
Achtung: Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize - Sir_Cmpwn
https://drewdevault.com/2018/03/24/Decentralize-decentralize-decentralize.html
======
osteele
The post repeats the myth “There is no promise that a company can make to its
users that outweighs the fiduciary duty that obligates them to maximize
profits by any means. The only defense of this is legislation and consumer
choice.”

As a counterpoint, see, for example, [1], that quotes the Supreme Court Hobby
Lobby decision[2]: “Modern corporate law does not require for-profit
corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do
not.”

The argument in the OP article stands without this — it is nearly as bad that
companies have _incentives_ to misbehave, as if they were _legally obligated_
to — but there is also room for improvement at the margin, if employees and
customers understand that corporate actions are management’s choice; their
hands are not tied.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-
co...](https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/04/16/what-are-corporations-
obligations-to-shareholders/corporations-dont-have-to-maximize-profits)

[2]
[https://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&v...](https://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=000&invol=13-354)

~~~
Barrin92
It might not be strictly true in a legal sense, but it hits close to the mark
in the case of facebook et al. Their business is the elimination of privacy
and selling off the data and attention of their users. It simply would not be
a billion dollar business otherwise.

Hobby Lobby or a car manufacturer might find a way to combine civic duties
with corporate profits, social media will never be able to. Their entire
business model is based on squeezing as much value as possible out of the
limited attention span of consumers.

~~~
osteele
A company gets to decide what business it's in (Facebook and Google have each
explored several), what its ethics are, and how these ethics apply. For
example, Google is in a substantially similar business, but it is interesting
to contrast Facebook's pattern of behavior with Google's.

Google isn't a paragon, and it's alarming (to me) that Google is building a
universal panopticon too. But these two companies, despite the similarity in
their business models, appear very different with respect not just to how they
collect data, what they collect, how much they sell, and what breaches or not-
breach breaches have occurred, but also how forthcoming they are about all
this, and whether they act like they've got something to hide. Facebook used
tricks[1] to run their iPhone app in the background when requested not to, and
only backed this out when the new iOS “battery shaming” feature outed them;
they uploaded Android call history with text that mislead the user into
thinking they were just uploading contacts. Google has made mis-steps and
knows a scary amount about us, but I don't recall this kind of systematic
boundary-pushing and post-discovery obfuscation and denial.

Or contrast Lyft and Uber.

These differences in behavior aren't from a difference in business models.
They are from differences in “corporate DNA”, or culture. Zuckerberg was a
teen when he wrote these messages[2], but most people I know don't speak or
act like that even at that age. Some people advance to a different moral stage
even at the end of, or after, their teen years; it looks from a longer pattern
of evidence, only some of it recent, like Zuckerberg and his company may not
have done so. Yes, business incentives are a factor, but explanations don't
begin and end with “money made me do it”.

[1] [http://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-background-
data/](http://pxlnv.com/linklog/facebook-background-data/)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-
se...](http://www.businessinsider.com/exclusive-mark-zuckerbergs-secret-ims-
from-college-2012-5)

~~~
Barrin92
That sounds to me like rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. Corporate
culture is the direct result of the business model of the company. You won't
see facebook promote decentralised privacy, it's not going to happen just like
you won't find anti-oil protests within the management of Exxon-Mobile, or a
push for rail based public transport within the headquarters of Uber.

Corporate culture is a structure build on-top of their business, nobody has
ever changed their business to adapt to their culture, they just get a
rebranding and hire a PR team if the two happen to run into conflict.

~~~
warkdarrior
> Corporate culture is the direct result of the business model of the company.

That's clearly incorrect. Both Walmart and Costco are in the same retail
business, but their corporate cultures are quite distinct.

~~~
d0lph
Those are pretty different though, Costco is a "membership-only warehouse
club" who sells through wholesale.

