Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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Ok. So you say we're not trending towards a more centralized internet because you discard all proof that that is exactly what is happening. That's fine with me but it really doesn't help to move the discussion forward.

The reasons why we are moving to a more centralized internet are what is interesting, such as - you rightly identified those - that stuff isn't always powered up and that keeping a mailserver up and running is work and so on.

But none of that changes that centralization is happening.

Multiple distinct companies != peer-to-peer internet. That's what a decentralized network infrastructure used to mean, where the 'peers' were equals.

Nowadays it means clients in one camp and servers in another, and large scale consolidation of those servers in the datawarehouses of a relatively low number of companies serving up the bulk of the data. If that trend continues it's not a bad or a good thing per-se but it would be good to stop and think about how desirable that is.

So from that point of view a lot of centralization has already happened.

Everybody running their own mailserver: could be a good thing, presuming they can be made easy to set up and easy to maintain (I don't see any technical reason why not). Ditto webhosting, why should facebook host all your content (or google, or Yahoo).

In the end, convenience won over 'peer-to-peer', there are many reasons besides convenience (firewalls, for one) but the results are here and we'll have to live with it (except for a couple of die-hard hold-outs).

What I've tried to make clear, and either failed in or you disagree with this as well, is that I don't think saying we are "centralizing" or moving towards a "centralized" internet is correct, largely because that implies we are approaching, or event still moving towards, the end-point of that spectrum, which is centralization, and that implies a single authority.

I think it is correct to say we are, or at least were, decentralizing, to a degree. I think it's correct to say that we are not fully decentralized, which we were close to initially, but I don't think it's entirely constructive to say we are moving in a direction that leads to a centralized internet, and what that implies (a single authority, even if for a single service). I think we are moving towards, or have arrived at, what we see in many markets. Large dominant players that the majority use, but with a large market of smaller players that provide for the niche needs. Take the automotive industry, for example.

I think we are largely arguing over semantics, which is something I don't want to do, but at the same time it's hard to be sure I'm not just reducing your arguments to the point there's no difference and ignoring important points at the same time.

> But none of that changes that centralization is happening.

I think it's cyclical, and there will be periods where we move along the spectrum back and forth, but I doubt we'll get as close to the decentralized end as we started at, but for many reasons. I don't think we'll get all that close to the decentralized end either though.

> Multiple distinct companies != peer-to-peer internet.

My argument has not been "we are decentralized", it's been "we are not centralized". To that effect, peer-to-peer is irrelevant to my argument, and I've tried to make that clear.

> Everybody running their own mailserver: could be a good thing, presuming they can be made easy to set up and easy to maintain (I don't see any technical reason why not). Ditto webhosting, why should facebook host all your content (or google, or Yahoo).

Because it's very, very inefficient. There are upsides to centralization (e.g. discoverability), just as there are downsides (e.g. homogeneity). I think the sweet spot that maximizes the upsides and minimizes the downsides is somewhere between decentralization and centralization.

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