undefined | Better HN

0 pointsacdha2y ago0 comments

web3 failed because it was a rebranding exercise by cryptocurrency holders trying to create new demand for their random numbers.

Centralized servers aren’t archaic, they’re a natural outcome of how social systems work: finding communities is hard; people want to contribute their ideas, not play sysadmin; spammers and AI researchers will create enormous costs for you; etc. If you federate, you will have more time dealing with those issues than a single focused competitor and you are unlikely to see free contributions which outweigh those costs.

Everything you mentioned is available now on Mastodon, and it’s really interesting to see how that works. Some people love having a small network of their friends, but a lot of people have trouble finding people they want to follow. Instances can have their own rules but dealing with abuse is now a multiparty process and since a lot of instances are run by volunteers that can be slow, unreliable, and inconsistent. Some small servers get hammered by storage and bandwidth demand but there’s no great path to monetization unless you have a ton of users willing to pay more than most people are used to paying for internet services.

In general, these are social problems and there is only so much technology can do to improve them.

0 comments

pc_edwin2y ago

I tend to agree but where we diverge is in the thinking that these problems cannot be solved with technology, I believe the opposite.

The point of web3 is to abstract away things like sysadmin by commoditising consensus. Once a blockchain gains mass & momentum it opens up a whole new world of possibilities to hack/reinvent social media.

You could use multiple different types of social media and still maintain a single identity (auth). This means you could find friends and friendlies everywhere you go.

The key is the consensus layer and the ability to store & and read critical metadata. I'll give a personal example:

I've been helping a friend to create a combination of Netflix and DVDs. We package the movie licenses into NFTs (MovieKeys) so when the user signs in with their wallet they can stream all the movies in they own.

There are so many possibilities with this but lets focus on the social part. In theory, a social media service could scan their users wallet for MovieKeys and create a social graph based on that. Heck you could create entire forums just out of the people who owns a certain moviekey. I wont go further because we go a lot of things cooking atm.

The general point is, the technology and the UX to make these things possible is just an arms length away. The entire space got ravaged by scam artists instead of trying to build real magical experiences people actually want.

acdhaOP2y ago

> I've been helping a friend to create a combination of Netflix and DVDs. We package the movie licenses into NFTs (MovieKeys) so when the user signs in with their wallet they can stream all the movies in they own.

How do you plan to deal with piracy? I can't see many rights-holders going for a system which doesn't allow them to revoke keys.

pc_edwin2y ago

There is where the Netflix side of the equation comes in. You can sell or gift your MovieKey like a DVD but at the end of the day its a license to stream on our platform.

All content is DRM protected and we'll ban your account from the platform if you pirate or clone your keys ad infinitum.

I'm personally not a fan of this solution but the technology is just not here yet to do this without a centralised control system.

So I get where my friend is coming from, no artist will want to have anything to do with us if people can just pirate the stuff or clone their keys ad infinitum.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsacdha2y ago0 comments

web3 failed because it was a rebranding exercise by cryptocurrency holders trying to create new demand for their random numbers.

In general, these are social problems and there is only so much technology can do to improve them.

0 comments

pc_edwin2y ago

I tend to agree but where we diverge is in the thinking that these problems cannot be solved with technology, I believe the opposite.

You could use multiple different types of social media and still maintain a single identity (auth). This means you could find friends and friendlies everywhere you go.

The key is the consensus layer and the ability to store & and read critical metadata. I'll give a personal example:

acdhaOP2y ago

How do you plan to deal with piracy? I can't see many rights-holders going for a system which doesn't allow them to revoke keys.

pc_edwin2y ago

There is where the Netflix side of the equation comes in. You can sell or gift your MovieKey like a DVD but at the end of the day its a license to stream on our platform.

All content is DRM protected and we'll ban your account from the platform if you pirate or clone your keys ad infinitum.

I'm personally not a fan of this solution but the technology is just not here yet to do this without a centralised control system.

So I get where my friend is coming from, no artist will want to have anything to do with us if people can just pirate the stuff or clone their keys ad infinitum.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse