I think that decentralized solutions to the Web mostly suck because they're worse to use for the majority of people. But if the Web becomes useless for things people actually care about, decentralized solutions will creep in. People won't simply give up, the things that work will become better in the ways that serve prospective users.

That's kind of the worst case scenario, though, where bad politicians don't get removed from office. We can hope that most people will decide that enough is enough, or politicians will quietly back down when they realize they're dooming their own careers.

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layer8 2 days ago | parent [-]

The worst case is when only approved hardware and software will be legal, and every level of infrastructure will be enforcing that. You can say good bye to decentralized solutions then.

Note how Apple is already a bit like that, banning certain torrenting apps even from alternative app stores [0]. I’m just mentioning that as a demonstration of the feasibility of such closed and controlled ecosystems. Now restrict ISP network traffic to packets signed by approved hardware, and there aren’t that many practical loopholes left.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45098411

	▲	bitwize 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Brazil's senate has already approved a bill, PL 2628, which is broadly similar to the UK's Online Safety Act, but also requires sistemas operacionais de terminais ("terminal operating systems") to implement age checks in a secure, auditable fashion. The days where you could run whatever OS you want on hardware you own will soon be over. And you know what? There's not a damn thing any of us can do, so may as well just buy Apple gear.