If you want to generate interesting questions about decentralization, just stare at how modern BitTorrent works and try to explain why the tech/ecosystem are the way they are. I'm still struggling to construct a full narrative
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John Backus Retweeted John Backus
I have a narrative I like now, but here are a few example questions I'm still not super confident about: • Why didn't anonymous file sharing via I2P take off? • Why didn't DHT+PEX fully replace centralized trackers? • Why is search *still* centralized?https://twitter.com/backus/status/1018953426355433472 …
John Backus added,
John Backus @backusDecentralization enthusiasts: Why didn't decentralized BitTorrent search takeoff? Many tried: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=BitTorrent&oldid=850160168#Decentralized_keyword_search … Not rhetorical, I'd love ideas. I'll share a few theories below
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Replying to @backus
ThePirateBay & other centralized search engines also we're fundamentally a very familiar paradigm. They ran in the browser, like Google. We don't really have good example of search outside of web browsers.
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Replying to @CharlesElegans
True. We could still have in-browser decentralized(-ish) search. Another user mentioned BTDigg in this thread. Also Magnetico (https://github.com/boramalper/magnetico …). The previous generation of file sharing did have in-app search, but we just know that is a legal nightmare. Look at PopcornTimepic.twitter.com/nMwuhSC3Ng
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Replying to @backus
I can't really think of any self hosted app that anyone uses (the best example I can come up with is Jupyter). There isn't very much decentralized stuff that's been done with WebRTC (since most use it with a special signalling server)
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Replying to @CharlesElegans
Jupyter is a good example. Electron apps can probably be viewed as in a similar camp just not literally opened up in the browser. You could also build this stuff as standalone frontend apps hosted on IPFS that use local storage aggressively
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Replying to @backus
It remains to be seen whether a truly controversial app hosted on ipfs won't be successfully taken down from public gateways.
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John Backus Retweeted John Backus
Yeah, but I think it seems promisinghttps://twitter.com/backus/status/1012545688633106432 …
John Backus added,
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