
The Vision for Decentralized Web - brisky
http://www.tautvilas.lt/the-vision-for-a-more-decentralized-web
======
mStreamTeam
This a problem I’ve something I’ve been working on my free time. The biggest
problem with the decentralized web right now is that setting up a server is a
huge pain and your average person lacks the knowledge and resources to do so.

I’ve been working on a simple music streaming server called mStream. The goal
is to make a server even my mom could setup.

I publish binaries for every major OS which means you don’t need to rent a
server or buy more hardware. You can just run it on your home computer.
mStream is configurable entirely through the GUI, so you do not need to open a
terminal to get it running.

The hard part is making that server easily accessible on the internet. Setting
up SSL and dealing with NATs still requires tech knowledge. I’ve been making
some beer money selling hole punching software, but that still requires me to
host a server so other people can access their servers.

~~~
x3haloed
Your first paragraph is absolutely correct. The issue I see with your solution
is that there's no fault tolerance, so the service is likely to be unreliable,
and then of course there's dynamic IP which means it will be difficult to
connect to from the public internet.

Honestly, the real issue is getting people to pay for things. Running web
services has a cost, but it's hard to "see" it. If you're mom is going to want
that server to be available 24/7, then she has to pay for a computer to run it
on and an internet connection (which she has probably already done) as well as
the electricity to keep it all powered on 24/7, and that doesn't add any fault
tolerance to the system. If you can convince her that all that cost it worth
it to stream music, then why can't you convince her spend a similar amount to
let someone else deal with the hassle and get better reliability?

The best solution is to simply pay a service to do the hosting and take
advantage of economies of scale to provide an always-on service at a great
value.

"free" services that aren't actually free are the problem.

~~~
x3haloed
In fact I would be interested to see if it's possible to protect consumers by
regulating marketing of software and services as "free", where it can only
done if strict data handling policies are applied.

------
asdkhadsj
I'll be interested to see where these distributed trends go. I too have been
working on something to solve a problem I face; "information" sharing and
storage. Fundamentally I want a public wikipedia focused around small pieces
of information _(though I 'm still toying/dogfooding with the UX)_, but more
importantly I don't think it should be a centralized entity.

Oddly though there's something I don't like about building on top of a
blockchain. It feels strangely walled off. A distributed system with all the
problems of a closed off startup. I'm likely being unfair, but I'm just saying
how I perceive them. Despite being interested in this area, including working
on it personally, I just have no interest in joining one of these blockchain
things. I don't honestly understand what I or my hypothetical users are
getting out of it.

I really like the Scuttlebutt protocol in concept; it feels very.. "email-
like". Something that is a mix of federation and self-hosting. Scuttle or
maybe ActivityPub seem to have a good feel for decentralizing. Blockchain _(as
I 've seen so far)_ however.. eh. Am I being unfair / short sighted?

~~~
megous
Some decentralized discovery method for interesting tech content would be
nice. Something simple, like if you could put a list of websites you like to:

    
    
        https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/recommended.list
        -------
        https://friend1.domain/ Blogs about electronics
        https://friend2.domain/ Blogs about knitting
        -------
    
        https://friend1.domain/.well-known/distributed/recommended.list
        -------
        https://my.domain/ Blogs about hacking SBCs
        https://friend3.domain/ Nice website
        -------
    
    

And you could write a bot that would walk through this, avoid loops, and
construct a graph, and give you a search or RSS. RSS feeds could be also
discoverable.

    
    
        https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/my-feeds.txt
        --------
        https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/feed-blog.xml My blog posts
        https://my.domain/.well-known/distributed/feed-announce.xml My announcements
        --------
    

Just something that helps with discovery of interesting content in a
decentralized way, outside of search engines, aggregators, HTML pages, etc.
You would be able to select search distnace from certain domains, blacklist
domains, etc.

And if you assume person == domain, this would build an open, distributed,
searchable social graph (of people with domains :) and something to say).
You'd be able to see weights of domains by how many people recommend them,
etc.

There would be no central storage for the graph.

