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Can We Decentralize the Web? (computing.co.uk)
This week the Internet Archive hosted an amazing Decentralized Web Summit, which united the makers who want to build a web "that's locked open for good." [Watch the videos here.] Vint Cerf was there, as was the technical product development leader for Microsoft's own decentralized identity efforts, several companies building the so-called punk rock Internet, "along with a handful of venture capitalists looking for opportunities." One talk even included Mike Judge, the creator of HBO's Silicon Valley, which recently included the decentralized web in its ongoing storyline.
Computing highlighted remarks by Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, and Mitchell Baker, the chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation. The ideology of the web's early pioneers, according to Baker, was free software and open source. "Money was considered evil," she said. So when companies came in to commercialize the internet, the original architects were unprepared. "Advertising is the internet's original sin," Kahle told the packed room. "Advertising is winner-take-all, and that's how we've ended up with centralization and monopolies."
At the conference, attendees presented utopian visions of how the future of the internet could look. Civil, a new media startup, proposed crowd-supported journalism using cryptocurrency micro-payments. Mastodon, a decentralized and encrypted social network, was commonly referenced as an alternative to Twitter. As Facebook and Google continue to monopolize the digital advertising ecosystem -- recent estimates say that the two companies control over 70% of digital advertising spending globally -- the promise of a decentralized web, free from the shackles of advertiser demands is fun to imagine.
Tristan Harris, who leads the Center for Humane Technology, "just hopes the pioneers of the new internet turn around to face the potential negative externalities of their products before it's too late," arguing that "If we decentralize the systems we already have without an honest recognition of the social harms that are being created -- mental health [issues], loneliness, addiction, polarization, conspiracy theories... then we've decentralized social harms and we can't even track them." But Tim Berners-Lee "remains hopeful".
"There's massive public awareness of the effects of social networks and the unintended consequences," he told Computing. "There's a huge backlash from people wanting to control their own data"... Meanwhile, there's the rise of "companies which respect user privacy and do not do anything at all with user data" (he namechecks social network MeWe to which he acts as an advisor), open-source collaborations like the data portability project (DTP) led by tech giants, and his own project Solid which is "turning from an experiment into a platform and the start of a movement".
"These are exciting times," said Berners-Lee.
Computing highlighted remarks by Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, and Mitchell Baker, the chairperson of the Mozilla Foundation. The ideology of the web's early pioneers, according to Baker, was free software and open source. "Money was considered evil," she said. So when companies came in to commercialize the internet, the original architects were unprepared. "Advertising is the internet's original sin," Kahle told the packed room. "Advertising is winner-take-all, and that's how we've ended up with centralization and monopolies."
At the conference, attendees presented utopian visions of how the future of the internet could look. Civil, a new media startup, proposed crowd-supported journalism using cryptocurrency micro-payments. Mastodon, a decentralized and encrypted social network, was commonly referenced as an alternative to Twitter. As Facebook and Google continue to monopolize the digital advertising ecosystem -- recent estimates say that the two companies control over 70% of digital advertising spending globally -- the promise of a decentralized web, free from the shackles of advertiser demands is fun to imagine.
Tristan Harris, who leads the Center for Humane Technology, "just hopes the pioneers of the new internet turn around to face the potential negative externalities of their products before it's too late," arguing that "If we decentralize the systems we already have without an honest recognition of the social harms that are being created -- mental health [issues], loneliness, addiction, polarization, conspiracy theories... then we've decentralized social harms and we can't even track them." But Tim Berners-Lee "remains hopeful".
"There's massive public awareness of the effects of social networks and the unintended consequences," he told Computing. "There's a huge backlash from people wanting to control their own data"... Meanwhile, there's the rise of "companies which respect user privacy and do not do anything at all with user data" (he namechecks social network MeWe to which he acts as an advisor), open-source collaborations like the data portability project (DTP) led by tech giants, and his own project Solid which is "turning from an experiment into a platform and the start of a movement".
"These are exciting times," said Berners-Lee.
With all the terrorists and pedos coming out of the woodwork (the LGBT-P fiasco), might it be a good idea for more centralized monitoring? If it saves just one kid, this is worth it. Plus, decentralization brings fragmentation. Look at the Android versus iOS ecosystems. You want centralization. Really, you do.
The web is already decentralized (if you exclude the browsers' victory in banishing self-signed certs). The fact that tons of websites choose to use one or two services is a business decision, not a technical one. You don't need advertising, you could run your own advertising, and you can manage your own payments and subscriptions. But people don't because it's easier to use whatever's popular at the moment. They could choose to include a free plug-in advertising framework which they self-host and manage on their own, but instead they choose to use a 3rd party service and pay them instead. The sites don't care about you, they only care about making money. Thus none of this is a problem for them.
The biggest obstacle is greed and people too lazy to learn. The others are ISP port blocking, ISPs banning servers, and most ISPs having tiny upload speeds. Business class net service isn't required for personal site, so don't tell me you have to upgrade to business service, which isn't even available in a lot of residential zoned areas.
The issue isn't technical. But cultural and political.
The old days of the Wild West Web is gone or nearly out. Freedom is at a cost of safety. Every new control that makes us safer chews up a Little bit of freedom. Any new freedom we obtain can adversely affect our safety.
Freedom is good. But so is Safety. There are some things at a small cost of freedom we can get a lot of safety. their are other that at a large cost of freedom we only get a little safety. So normally there should be a happy balance.
However freedom once given is much harder to regain then safety lost. And cultures and people in general when have their safety threaten will more likely react without fully measuring their decision, as they feel the need to protect themselves.
Back in the 1990's the Web was free, there was all kinds of stuff that you can get anonymously and without much consequences. But early on reputable institutions avoided it AOL/Prodigy/MSN because it was too unsafe, and if they were going to have people pay for service they needed a closed garden to protect themselves. However the Web Caught on and Institutions were mostly forced to get in, and the every man started using it.
The 1990's web had an average level of education of a Jr. in College. Then with average Joe getting in it went down to an 8th grade education. This meant we couldn't trust common sense to protect people. So people ended up downloading viruses/spyware and just general crap that killed their $2,000 computers. So they got angry and then went to more centralized locations Google that weeded out the "Dark Web" then to Facebook which was a self contained ecosystem. In general people are much safe now. I am no longer getting called in a panic because someone had corrupted their PC with millions of popup adds.
This happened at a cost of our safety. Now with a few key site hubs, like Facebook information about us is never easier to get to.
If we want a decentralized web again, we need our culture to realize it will no longer be as safe and accept that.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
long before the Web. You can't say they should have seen it coming, because it had already come, decades before.
Allowing deep cross-linking of images was the fatal mistake. If they hadn't done that, probably no one would ever have come up with all the abuses that followed.
It's so damn simple. Keep ads on the same server as the site. Make them part of the site, under control of the site owner, who will lose his users if he doesn't police the ads. Don't support anything else in the protocol. Don't even put the idea of doing it any other way into PHB's heads.
And no cookies, except for session ID. Don't even have the concept of a "cookie" but have a header line for session ID.
But that's all too late now.