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0 pointstrotsky15y ago0 comments

Seems like a pretty misguided point of view. Something tells me a sizable amount of the facebook crowd is comfortable downloading torrents, I'm pretty sure that counts as distributed/decentralized. As far as free software, is your mom unable to use any website that uses apache, ngix, php or ruby? Almost everyone has a broadband router that is almost entirely open source. My Mom and Dad both use an open source browser, what do yours use?

Is your point that only companies worth $50bn can build usable web apps, or that anyone that doesn't want to sell your data can't do UX?

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6 comments · 3 top-level

adw15y ago· 3 in thread

The Facebook crowd is 500m people. The number who even know what BitTorrent is compared to that is a rounding error.

trotskyOP15y ago

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-smashes-12000000-bitt...

That's from 2008 announcing Pirate Bay had hit 12 million concurrent peers on their tracker. That's not total users, that's total online. Take that number and multiply it by 5 to 10 to estimate total users, double it to account for the rest of the global trackers (low?) and increase it by some percentage to account for 3 years of growth and you're in the hundreds of millions of users range, possibly as high as 300M or more.

I'm not a crazy bittorrent fanboy, in fact I'm quite the opposite, but I think it's clear that the number of users of a decentralized system can far exceed any "rounding errors" of facebook's numbers.

georgemcbay15y ago

By having 12 million concurrent peers on their tracker, aren't they pretty much de facto centralized even if the protocol is theoretically decentralized?

If The Pirate Bay disappears tomorrow do all of those users just switch over to another tracker? Very likely not. They'd just wait around to hear about the next Napster->Kazaa->LimeWire->Pirate Bay from their tech savvy friends, remaining mostly oblivious to the technology being used under the hood.

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SoftwareMaven15y ago

I think you are massively over-inflating your 300M estimate. The typical usage of bit torrent is to leave it running 24-7 to download the 300 torrents you've got queued. I would bet it is is far lower than 5-10 times and I really doubt it has tripled since 2008.

SoftwareMaven15y ago

My mom and dad don't know what a browser is. This is not fantasy or creative editing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

If so, so many people don't know what a browser is, you can only image how smooth a distributed social network would have to be to work.

Bit torrent works because it's three steps: 1. Download a bit torrent client, 2. Search Pirate Bay, 3. Click on the torrent. Occasionally, you hear the failure mode: why won't this stupid thing download? The only people who say things like "More people need to seed this" are tech literate.

hasenj15y ago

Bittorrent is different. You don't care who the other nodes are, all you care about is you're connected to some nodes, and the client takes care of that for you.

Like others said, the only way a decentralized facebook would work is when everyone uses one (or two) central nodes (site) which will most likely be run by something like Google or Microsoft, and the end result will be the same: big company has access to all your data.

The "Like" button probably wouldn't work though. If you're some external website, which "like" button will you embed? Google's like button? or Microsoft's?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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6 comments · 3 top-level

adw15y ago· 3 in thread

The Facebook crowd is 500m people. The number who even know what BitTorrent is compared to that is a rounding error.

trotskyOP15y ago

http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-smashes-12000000-bitt...

georgemcbay15y ago

By having 12 million concurrent peers on their tracker, aren't they pretty much de facto centralized even if the protocol is theoretically decentralized?

1 more reply

SoftwareMaven15y ago

My mom and dad don't know what a browser is. This is not fantasy or creative editing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

If so, so many people don't know what a browser is, you can only image how smooth a distributed social network would have to be to work.

hasenj15y ago

Bittorrent is different. You don't care who the other nodes are, all you care about is you're connected to some nodes, and the client takes care of that for you.

The "Like" button probably wouldn't work though. If you're some external website, which "like" button will you embed? Google's like button? or Microsoft's?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse