From the transcript of an interview with Jason Scott:

What I want to get to though is the fundamental lie of the
Internet, which is that the internet is decentralized and that it
functions as a a discrete series of interrelated parts that have to
some extent some sort of temporary balance of power between equally
powerful groups that causes the miracle of this interrelation to
happen. But if you look at any aspect of it, it's been
centralized: digital certificates, domain names, network
allocation, and other aspects more Gentile like social media
accounts or being able to talk with central communities that exceed
anywhere past 5 to 10 million people. So anytime you get up to a
certain number it just starts centralizing and as a result it
becomes shocking to people when a centralized authority, in the
name of anything ranging from benign to evil motivation, executes
something by fiat. You wake up one day and now you can't have your
Facebook and your messenger client be the same client for a
technical reason you have no say in. There's no number you can
call there's no one you can complain to: you're done.

The dead Internet implies that there's something that can be killed.

I totally get it if you've convinced yourself that you're on a
decentralized honest to goodness community made up of real people,
anything that pulls back that layer to show the circuits underneath
is traumatic.

If your perception of that tips over 50%, you're going to feel
besieged like "Oh, I'm drowning in robots, what is the point, this
isn't even people anymore." Once you have that perception then the
Internet is dead to you in your heart. So the conspiracy idea that
this has already happened and we can't tell, I find interesting.

It's going to be a more and more salient question. It's already
real on dating sites. As I understand it the chances of you having
a positive interaction with an actual human being is fairly low on
any well-trafficked dating site.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6w54AvFP_70>

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Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> writes:

From the transcript of an interview with Jason Scott:

What I want to get to though is the fundamental lie of the
Internet, which is that the internet is decentralized and that it
functions as a a discrete series of interrelated parts that have to
some extent some sort of temporary balance of power between equally
powerful groups that causes the miracle of this interrelation to
happen. But if you look at any aspect of it, it's been
centralized: digital certificates, domain names, network
allocation, and other aspects more Gentile like social media
accounts or being able to talk with central communities that exceed
anywhere past 5 to 10 million people. So anytime you get up to a
certain number it just starts centralizing [...]

It’s worth thinking about how it could be otherwise (and there are real attempts to make it so).

If you want globally unique names then a central naming authority is an
easy way to do it. Examples are the DNS (or more precisely the DNS as
reached from the IANA root) and the Internet PKI (technically there are
several central authorities here - browsers and OS vendors - but the
number is very small.)

It’s not the only way; if you generate random ‘names’ of sufficient size then the practical effect is global uniqueness - but they tend to look
like R+eZuTq1R5C8gniEcPmU, not much good for everyday use by normal
human beings.

Usenet as a technology has a somewhat centralized model: for the most
part if a name exists in two places, it means the same thing, but it
isn’t guaranteed to exist in any particular view of the network. As implemented, most sites delegate to a centralized authority in the form
of a standardized.

PGP attempted truly decentralized key distribution, but adoption is
negligible, even though it’s been available for decades. The poor
quality of the software doesn’t help but the key distribution mechanism
is just plain impractical outside very niche use cases. (Signal lets you
do in-person public key distribution, but in practice it mostly
delegates to phone numbers for identity and ‘trust on first use’ for
keys.)

I think the core point here is that centralizing authority works and,
mostly, attempts at decentralizing authority do not work. So...

But if you look at any aspect of it, it's been centralized

...it was, inevitably, always going to be centralized.


(Decentralizing implementation can work relatively well, in comparison -
DNS and PKI both being examples.)

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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On Mon, 20 May 2024 08:22:10 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If you want globally unique names then a central naming authority is an
easy way to do it.

I’m not sure you could describe the DNS as a “central naming authority”. Look at the proliferation of registrars, and the opening up of all kinds
of random new TLDs, obviously as a revenue-generating exercise.

Once you have a domain name registered, you are free to use the entire namespace under it for your own purposes.

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Richard Kettlewell <invalid@invalid.invalid> writes:

Usenet as a technology has a somewhat centralized model: for the most
part if a name exists in two places, it means the same thing, but it
isn’t guaranteed to exist in any particular view of the network. As implemented, most sites delegate to a centralized authority in the form
of a standardized.

a standardized control.ctl.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If you want globally unique names then a central naming authority is an
easy way to do it.