~~~
WorldMaker
So is Sam's Club and that's owned by Walmart?

~~~
d0lph
So is their corporate culture different from Walmart's?

------
CookieMon
I would like to decentralize, but projects like Masterdon are not the way
forward.

If you want to decentralize the servers then you MUST also decouple user
accounts from the server they signed up with. Today, if you switch to
Masterdon (or perhaps someone you know is running a diaspora node), everything
appears to go well until a year from now when the volunteer who was providing
the server loses interest or moves on, and your account/photos/journal/social
network vanishes. So you start over by creating a new account with another
server... tick tick tick, gone. Rinse repeat.

Centralized services don't have this problem - even myspace is still up today,
meaning this killer problem isn't on our radar when we evaluate things like
Masterdon, or promote it. We don't realize this is a temporary arrangement
with a clock ticking down to complete account destruction.

Hubzilla is the only decentralized social media project I've encountered that
tackled this problem and sort of solved it (they call it "nomadic identity").
I hear that needing an architecture able to solve this problem was why when
Friendica was gaining popularity, the guy behind it realized the whole concept
was a lost cause and subsequently started again with what would later be
called Hubzilla.

Regardless of whether Hubzilla itself is your cup of tea, separating user
accounts from volunteer run servers is necessary before centralized social
networks can be challenged, otherwise you just inoculate people against ever
leaving the central networks again.

(not to suggest this is the only necessary thing, or only hard nut to crack)

~~~
Tepix
Btw, it's spelled "Mastodon".

> _If you want to decentralize the servers then you MUST also decouple user
> accounts from the server they signed up with._

I somewhat disagree. Email is a decentralized service that works well and its
accounts are coupled to the server you signed up with. It merely requires you
to do some research when picking a node² or running your own.

Ideally there would be some provision in the protocol that allows you to
transfer your content and notify your friends whenever there is an address
change. You could do this with a digital signature. You could also bolt on a
decentralized identity that's on the blockchain, e.g. register a domain with
namecoin (which is completely decentralized) and point it to your current
social identity. Problem solved¹.

\--

¹ to be fair, registering a domain with namecoin is not trivial at the moment.

² perhaps pick one that requires payment, that creates an obligation to
provide the service

~~~
daveFNbuck
I didn't do much research when picking a node and now I'm locked in to Gmail
way more than I am to Facebook. If I stop using Facebook, I lose access to a
few people I'm not actually talking to anyway. If I stop using Gmail, not only
do people lose the ability to contact me, it also breaks my account on most
other services I use online.

~~~
Tepix
Yes. It's convenient but it's bad for privacy and locks you in. I'm not using
any SSO for that reason.

------
panarky
I see this form of argument a lot:

 _Companies have an {obligation, fiduciary duty} to maximize value for
shareholders, therefore they have no choice but to do horrible things to
{users, customers, the environment, civic institutions}_

Presumably, decentralization, federation and open source will eliminate the
profit-maximizing corporation, thereby stopping all the horrible things.

The problem with this reasoning is that it only addresses one side of a two-
sided transaction. The corporation doesn't transact with itself. The other
side of the transaction is the user.

What if every user was willing to pay $5 per month for a "clean Facebook"
without ads, without surveillance, without psychological profiling, without
selling private data to malevolent third parties?

If every user paid $5 a month, Facebook could continue their current business
with the best computer science talent and a global network of data centers.

If every user paid $5 a month, Facebook's shareholders would do fabulously
well.

But of course, that's a ridiculous proposition. Only an infinitesimal number
of Facebook's 2.2 billion users are willing to pay for the service.

Since a social network only has value to a user when all the user's friends
and family are also on the network, a Facebook that only has a few people
willing to pay won't be very useful.

Advocates of decentralized social networks need to explain (1) who will pay,
and (2) how to get enough users to make the network valuable to a typical
user.

Until we figure that out, we're stuck with social networks that are free for
users, monetized with advertising, and regulated by the state.

~~~
AHMagic
We already have decentralization in three primary forms of communication:
phone, mail, and e-mail. They worked great in 1998. Why can't they work great
in 2018?

~~~
yorwba
There are now phone plans that are paid for by selling your data and sending
you spam SMS. There are e-mail providers that operate similarly, and most
e-mail addresses are registered with one of them. Those things don't really
work for snail mail, but few people use it anymore, because sending a letter
costs more and they have come to expect communication not to cost money.

The formerly decentralized services are no longer so decentralized since "free
of charge, paid for by data and ads" has shown itself to be a viable business
model that users love. (Until they understand what's happening, at least.)

~~~
AHMagic
Your point is valid, but we still live in a world where we can call Verizon
phones with AT&T phones; send e-mails to Gmail users with Yahoo; and send mail
with UPS instead of USPS. With those means of communication, we still have
control over our providers.

There is no control within Facebook's ecosystem. Similar with AOL, if you
don't use Facebook, you're necessarily out of the loop, and I don't feel
comfortable with that.