~~~
brisky
That is something I have been thinking about too. I imagine this could work as
a distributed decentralized db where you publish some link and sign it with
your domain key. A client could easily select the most submitted urls from DB
and also 'follow' certain domains(users) that submit the most interesting
urls. I would love to discuss and validate this idea more.

~~~
megous
Yeah, one problem is that on the current internet, if people are not
constantly posting low value crap on social media, they are hard to discover,
and they're ranked down just for inactivity. But this system would support
ranking just on the number of domain recommendations, and people would be able
to make tools to do their own ranking (eg. how many people I recommend
recommend domain X would be my rank for domain X,...), etc.

But I think, it would need to be decentralized, to avoid single DB somewhere
that could be abused and manipulated, or lost.

But if you have to use a tool to read the graph from the web yourself, and
people have to upload recommendations to their own server, and have them
directly associated with their domain, that may encourage saner behavior, too.

If someone wants to make a centralized public search for this graph, so that
people who don't see value in building their own index/ranking could search
for content too, that would be possible.

But the key aspect would need to be the distributed nature. It would not need
any cryptography either, just a bunch of text files at the simplest level.

The graph would be out there on web servers, the creativity would be in
creating the tools to scrape it, rank stuff, and searching through it. And
that could even be done in some incremental way (without the need to scrape it
all at once).

~~~
brisky
Totally agree. Ping me on connect@tautvilas.lt if you would like to discuss
this idea more and try to develop it :)

------
miki123211
the problem with decentralization is that, for an average Joe, it's just a
bunch of loonies wearing tin foil hats who have something to hide, and
besides, what has Facebook done to me (average Joe) personally? People,
ultimately, don't care about privacy that much, not until they see obvious
consequences of corps having their data that affect them greatly in their
lives. Privacy against employers/old school friends/fiancees is something they
care about, that's why Snapchat, Instagram Stories and private groups are
replacing the public newsfeed. Decentralization must offer some _clear_
advantages over fb, that an average person might appreciate. Those advantages
must offset the UX problems, of which there are plenty, most of them pretty
hard to fix. In my opinion, the worst one is the ubiquitous use of smartphones
over PCs, as any decentralized stuff on smartphones is a nightmare, mostly due
to systems relying on servers for stuff like push and background app refresh.
This is particularly important on iOs. Also true decentralization, NOT
federation, with checks and balances, possibly with nodes that only connect to
other nodes that have signed a sort of license / legal agreement, is the only
way to ensure it won't turn into mail, AKA one big Gmail that doesn't care,
and the rest which doesn't matter.

~~~
thepete2
Good point. I think that's the fundamental problem why most people don't care
about internet privacy or mass surveillance. It's invisible and very easy to
pretend it isn't there. I'm not sure what can be done about that.

~~~
miki123211
To be honest, I don't care that much personally. I know the theoretical risks,
but the things I get for not caring are just too great.

------
a3n
Chicken and egg: Why would anyone leave Facebook/Twitter/CorporateTool for
this or any other competitor?

Also, what's to prevent this from being boiled down to another set of
Facebook-like/Twitter-like/CorporateTools, just as the early web was contorted
into today's interactive TV?

