I think you’re far too optimistic. There very much are central nodes: DNS registrars, ISPs and data-centers. The prerequisites for participating have increased. Domestic Australian providers now require copies of government-issued IDs (copies which then make their way into America’s private-intelligence spinoffs like Palantir, because it’s these spinoffs that are selling verification services). The West is expanding its capability to surveil domestic and foreign populations. To participate on the open-internet is to identify yourself, provide documentation and have government- or private-databases verify your identity and to pay perpetual gratuity rents.
A thousand virtual-servers hosted on Microsoft’s or Amazon’s computers. That’s the reality. It already feels as if Cloudfare is MITMing everyone. The internet has become more centralized than it was and that’s a trend that will continue.
It seems to me absurd that the majority of a developed-nation’s citizens carry around pocket-computers that are connected to the internet 24/7/365 yet none of them are allowed to host a blog on their computers (pocket or otherwise). (The reality is your mobile-computer is forbidden by economic-rent-seekers from talking to another mobile-computer even though they may both be in the same room; they force your data to transit over their infrastructure and gate-keep it so that the other mobile-computer is forced also into paying rent so that it can retrieve your data from the economic-rent-seeking entity [that may be located in another country; so that message you sent to a friend may travel half-way across the world even though their computer is three meters apart from yours! What a farce!].) Consumers are behind CGNATs and are barred from hosting by default. I was optimistic about IPv6–everyone could have a unique public-IPv6-address. The market for static IPv4s should have collapsed. It’s still here. It’s still demanding perpetual rents.
I’m an advocate of OpenNIC–a domain should not require a perpetual rent be paid to a registrar. The foundation’s of the internet are centralised. To seek and agitate for de-centralisation is correct, but it’s counter-productive to redeploy the same centralised software that got us to this point we want to move away from. That software was designed for a bygone era and it’s been taken over by corporate interests. Capitalism is doing what it does best: consolidating! You’re not going to de-consolidate by taking their software. We need a new internet. We need GNUnet.
GNUnet’s still juvenile, but I do encourage users to deploy and play with it. We can get to a better internet that reflects all of us. Computers have become locked dumb-terminals for ad-networks and tech-oligarch mouth-pieces. They constrict the user absolutely whilst using your hardware, electricity and data connection to surveil the mobile-computer’s environment and your interactions with it. If you dislike that future you need to participate.
I2P is a mature project and is ready to deploy now. There’s two implementations: one in Java and one in C++.
You need to pay perpetual rents to host on the old-web: you need to pay rent to a DNS-registrar and you need to pay rent for a publicly-routable IP address; you’re also coerced into paying rents for compute-time in a data-center (it’s often cheaper than paying for a publicly-routable IP address which are priced for businesses). These are economic-burdens that exist purely for rent extraction. You can host your own Lemmy instance over I2P (and/or GNUnet) on your own machines on the data-connection you already pay for right now. The additional cost is $0.00 (excluding the increased compute-burden on your machines). If you data-connection already grants you a public routable address you can use OpenNIC for a free or self-administered domain that is accessible over the old-web. The software exists. Users need to deploy it, use it and agitate for it.
I will be using solar-panels, batteries and arm CPUs running GNU/Linux to host content over I2P and GNUnet. The compute becomes free. The only cost that remains is the nominal amount required for a consumer-connection. Using software like I2P and GNUnet on your own hardware on your data-connection–that you’re using to read this–is the closest thing we have to “no-barrier” self-hosting or decentralising. The reality is that’s a significant information barrier and I am surprised that no-one has made a mobile-computer ‘app’ for self-hosting blogs/forums that runs a I2P-router in the background for non-technical users. I type that… but I know why it probably hasn’t been done (if it hasn’t): Google’s Android will kill any long-running background process… and Apple would not let you publish it.
Google’s Android will kill any long-running background process… and Apple would not let you publish it.
tbh portable mobile phones are not the right place for running public services or an i2p router. an i2p router produces a constant traffic, and mobile data plans have a monthly traffic limit. you can’t afford having 4 TB traffic a month on mobile data. also its a waste to use wireless networks for it, because of the increased power consumption and because it is taking airtime from other devices, with wifi too but even more so on the cellular network.
I’m always available to be bashing google, but it makes sense to kill most long running things. smartphones only have a day long or more battery life because they kind of suspend themselves frequently. if you are running a blog on your phone, it will either get drained more quickly, or your blog won’t be accessible most of the time. but also it won’t kill all apps, you can make exceptions. likely depends on the brand, but on my phone I have several long running apps that are allowed to run freely. one of them the ntfy app, which is capable of receiving my notifications quickly, and I don’t have google services installed.
