[cslarson]

Ha this is so well put, thank you.

But it does surprise that so many technologists are falling into this trap (disregarding the innovation because of the plethora of junk it enables). The value of permission-less platforms and protocols should no be assessed absent of curation. Google, email spam filtering, wikipedia, the web abounds with examples and without curation we would be in a sea of shit.

[AlexandrB]

Aren't these examples of centralization of a decentralized technology? If so, what's the point of starting an expensive-to-run distributed platform only to end up at the same point we're at now where in practice most activity goes through a few centralized gatekeepers? After all, you can still run your own web or SMTP server. The web is still permission-less in the trivial sense - just like crypto. But Google can blacklist your site or blackhole your emails making your permission-less services useless in practice. What stops a curated web3 from ending up in the same place we're at now?

[throwaway82652]

>What stops a curated web3 from ending up in the same place we're at now?

The answer is either nothing at all, or paradoxically it's some vague sense of optimism involving "faith" "belief" and "trust". It should surprise no one that web3 fundamentally can't deliver on any of its promises.