<story><title>A decentralized web would give power back to the people online</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/09/a-decentralized-web-would-give-power-back-to-the-people-online/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zer0gravity</author><text>So nobody can &amp;quot;give the power back&amp;quot; to anybody, but people can stop giving their power away to others. We all have power, and we manifest it through our actions and choices.&lt;p&gt;Some say knowledge is power, but in order to gain knowledge you have to make that choice. One can try to educate people about the benefits of hosting their own data, but unless they make the choice to listen and understand it&amp;#x27;s all for nothing.&lt;p&gt;I tend to agree with others that posted here, that in general, people are just not interested. It may be too hard for them to grasp the real implications of giving all those informations about them to third parties.. They may also consider that it&amp;#x27;s too hard to handle all those problems by themselves so they&amp;#x27;re willing to pay the prices...&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that the change can happen unless the people who do understand, do something about it, but usually these people are more interested to cash in on the ignorance of those who don&amp;#x27;t...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cocktailpeanuts</author><text>The &amp;quot;People don&amp;#x27;t understand&amp;quot; is a condescending statement and is exactly the reason why the people who try to build these decentralized systems never succeed, because they don&amp;#x27;t even understand why people use information silos.&lt;p&gt;If you really think that&amp;#x27;s the problem and you think you know better than other people, you should quit using every single centralized system out there, like your bank (they take your money and invest it elsewhere! And most people don&amp;#x27;t even know about it!), credit card (It&amp;#x27;s just a small piece of plastic but you have to pay them money just to pay money, and they even track your purchase history, how ridiculous is that!), etc.&lt;p&gt;Sure there are shitty aspects to this (and I don&amp;#x27;t like it either), but the reason they are still around is NOT because most people don&amp;#x27;t know, but because most people have better things to worry about. I know EXACTLY what&amp;#x27;s going on but still use centralized silos for certain things because it makes sense at the moment, even though there are many downsides.&lt;p&gt;It is these &amp;quot;decentralized&amp;quot; people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people.</text></comment>
<story><title>A decentralized web would give power back to the people online</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/09/a-decentralized-web-would-give-power-back-to-the-people-online/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zer0gravity</author><text>So nobody can &amp;quot;give the power back&amp;quot; to anybody, but people can stop giving their power away to others. We all have power, and we manifest it through our actions and choices.&lt;p&gt;Some say knowledge is power, but in order to gain knowledge you have to make that choice. One can try to educate people about the benefits of hosting their own data, but unless they make the choice to listen and understand it&amp;#x27;s all for nothing.&lt;p&gt;I tend to agree with others that posted here, that in general, people are just not interested. It may be too hard for them to grasp the real implications of giving all those informations about them to third parties.. They may also consider that it&amp;#x27;s too hard to handle all those problems by themselves so they&amp;#x27;re willing to pay the prices...&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t think that the change can happen unless the people who do understand, do something about it, but usually these people are more interested to cash in on the ignorance of those who don&amp;#x27;t...</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dsacco</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;I tend to agree with others that posted here, that in general, people are just not interested. It may be too hard for them to grasp the real implications of giving all those informations about them to third parties.. They may also consider that it&amp;#x27;s too hard to handle all those problems by themselves so they&amp;#x27;re willing to pay the prices...&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s true that  many users who give away their data are not cognizant of the consequences, and there are others who understand but do it reluctantly because of peer pressure or usability. But there&amp;#x27;s a huge swath of people who fully understand the privacy implications of giving away all their data in exchange for the products they use daily, and they&amp;#x27;re perfectly happy with the deal.&lt;p&gt;They&amp;#x27;re not as vocal as the zeitgeist here on HN, and they&amp;#x27;re not irrational, naive or helpless; they just have a different set of values.&lt;p&gt;I agree with you that people who care deeply about this issue have the power to change it through focused, collective effort (even if that means supporting open alternatives, like DuckDuckGo). However, I disagree with your characterization of people who willingly support this as being predominantly exploitive.</text></comment>