A fully decentralized web would be delivered peer-to-peer via a mesh network or something similar. Anything else is a farce, because it's not just about who holds the data on the network, it's about the network itself. If any link in the chain of the communication can be controlled by some centralized power- it's not decentralized.
On a fully decentralized network, three things restricting freedom and privacy would be:
* the personal device used to (inter)connect, like malicious code hiding in firmware
* those controlling the power needed for the device
* those that can interfere with communication or alter data on the distributed network, either as a peer on the network, through malware/disruptive communication on the network, or those blocking communication
The problem with the decentralized web, though, is that when the web is fully free- if everyone stores part of the content from everyone else, then they could be storing things that are illegal and that they don't agree with. I personally don't want to participate in any network where I can't control what data is stored locally.
1) Cloud hosting --> might as well use the centralized application because this is still centralized.
2) Peering your own hardware for a direct internet connection is not accessible to most people.
3) even in a p2p context, your PC or mobile device is not under your full control and especially in the US, most broadband goes through one of a small number of service providers (Comcast for example)
So I agree with you: network architecture is a major stumbling block.
On second thought, though, that still doesn't mean we shouldn't strive to create "decentralized" applications that are accessible to most average people somehow. I believe this is possible and without a huge upfront cost (besides time). They could still gain power through traction.
And as far as hosting content for others in a p2p context, I think part of the point of a scheme like that is you should never be able to know what you're hosting. It should be opaque encrypted blocks of data, right?
I remember to have seen a protocol for such ad hoc mesh networks that wasn't even IP-based and could be implemented on most routers. The network can dynamically self-configure, route around failures, and nodes can go in and out of existence whenever they want. It looked pretty cool but unfortunately can't remember where I've seen it. :/
When is that going to happen? All those routers, etc. don't run on fairy dust and the people that keep them serviced and running kind of enjoy doing things like being able to afford to eat, etc.
Even if you get rid of that part, you have to provide power to the devices and pay for a place to put them. Don't expect that a local telco's going to let you just slap a box on their pole rent-free. Any halfway savvy businessman is going to say "Good of humanity? That'll be $25/mo to put your box in my shop." unless there's some larger, provable benefit to him or herself.
It already happens/has happened with AMPRnet, HSMM, CUWiN, Freifunk, FunkFeuer, OpenWireless, Firetide, Guifi.net, Netsukuku, Ninux, Senceive, and others.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_mesh_network
When higher levels of portable energy become safer and cheaper, then it would be more likely that a small radio could be used to transmit and receive over longer distances.
If a company like Google and Facebook were to provide free adequately high-speed internet access, there'd be less incentive for a free peer-based network wherever they provided free access. Google's free wired plan is lower speed and they didn't plan to expand it; however, I'm not sure about their plans for Wifi. Neither Facebook nor Google have stated they plan to provide access everywhere. So, free access via a peer-based network would remain an incentive over paid plans for the foreseeable future.
I see zero evidence this happening.
But when you put a person's life in to context, how do you expect a working mother of three to just learn the tools? What if she has the remotest of computer literacy? That is, she could operate Facebook but no more? Then is it reasonable to expect her to learn how to administer her own server? Can she choose to spend hours a week learning for months while her children need food to be prepared for them, clothes to be washed, and beds to be made? In a practical, not theoretical sense, does she really have that choice?
The example with voting feels disingenuous because voting is specifically designed to be accessible to every person. Learning bash and administering your own web server is absolutely not the same.
She wouldn't have to, it's all about the money and the wish to be dependent or independent. There are web hosting as well as consulting companies that can setup private social network for one time fee, with automated backups and all.
To me, when I hear that some "computer illiterate" person "learns to use facebok" it kinda sounds reminiscent of hearing that someone learns to make crack from cocaine. Is it useful - maybe, is it good for society - eh I don't think so. I rather see them "learn" how to use sandstorm...
Just the words "web hosting" are not in most peoples' vocabulary.
You are right that it's good to teach people computer literacy. But your belief that people can somehow spontaneously learn about web hosting is unrealistic.