~~~
jake-low
> and send mail with UPS instead of USPS

Not to detract from your point, just thought you might be interested to know
that USPS actually has a legally-protected partial monopoly on the right to
carry letters (18 U.S. Code § 1696).

An exemption was added in 1979 allowing private carriers to deliver "extremely
urgent" mail. This is why UPS and FedEx express mail envelopes bear that text
on their front.

Apart from this exemption, USPS, FedEx and the like are only allowed to
deliver 'parcels', not 'letters', though I'm not sure where the distinction is
legally defined.

More info:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes)

~~~
AHMagic
Interesting, thanks.

------
tmikaeld
I think that these points have to click before people move from FB:

 _Simple_ -> Start the app and commicate (on all devices)

 _Minimum features_ -> Feed, Chat, Groups, Events, Friends

 _Fast_ -> No one will use a slow App

 _Ownership_ -> All self-owned data can be removed from everywhere

 _Decentralized_ -> And no one else can remove your data

 _Privacy_ -> With simple sharing control

So far, I've not seen anything that has all of these.

~~~
thewarrior
Also :

\- Handle DMCA notices and law enforcement requests for taking down illegal
content.

\- Hackers compromising accounts.

\- Private data being compromised because of Wordpress like security bugs.

\- Spam / Bots spreading junk and fake news.

\- Permanently deleting content.

\- Concerns around terrorism, grooming, child pornography etc

These problems will become major headaches at scale.

~~~
kodablah
I'm not sure many people require those to move from FB.

~~~
AlphaWeaver
No, but some of these may be legally required in order to operate as a
competitor to Facebook.

~~~
errantmind
I don't think anyone is saying the alternative should operate as a business
competitor to facebook. I think the idea would be for the service to be fully
decentralized, where no one has the power to remove anything

~~~
zaarn
The advantage of Mastodon is that people _do_ have the power to moderate and
take things down.

But only on instances they are administrators off.

So while I can take down illegal content on my instance I can't go to the
japanese instance and ask them to stop posting all those anime girls. They
follow their own rules and if I don't like them I can just not allow their
content on my server.

If you want to follow both my server and the japanese server you'll have to
find an instance that doesn't ban either of us or run your own.

(Though I trust that there are a good number of lightly administrated
instances that it'll be easy to find one before you're forced to run your own)

------
kpcyrd
Decentralization is mostly about power distribution, it doesn't imply privacy.
There are a couple of decentralized projects that are worse for privacy (for
the sake of decentralization) and ended up being used for OSINT.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I don't imply it's about privacy. I talk entirely about power distribution in
this article.

~~~
redthrow
Do people who run the centralised, private Signal app have more power over the
user than people who run decentralised, non-private Mastodon instances?

Or do Mastodon people say it's strictly for broadcasting and encourage people
to use proper end-to-end encrypted messaging apps for private communication?

~~~
tortasaur
The latter.

------
danielrhodes
This article like so many others perpetuates this idea that Facebook and
others are selling your data. You can more or less disprove they are doing
this with a little critical thought.

Facebook has a disincentive to sell data: if they sold user data, they no
longer have exclusive control over it and somebody else can profit off their
efforts in its collection. The value of Facebook is they have lots of eyeballs
and they have lots of data on what those eyeballs like to see. If they simply
sold this to an advertiser, why would the advertiser want to come back and pay
them in the future? What they actually do is let advertisers target on this
data, but the advertisers never actually have direct access - they can only
assume that the users they target are ones that have the attributes they
requested.

So what is Facebook selling? The same thing any other media platform, from
newspapers to TV, is selling: your attention. Are you the product? Kind of.
But just like any other marketplace, Facebook knows that if their platform
doesn't provide value you're not going to come back and then neither will the
advertisers.

Personally I think Google has played this balance far worse, by comparison:
their interaction time with their users is so small that they have gotten more
and more spammy to wedge into the little bit of your attention they get.
Facebook gets a lot of user time and thus can be far more judicious on when
and how they show you advertisements.

~~~
crowbahr
Except you're exactly wrong in that Facebook has been directly selling data
while Google has not. Cambridge Analytica was crunching specific user data,
not just buying aggregate targeted ads.

That's what this whole uproar is about: _they 're allowing wholesale data
access, not aggregated targets_ through their API.

Google, whom you criticize, is the one actually only selling aggregates.

