<story><title>Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?</title><url>https://continuations.com/post/671863718643105792/web3crypto-why-bother</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmydorry</author><text>- You need permission from the central root certifying authorities (aka. getting a domain) for people to be able to find your site.&lt;p&gt;- You need to remain out of the shitlist of a handful of “spam and anti-evil” authorities (getting on a list means your site gets blocked by all the big browsers and can be permanent or take a long time to resolve)&lt;p&gt;- You need permission to host your content from the: hardware &amp;#x2F; cloud provider, the datacentre if you self-host, and &amp;#x2F; or intermediary ISPs for peering (if no-one will peer, your site may as well not exists)&lt;p&gt;There are some other parties you need permission or blessing from that don’t come immediately to mind.</text></item><item><author>almost</author><text>People choose to do that because it’s convenient. There’s nothing in any of the nebulous ideas around “web3” that would change that.&lt;p&gt;You can use a federated social network RIGHT NOW. Or you can just make your own website TODAY. No permission needed, you get complete ownership. It’s the amazing decentralised dream that was (and is) the internet. Only thing it won’t do is potentially make you rich (at the expense of others) just for getting in (and out!) at the right time.</text></item><item><author>whywhywhywhy</author><text>No. If you read up on how the web works at its base, it’s highly centralized.&lt;p&gt;If you look how people interact with the web, it’s highly centralized to a handful of apps by a handful of companies.</text></item><item><author>qaq</author><text>on top of that decentralized part is already the web itself is pretty much it</text></item><item><author>almost</author><text>It’s weird that this article waffles on about PCs and how the author thinks that’s a good analogy. It’s not very convincing because you could easily pick another technology pair and show it the other way (often worse is just worse).&lt;p&gt;But the thing that really seems weird is that all you need to do make it interesting is 1) define what you mean by web3 (it’s a slippery weasel word that changes meaning whenever the people using it needs it to) 2) define a few uses that are obviously better than the alternatives and justify them without hand waving (including explaining why what would appear to be fundamental show stopping flaws are not in fact that)&lt;p&gt;If you can’t do that (and no one seems to be able to) the maybe, just maybe, it is bullshit?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Barrin92</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;You need permission from the central root certifying authorities[...]&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;You need to remain out of the shitlist of a handful of “spam and anti-evil” authorities&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;And the exact same will happen in the world of &amp;#x27;web3&amp;#x27;. Except you won&amp;#x27;t sign your terms and conditions in English but in from of a smart contract. The internet is a distributed computer, blockchains are distributed computers. Whatever people built on top of it will be as permissioned and have as many authorities as anything else.&lt;p&gt;You think you can&amp;#x27;t do encrypted, peer-to-peer communication without authorities on the good old internet? Of course you can, there&amp;#x27;s nothing technically in the way of it at all. It&amp;#x27;s just that nobody runs a business that way and they won&amp;#x27;t do it in the world of &amp;#x27;web3&amp;#x27; either.</text></comment>
<story><title>Web3/Crypto: Why Bother?</title><url>https://continuations.com/post/671863718643105792/web3crypto-why-bother</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmydorry</author><text>- You need permission from the central root certifying authorities (aka. getting a domain) for people to be able to find your site.&lt;p&gt;- You need to remain out of the shitlist of a handful of “spam and anti-evil” authorities (getting on a list means your site gets blocked by all the big browsers and can be permanent or take a long time to resolve)&lt;p&gt;- You need permission to host your content from the: hardware &amp;#x2F; cloud provider, the datacentre if you self-host, and &amp;#x2F; or intermediary ISPs for peering (if no-one will peer, your site may as well not exists)&lt;p&gt;There are some other parties you need permission or blessing from that don’t come immediately to mind.</text></item><item><author>almost</author><text>People choose to do that because it’s convenient. There’s nothing in any of the nebulous ideas around “web3” that would change that.&lt;p&gt;You can use a federated social network RIGHT NOW. Or you can just make your own website TODAY. No permission needed, you get complete ownership. It’s the amazing decentralised dream that was (and is) the internet. Only thing it won’t do is potentially make you rich (at the expense of others) just for getting in (and out!) at the right time.</text></item><item><author>whywhywhywhy</author><text>No. If you read up on how the web works at its base, it’s highly centralized.&lt;p&gt;If you look how people interact with the web, it’s highly centralized to a handful of apps by a handful of companies.</text></item><item><author>qaq</author><text>on top of that decentralized part is already the web itself is pretty much it</text></item><item><author>almost</author><text>It’s weird that this article waffles on about PCs and how the author thinks that’s a good analogy. It’s not very convincing because you could easily pick another technology pair and show it the other way (often worse is just worse).&lt;p&gt;But the thing that really seems weird is that all you need to do make it interesting is 1) define what you mean by web3 (it’s a slippery weasel word that changes meaning whenever the people using it needs it to) 2) define a few uses that are obviously better than the alternatives and justify them without hand waving (including explaining why what would appear to be fundamental show stopping flaws are not in fact that)&lt;p&gt;If you can’t do that (and no one seems to be able to) the maybe, just maybe, it is bullshit?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>almost</author><text>Freenet and Tor have existed for a while and are solutions to these problems for those that need them. You’re not interested in that though are you? No coins so no option for speculation.&lt;p&gt;Web3 as it currently stands (as I said before it’s a slippery weasel word so no don’t you’ll change it to suite) also needs all that stuff. Most “web3” apps are served via Cloudflare ffs!</text></comment>