[frebord]

We royally fucked up with the internet. I literally have to question my own motives for things, and often wonder if I have been manipulated into my beliefs, opinions, and desires. It is kind of scary to think about!

How do we move to a less centralized internet and is it too late?

[willemmali]

Fun question: where does the idea "decentralization good" come from?

What big players could have an interest in this and why?

[astrodust]

Decentralization is a way of removing dependencies and adding redundancy. It's often less efficient, there's way more duplication of effort, but can be more resilient.

Big players don't necessarily have an interest in this, but some do. It's always a balancing act between too much centralization (single target/point of failure) and too much decentralization (impossible to control).

[willemmali]

I'm trying to think of specific actors that have interests in this, but I'm finding it hard. Not the NSA, right?

I don't understand why you think decentralization is a balancing act. What do you mean by "impossible to control", and why would that be bad? What would "full" decentralization even entail? A network of sentient computers doing whatever they want, except using supernodes "too much"?

(My definition of supernodes: nodes that transfer significantly more traffic than others structurally, in practice nodes that accept incoming connections, like servers or BitTorrent supernodes, but also AS's.)

[astrodust]

The military and certain branches of the government (e.g. CIA) are very interested in having modular, autonomous structures that can survive in the event of a decapitation attack, or if communications are severely disrupted through other means.

They're also interested in having centralized control so the various components of their organization are not running rampant and in conflict with the others.

It's a delicate balancing act. Look at the US as a whole: If states are too independent they might get into wars with the others, not unlike The Holy Roman Empire. If they're too much under the thumb of the Federal government they'll feel oppressed.

[logicallee]

If (my example) instead of people messaging each other on facebook, every single person needed to run a server (such as an IRC server) at home - no centralization at all. (If five people want to talk to each other, there are a total of 10 connections because 4+3+2+1 to fully connect every node with every other node). That would be an (extreme) example of decentralization, and obviously centralizing chat so I can just use a thin facebook/whatever app is hugely convenient. Likewise the blockchain is a joke, a single $200 pc can trivially do the work of the entire bitcoin network, trivially - if it were centralized. This second example also shows what is meant by control. So it's a balancing act.

[astrodust]

The internet is both centralized, we need to agree on protocols, coordinate address spaces, issue domain names, and decentralized, where elements of it can survive independent of the others if they're temporarily disconnected.

The Bitcoin blockchain is an example of something that's a complete contradiction: It's a highly distributed highly centralized system. There's only one Bitcoin block chain, and everything must be recorded there for it to be valid. If, for example, Iran is cut off from the greater internet then that means you can't use Bitcoin in Iran.

BitTorrent is a much better example: There's no central authority, it's truly distributed, and highly fault tolerant. If Iran was cut off for some reason, all the Iran-hosted seeds of any content would still work.

[logicallee]

I agree with everything you've written.

[gpderetta]

"Discordians shall not believe anything they read."

[gene-h]

That is only half the problem, from the article: "Cambridge Analytica buys personal data from a range of different sources, like land registries, automotive data, shopping data, bonus cards, club memberships, what magazines you read, what churches you attend."

Data collection like this still occurs without the internet. In addition, decentralization of the internet does not necessarily prevent targeted ads. IE, now instead of buying an ad from facebook that targets everyone with interest x in geographic area y, now we buy an ad on a local website for interest x in geographic area y.

[lalalander]

Since targeted ads (and sponsored Facebook posts) are the vectors for influencing people, wouldn't it be a great deal easier if people just blocked ads? No matter how much accurate a profile is built off you (through other companies selling your data), you can't be influenced by ads if you don't see them. Especially since we know that ads are not just trying to persuade you to buy things (which is probably still morally acceptable, at least to me), but also to influence your political affiliations without you realising it.

[hkmurakami]

Not sure if being influenced unbeknownst to you is a n entirely new phenomenon though. What was its extent with print or TV media where everything is centrally controlled?

At least one core problem is that no one wants to read primary sources and make decisions themselves. We seem to prefer an illusion of independent thought when we're actually choosing from a set of prepackaged partitions that are neatly presented to us.

[frebord]

I mean Facebook for example, at its core for an end user it really just mirrors what the Internet was built to do. I can easily host my own profile and allow people to log in to it and talk to me. How did it become so dangerously centralized?

[mjevans]

The average user is lazy, cheep, and unaware of how valuable their freedom is.

[willemmali]

Did you mean "sheep" or "cheap"?

[tombrossman]

I think we've just witnessed the birth of a new technology portmanteau on HN- "Cheep: (noun) Member of one or more online herds of users who are exploited for personal data". I like it.

(sadly, cheep.com is already taken or I'd be on that like white on rice...)

[criddell]

> How did it become so dangerously centralized?

Network effects and there's nothing out there better than Facebook.

[dredmorbius]

Facebook owns the directory, and the notifications channel.

Freestanding sites lack this, and it turns out that behavioural costs matter.

[jdhopeunique]

I think Urbit is trying to tackle this problem of decentralizing the internet. I'm not sure of their current status however.

[k__]

Decentralizing won't help much.

The who really knows what is fake news? And what about the filter bubbles that keep the full picture hidden from you?

[willemmali]

A decentralized search engine with configurable or even just inspectable filter bubble would be a good start?

(Although I think the correct abstraction is not "search engine", but "decentralized content index" + "decentralized content ranking" with tweakable parameters.)

[ordu]

> I literally have to question my own motives for things, and often wonder if I have been manipulated into my beliefs, opinions, and desires.

Its possible to be immune for such manipulaions, I believe. If you subject you thoughts to strict formal rules of rational thinking, than it would be hard to manipulate you.

But the first and most important thing is constant questioning own motives. So you are on the right track. ;)

[riprowan]

> If you subject you thoughts to strict formal rules of rational thinking, than it would be hard to manipulate you.

If the brain was fundamentally a linear processor, you might have a chance. But the brain is almost entirely a pattern-machine, and linear, logical thought is mostly an artifact.

Humans can be programmed like any AI. It just requires the correct stimulus.

[ordu]

I'm not saying that one can be completely rational. I'm saying that you can be much more resistant to mind influencing technologies. Moreover you can be resistant for such a level, that you'll become immune for technologies which targets 95% of population.

[AnimalMuppet]

In addition to what riprowan said, if you are perfectly logical and rational, but I can control your input data, I can control your conclusions.

[ordu]

Really? What you know about my consclusions? How can you check that you control them? By looking at my behaviour? Ha-ha. How you can control them if you have no precise knowledge about them and processes leading to them? Oh... And how can you control my input data, if I'm not reading your ads?

[Florin_Andrei]

> How do we move to a less centralized internet and is it too late?

Oh great, divide et impera.