Last year, I interviewed Ian Clarke, who started arguably the first decentralized file sharing system: freenet!<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ</a><p>The interview -- like most of my interviews -- goes into depth about the entire space, and also touches on Locutus, his new project.<p>PS: I like to interview people on topics related to what we build at Qbix and Intercoin.<p>Freedom of Speech and Capitalism (with Noam Chomsky)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv5mI6ClPGc</a><p>Identity and Civic Engagement (with David Boulet)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRzVj2W9WGM">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRzVj2W9WGM</a><p>Free Cities (Patri Friedman, grandson of Milton Friedman)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgil1M9tAXU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lgil1M9tAXU</a><p>Community Economics (Thomas Greco)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXTn52kL0Yo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXTn52kL0Yo</a><p>Crypto and Securities Laws (Sara Hanks)
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocrqgkJn4m0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocrqgkJn4m0</a>
I really want to like Freenet. The idea of a serverless network with resources distributed amongst the nodes is such an elegant solution. It makes even more sense today with the easy access to fiber or high-speed cable and cheap storage. It's everything I wish the internet as a whole could be.<p>But when I've used it the experience was absolutely dreadful. It's difficult to find anything, and there's a lot of emphasis on trusted peers, but I don't know anyone who has even heard of this, and it's unclear how you'd find nodes to trust. Also it's horribly slow and the proxy server eats a ton of resources.<p>I think it's a beautiful concept with massive potential, but I'm extremely skeptical it will ever find widespread use
Freenet is well designed and well maintained, but it is a solution looking for a problem. We dont yet life in the police state where everyone's political opinions need to be hidden in dark networks. At the moment, freenet has a bad reputation for hosting very illegal content. That rep is so bad that if authorities ever look into your internet traffic, freenet connections are more than enough to get warrants that will rip your life apart. Imho, running freenet is like commuting to work on a sportbike. It is perfectly legal (i used to do it) but dont be suprised if the cops pay closer attention to you. Except those "random" license checks by the roadside arent nearly as embarrassing as them inspecting your computers.
Also check out Locutus <a href="https://github.com/freenet/locutus">https://github.com/freenet/locutus</a> from the same inventor as Freenet
I dabbled with Freenet when it first came out in '99/2000 is but I found the performance just awful - think I once waited 30 mins for a 100k html file. And each year after they said "we solved that, works great now" but it didn't. I'd be curious to know what it's really like now. Well, I would, except that there was so much CP on Freenet I don't think I'd dare install it because of the risk of taint. Is there much legit anon material?
While Freenet is a technically well-designed and maintained network, it has a reputation for hosting illegal content and being associated with warrants that can cause significant disruptions in users' lives. Using Freenet may attract more attention from authorities and may not be necessary at the present time, as the current political climate does not necessitate the use of such networks to hide political opinions.