What’s everyone’s opinion on Tim Berners-Lee’s Inrupt venture? I made the mistake of underestimating him back in 1992 with his wild ideas of a “World Wide Web”. Will he be right this time as well?

https://indiatimes.com/technology/...

The article is from more than two years ago, so we can safely say that nothing has come out of it.

The main problem is the "network effect" that was also at the root of oligopolising the internet in the first place. People flock to a platform because other people are also there and it's easy to find each other, which is why more people join.

A new platform, no matter how nice it is, has the network effect against it. There's nobody there, so why join.

Won't fly. Convenience of Internet is too large for average humans to migrate to something different.

This website should use target="_blank" for links

@Eklavya You don't do that because it breaks the back button and also accessibility.

We are only just learning why it isn't a good idea to have someone else do authentication and another company provide hosting for your project, and to buy phones where you don't get to choose what you can install. The case of Parler taught the alt-right mob a lesson about privacy.

It will take a decade or two until other groups also learn this lesson, and then again until they also learn to encrypt all traffic. We will have people on Mars before secure networking becomes the norm.

@homo-lorens That's a major defect of most research and PoC solutions. Everyone is too busy developing a working example that they forget to include security features, and as soon as the thing is out there, it's pretty much impossible to do any mayor change which would provide better security. Car remotes, nuclear reactors, communication protocols, banking, ...

He's right - the internet *shouldn't* be how it is today. And as much as I love him, he's a bit naive thinking he can change it.

It's the way it is because the big companies have made it that way to their advantage - they make a lot of profit, and have a lot of influence with the way it's set up. So to truly implement his idea, you're going to war with the likes of FAANG combined - and there's no way he's ever got a hope of pulling that off, sadly.

@AlmondSauce So? They couldn't do anything about that because they would be obsolete.

What he overlooks is what advantages this centralisation offers because that's what made these companies big in the first place, and that's what will keep them going.

Hard for lightning to strike in the same place twice.

It took at bit of trying to understand what's the point of it, but I think I maybe got it in the end. It would be very useful for normal users if everyone used it. It's not a privacy heaven — just an outer circle of hell than the Internet is now.

@Fast-Nop you make a valid point. That is why WhatsApp is so hard to avoid. We have seen it happen though with platforms like MySpace and Skype so it's not impossible.

I have never heard of these technologies before though I think it will only be meaningful when there is a big insensitive. At the moment few really care about the issues but enjoy the services the big tech companies provide.