------
sandov
I would like to know how many people still use the web in comparison to how
many people use the Internet. My guess would be that normal people are moving
to using specific mobile apps for everything they need.

~~~
friedger
Some of the Blockstack apps work on mobile as well (I haven't tested them all
but a saw some good progressive web app designs).

------
ilaksh
Personally I think that the most practical decentralization solutions are
going to be p2p.

And also I think the big challenge we have now is for people to really work
together and support some of the ideas out there. There are actually a very
large number of projects in this area. Most of them are both fairly useful and
also fairly unpopular.

I think the key is going to be to get some social momentum behind some of the
better solutions.

------
dadahackernews
Out of topics I'm in no way am a tech-savvy or Internet security/ piracy etc.
advocates by any means (although I've been looking into it). Q the article is
straightforward to follow and comprehend , that I have not once google up any
technical words. I like the writing in this.

------
marknadal
A blockchain is just trading one walled garden for another.

The true vision of the decentralized web is reduced friction by having no
gardens.

Sites like notabug.io (p2p Reddit) and d.tube (decentralized YouTube) are
doing this, no need to login, no pay wall.

You don't need a blockchain to decentralize, just stuff like WebTorrent or
GUN.

------
a3n
Gah!

While reading the article I followed links and secondary links, and searched,
and I now have 18 resulting tabs open.

The last one is this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=decentra...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=decentralized%20web&go=Go&ns0=1)

and the first link on that search result page is to TBL's Solid project, which
seems to be Yet Another DWeb effort.

Should I think of this, and other Dwebs, as an eventual global replace for
FBook et al?

Or is/will it be more like superpowered personal web pages? And will my aunt
have to run her own ... node?

~~~
brisky
Author here. I would like to address some of your questions:

1) The web is decentralized by design - we only need to 'upgrade it'

2) We need to create tools that empower people to leverage decentralized
capabilities of the web (so that there would be no need for aunt to run the
node)

3) I imagine we should not think about DWeb as some sort of FB replacement but
more of an ecosystem where people feel that they have a choice and don't need
to give away their content to facebook and other centralized platforms.

It is not clear how this has to be implemented but I feel that some more
privacy oriented and data-ownership oriented platforms will emerge in the next
five years.

~~~
a3n
> It is not clear how this has to be implemented but I feel that some more
> privacy oriented and data-ownership oriented platforms will emerge in the
> next five years.

Thanks. I look forward to opening another 18 tabs in five years. :)

------
stevedekorte
AFAICS, neither Blockstack or dpage.io are "decentralized". Note the login
page. Ask what happens if dpage.io site goes down. This is just a website. The
fact that this site uses Blockstack's centralized servers doesn't make it
"decentalized" any more than using AWS would.

~~~
muneeb
Muneeb from Blockstack here.

Dpage can be easily converted to a Desktop app. Most of the app logic is
client-side anyway and hosting at a domain is mostly for convenience.

Blockstack's "centralized servers" doesn't really fully capture the technology
at play here. The pointers to user data lockers are stored in the Stacks
blockchain, and users can host their own private encrypted data lockers where
they want. Blockstack PBC does provide a free service to host data lockers, as
a way to help bootstrap initial usage.

~~~
stevedekorte
It's fine to have some default servers for discovery bootstrapping (as Bitcoin
does) but any subset of Bitcoin nodes can go down without the network failing.
Is this true of Blockstack? If every Blockstack controlled or financed server
went down, would the network continue to work?

------
idlewords
They seem to have forgotten Step 0, create a viable business model that can
pay people.

~~~
friedger
Many Blockstack apps are about managing user data. If you want to make profit
from this data then you stay where we are at the moment with data
capitalism...

~~~
idlewords
You need money to build and run the apps. Source: I do this for a living.

~~~
jude-
The operational costs are considerably lower with Blockstack, since the app
doesn't host any user state (and in many cases, no state at all). Most apps
don't need a database of any kind -- all the business logic runs client-side
in the user's web browser.

~~~
tzfld
Event if operational costs going to be 0, it's not a viable business model to
not have profit.

~~~
jude-
I never claimed otherwise ;)

However, I will claim that the lower operational expenditure (and lower
liability for holding user data) makes profitability on-the-whole easier to
achieve in Blockstack-powered apps.

------
gfody
needs more vision. decentralization alone won't get us out of this nightmare.
even if we design the perfect replacement system, we'll never get the
mainstream off the old one - not without nuking Moab Utah.

------
pmlnr
> In order to implement the vision of decentralization, first we need empower
> people to easily publish and own their content on the web.

