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by noncoml 1376 days ago
Yup. A bit less catchy than “Don’t be evil” but it’s the same.

Cloudflare is what Google was 20 years ago.

The cycle can only break by decentralized protocols.

5 comments

> The cycle can only break by decentralized protocols.

I disagree. The cycle can break by breaking up the monopolies so that one company doesn't control everything, and allow free market to expand.

Competition keeps people from being evil. Evil only happens when there's no reason for them to NOT do evil things.

Google was fine until they became the top dog and nobody could even compete.

Decentralized protocols are the competition you are looking for.

The only alternative is regulatory intervention, which is unlikely to happen, however much you may want it to happen.

> Competition keeps people from being evil. Evil only happens when there's no reason for them to NOT do evil things.

I don’t agree. People generally don’t steal, but if they have no food, they will resort to theft to survive. Competition can prevent some ill effects of monopolistic tyranny, which I think is what you’re getting at here, but it breeds other evils.

Which isn't ever going to happen as the benefits of centralization are too great, as it has been empirically observed time and time again.
Even Adam Smith knew monopoly was a problem government needs to solve: https://economics-reloaded.com/1_classical_theory/Adam_Smith...
A decentralized economy has shown superior to a centralized economy over time.
And in time, Cloudflare will be what Google is now. Better stay away from them, so we don't end locked in, like we did with Google. They will start using their role as the internet proxy as a lever soon, prioritizing the sites they like and slowing down the sites they don't.
This is all running using decentralised protocols.
I guess he forgot “secure”, which neither TCP/IP DNS… are.
They're secure enough when layered appropriately (https, quic, dtls, etc)
> Cloudflare is what Google was 20 years ago.

Cloudflare is already much worse. It's relentlessly centralizing the whole Internet.