Every single person with a .eth site is building the wealth and power of this person. Every person advertising that infrastructure by adding .eth to their name on here has to decide what they’re really about.
The method of accountability is to… shift all the power to the multi-billion-dollar company that publicly said they’ll push out any worker who talks about politics that they don’t like.
Hope I’m wrong and this works, genuinely. But there’s a large & vocal contingent of folks insisting that being able to spread hate without fear of losing money is a core tenet of web3. We’ll know if it’s intrinsic to the new platforms soon enough.
This framing makes a common error — being critical of extractive and exploitative technology *is* optimism. Saying that new tech shouldn’t happen at the expense of the vulnerable *is* an optimistic belief. Those who perpetuate the myth that criticism is anti-tech are the cynics.
Take a look at people cyncially promoting web3 — when critics (rightly!) point out that grift and scams and exploitation are rampant, their reaction is to say “all new technologies have lots of scams”. It’s a lie, but it’s also pessimism and a pathetic acceptance of failure.
When critics point out that gig economy apps exploit workers and undermine their financial and social stability, the cynics say “that’s just the price of innovation” instead of imagining a future where innovation helps those who need it most.
This is a good thread about opportunists in web3 basically ripping off the work of marginalized artists in order to seem like they’re doing good good bringing new people into the community. It levels useful criticisms & is worth reading. But I want to highlight one point…
The pattern of stepping in to independent communities, extracting value, and using the tech for cover is repeatedly described here (and I see this elsewhere) as “so Web 2.0”. There’s a very strong desire to say “those bad behaviors are part of the old and we’re part of the new”.
Here’s what’s important for web3 folks to know, from someone who was there: you were told a lie about Web 2.0. We had the same idealism, the same optimism, and equally good tech. The extractive financialization happened anyway, and you’re walking into the same trap.
This is a very good overview of the web3 hype & reality for folks who haven’t had a chance to (or haven’t been interested to) look at it yet. I’ll emphasize some key points and vital ideas that are worth amplifying…
First, web3 advocates ritually talk about these platforms as “censorship resistant”, always using the example of deplatforming Trump and other fascists as the risk — not marginalized people who’ve been silenced. Deplatforming bad actors is *best* thing the current web, not a bug.
Second, the massive (billions & billions of dollars) investments in web3 only make sense if there will be new winning companies every bit as dominant as Facebook, etc. If the winners from web3 were going to be lots of individual creators, these investments would be foolish.
By contrast, on your free Glitch In Bio page, you can link to literally any image on the web. glitch.com/glitch-in-bio You can even add your domain name so it’s at an address you own. And there’s no gas fees when you want to fix a typo or upload an image.
Pretty impressive — the free covid test ordering site is taking orders now, a day *ahead* of the announced launch. (I wonder if this is a test for all users or just some users?) covidtests.gov
(I don't expect that this will be open to everyone all at once ahead of scheduled launch time; it's normal for a site with this kind of scale to open up in phases to different users over time.)
I got my confirmation from USPS just seconds after submitting my info. Total time from visiting the site to having an emailed confirmation of the completed order was maybe 90 seconds. In all, an impressively well-executed experience that I hope continues to improve and expand.