I’m not sure you could describe the DNS as a “central naming authority”.
Look at the proliferation of registrars, and the opening up of all kinds
of random new TLDs, obviously as a revenue-generating exercise.

Once you have a domain name registered, you are free to use the entire namespace under it for your own purposes.

I did allude to this briefly in the previous post, but it can be
expanded upon. The authority is delegated, but it is delegated from a
central point. If the people who ultimately control the IANA root don’t
like your face, they can (with some inconvenience) stop you using your
chosen names.

You can certainly say it’s a social limitation rather than a technical limitation: you can set up your own roots if you like. But approximately
nobody will pay any attention if you do. The social limitation is no
less real than a comparable technical limitation.

In contrast the PGP web of trust doesn’t have this property. There’s no single point of control that can deny you use of the system. Certainly a coordinating gorup of key server operators could make your life harder,
but your neighbours’ signatures on your keys still exist.

UUCP bang paths had a weaker (totally unsecured) form of the same
property.

The nearest you can get in PGP to a single centralized point of control
is the software implementations. But there are several and even though
one is fairly dominant, its open source nature means that any attempt to exploit its position would be highly visible. So again there is a social
vs technical point here: the GnuPG authors could, technologically and with incomplete but nevertheless wide coverage, ban you from using your keys;
but for social reasons this is extremely unlikely to happen.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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Ben Collver <bencollver@tilde.pink> wrote or quoted:

It's going to be a more and more salient question. It's already
real on dating sites. As I understand it the chances of you having
a positive interaction with an actual human being is fairly low on
any well-trafficked dating site.

How I view the internet depends on which part of it I cherry-pick
to look at.

Why would the author even expect a positive interaction with an
actual human being when going on a commercial dating site?

I don't know if commercial dating sites on the internet were
ever any different or better.

Back in the day, before the internet was a thing, there used
to be these marriage arrangement institutes. So I could write
about the "death of the real world" like this: "Folks, I've been
out there in the real world, and let me tell you, it's a pretty
bleak scene. If you hire one of those marriage arrangement
institutes to try and line you up with some nice ladies
- it's a total disaster!" Yeah, but in the real world there are
thousands of other things besides matchmaking services.

The internet is infrastructure. It provides the opportunity for
peer-to-peer structures just as much as centralized ones. People pick
and choose what they want from it. If people tend to use centralized
services in certain cases, it's likely not the internet's fault.

You can actually meet people over the internet, but it might happen
more often through other means than commercial dating services.
(I can't say much about that, since I don't have personal experience
with those commercial services nor have I read much about them.)

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On Sun, 19 May 2024, Ben Collver wrote:

From the transcript of an interview with Jason Scott:

What I want to get to though is the fundamental lie of the
Internet, which is that the internet is decentralized and that it

And don't forget electricity! Power generation for most of us is also very centralized, and if it goes away, it takes the internet with it.

Some have solar here, but the other end most likely is traditionally
powered.

Your ISP is a case of centralization, and also, the currency you pay your internet and electricity provider is centrally managed.

As you say... it is a fun thought experiment to think about how this can
be avoided or mitigated.

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On Mon, 20 May 2024 10:44:19 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If the people who ultimately control the IANA root don’t
like your face, they can (with some inconvenience) stop you using your
chosen names.

Counterexample: The Pirate Bay. In spite of repeated domain seizures, a high-profile prosecution with convictions, and an ongoing campaign to get
it shut down, it continues to operate to this day.

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This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.

On Mon, 20 May 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 20 May 2024 10:44:19 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If the people who ultimately control the IANA root don’t
like your face, they can (with some inconvenience) stop you using your
chosen names.

Counterexample: The Pirate Bay. In spite of repeated domain seizures, a high-profile prosecution with convictions, and an ongoing campaign to get
it shut down, it continues to operate to this day.