~~~
mesozoic
Are you sure they are not? We only knew for sure Facebook was once there was a
whistle blower.

------
danbruc
_Companies like Facebook, publicly traded, have a legal obligation to maximize
profits for their shareholders. Private companies with investors are similarly
obligated._

 _There is no promise that a company can make to its users that outweighs the
fiduciary duty that obligates them to maximize profits by any means._

Not true. [1]

[1] [https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-
co...](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/8146/are-u-s-companies-
legally-obligated-to-maximize-profits-for-shareholders)

~~~
devmunchies
Even if it were true, couldn’t a company argue that they want to put users
before shareholders to prevent a public fallout like we are seeing with
Facebook? Which could be seen as risk management.

~~~
danbruc
If it were true, then there would have to exist at least some framework to
judge what counts as maximizing profits. Maximizing the profit this quarter
may require a vastly different course of actions than maximizing the profit
over the next ten years. So depending on exactly what would fall under
maximizing profits, this may or may not be a valid argument

But fortunately we don't have to worry about that, the people writing laws are
not all idiots and it would be a pretty stupid idea to put requirements into
laws that are essentially impossible to fulfill due to a lack of psychic
powers and time machines.

------
kodablah
Lots of people are working on this problem. I too am even trying to spin up
something simple on top of Tor v3 hidden services.

I think too many implementations are focused on the wrong things. Too many
implementations are hung up on the distributed storage part. These can be
plugged into abstractions as new ones come about. In the meantime, just
because it says "decentralized" doesn't mean that pieces can't be centralized
on some people's computers. I think when most people say that they mean off
the cloud and into the home. Also, too few implementations care enough about
anonymity.

------
downrightmike
Here's a good resource for setting up self-hosted alternatives:
[https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-
selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted)

~~~
mycloud
There are also projects like [https://yunohost.org/](https://yunohost.org/)
and [https://cloudron.io/](https://cloudron.io/) which aim to lower the
technical requirements to get started with selfhosting as well as lower the
ongoing maintenance burden.

------
HIPisTheAnswer
Grep'd the articles _and_ the comments (thus far) and I'm amazed that nobody
has mentioned matrix,

Check it out - matrix.org

PS: Even more importantly, the Host Identity Protocol. The US army has been
using it for over 10 years. If that doesnt speak volumes ...

~~~
zaarn
Matrix still has too many problems. Synapse takes a buttload of memory to run
(there is even warning in the README.md), all the clients are a joke and E2E
encryption isn't part of the protocol, worse, it's an optional setting, not
even default for private chats. Last I checked E2E isn't even available for
group chats.

Plus, the author talks about Mastodon, which solves an entirely different
problem than matrix to begin with.

Matrix doesn't even support ActivityPub, which is basically the W3C approved
standard for federated social activity, it should be easy for Matrix to
integrate into the fediverse.

Until then I won't consider matrix as a serious solution to anything.

~~~
mxuribe
To be fair, matrix's synapse server was always only supposed to be the
reference server...reference servers aren't always built for top-notch
performance, just for admins/implementors to get understanding of protocol,
etc. To address performance, the team is busy building a matrix server in Go;
see [https://github.com/matrix-org/dendrite](https://github.com/matrix-
org/dendrite)

I do agree that mastodon and matrix - of which I'm a fan of both - solve for
different scenarios. Mastodon replaces twitter; sort of short social media
bursts/broadcasts. While matrix replaces slack (and other chat platforms like
xmpp). I've always seen matrix as a modern-day irc; also allowing expansion
and enhancement via plugins, and programmability like good ol' irc is/was.

ActivityPub was only recently approved, so can't expect every project to
instantly support it; though to be fair it has been on many projects' radar
well before its approval by w3c. I truthfully haven't followed the latest
matrix news, so not sure if support for activitypub is coming soon. I do feel
that supporting activityPub really make it that much more powerful of a
protocol AND platform...but i'm sure that's not a trivial matter.

If you haven't played around with clients for matrix (such as the Riot
clients), i suggest you give it a try. Riot keeps getting better and better
with each new release.

------
snvzz
Mastodon does everything signed and unencrypted. This includes followers-only
and private messages.

I can't in good faith recommend Mastodon.

