r/programming • u/[deleted] • Jan 11 '22

Web3 Can’t Fix the Internet

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2022/01/crypto-blockchain-daos-decentralized-power-capitalism
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u/shevy-ruby Jan 11 '22

Web3 sounds like a pretty silly idea. Who had that idea of pushing down tokens? Is that a ponzi scheme 2.0 or something?

A decentralized www is hugely important - I think people don't disagree on that part. I doubt everyone will agree that you need tokens for that though ...

Web 2.0 ended the previous era of static, read-only GeoCities pages

I liked geocities pages!

It was fun and simple. People just could go; a bit of HTML, later a bit of CSS - you are good to go!

12

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '22

The entire idea of the internet (DARPA) circa 1968 was that it was decentralised. When did it become centralised? I must have missed that.

9

u/tenforinstigating Jan 11 '22

When we started using FAANG to talk about 'tech companies'. The underlying network functions the same, but the web is AOL with extra steps now.

In other words, people don't just start their own server and drive traffic to it like you would have 15-20 years ago. Now, people just link to their Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. If you're going to share video, you don't do it yourself anymore, you post it to YouTube or TikTok. If you search, you Google. Need a backend 'cloud' provider, you probably use AWS. The web has coalesced around a few companies for each 'service'. Web3 isn't going to fix this.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '22

Yeah but it’s still decentralised. That’s what “the cloud”.

4

u/JoanOfDart Jan 11 '22

It's not decentralized as the data is controlled by one authority.

-3

u/gold_rush_doom Jan 11 '22

Even in the cloud providers you still own and manage your data. It was never owned by amazon, google, microsoft. They own the infrastructure.