I don't agree with the premise that people don't want to be part of the infra. The real problem is that gate keeping is a great business model. It is so profitable to create a wall garden that companies compete ferocely to take care of you content.
Supposing TSMC has similar margin and cost structure for chips made in the US and Taiwan, what does a 5-20% price increase means in term of production cost?
It is late and I am thinking out load. How about a reputation system where users bring proof that other websites haven't found them abusive.
Visit a website that require identification. Generate a random unique identifier in your user agent. Live your life on that site. Download from that site a certificate that prove that your didn't abuse their site. Repeat that a few times.
Visit the site that wants to know if you are an abusive user. Share your certificates. They get to choose if they accept you.
If you abuse that site, it reports the abuse to the other sites that delivered you a certificate. Those sites gets to decide if they revoke their certificate or not.
It is a self policying system that require some level of cooperation. Users make themselves vulnerable to the risk of having sites they like loose trust in them.
There are cryptography primitives allowing you to privately make an intersection of the certificates you have and the providers the site would trust and compute a kind of score while not exposing any of your certificates or which providers trusted you amongst them. (the only thing is that a website could extract the knowledge that one specific provider trusted you if they only trust one, but that could probably be fixed with a better protocol that the one I have in mind).
Some stuff would definitely either slip through the cracks OR tarnish the reputation of legitimate users. What happens when someone's device gets compromised by a botnet that silently clicks ads in the background or turns that device into part of a DDoS army?
> It is a self policying system that require some level of cooperation.
How hard is it to obtain one of these certificates as a bot?
What you are describing though is possibly comparable to Privacypass.
Apple seems to be on board with Privacypass, perhaps they'll include a digital voucher of some kind with their devices and that presumably contributes to old devices getting worse as the voucher is spent down.
Just imagine if the whole web can contribute to planned obsolescence and you can pay for a fast, hassle free internet experience again just by buying a new phone.
And then you can dump the old ones on eBay for cheap as long as you don't plan on using them to access online services. Unless you are willing to settle for basic economy web experience.
Not everyone has a deep understanding of LLMs or the self-control to avoid the temptation of off-loading thinking to one. Many people are desperate enough to look to LLMs for medical advice or even friendship[0]. As workplaces and schools partner with Big Tech[1], LLM interfaces have already become embedded in everyday life as something you can't ignore.
There are no guardrails to LLMs. They remove friction from tasks that used to require critical thinking. We're constantly pressured into using them. I think only blaming the end-user is naive.
Is it time to move away from directly elected representative toward topic-specific randomly pick representative? Would this help prevent operation to influenced opinion?
IMO the problem of many platforms is that they don't let you "own" the software (whatever that means).
Steam experience is closer to the feel of ownership because:
- Most games don't just randomly upgrade. They are stable.
- Steam is cross platform enough that you can use the software on different devices as if you were copying it.
- Your steam account isn't the center of your digital life, it's access isn't subject to many associated risks.
I don’t buy that justification, most people have never and will never spare a thought for “software ownership”. I’d bet the truth is closer to “people don’t see games as software, but as entertainment. Paying for them is no different to paying to go to the movies, buy a song on iTunes, use Spotify, or Netflix”.
Apps (“software”) and games are fundamentally different in the public’s perception. Look at the App Store, it has two different tabs for games and Apple is even making a separate app for them.
It’s curious that you had to specify mobile games. That seems to indicate you understand those are their own class of product (often more slot machine with extra steps than software or game) than what the conversation is about (Steam, thus desktop games).
The App Store—which, by the way, I was thinking of the one on the Mac—was merely an example to represent how companies understand and separate games from other software. I could’ve also made the point of games being seen as entertainment rather than software by pointing out Netflix has movies, TV shows, and games, but not other apps.
I doubt you understand what science is about. The proposed theory, like any theory, should be judged on its power of prediction and simplicity. It doesn't matter if it doesn't satisfy your curiosity.
On the software side, I think the biggest blocker is affordable UEFI laptop for developers. A risc-v startup aiming to disrupt the cloud should include this in their master plan.