~~~
kodablah
Pardon my naivete towards Mastodon, but unencrypted at rest (i.e. an
implementation thing) or in transit (i.e. TLS not supported in the protocol)?

~~~
detaro
Not end-to-end encrypted. TLS is recommended (or even required, not sure), but
the instances involved can see the contents of private messages.

~~~
kodablah
Out of curiosity, if the messages themselves were encrypted externally, would
this solve most people's concerns? Or is the metadata that is leaked (I assume
to/from, timestamp, size) also unacceptable? Also curious for those that have
this beef with Mastodon, would transit anonymity help alleviate some of the
concerns w/ data transparency?

~~~
snvzz
Note metadata includes where someone is posting from.

Connect to post something without encryption means your location is revealed
to anybody observing the network.

This is indeed dangerous.

~~~
daveid
>Connect to post something without encryption means your location is revealed
to anybody observing the network.

Where are you taking this from? You think connecting to your Mastodon server
you have an account on somehow broadcasts to the whole network?

~~~
snvzz
If a message is sent through an unencrypted connection, anybody sniffing the
network gets:

\- Your message

\- Your account name

\- Your ip address (thus location)

\- The time at which this happens

If the message is sent through an encrypted connection, but the federation
connection between the servers is unencrypted, a powerful enough observer
could still deduce the above.

~~~
zaarn
A powerful enough observer will be able to observe two of the three properties
no matter if TLS is used or not.

Most Mastodon servers have TLS, exceptions usually included instances deployed
to localhost.

Mastodon doesn't technically require it but all clients I've seen do and the
web interface relies on some features that are only available in a trusted
context (HTTPS and localhost)

I don't really see the problem though, which instance you sign up to is up to
you. You _can_ sign up to a HTTP-only instance if you want.

The privacy of your data is in the hands of your local administrator more than
any powerful observer (and servers you send messages too, like with email, for
which all your complains are valid too since it functions similarly).

~~~
snvzz
>Mastodon doesn't technically require it

That's a serious issue. If plaintext is allowed, then expect getting people to
downgrade to plaintext will be trivial, because "it just works".

It's a serious mistake, but a well understood one by today. Mastodon is
relatively new, and they should have known better than to do this.

~~~
zaarn
There is no downgrade. Mastodon will in it's default configuration not allow
non-HTTPS connections. The protocol doesn't require it, so Mastodon
technically doesn't. With a few code changes you can do that.

So yes, Mastodon _did know better_ but it's not an inherent property of
ActivityPub to use HTTPS.

------
coldtea
> _We don’t want to have our people’s opinions radicalized_

Why not? Not a fan of the 60s?

------
austincheney
Weird... I always thought Google was inescapable, but I cannot get a single
data point to display on that tracking map. I should note I am currently (and
frequently) signed into Google and Google maps normally seems to know where
home is.

~~~
ken
Same. At /maps/timeline it says "Location history is off", so I guess that's
something that needs to be enabled.

------
krupan
Facebook should split into Facebook the aggregator and Facebook the content
hoster. You could talk about a third piece that is Facebook the content
provider, which is for providing things like gifs, templates, memes, emoji,
games, and other stuff like that. Because Facebook hasn't completely broken
from open web standards those types of content providers already exist today.

Aggregators would be where you go to set up your friend list and see your
feed. It could look and feel like Facebook does now. It would have an open
standard protocol that content hosters would use if they wanted to be
aggregated. This could still be an add driven business, but subscription, self
hosted, and DIY solutions could exist too.

Content hosters could either charge a monthly hosting fee, or they could serve
up their own adds. Self hosted and DIY solutions could also exist.

The big benefit to this would of course be the competition. Since it's an open
standard anyone could be a content host, and anyone could be an aggregator.

To make extra sure there is competition, and this could come in a phase two
after the initial splitting up of Facebook, there should be open standards for
exporting and importing friends, follows, likes, etc. to and from aggregators,
and open standards for importing and exporting content from the hosters.

Speaking of follows and likes, there could also be aggregator aggregators
(AAs). People could opt in to publicly and anonymously share their likes and
follows and the AAs would consume those and report on trends that cross
aggregator boundaries. Anonymity could be much more protected this way while
still giving us that interesting information about what is trending.

One tricky part of this is how do I as a content author only allow my friends
to see certain posts of mine? It would have to be with encryption. My content
provider could keep public keys of my friends and only my friends (well, their
aggregators) would be able to decrypt my posts using my friends' private keys.
I can see some challenges and holes in this, but it doesn't seem any worse
overall than how Facebook protects privacy now. Open implementations and peer
review could get us to better-than-Facebook privacy quickly.

------
darklajid
Tangential, but what is it with people using German words, randomly? "Achtung"
here, I saw some (US, afaict) people on Twitter try to establish "#forwärts"
yesterday..

Is there a connection between any recent event and German(y) that I missed?

