We are in the hobbyist tinkerer stage. It’s easy to assume that’s where things will remain but that won’t be the case. Companies that monetize via a combination of fees and subscription upsells can and will cover the costs of servers.
Discussion
Then we’re back to centralization, no?
Things will always trend to maximum efficiency. In most cases that means larger, economies of scale. The difference is that we now have choices and no longer have to stick around if someone does you wrong. I don’t know why people think relays will be like a giant thing to choose from - they’re more likely to trend toward thousands of niche communities/ interests
You talk as if decentralized communication is a new thing, the choice was always there with networks like freenet or i2p as old as 20 years and more.
Read a quote (same YC thread) every generation has to learn old things as new again.
Decentralized communication may be old, but it’s been forgotten and the tech is old. Perhaps we’re simply bringing back bellbottom jeans, except NOSTr is a better platform to do it. A more global and efficient platform that is able to scale globally.
Facebook alone has 918.27 acres of data servers. All for centralized storage. 40 million sqft globally. This is for all the things that people care about photos and video.
Could everyone self storage again? Perhaps that’s the way? But the vast majority of people are too inept or lazy to figure that out. I assume the vast majority want the security of having their information on a centralized exchange. For safety alone.
Though, as I’m thinking through this, perhaps that’s fine. There’s room for both: centralized storage with non centralized access.
@deaddodo addresses this on. Ycombinator forum: What bugs me about it is their naivety to solved technical problems. For instance, they answer the question of “why this hasn’t been done?” with:
> I don't know, but I imagine it has to do with the fact that people making social networks are either companies wanting to make money or P2P activists who want to make a thing completely without servers.
Except it has been done. In fact, that’s literally what KaZaA was with its “superpeers”. And what they realized was that by making a semi-decentralized system, they just introduced the weaknesses of both systems (slow downloads via peer-latency and network limits + easy censorship by killing relays/nodes). In addition, this is exactly how IRC works, despite the fact that it’s mostly used with a few nodes these days.
I’m not against semi-decentralized systems. They’re great and help deal with some scalability problems; but they don’t solve for the number one issue most people moving to decentralized are seeking (anonymity, privacy and free speech), so it’s not fair to compare it to platforms/protocols that do offer those features.