I thought it was several pirate bays being operated by different people? Granted, that doesn't change anything from my perspective, and I'm happy
they are working and it is a good example of decentralization in a
centralized structure (well part of it at least).

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On 21/05/2024 16:21, D wrote:

On Mon, 20 May 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 20 May 2024 10:44:19 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If the people who ultimately control the IANA root don’t
like your face, they can (with some inconvenience) stop you using your
chosen names.

Counterexample: The Pirate Bay. In spite of repeated domain seizures, a
high-profile prosecution with convictions, and an ongoing campaign to get
it shut down, it continues to operate to this day.

I thought it was several pirate bays being operated by different people? Granted, that doesn't change anything from my perspective, and I'm happy
they are working and it is a good example of decentralization in a centralized structure (well part of it at least).

Both of you are right. Yes, there are multiple Pirate Bays, but there's
an 'official' Pirate Bay located at thepiratebay.org. Granted, this
domain has changed hands many times over the years, and it no longer
resembles the original site very much (ads etc.). However, making a copy
of TPB is trivially easy as it's all magnet links. All of the million
plus torrents are about 100M in size.

To be fair, TPB is a malware-ridden shit-hole filled with dead torrents
and whatnot, but that's outside the current discussion.

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On Tue, 21 May 2024 22:32:48 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Mon, 20 May 2024 10:44:19 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If the people who ultimately control the IANA root don’t like your
face, they can (with some inconvenience) stop you using your chosen
names.

Counterexample: The Pirate Bay. In spite of repeated domain seizures, a
high-profile prosecution with convictions, and an ongoing campaign to
get it shut down, it continues to operate to this day.

The fact that The Pirate Bay is apparently still going in some form is neither here nor there. The statement is about control of a given domain name. Certainly the fact that it’s had at least one domain seized
(albeit via centralized control over .se than the root) supports the proposition rather than contradicting it.

You did say “your chosen names” (plural). So the fact that The Pirate Bay has been able to continue operating, under one name or another,
essentially without interruption all this while, does disprove your point.

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On Tue, 21 May 2024 21:32:21 +0100, Gordinator wrote:

To be fair, TPB is a malware-ridden shit-hole filled with dead torrents
and whatnot ...

As a Linux user, I don’t use it to download cracked software. Yes, there
are quite a few dead/incomplete torrents. But as with anything, Sturgeon’s Law applies.

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Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:

On Mon, 20 May 2024 10:44:19 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If the people who ultimately control the IANA root don’t
like your face, they can (with some inconvenience) stop you using your
chosen names.

Counterexample: The Pirate Bay. In spite of repeated domain seizures, a high-profile prosecution with convictions, and an ongoing campaign to get
it shut down, it continues to operate to this day.

The fact that The Pirate Bay is apparently still going in some form is
neither here nor there. The statement is about control of a given domain
name. Certainly the fact that it’s had at least one domain seized
(albeit via centralized control over .se than the root) supports the proposition rather than contradicting it.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

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This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable text,
while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.

On Tue, 21 May 2024, Gordinator wrote:

On 21/05/2024 16:21, D wrote:

On Mon, 20 May 2024, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Mon, 20 May 2024 10:44:19 +0100, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

If the people who ultimately control the IANA root don’t
like your face, they can (with some inconvenience) stop you using your >>>> chosen names.

Counterexample: The Pirate Bay. In spite of repeated domain seizures, a
high-profile prosecution with convictions, and an ongoing campaign to get >>> it shut down, it continues to operate to this day.

I thought it was several pirate bays being operated by different people?
Granted, that doesn't change anything from my perspective, and I'm happy
they are working and it is a good example of decentralization in a
centralized structure (well part of it at least).

Both of you are right. Yes, there are multiple Pirate Bays, but there's an 'official' Pirate Bay located at thepiratebay.org. Granted, this domain has changed hands many times over the years, and it no longer resembles the original site very much (ads etc.). However, making a copy of TPB is trivially easy as it's all magnet links. All of the million plus torrents are about 100M in size.

To be fair, TPB is a malware-ridden shit-hole filled with dead torrents and whatnot, but that's outside the current discussion.

Had no idea, thank you very much for the update!

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