alt Hacker NewsI hang out with a small group of sysadmins who like to spin up the old internet stuff, like irc, gopher.
And that got me to thinking about Usenet and how a ton of software (usually pirated) and images (usually pornography) were posted to it.
And people often posted stupid stuff they said (usually because they were young and dare I say afflicted by a moment of dumb).
I think one of the problems with p2p distributed systems is how do you handle "mistakes". Things you want deleted.
What if someone accidentally posts their address and phone number?
What if you post a communication system with encryption methods, but then the government passes a law that is criminal? Maybe in some regimes that puts you on a list for arrest? Look at what is happening with HAM radio operators and Belarus...
https://www.niemanlab.org/reading/ham-radio-operators-in-bel...
To me, none of this raises above the idea that distributed p2p content should not be used. It is just that it has some issues.
Also, unrelated, but I think the plethora of "How does this compare to XYZ" type comments are not very helpful. It is too easy to write that kind of post, but much harder to answer.
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This just seems like acknowledging the reality. If you publish something publicly, it's very possibly forever. Maybe a reasonable solution would be for a user client to delay publishing for a time (like an email client that lets you cancel/recall a sent email for a time).
AD: We're actively working on that issue right now, making the defaults safer. We're also discussing internally how to enable revocation of content at the network level. It won't be perfect, but neither is GitHub or the likes.
You know, a centralized system is not immune to any of the issues you are listing here.
Whether your mistakes can be deleted is up to the operator. They can even lead you to believe your content was deleted, while reporting it to the authorities.
> What if you post a communication system with encryption methods, but then the government passes a law that is criminal
Did you post it while it was legal to do so? Yes. Are you distributing it after it was deemed illegal? No. If you are in a country with a fair justice system, you wouldn't have to worry. If you are in a country without one, they will find a much easier way to get you anyway.
Can't you just download content from centralised services as well?
A large proportion of historic usenet posts are archived and remain freely available today. Didn't google end up with one of the larger commercial archives? So that "stupid stuff" is still around unless it got deleted at the time (and wasn't archived first).
New uploads to github are constantly being scanned by both benevolent and malicious actors for secrets that were inadvertently checked in. It's far too late by the time you notice and delete it.
This P2P system doesn't appear to introduce any new problems that aren't already widespread.