1. They were a major site that was an initial starting point for traffic
2. Search engines pointed to them and people could locate them.
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That was all a long time ago. Now people tend to go to a few 'all in one sites'. Google, reddit, '$big social media'. Other than Google most of those places optimize you to stay on that particular site rather than go to other people's content. The 'web' was a web of interconnectedness. Now it's more like a singularity. Once you pass the event horizon of their domain you can never escape again.
You've set yourself up for a question: Please give an example, with a deeper-lever perspective, of a real-world use-case for (non-crypto) blockchain that isn't better solved with non-blockchain technology.
Edit to answer this question:
> What about this is intrinsically "dangerous nonsense"?
The article isn't about the tech itself, it's about the interfaces of the tech and the real world. The problems there are shameless shilling, deception & efficiency problems.
I think any adversarial system has something to gain from blockchain. When participants of a system are naturally pitted against one another due to being competitors (a la engaging in a zero-sum game), the solution is usually to agree to auditing by a third-party. However, this method is easily corruptible by replacing the auditors with biased parties[1]. This is not an uncommon problem. Try searching "biased auditors", and you'll get a wealth of literature and perspectives on the issue.
A lot of blockchain proponents are majorly against the idea of "private blockchains", but I'm not. I believe private blockchains hold a lot of promise as a way of auditing an adversarial system, in place of a corruptible third-party. Plus, auditors don't amount to much more than middle-men, and thus add an additional layer of complexity to the system, meaning more can go wrong. Redirecting the cost of auditors to maintaining a system hosted by the adversaries would result in a more lean system (by less nodes) with little chance of bias corrupting the audit process (because you can't inject former employees into a blockchain). Instead of the SEC having to oversee both the members of the network and the auditors to prevent trusts from forming, they would just need to monitor the blockchain updates.
What the technical implementation of this would look like would vary wildly by industry, and thus would require some brainstorming to ensure feasibility, but no such brainstorming would ever begin if the members of an adversarial system are convinced that blockchains are "dangerous nonsense".
Of course, such a technology would take a massive chunk from a very profitable industry, so I expect a lot of people (employed auditors) to be averse to the idea, but maybe those people need to do some soul-searching. When your job depends on the continued existence of a problem, you aren't really incentivized to diminish the problem. Rape-whistle companies sell less rape-whistles if people rape less.
1. How do you solve the oracle problem? Blockchain can only deal with things that are on the blockchain already. Any interface to the real world suffers the trust and bias issues you described. You're just shifting the problem ever so slightly. (That's why the only real application is crypto currencies so far, because those can be realised wholly within the blockchain.)
2. How do you incentivise expending the PoW work without cryptocurrencies?
3. Why not have one central/permissioned authority issue chains of blocks, and everyone that wants can verify them cheaply? That is millions of times more efficient than PoW.
All great questions, and I'll preface my response to saying that the true answers to these problems would have to be addressed in the "industry-specific brainstorming" that I mentioned. The results could look wildly different based on the problem the blockchain is addressing.
That said, the movement of "tangible assets" to "blockchain assets" is without a doubt a huge challenge for blockchains, but usually only when dealing with "real things" vs "systemic things", eg exchanging fiat for cryptocurrency. Integration into a private blockchain can be wholly systemic (so system-to-system vs reality-to-system). Integrating a new company into the system could be done by a joint effort between the members of private blockchain (who are all incentivized to help, because it's in their interest to ensure that no member of their industry goes unchecked.)
The economic incentive to commit to PoW is intrinsic to the adversarial network itself - basically, the desire of a company to survive the zero-sum game (success in such is typically measured by market share.)
To revert to a centralized authority is not an invalid approach, and may very well be the "happy medium" that allows this concept to solidify into something feasible. However, it is a "half-in, half-out" solution and is still vulnerable to corruption.
This is -of course - all speculative, but my overall point is that the discussion to reach solutions to these challenges will not be had if blockchains are written off as "dangerous nonsense".
