Comment by EGreg
1 day ago
It's all a matter of whether someone is willing to pay for the hosting.
Which is not, in my opinion, how things should be hosted on the Web.
Freenet had a different approach, even back in the early days (two decades ago). I interviewed Ian Clarke about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ
I wrote about it for years: https://community.intercoin.app/t/who-pays-for-storage-nfts-...
And recently I built Safecloud to be different: https://safebots.github.io/Safecloud/
On HN, a TLDR would be helpful, because just clicking your links would potentially mean falling for shilling of ones own side-hustle.
I bet there's complexity to the topic, but I am sure you could put it into a few words instead of just leaving a hook for others to click on.
I know nothing of Safecloud, but freenet failed for a very valid reasons:
1. Data retention isn't infinite. If the source disappears from the network, peers will prune it shortly. This is exponentially true in our multimedia-heavy world.
2. Despite 1, if you actually want to delete something you published, you can't. Absolutists will see this as a good thing. Normal people will see this as a problem.
3. Peer-to-peer doesn't work in a mobile-first world, and not enough people will host nodes as a hobby. If all website publishers/hosters have to host a node, then we're just back to the current model but with extra steps.
Closed-garden mobile-first tech feudalism lobotimized the Internet. I remember trying out the Freenets, I2Ps, and whatnot in the 90's. Too cumbersome nerdy tools to use for anything actually worthwhile. It was born in the idealized world village of the 90's Internet. Maybe real life doesn't work like that, and the lobotimized centralized tech will eventually win.
Is the p2p problem really still one in our world that is mobile first, but also has ubiquitous internet connectivity pretty much everywhere? I’m almost sure I could host my website from my phone and have at least 99.5% percent of uptime.
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