[brenden2]

A big thing that annoys me about buzzwords like "decentralized" is that they're not binary. Another one that's largely lost meaning is "blockchain". Decentralized is relative and depends entirely on the context.

They do tend to represent ideas like anti-censorship, individualism, and (sometimes) privacy. I think it makes more sense to discuss these topics in terms of the actual implication of what you're decentralizing, and how it actually helps.

For example, the Internet itself is decentralized. But from the perspective of your particular ISP, it's not at all decentralized (if your ISP turns off your Internet, it's game over).

Email is also decentralized, but so what? Most people use the same email providers so it's somewhat meaningless for SMTP itself to be decentralized. Google can still read your emails.

The problem with using these terms instead of more tangible language (i.e., language that describes what the thing is actually doing) is that they tend to get hijacked by scammers/marketers who just want to harness their popularity for their own ends.

[OrderlyTiamat]

> E-mailadres is also decentralized, but so what? Most people use the same email providers so it's somewhat meaningless for SMTP itself to be decentralized. Google can still read your emails.

I actually think email is almost the ideal implementation of a decentralized network. You're always going to have giants in any communication network- that's simple the reality. Email allows people to use these giants or, and critically, it allows people to join in the conversation while not using those giants. It is open. Suppose this were to happen with twitter or facebook, where the protocol was open and people using networks like mastodon could simply join in. That is a way to achieve decentralization, with the benefits that go with it. If you don't want google to read your mail, you and your correspondences can choose not to. Twitter and Facebook offer no such choice.

[derrick_jensen]

The issue here is that it is fairly difficult to not be automatically filed as spam, and you can easily be blocked from communicating with large chunks of people if something nasty happens. Of course, if you know these people directly, they can put in various exceptions, but most people you're interacting with won't

[no_identd]

>You're always going to have giants in any communication network

I suppose you make that claim based on the assumption that any electronic long range communication system at most reduces to a network?

If so, your assumption—while applicable to our current global communications network—doesn't cover the communication systems which could (& hopefully would) already exist if the ARPAnet originators hadn't messed this up by dropping the Internet layer and renaming the Network Layer to the 'Inter'net layer. It got Telcos exactly what they needed to remain giants.

[bavell]

> if the ARPAnet originators hadn't messed this up by dropping the Internet layer and renaming the Network Layer to the 'Inter'net layer.

Can you send elaborate? Genuinely curious.

[tgragnato]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet

Back in the day the network layer was not standardised nor interoperable. The "International Network Working Group" provided a communication protocol (TCP/IP) capable of hiding the differences of the different networks.

> the job of the TCP is merely to take a stream of messages produced by one HOST and reproduce the stream at a foreign receiving HOST without change. [Cerf]

That network of networks demonstrated the feasibility of the concept of interconnection. The resulting net eventually became the global inter-network... INTERNET

[no_identd]

Not my point tho, see here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21108739

Interconnected Network Networking (what we have today)≠Interconnected Internetwork Internetworking (what we should have but don't)

The latter enables recursive structures, the former doesn't.

[bavell]

Thank you, this is what I was looking for.

[no_identd]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21108739

[OrderlyTiamat]

It was more based on the idea of the network effect, because any service in communication systems may benefit from additonal users. This effect is uncoupled from the actual technical implementation, though that is also an important factor of course.

[zzzcpan]

Well, in the context of privacy decentralization doesn't have a lot of meanings. Just a couple, like leaking as little information as possible to a single party and giving as little control as possible to a single party, because if you can't trust a single party having to trust many independent parties with much less information and control is much better for privacy (theoretically not a single party should be able to decode a single bit of useful information about others, even a resoursful malicious party doing sybil attacks, etc.).

[im3w1l]

> For example, the Internet itself is decentralized. But from the perspective of your particular ISP, it's not at all decentralized (if your ISP turns off your Internet, it's game over).

Yes the ISP is a chokepoint and thats why:

1. People push for regulations like net neutrality to legally prevent them from doing something like that.

2. Use VPN's to deny ISP information they could use to decide whose pipe to turn off.

3. Some are trying to build meshnets and physical peer-to-peer infra.

[esotericn]

> Email is also decentralized, but so what?

Client implementations being possible is a huge one.

The security claims of a product like WhatsApp (in the news lately) would be far more verifiable if it weren't essentially a black box. It's also just like, basic computer hygiene and _nice_ to be able to have custom clients.

Imagine if the Gmail web interface were all you had and software like Thunderbird or Mutt was just completely impossible.