50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust investigation of Google

Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by chongli on Monday September 09, 2019 @09:58PM (#20924477)

A centralized system may be susceptible to large bad actors such as Google but a p2p decentralized system is susceptible to large numbers of small bad actors. We simply haven't cracked the hard problem of trust and so we're stuck delegating to large authorities.

In some ways this is reminiscent of the history of civilization, where people band together for protection against marauders. In exchange for protection, we become vulnerable to tyranny.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by jborichevskiy on Monday September 09, 2019 @10:28PM (#20924586)

> We simply haven't cracked the hard problem of trust and so we're stuck delegating to large authorities.

Just to clarify- what sort of trust are you referring to in the context of a service like YouTube?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by chongli on Monday September 09, 2019 @11:03PM (#20924710)

Moderation. YouTube filters out all manner of content which we would prefer not to see (extreme violence, child abuse) and it presents both recommendations as well as search results we rely on to help us find the videos we're interested in.

These problems, moderation and search (and some would say curation), are just two examples manifested by the hard problem of trust in decentralized systems.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by jborichevskiy on Monday September 09, 2019 @11:49PM (#20924885)

Both make sense, thanks. Curious if you've run across good writing or research that explores this problem in depth, definitely interested in reading more.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:50 U.S. states and territories announce broad antitrust i... by chongli on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @09:31AM (#20927927)

I wish I had, I would definitely share it with you. I've only been able to say what I said as a result of accumulated observations over the years. I've seen many decentralized systems wax and wane in that time.

I tried to find some pieces but it's honestly very difficult these days, due to the sheer quantity of garbage on the internet. My trust in centralized search engines is collapsing under the weight of so much spam. I'm legitimately worried there will be nothing to replace them.

[ Parent | on HN ]