Pseudo-peer-to-peer



Anonymous author



Peer-to-peer (P2P) is the essence of the internet. Tim Berners-Lee's first drafts of the World Wide Web suggested a platform where content is universally accessible, including universal authorship, essentially what today we understand as blogs and wikis.

Prior to that, Usenet and Email SMTP were distributed systems enabling peer-to-peer communications without a single dominant node.

Technologically, the internet was an innovative peer-to-peer infrastructure, a "network of intranets". However, ultimately its goal was to provide peer-to-peer interactions between people and organizations. The infrastructure enabled the interactions.

Peer-to-peer digital interactions include: the ability to send instant messages to a friend, the ability to share files such as videos and documents, the ability to publish thoughts to the world, the ability to buy real world objects through digital marketplaces.

Today, the infrastructure is mostly comprised of a few "armies of servers" (clouds) owned by large corporations. Peer-to-peer infrastructures on the internet are far from mainstream. On the other hand, we haven't lost peer-to-peer interactions. Quite the contrary, modern society thrives on peer-to-peer digital interactions. These interactions are enabled by the cloud infrastructures of internet giants.

The ability to send instant messages to friends: Facebook, WhatsApp

The ability to share files such as videos and documents: YouTube, Google Docs

The ability to publish thoughts to the world: Twitter, Facebook

The ability to share goods and services: EBay, Airbnb, Uber

Normal users of these services wouldn't understand peer-to-peer infrastructures (most people struggle with basic computer tasks), so they would see little benefit in changing the infrastructure from cloud to peer-to-peer. On the other hand, peer-to-peer digital interactions are obviously valuable to all of us. To normal users, the infrastructure is irrelevant and invisible as long as the features are available. In their view, the peer-to-peer web is already a reality.

We live in a pseudo-peer-to-peer internet, where our interactions seem to be peer-to-peer, but a internet giant is always present. The business of internet giants is to become the invisible foundation for all our digital interactions. They have no intentions in enabling our interactions outside of their infrastructures.

A middleman's business is to make himself a necessary evil. ‐ Neuromancer

Facebook's mission will never be to sincerely "connect people". More accurately, it aspires to become the "people connector". There's a subtle but important distinction here. A matchmaker's job is complete once the two persons meet each other, but a people connector is a messenger that doesn't want to enable a private meeting with only the two individuals present.

Hence the problem is that essentially the business of a internet giant is to own our interactions. Facebook makes money by owning your friendships. Google makes money by owning details of your personal life. Internet giants are emperors of the global virtual society, larger in absolute numbers than many countries. We do not have a parliament, we do not have elections, we do not have votes, we do not have political representatives, we do not have democracy.

We do not have rights. While in the physical realm we have laws and rights through real governments that cover some of our digital activities, they often do not cover the entirety our virtual life, comprised of virtual possessions that we assume, naively, belong to us. Through aggressive terms of services that we fail to read yet still agree, internet giants hold rights to terminate our virtual existence and possessions.

Our digital interactions were just the first target, and are already won by internet giants. Their next goal is to own our payments (Facebook and Google). Then, to own our presence in virtual reality (Facebook and Google). With net neutrality threatened, there may soon come a time where internet service providers (ISPs) will provide access to only walled gardens. In fact, for people in developing countries, internet giants like Facebook and Google are already establishing ISPs. Internet.org is a travesty to the original concept of the internet, using the hypocrite speech of Facebook's "connecting people".

Their ambitions won't stop, and their influence will start creeping beyond our digital life, extending more and more to our real-world lives. With Google blending with Washington and Zuckerberg aspiring for public office, soon there may be no distinction between virtual societies and real societies.

True P2P infrastructure is the only way we can guarantee our virtual freedom, and ultimately our physical freedom. Digital infrastructures are how internet giants attained power, and through digital infrastructures we can revert the situation. If we don't do anything, the dominance of internet giant clouds will continue to expand.

The world is already mostly dystopian, where privacy is dead and our micro-interactions are owned by multinationals married to elite politicians. But we still have some tiny bits of freedom left. For some lucky reason, most of us can still access any website hosted by any computer. We can still spawn our own servers and communicate through our own mesh, our own cloud, owned by everyone yet owned by no one.

We don't yet live in the era of internet 100% owned by internet giants. Perhaps only "90%" of the internet is owned by them. Let's make use of that 10%, it's our last hope. We can fight for reverting this situation while there is still time. Take action and:

Delete your Facebook account

Abandon Gmail, become a customer of an email service like ProtonMail or FastMail

Abandon WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, Hangouts, Allo, Duo

Use Signal or Email or OTR

Use ad-blockers or firewalls that block all Facebook and Google domains

Use Tor and VPNs so internet giants don't own information on your IP address

Use the P2P social network Patchwork and contribute to it

Use the P2P marketplace OpenBazaar

Engage in the Ethereum community

Engage in the IPFS community

Adopt cryptocurrencies

Don't let user experience (UX) expectations bring you back to internet giants

Work hard to improve the UX of true P2P services

Explain to your friends why all this is crucial

Internet giants are proceeding to dominate the world through comfortable user experiences and armies of servers. Make a conscious effort to fight back.

(this text also available at http://pastebin.com/P6WLSXw7)