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Internet developments have gone from exciting to dreadful. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by Anticorp@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.ml

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Idk if this is the right community for this conversation, but it's been on my mind and I want to share it with someone.

In the 00's every new thing we heard about the internet was exciting. There were new protocols, new ways to communicate, new ways to share files, new ways to find each other. Every time we heard anything new about the internet, it was always progress.

That lasted into the early teens and then things started changing. Things started stagnating. Now we're well into the phase where every new piece of news we hear is negative. New legislations, new privacy intrusions, new restrictions, new technologies to lock content away and keep us from sharing, or seeing the content we were looking for. New ways to force ads.

At one point the Internet was my most favorite thing in the world. Now I don't know if I even like it anymore. I certainly don't look forward to hearing news about it. It's sad, man. We've lost a lot. The mega corps took the internet from us, changed it from a million small sites that people created because they had big ideas, or were passionate about small ones, and turned it into a few enormous sites with no new ideas, no passion, just an insatiable desire for money.

We're at the end of an era, and unlike the last 20 years of progress, I don't think most of us will like what the next era brings.

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[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Do you think it was invented as a Ponzi scheme, or has that just become the perception based off the massive initial growth in value? I think that the goal was always for the eventual stabilization of the currency, which of course means that mining becomes less and less profitable. It needs to eventually hit a point where mining produces no new coins for the currency to hit stability. But then idk why anyone would run the servers required for verification. At that point the verification becomes massively power intensive. So maybe it was always a Ponzi scheme? I'm no crypto expert, so I don't really know.

[–] wagesj45@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

It was corrupted in much the same way the stock market was corrupted. That whole thing is mostly speculative gambling now, when it was supposed to about profit sharing with companies that were either sound investments currently with steady profits or up-and-coming companies that had potential. Now it's just casino gambling betting on prices that are completely divorced from reality that expects infinite growth of made up value.

[–] sknowmads@dormi.zone 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Go read a bit of Satoshi's white paper on Bitcoin. It was created in response to the banking industry as a way for individuals to securely own digital currency without a centralized institution.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have. I know the stated goal. The question is do you think that was the actual intent, or was it always intended as an elaborate ponzi scheme? I think it has more or less lived up to its stated goal, but as a currency. People think it's a Ponzi scheme because it's treated as an investment. From that perspective I can see why they think that and I wonder if they think that's what it was originally created for.

[–] sknowmads@dormi.zone 4 points 1 year ago

If it was a Ponzi scheme from the get go he would have cashed out his billions by now.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago

No, it just didn't get traction for actual transactions fast enough and it just became a target for speculation. That's a positive feedback loop where volatility discourages use as a currency while encouraging speculation.

I think what we need is to establish an independent digital currency first, and then decentralize it. For example, GNU Taler, and then build out the infrastructure and a cryptocurrency could then be phased in. Once the mass market uses digital payments outside the banking network regularly, they'll be ready to adopt something like BitCoin for international use.