This crypto-fueled decentralized protocol craze is an antitrust trojan horse. Do people calling to break up Big Tech realize Silicon Valley might accidentally trust-bust itself?
Ex: Twitter couldn’t freeze out 3rd party apps like it has if backend was decentralized
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I used Twitter as an ex b/c they originally let 3rd party devs build frontends (Tweetdeck, Tweetbot) but now they’re freezing em out (no “like” API, polls don’t work) so they can serve ads. Can’t build your own twitter b/c network effects. But if backend wasn’t centralized…
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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I’m confused. The examples you use failed. Limewire and Kazaa are dead and eDonkey has been losing users since BitTorrent overtook it a decade ago. Yet record companies, while different, still exist. I don’t see how you’re making the logical jump.
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Ah I've shared a bunch about how p2p file sharing is a useful historical reference for decentralization stuff. See https://medium.com/@jbackus/fat-protocols-arent-new-42d2c538db41 … Look at the ecosystem at the time, not today's market. Many companies competing on top of same protocols.
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Anyways, the p2p part isn't crucial. Core of many internet tech giants (Google, FB, LinkedIn, Twitter) is network effects or proprietary central software. I'm not saying *these companies* will decentralize. I'm saying that crypto boom might incentivize future companies to.
End of conversation
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BTW nothing personal - how that's possible that Bloom is having lower marketcap than it's holdings?
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The blockchain ecosystem is also investing insane amounts of cash into finding viable UI for interacting w/ private keys.
This may help privacy advocates find ways to make the equivalent of GPG emails (and much more) easier to use and accessible in key apps like the browser
Young people sniffing around cryptocurrencies end up learning cryptography and distributed systems terms: “zero knowledge proofs”, “the byzantine generals problem”, etc
I wouldn’t be surprised if this motivates more students to study these areas in college
Even if you’re skeptical of all the crypto companies county ICOs, bottom line is they’re going to try to launch crypto-based distributed systems. p2p file sharing provided lots of production networks for academia to study (Kademlia, Gnutella, FastTrack, BitTorrent).
Provide crypto + distributed systems case studies for academia