traction of a worse platform takes away from a better one.

Finally, gpg keys existed way before keybase and are actually one of the actually distributed and decentralized systems, so it’s curious that you picked specifically on this example.

gpg keys are entirely local first. Actually decentralized and usable to the individual user level. On top were built various webs of trust by mutual signing and publication of public keys to various public directories.

Keybase were able to package this neatly with added features and they enjoy some network effects but their data is public - you could spin up a compatitor before the end of the year ( it is dec 31 :) without losing any data. Or with a completely separate web of trust, that could also trust keybase keys.

ssh keys are similar in this regard, except the usage patterns are different and so keys are trusted on an individual basis or when signed by some organization/“community” wide ca. Im sure you know all this already.

Both of these last two examples demonstrate that in some cases decentralization does work, well. If we go with your “decentralized” model - “power to the states, not the people” - inevitably you get monopolistic players that kill off the standard as youve observed yourself. Like happened with email, with jabber, with rss, with browsers, like will happen with AP.

This is not a faster, quieter, cleaner or more efficient dishwasher. This is the exact same one we had last year, except with chrome finish, touch buttons and built in wifi. It will get picked up by the same sort of people that bought the old version - namely ones buying their first one or whose 10 machine broke.

It will fail and be unsatisfactory in fundamentally the same ways, since nothing changed in the mechanical specs. And in 10 years some extra features will be added like a voice assistant, to justify the raised priced on the same old crap.

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