People first need to experience something, then get some language for what it is and how it works, and only then can they begin to seek out education about how to learn how to reconstruct it for themselves.
Providing turnkey decentralized application hosting is a way to allow people to first experience what it's like to deploy an application. By having that experience and doing it over and over they can start to have shared experiences around it, from which they will learn language about what it is. Only at that point can they start to learn how it actually works and what it might be like to do it in a different way.
Edit: There's another comment in this thread where someone brings up the hassle of IT as a major centralizing force. Best comment so far in this thread.
So you have to create a system that's decentralized and yet has the interface of a centralized application and which is distributed on centralized, mostly monopolized platforms.
So that's certainly an undertaking... but not necessarily impossible.
No, that's not how it works. Sure, perceived value is important, but that's not where it starts. For people to switch to something else they need to find out about it first, and to find out about it somebody has to promote it to them. And how do you get people to promote it? You need an incentive, you need to find some way to make it worth for people to promote the software and of course it has to have a value for users to use it too.
Torrent sites, for example, benefited from promoting torrent technology.
The perceived higher value itself is the incentive that will make people tell other people about it. People like to share things they really like or dislike. It gives them something to talk about ;-)
You seem to talk about building a platform to replace Facebook, Snapchat, Google and others like them ? Good luck ;-)
Snapchat made it by offering easier photo options before Facebook did. Whatsapp did the same with messaging. Maybe some startup will make it with VR before the others do. But 'more power' and 'decentralized' will simply not do.
This is the classic "If I asked people what they wanted, they would've asked for a faster horse" thinking.
There are lots of things people want that Google, Instagram, etc don't offer them. Most people just don't think they're allowed to ask. I know many people who want a better job, people who want to be able to stop living on the street, people who want to eat better, people who want political representation they believe in.
Health, career mobility, and an end to poverty, and good reprentation are maybe acceptable outcomes for specific businesses. But overall the world of business owners is hurt by those things. Sick people spend more money to treat their symptoms, people without job mobility work harder for less pay, poverty forces people to spend the same money over and over again, and corrupt officials can be controlled with bribes. These things are all great for the great core of businesses from Wal-Mart to Coca-Cola to the donut shops, strip clubs, and restaurants on your street.
The way that incentive plays out is complicated, and this is just a theory. I can't prove that there's any kind of permanent system there. But that's how it seems to me.
Decentralized systems don't have that incentive. Ethereum doesn't care how easy it is for employees to quit. Email servers don't care how sick people are.
That doesn't mean those system will necessarily be empowering... "Empowering to disempowered people" is a political aim, and if you want tools to support a political aim, they have to be designed and tested for that outcome. Unfortunately, even though the decentralized tools don't care about the cultural incentives, those of us who build tools on those decentralized platforms do, and we often recapitulate the same incentive systems that Google, Facebook, etc do.
BUT, the light in the end of this whole tunnel for me is that IF you can take "empowering disempowered" as a design goal, and IF you can find some space outside of the commercial incentives to design a tool on decentralized platforms that moves that dial, THEN that tool will actually embody those values, and because it is decentralized it will not be beholden to the standard cultural pressures, and that might actually make a difference.
To some extent this happens every day in in little corners of every product and service in the world. Employees do find ways to enact their values in the work, when they have a little bit of free energy after doing what their boss likes. In theory a decentralized toolset can replace the corporate structure that makes that employee beholden to the boss, making them beholden to algorithms of their choice instead. In theory one of those algorithms would be responsible for keeping them solvent. In theory that could free them up to spend a larger percentage of their time enacting their values. In theory that could create more economic value than doing what an (largely arbitrarily selected) supervisor thinks is right.
But that's a lot of theories.
It all comes down to perceived (!) value. Once people use one thing, they will only switch if something else offers a clear higher value. At that point offering the same value is not enough anymore. This higher value has to be something that makes every day life in a very obvious way a little better. I am afraid something abstract like 'more power' will not do the trick.