Why? If someone wants to publish, they'll learn what needs to be learnt. If
they are not willing to do so, they don't really want to publish, so why
empower them? (This is a serious question.)

~~~
tzfld
Because already have centralized services that easily do that. You can't
attract users without this.

------
akubera
I think equating "the internet" and "the web" is sloppy; the author does this
in the first paragraph and throughout the article.

> It [The Internet/The Web] took off with hackers running independent servers
> in their basements.

Is that true? Maybe if we're talking "the internet", things like MUD, IRC,
Usenet, or BBS servers were run by individuals, but looking at the "List of
websites founded before 1995"[1] it seems like there were big players outside
of labs/universities pretty early on in the history of The Web. I'm asking a
legitimate question here: was www successful (at least in part) due to
websites from individuals (let's maybe say "students on university networks"
rather than "hackers in basements") over large institutions (like the
magazines)?

> The informational landscape today shifted from people sharing personal
> websites to sharing social posts.

Again, I question the accuracy. Did more people have personal websites than
BBS/Usenet/Web-Forum accounts?

Regarding the dpage.io site this article is promoting:

> As you can see, there are no ads, no clutter, only information that was
> created by the user.

This is a problem I think the "distributed web" community has to deal with:
What if the user _wants_ to monetize their content, perhaps with ads? Either
people are going to do some "pay per view" of articles on your network (which
seems to be antithetical to "information for the masses" that I have a feeling
most decentralized developers identify with), or they use ads. Want your ads
to do better? well don't fund the network that has reader anonymity built in.

> The domain name system enables any person on earth to have his human-
> readable address on the web. This system is decentralized by design and is
> owned by nobody.

So they want to fork DNS from ICANN so your identity is always linked to your
website?

> Dpage.io is not a website builder, and it is not a blogging platform.

Design your own website, upload it to us and we'll host it for free.

Reading the contents of the strange little iPad on
[https://dpage.io/](https://dpage.io/) it says:

> Your user profile details along with your data are by default stored on a
> free Blockstack's Gaia storage hub. DPAGE doesn't store your data on its own
> servers. You can run your own storage hub on a server of your choice.

So it _is_ that kind of distributed server: the one you run yourself.

<aside> The phrase "a free Blockstack's Gaia storage hub" is strange and feels
very corporate, being sure to indicate that it's not just any Gaia server, but
the one OWNED by Blockstack. Sometimes it's the little things that show you
how much control the marketing department has. </aside>

I'm not going to comment on their blockchain stuff.

I'm only criticizing because I think people are putting lots of effort into
solutions that are misguided: "The people WANT to have their own websites!
This is the platform they'll want for sure!". I very well may be missing the
point here, but inaccuracies and romanticizing the past lead me to skepticism.

XAMPP[2] is still around after 17 years, (last updated 4 days ago), which I
remember being super easy to setup your own site, and I have a feeling it's
even easier now. CMS platforms like Wordpress.com, SquareSpace, etc, do allow
you to own your own content, easily use themes/plugins, and backup/export
everything if you want to move (for a price, because they're providing a
service, which is reasonable).

I think the most interesting decentralized platform is dat/beakerbrowser,
because

A) There's already a tangible working product (Beaker)

B) There's no login/user-admin: your browser upon startup is a node in the
network

C) Backwards compatible with http(s), so it's not like there's a hard fork of
the DNS namespace and links no longer work.

D) No concept of privacy/encryption (that I'm aware of). You really don't
_own_ your data, you publish it and the system is designed to allow
anyone/everyone with the link to copy it, change it, host it, seed it. If you
don't like that, don't use it.

Of course you have to seed your site, so again there's a chicken and egg
problem of hosting your own server (but if it's just running the browser until
your friend says they've downloaded the site, it's easy, right?)

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant, but I guess it did.

I wish dpage/decentus/blockstack/gaia good luck because I think distributed
webs do have a future and every player can bring something to the table, but I
hope their message/intentions become a little more focused.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_befor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_founded_before_1995)

[2]
[https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html](https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html)

