This post follows a recent discussion about decentralization at the first Madeira Tech Meetup of 2018. I already touched these subjects previously here on the blog a couple of times (for example, the one about Zeronet and the one about Mastodon), but this time I will try to summarize the key points of the issue and give a list of awesome projects and applications the will help you reduce your dependency on several centralized services.
Nowadays many most popular web services and applications that “we” use are centralized, this means that the application and its data only exist on the machines of a single entity. As soon as this was considered normal, it led to another phenomenon, which these “apps” close down any possible interaction that is not under their control, to keep the user locked in. A good example is social media and their chat applications, since closing down the doors to open protocols and any form of interoperability, allows the network effect to keeps the users inside (why can’t someone with an account on a certain Google chat application, talk with someone who uses Facebook Messenger? you know, like email works).
The Internet infrastructure at it’s core is decentralized, it was initially designed this way in order to be robust and continue working when there is a problem in any of member of the network. For many years the applications built on top it, followed some of this principals and were happy to have a certain level of interoperability with other software because it provided value. Since mid 00’s to this day things changed and many services and applications are as closed as they can be (the so called wallet gardens), because there are economic incentives to behave this way, making the users and their data “hostage”.
Fortunately, the new rules of the European Union will start being implemented and enforced in the next couple of months. Other than giving back the control of their data to users, it requires that they must be able to export it in a common format, which will allow users to move to other competitors more easily.
However, this new right still threatens some comfortable walled-garden models. For example, social networks, exercise-tracking apps, and photo services will have to allow users to export their posts, rides, and photos in a common format. Smart competitors will build upload tools that recognize these formats; GDPR might therefore help to bridge the strategic moats of incumbents.
Source: Techies Guide to GDPR
But it doesn’t solve all the centralization problems. So a better (and complementary) approach is to use applications and services that use open protocols and were built with interoperability in mind. If they are open source, if you can self-host them or if they are completely distributed, even better.
So to give you a head start, here is a list of applications that address common usages in the Internet, that are open-source, decentralized and can easily replace popular software you use nowadays:
- Matrix – Is an open chat protocol and collection of reference implementations (ready to use) that is an alternative to any chat application, you can use an existing server or launch your own.
- Mastodon – is a Twitter alternative. Together with GNUSocial and other softwares, they form an open network that regardless of which service or software type you use, you are able to interact with everyone. You also can host your own server/instance.
- IPFS – a content-based addressing protocol (with reference implementation) that tries to make the web more distributed and less reliant on central servers. Very useful to publish public data from your own computer.
- ZeroNet – an alternative distributed network where websites are served by the peers in the network and not central servers. One of the nice things here is that you can easily clone and publish websites using standard templates.
- Peertube – the name gives you a hint, it is a Youtube replacement that doesn’t depend any central server. It is federated and the video is distributed to the users by “Webtorrent”.
- Syncthing – File synchronization application (alternative to Dropbox) that lets you have all your data up to date across all your devises and doesn’t rely on central servers.
- OwnCloud/NextCloud – Also an alternative to Dropbox and similar services, were the user can self-host a server or use one available on the Internet. These servers are federated, which means you can share and work on the same folders even with users from another server or service.
Like these ones there are many others available. I just highlighted the ones above because I think they are ready/stable and can “fight” with the existing centralized services.
The usage of decentralized applications makes the Internet more democratic, more resistant to censorship, more resilient, makes the life harder to authoritarian entities, as well as others that try to centrally manipulate public perception (don’t automatically adding users to the famous “filter bubbles”) and reduces the probability of massive companies maintaining monopolies on certain markets.
At first it might take a little bit of work, but the benefits are there and will be collected later.