
Achieving Scale in the Decentralized Web - pfraze
http://pfrazee.github.io/blog/achieving-scale
======
ch
So all that's missing with the decentralized web is a centralized service to
aggregate the decentralized streams?

I don't see what is being addressed here other than Twitter didn't make the
client be your web server (push vs pull).

Sure the decentralized approach liberates the data. But without critical mass
what good is that data?

Maybe the example is just not compelling enough to illustrate the real point
here?

~~~
pfraze
The decentralized approach removes a hard binding between the app provider and
the user. When you post to Twitter, you add content to their site. When you
post using the P2P web, you add content to a site you own. You retain
ownership of the content; the content URL remains independent of any service;
and the content remains local. You can move a P2P site to a new frontend
application, and you can switch to a different aggregator for a global view.
For that matter, you can skip the aggregator service, and use the pure P2P
arch, and even crawl locally.

It's quite a bit more than "mak[ing] the client be your web server." It's
about independent publishing.

~~~
rakoo
While the decorrelation of user data and application provider is important, I
feel like the proposition is relying a bit too much on a centralized service.
Perhaps reusing some ideas of OStatus would be helpful ? Something like that:

\- UserA starts a feed at dat://UserA, and publishes stuff in Activity Streams
format

\- UserB follows dat://UserA

\- UserB comments on UserA feed: it creates dat://CommentsFromUserBonUserA,
and publishes a comment in Activity Streams format there

\- UserB pings UserA telling them about dat://CommentsFromUserBonUserA: UserA
is naturally interested, so they just subscribe to this feed, and republishes
stuff into dat://UserA

\- UserC subscribes to dat://UserA. They get UserA's posts, along with UserB's
comments, without every subscribing to dat://UserB. All activity about UserA
is in one place, completely under UserA control, with no dependency on a
centralized service

\- Same can be done for mentions of UserA

This obviously assumes pinging is easy, which it isn't. Perhaps some polling
of a DHT ? It also doesn't solve the issue of hashtags... but it makes
dependency on centralized service less important

~~~
pfraze
A purely p2p ping would help with non-centralized discovery, but it isn't
easy. I'd be receptive to a proposal.

Web Crawling is a reliable federated system that doesn't impede user freedoms.
The crawlers are so fungible that anything centralized about them doesn't
really concern me.

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harryf
> There’s no walled garden for Web crawlers. Their datasets can be freely
> replicated from the public Web.

The same can largely be said of the normal web when it comes to Google, but
that doesn't alter the fact that they have a monopoly. Brand recognition,
economies of scale and similar underpin their position. Can a decentralized
web prevent monopoly?

~~~
pfraze
I guess we could ask Google to stop outperforming all their competitors.

Two thoughts on this:

\- Maybe someday we'll find a way to do fully distributed services reliably.
None of the global blockchain solutions are good enough, by my standards. What
we _can_ do is remove the friction to creating competition, which the P2P
stack and other techniques (like the old Web Intents spec) are for.

\- I would like to see home servers become a thing. Put ten terrabytes in the
corner, run a bunch of crawlers on it, include some non-public services. You
can't beat google on searching the web as it exists right now, but google cant
search private data.

------
pudo
"If we put all economics aside, it's obvious the web should be organised this
and this way..."

What I'd really like to see is decentralised web proponents (of which I'm no
longer one) put out some ideas for how their model is going to support
economic activity of any interesting kind. Yes, selling advertising by
centralising eyeballs is shit, but show me something better.

The alternative is to either wait for capitalism to finally be over (spoiler
alert: they're planning another season, starting January 20), or to get a
second gig as a gardener to fund my web habit.

~~~
pfraze
We shouldn't let unresolved economics stop us, but here's what I've written
previously:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Rad_Decentralization/comments/5j878...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Rad_Decentralization/comments/5j8782/beaker_an_experimental_p2p_browser/dbfagy0/)

~~~
lewisl9029
> Subscription services will still be an option, even in a P2P Web, but we are
> trying to reduce the natural monopoly of the dataset (no walled gardens) so
> that might make affect service revenue by increasing competition. I'm not
> sure how destabilizing it will be.

If a service can be destabilized by the lack of a walled garden to lock in
users, then it's in society's best interest for that service to be
destabilized, because that means there are other competing services that users
want to use, but can't because of the size of the existing service's network
effects.

The status quo of services competing mainly by the sizes of their network
effects is completely hostile to innovation, experimentation, and user choice.
Any efforts that could disrupt this status quo has my full support!

~~~
pfraze
Completely agree

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pmlnr
NNTP? Wasn't that kind of a solution for this?

