this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Shills ruin everything. More robust p2p and federated systems is awesome and seemingly the direction things should be heading (web 3). There is the real question of how do incentivise and fund the infra, and that's where the shills pop in.
While to some extent that is true, where it always falls apart is in what tangible benefit this provides to the user. Federation is cool, and there are benefits in terms of moderation, but to the average person the difference between centralised and federated tools is usually that the federated tool has far fewer users/engagement. It's the same for web3, in that the shills are selling something no one actually wants or can really benefit from.
P2P and federation help reduce the capital and labor costs that is a major problem for these very large systems. That doesn't seem needed based on past status quo but as the age of easy money ends these companies have to do what they promised their investors, squeeze costs and increase profits and consolidate their market share.
It's not a forgone conclusion, big tech aren't idiots neither the engineers or c level folks, but enshitfication gives new players Niches to compete in, but these new players almost need to use any cost reduction tech they can because we are in such a capital sparse environment.
I agree still on the shills. Most are get rich quick minded folks, with pump and dumps or worse just pure rent seeking. Again there is a place, I think, to find better ways to monetize people's work they put towards running infrastructure (as compared to selling the outputs of the panopticon, pcyops for governments and corporations, and the charity of the privileged).