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On en arrive à des propositions dites « démocratiques » entièrement basées sur la machine, où l’évaluation du nombre et de la qualité des contributions individuelles deviendrait une monnaie d’échange universelle et infalsifiable. On imagine même que les individus pourraient participer aux prises de décisions de façon proportionnelle à leurs contributions. Le bon vieux système de bons points remis au goût du jour ! Tant pis pour ceux qui ne souhaitent ou ne peuvent pas contribuer ? Tant pis si nous devenons esclaves de notre propre auto-évaluation ? La vie deviendrait un grand jeu vidéo où je chercherais à accumuler plus d’étoiles sur mon profil que le voisin pour gagner des points de gouvernance ou de rétribution ?

La gouvernance, si elle n’est pas humaine, prend le risque d’un réductionnisme mortifère et le chemin d’un égalitarisme totalitaire qui n’aura rien à envier aux dictatures que le monde a connues jusqu’ici.

Il me semble donc que les communs et le pair-à-pair ne pourront se développer harmonieusement qu’à la seule condition que les individus intègrent profondément que «pair», contrairement à son homonyme informatique, n’est pas synonyme de ce qui est «identique à moi» mais parle de connexion et d’amour d’une radicale altérité.

Ce que la blockchain, qui n’est qu’un outil, ne nous dit pas, c’est comment nous allons réussir à faire société et quelle société nous voulons. Cette perspective passe peut-être par trouver ce que nous avons en commun, ce qui ne signifie pas effacer nos singularités et nos défauts via une hypothétique technologie de la transaction. Il ne s’agit pas non plus de fantasmer un monde sans limites régi par une sémantique universelle, mythique Tour de Babel moderne.

Il s’agirait plutôt d’apprendre à travailler et à gouverner ensemble avec nos imperfections et nos limites, dans le but de créer quelque chose en commun au cœur de la relation. C’est probablement très difficile à réaliser (sans doute le travail de toute une vie !), inefficace et bancal, mais peut-être aussi tellement plus gratifiant et créateur de sens qu’une chaîne de chiffres infalsifiable…

  Other projects   Alerta! is a community-driven alert system Plantaré is a community currency for seed exchange The World of Alternatives is a proof-of-concept initiative that aims to classify and document collectively alternatives of our “Another World is Possible” in Wikipedia Karma is a proof-of-concept gadget for a decentralized reputation rating system Massmob is a proof-of-concept gadget for calling and organizing meetings and smart mobs Troco is a proof-of-concept gadget of a peer-to-peer currency Brick (temporal nickname) is a forthcoming initiative for guiding student assignments towards the solution of real problems and the sharing of their results for reusing/replicating/adapting the solutions Ideas (temporal nickname) is a forthcoming initiative for brainstorming ideas of possible social projects related to the Commons

My next problem is with theft. There are a LOT of stolen YouTube videos. I’d say more then 3/4 of the videos on most of the PeerTube instances I’ve visited are taken from YouTube. I get how some people might have a grudge against Google and therefor YouTube and think that copying the videos and placing them on PeerTube might hurt YouTube, but in reality it hurts the creators that made them in the first place.

So if 3/4 of PeerTube Videos are just stolen YouTube videos, why not just go to YouTube? It’s the same problem any video sharing platform has. Content. If there’s not enough people creating content to watch, no one is going to use the service. YouTube is a HUGE source of content that no new service can really compete directly against. Turning PeerTube into a YouTube dumping ground is just admitting defeat. Until PeerTube finds a way to attract content creators, it’s going to struggle.

My last problem is with porn. Now, I’m no prude. I’ve got no issues with porn. It’s great, when in the right context. The problem is when it’s someone slinging their dick like a propeller right next to a video on how to adjust the settings on your hard drive. Fortunately most people put their porn behind content warning which blur the thumbnail and make you click on a warning to see the video, but not everyone does. Most instances will ban people for not using content warnings, but if someone is running their own instance, then the moderators for other instances have to ban the offenders instance from the Federation. It can be a slow process.

Until PeerTube fixes these four issues it’s going wallow in obscurity. It’s a good idea, being able to share videos across different social media platforms. Lessening server stress by using P2P. Decentralization. Federation. Content warning. All useful to the users, but it’s the content and how it’s managed by both the users and each instances moderators that will determine if, on a whole, PeerTube can survive and thrive like Mastodon, Pixelfed, or Friendica.

This also explains why Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin seems so excited about one particular feature of HTC’s Exodus 1, called social key recovery. Essentially, users can choose a small group of contacts and give them parts of their keys. If they lose their keys, they can recover them piece by piece from their contacts. Buterin, as usual, is looking far down the road, in this case to a future where people use blockchains to maintain more control over their digital identities and personal data than is generally possible today. Social key recovery is “arguably an early step toward formalized non-state-backed identity,” he tweeted.

Indeed, even if these phones take off, the decentralized web will still be mostly a dream. Construction of its foundational infrastructure is in the beginning stages. Perhaps an influx of new users would spawn compelling new applications, which might in turn inspire the development of new infrastructure. But the best the first round of blockchain phones can do is give us a glimpse at a potential future that’s still a long way off.