I'd like to use this opportunity to disagree with the current .7
strategy of the darknet- I've done it before, but this is the Chat
list, so It's not Off-topic to have a discussion about it.
I'd like to start of by admitting that I probably know the least
about the subject, compared with anyone else in the room. This isn't
a pissing match, I just want freenet to be the best it can be.
We all do. That's why we're here.
The darknet model should be supplemented with an opennet SOON- I
personally know 4 friends of mine who I have spoken with in person,
who have not wanted to use freenet in it's current state. I'll
attempt to discuss some concerns below.
I've tried to intend my thoughts below, for ease of reading.
The first is the idea of trust in Freenet .7 is complete- You argue
that you should only join with your real life friends,
That your peers are people that you trust, but this breaks down for a
few reasons.
1) The first is that it doesn't fit the Social networking model that
we're looking to model after.
In Milgrim's experiments (which, btw, were seldom as successful as
his first attempt), he found that the best results came from the
occasional long distance link.
a) In real life we often have these- For example, I am < 4 steps
from Bill Gates- My Pastor knows a friend of a friend, etc.
The problem is, these long distance links, such as My Pastor,
aren't necessarily people I trust on a deep level.
b) These weak links are often Largely grouped- Again, My Pastor-
There are several hundred people in his congregation.
If each of these people linked to him, we'd get ubernodes, which
you disagree with (See my other e-mail).
2) Trust isn't universal
a) The freenet .7 model gives them complete trust- I trust my
flatmate not to download CP, but I don't trust him not to download an
illegial MP3 file. Do I link with him? Do I need to find people
with whom I agree about everything?
b) People are desperate- Think about our chinese dissident- He
wants to learn more about the Western world, and to write and publish
about democracy. So he links with other people who are writing
about democracy.. He wants the information. But he knows that a
number of them
are otherwise untrustworthy people. Even though they all share a
love of democracy, should they link to one another?
3) We may never get to the point that freenet is "Big enough"
a) Sanity has argued on a Gmail model, where freenet is the "in-
thing", and people are looking for ways to get into it.
I) The number of people who want a truely anonymous network are
far fewer than the people who want a GB of free e-mail.
II) And even if we DID get that level of success, those links
weren't traded to people that were trusted. there were automted gmail
invite traders
Gmail invites were sold on eBay, etc. It's not the best model
for emulation.
b) People go to the path of least resistance-
I) It's always going to be easier to go to #freenet-refs, than it
is going to be to find friends who use the service. Promiscuous
linking is just easier!
II) More people care about speed than absolute privacy- Look at
how popular BitTorrent is.
* The best model will allow top speed for people who don't care
as much, but more privacy for people who do
* The right way to bring this about is be KEEPING THE DARKNET,
but layering an openet on top of it.
* People who care a lot about privacy use the darknet- People
who are desperate or want speed, use the OpenNet.
4) People are afraid of the Darknet
a) People are afraid of manually choosing to link-
I) For the reasons we outlined earlier, people don't know 100%
that their friends can be trusted in every domain
II) Because of that, they are afraid to link with people. they
don't want to be associated with a "Bad Guy"
* Rightfully or wrongly, they are worried (I've had actual
potential users say this), that they will link with a person who,
unknowingly to them
when they linked to him, does Bad Things.
* Freenet has always had a bit of a public scare because of CP
concerns. I'm not going to debate that here.
But people don't want to SPECIFICALLY, and KNOWINGLY ----
CHOOSE--- to link with a person who might do CP.
b) We need money!
I) We need users to get donations.
II) Users are afraid of the darknet
III) It's worth spending developer time on things that will
improve the number of people in the network, and number of people
donating,
c) Implementing Opennet will help get more users, which helps get
more donations.
I'll be happy to discuss this with anyone who's interested. It's a
serious issue, and I'm trying to go about things the Right way.
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