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backus's profile
John Backus
John Backus
John Backus
@backus

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John Backus

@backus

Seeking alternative compression. Hopefully wrong on average. Shameless. Started @getcognito and @bloom

San Francisco, CA
Joined August 2012

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    1. John Backus‏ @backus Jul 19

      p2p file sharing history is littered w/ predictions that a new **unstoppable and totally decentralized** protocol will takeover. It never happened. Users always flocked to the least decentralized system possible. Big lesson for today's blockchain and decentralization ecosystemspic.twitter.com/O2mE85BxF8

      31 replies 148 retweets 443 likes
      Show this thread
    2. John Backus‏ @backus Jul 19

      Decentralized systems are WAY harder to build and this seems to always affect UX. If easier to use centralized systems exist, users always prefer them. Decentralization is like regulatory compliance: it isn't a feature that attracts users, you just do it to stay alive.

      24 replies 45 retweets 188 likes
      Show this thread
    3. 🆆 🅾🅻🅵‏ @thee_wolf Jul 19
      Replying to @backus

      The UX is evolving quickly in decentralized applications. I think we're still probably a few years away from nailing the UX on dapps. The gap between Decentralized and Centralized will continue to narrow. I'm seeing great progress.

      2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
    4. ((λ()'Dr.ArneBab))‏ @ArneBab Jul 20
      Replying to @thee_wolf @backus

      As long as they aren’t being sued to death (as LimeWire was), they can become a new Acquisition. We already had great UX in distributed apps; that was Acquisition. Then Acquisition died along with LimeWire (which it used as core), when LimeWire was sued to death.

      1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
    5. John Backus‏ @backus Jul 20
      Replying to @ArneBab @thee_wolf

      John Backus Retweeted John Backus

      Yeah, I've talked about (and want to write more about) how BitTorrent's approach proved most resilient but required significant UX costs like splitting out search. It is hard to understand without the history, which is what prompted this:https://twitter.com/backus/status/1015012061166764032 …

      John Backus added,

      John Backus @backus
      Hanlon's good faith razor: Never attribute to incompetence that which might be explained by strategic competence • Our torrent client should have built-in search → No, we'll get sued • Let's be transparent about pricing → Then we can't charge price insensitive customers more
      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
    6. ((λ()'Dr.ArneBab))‏ @ArneBab Jul 20
      Replying to @backus @thee_wolf

      To understand the success of torrents, you also need to look at torrent sites. They provided something other systems did not: A community of likeminded people, working together and challenging each other to collect cultural works. And only got sued once other systems were killed.

      1 reply 3 retweets 4 likes
      John Backus‏ @backus Jul 20
      Replying to @ArneBab @thee_wolf

      Yeah interesting point. You could say that by pushing search to the web and outsourcing it third parties (The Pirate Bay, OiNK), these websites had their own competition which incentivized things like comments, private tracker bounties, quality enforcement, ratios

      3:09 PM - 20 Jul 2018
      1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. ((λ()'Dr.ArneBab))‏ @ArneBab Jul 20
          Replying to @backus @thee_wolf

          Yes. Also the core clients could then no longer be sued, because they had literally nothing to do with the content, and did not need to advertise anything, because the trackers would do that (and take all the risk).

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        3. John Backus‏ @backus Jul 20
          Replying to @ArneBab @thee_wolf

          Yup. BitTorrent won the p2p file sharing protocol wars (defined by an evolutionary pressure that caused Napster -> Gnutella/FastTrack/eDonkey -> Overnet -> BitTorrent) by moving the battle to a new group (SuprNova -> 2005's centralized-ish Pirate Bay -> 2018 Pirate Bay's monster)

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        4. ((λ()'Dr.ArneBab))‏ @ArneBab Jul 20
          Replying to @backus @thee_wolf

          I think that not BitTorrent won, but rather streaming sites won. They don’t even need a specialized client. Torrent stayed as a technology, but it it no longer part of mainstream media culture.

          1 reply 0 retweets 1 like
        5. John Backus‏ @backus Jul 20
          Replying to @ArneBab @thee_wolf

          Do you mean the legal ones like Netflix/Spotify/Soundcloud or grey market streaming websites?

          1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
        6. ((λ()'Dr.ArneBab))‏ @ArneBab Jul 20
          Replying to @backus @thee_wolf

          First the illegal ones. Then the legal but unethical ones (those forcing DRM on users: Netflix, spotify, … — I don’t know about soundcloud).

          0 replies 0 retweets 1 like
        7. End of conversation

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