~~~
qwerty456127
Pourquoi-Pas?

Some words, phrases and symbols from foreign languages can become
internationally-famous so almost everybody can understand them and also gain
meme-like semantic self-emphasize.

¡No pasarán!

ॐ

PS: I have also heard it's quite popular among French metal bands to use
German in their names to sound scarier (e.g. Blut Aus Nord).

------
mrhappyunhappy
Or just build a dapp on eos and solve all the issues at once : decentralize,
data ownership, users can make money by choosing what they want to share with
advertisers, everyone is essentially an owner.

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
Let users generate tokens based on how much data they choose to share.
Advertisers purchase tokens and proceeds are split between token holders based
on their share of total tokens. Everyone wins - users are in full control,
advertisers reach an audience, everyone gets paid.

------
erikb
This is nice, but also naive. The current battle against data grabs is not
about getting rid of data grabs, it's about giving the government control over
data grabs, so they can compete with China and Russia when it comes to knowing
their citizen. Facebooks problem is that they don't want to give the
government this kind of access. So now they get negative PR, regulatory
probes, etc.

Yes, decentralization would be the right solution. But this will always be
discouraged by governments and corps alike, basically by everybody who has
already lots of power and wants to have more power over your life.

As always you as a single person can choose to either be part of the ant
swarm, giving someone else all power over you, but by that sharing in the ant
swarms gains and luxuries as long as you are loyal, or by being self reliable
but therefore also really be required to build everything by yourself that you
really need and want to have.

If you decide for the first part there is really no reason not to give the
person who has power over you also access to all your data. It's part of how a
group works. And if the people at the top don't like you anymore then they
will find ways to kick you out no matter what you do or keep secret. On the
other hand its also part of the deal that the people above you don't use their
power to peek into your life as long as you stay loyal and support their
goals.

So FB either needs to accept to only live on the fringe instead of being the
market dominator, or they need to accept that the government has bigger power
and yield to them.

The only thing I feel one needs to be wary about is parasites who wants to
keep the whole cake without sharing even a little bit with people below them.
Trump is one such example. With these people you can't do either of the two
paths, there's only the battle for who's stronger. And if you are like most
people you don't really enjoy being in a constant struggle for survival.

It might very well be that Zuck is fighting against Trump here, and then
that's the parasite situation and all Zuck could do is move out of the US,
give up that market until Trump is gone again.

------
amelius
But how is federation going to protect my privacy? E.g. will my friends list
not end up on different servers of unknown origin?

~~~
Tepix
Only your server needs to know your friends list. Unless you decide to publish
this information to your friends. You are right that you are putting a certain
amount of trust your friends' server choices. That's why having several
trusted, non-commercial entities that run these nodes is important.

------
marknadal
Yeah, Mastodon and others are Federated which means the same thing that
happened to email (gmail, which everybody uses) will happen there.

Instead, we should make the developer tools EASY to create P2P (not federated)
decentralized apps. This is what we are working on:

[http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-
wit...](http://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-
with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8)

Also, d.tube is a pretty good decentralized YouTube clone, worth a mention.

------
redthrow
It would be more convincing if the author had their Mastodon account info at
the bottom, not their Github / Twitter account.

Also I'd like to hear the author's thoughts on GPG's viability, as discussed
below:

[https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/](https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/)

 _Eventually I realized that when I receive a GPG encrypted email, it simply
means that the email was written by someone who would voluntarily use GPG. I
don’t mean someone who cares about privacy, because I think we all care about
privacy. There just seems to be something particular about people who try GPG
and conclude that it’s a realistic path to introducing private communication
in their lives for casual correspondence with strangers._

~~~
jdiez17
The link next to the bird icon is sircmpwn's Mastodon profile, not his Twitter
account.

~~~
redthrow
> not his Twitter account

I stand corrected. I'll have a look at Mastodon.

