[ExI] see you on Retroshare

[Adrian Tymes]

On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 10, 2013 at 04:55:56PM +0100, BillK wrote:
> > I think a few more comments on the Retroshare platform might be useful.
>
> The death of the open Internet has been prophesied several
> times, but now it is really happening. Now is the time
> to start the migration awy from the centralized, open channels
> into enduser-run darknet.
>

Where, without advertising to draw new members (at least so
much as being googlable), communities die a slow, stagnant
death.  I've seen it happen multiple times.

Meanwhile, the communities who continue to exist in the open,
despite the increased costs, may continue to get new members.
(Some of them at very low rates, granted.)

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to convince people of this
until they run into it, and struggle with it for years.  Of course,
those who insist on such moves also tend to insist that the
world is as they believe it to be, regardless of the evidence.
This is not useful in finding ways to improve the world that are
more effective than wishing hard.

Further, in most cases the transition drives away enough
members (who were marginally participating in the first place)
that the community undergoes a phase change, losing any
effectiveness it had.  The counter to this is being someone who
could assemble the community in the first place - but I'm not
sure even Mr. More would care to rebuild the Extropians from
scratch, given the changes the world has undergone.

TL,DR: the open Internet is still alive, and prophesies which
keep proving false won't change that.  No matter how much of
an emotionally releasing disasterbationist fantasy they would
be if true, hard data - not anecdotes and fear-based worries
about possible futures - is what matters.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20130710/70490b24/attachment.html>