Short comment to say I appreciate the thoughtful response here, and that implications of public vs private blockchains in real world contexts is something I've not given enough thought to - thanks for the homework :)
"it is the only known solution to the Byzantine Generals problem that doesn't involve a centralized authority"
Did you skip that one on purpose? How do non-blockchain technologies solve the the Byzantine General's problem without relying on a (corrupt) central authority? Address this before you make more demands.
How does blockchain solve the Byzantine General's problem without relying on a (corrupt) central authority?
Math or not, police & courts overrule them.
Actually, blockchain isn't even mathematically a solution to BGP, is it? You need to define your actors better, here.
A 51% attack means communication can be denied. And there's still the question of how does A know that B has seen that A has seen, that B has seen…
Am I missing something?
The fact that communication happens on the blockchain doesn't mean it's not communication.
I just read a couple of articles about blockchain and BGP, and I think they all misunderstood what BGP is.
I'm A, and see that B is "committed on the blockchain to attack, assuming A is too". I can then add my block that says "I see B commits to attack. I agree let's both do this. I'll attack if you attack".
Ok. So now B sees that. Do they attack?
If you think the answer here is clear, then you've misunderstood BGP.
Good attempt at a deflection, I won't casually solve the very thing that is a great example of blockchain being a solution looking for a problem.
But, given the 'real world' context I tried to stress, do you think blockchain is a good solution to the variations of that problem in real world contexts?
You think that you're onto something but your rhetoric and arguments honestly make me cringe.
People are increasingly aware that governments/authorities do not deserve the trust that they have been given + the opaque nature of the system only allows authorities to abuse their power. Thus the technology you love to hate so much does in fact serve "real world" problems and is more trusted, so much so that Ethereum for instance processes 4.5x more transactions than Visa [0].
There are many more arguments how this technology delivers real value to real people NOW, but I have no interest in entertaining more of this kind of bad faith discussions. The better technology will survive and eventually dominate, with or without you.
I don't hate blockchain - the technology - it's really interesting.
Something I dislike though is that so many conversations that enquire roughly 'why not use a more traditional technology' end up with rant about not trusting governments - that is 'cringe'.
edit: That comment was snide, my heart goes out to the OVH team, the message within the video was good, forthright & honest. I hope it will be well received by their customers - just a shame it's a bit difficult to listen to!
I suspect the multitude of little plastic catches, clips, switches, levers etc that everything contains now are the major source of appliances being junked.
Average speed camera zones are the only speed control device that works (for many via congestion rather than willful compliance I suspect), unfortunately it also encourages tailgating, aggressive and distracted driving (often in reduced width lanes) - I wish there was more of a focus on that.
Reddit before user-moderated subreddits was far more pleasant, not that they're exactly at fault but they widened the audience just like eternal september & signal:noise, or signal:bullshit, ratios never recovered. There are still 'good' subreddits but above a surprisingly tiny community size they degrade rapidly & irreversably. What shocks me the most is if you log out well over 1/2 the front page content is at schadenfreude, it's awful.
I think the logic of user-moderation is quite cunning though. It lets thousands of different moderators try what works. A strategy of throwing mud at the wall. So the frontpage stuff is pretty janky, but perhaps that's because the lowest common denominator always is. It's true that when a subreddit gets popular it faces new challenges, and many fail. But that might be true for any forum.
The barrier to entry for brigading & group think is lower on reddit than discrete forums, I think that's part of the problem & I've no idea what the solution is. Different moderation methods have been tried all over (+5 insightful etc) but they have barely succeeded in isolation & I doubt they'd fare any better vs Reddits firehose.
They absolutely are, but I think that link demonstrates the difference I was poorly describing quite well actually, the front page was diverse then too - by design - but how many of those links are sharing things at someones expense in the r/trashy sense? Not to put the content of that link on some sort of pedistal, but how many of those links would make it to the frontpage today?
It's a differnet site today than then, but if it were current that type of content is still broadly more interesting to me than the present frontpage. Having a read of some of the comment threads too it's really quite different to today, Sure there were in-jokes but it was more than same tired memes getting voted to the top time after time.