I think you’re far too optimistic. There very much are central nodes: DNS registrars, ISPs and data-centers. The prerequisites for participating have increased. Domestic Australian providers now require copies of government-issued IDs (copies which then make their way into America’s private-intelligence spinoffs like Palantir, because it’s these spinoffs that are selling verification services). The West is expanding its capability to surveil domestic and foreign populations. To participate on the open-internet is to identify yourself, provide documentation and have government- or private-databases verify your identity and to pay perpetual gratuity rents.
A thousand virtual-servers hosted on Microsoft’s or Amazon’s computers. That’s the reality. It already feels as if Cloudfare is MITMing everyone. The internet has become more centralized than it was and that’s a trend that will continue.
It seems to me absurd that the majority of a developed-nation’s citizens carry around pocket-computers that are connected to the internet 24/7/365 yet none of them are allowed to host a blog on their computers (pocket or otherwise). (The reality is your mobile-computer is forbidden by economic-rent-seekers from talking to another mobile-computer even though they may both be in the same room; they force your data to transit over their infrastructure and gate-keep it so that the other mobile-computer is forced also into paying rent so that it can retrieve your data from the economic-rent-seeking entity [that may be located in another country; so that message you sent to a friend may travel half-way across the world even though their computer is three meters apart from yours! What a farce!].) Consumers are behind CGNATs and are barred from hosting by default. I was optimistic about IPv6–everyone could have a unique public-IPv6-address. The market for static IPv4s should have collapsed. It’s still here. It’s still demanding perpetual rents.
I’m an advocate of OpenNIC–a domain should not require a perpetual rent be paid to a registrar. The foundation’s of the internet are centralised. To seek and agitate for de-centralisation is correct, but it’s counter-productive to redeploy the same centralised software that got us to this point we want to move away from. That software was designed for a bygone era and it’s been taken over by corporate interests. Capitalism is doing what it does best: consolidating! You’re not going to de-consolidate by taking their software. We need a new internet. We need GNUnet.
GNUnet’s still juvenile, but I do encourage users to deploy and play with it. We can get to a better internet that reflects all of us. Computers have become locked dumb-terminals for ad-networks and tech-oligarch mouth-pieces. They constrict the user absolutely whilst using your hardware, electricity and data connection to surveil the mobile-computer’s environment and your interactions with it. If you dislike that future you need to participate.
I2P is a mature project and is ready to deploy now. There’s two implementations: one in Java and one in C++.
You need to pay perpetual rents to host on the old-web: you need to pay rent to a DNS-registrar and you need to pay rent for a publicly-routable IP address; you’re also coerced into paying rents for compute-time in a data-center (it’s often cheaper than paying for a publicly-routable IP address which are priced for businesses). These are economic-burdens that exist purely for rent extraction. You can host your own Lemmy instance over I2P (and/or GNUnet) on your own machines on the data-connection you already pay for right now. The additional cost is $0.00 (excluding the increased compute-burden on your machines). If you data-connection already grants you a public routable address you can use OpenNIC for a free or self-administered domain that is accessible over the old-web. The software exists. Users need to deploy it, use it and agitate for it.
I will be using solar-panels, batteries and arm CPUs running GNU/Linux to host content over I2P and GNUnet. The compute becomes free. The only cost that remains is the nominal amount required for a consumer-connection. Using software like I2P and GNUnet on your own hardware on your data-connection–that you’re using to read this–is the closest thing we have to “no-barrier” self-hosting or decentralising. The reality is that’s a significant information barrier and I am surprised that no-one has made a mobile-computer ‘app’ for self-hosting blogs/forums that runs a I2P-router in the background for non-technical users. I type that… but I know why it probably hasn’t been done (if it hasn’t): Google’s Android will kill any long-running background process… and Apple would not let you publish it.
edit: this was a duplicate
tbh portable mobile phones are not the right place for running public services or an i2p router. an i2p router produces a constant traffic, and mobile data plans have a monthly traffic limit. you can’t afford having 4 TB traffic a month on mobile data. also its a waste to use wireless networks for it, because of the increased power consumption and because it is taking airtime from other devices, with wifi too but even more so on the cellular network.
I’m always available to be bashing google, but it makes sense to kill most long running things. smartphones only have a day long or more battery life because they kind of suspend themselves frequently. if you are running a blog on your phone, it will either get drained more quickly, or your blog won’t be accessible most of the time. but also it won’t kill all apps, you can make exceptions. likely depends on the brand, but on my phone I have several long running apps that are allowed to run freely. one of them the ntfy app, which is capable of receiving my notifications quickly, and I don’t have google services installed.