RE: The Current State of Alt-Tech
Thank you for writing this, I haven't heard of several of these sites before now.
There is a ton of value in free speech and ethical operation of a website if it is going to be used by millions of people. With that said, one criticism of some of these services is that they end as similar, but worse, versions of popular sites.
Unfortunately, DTube is an example of this... I have a hard time taking the service seriously when it is barely functional. It seems a bit absurd to me when people talk about it replacing YouTube - YouTube handles incredible amounts of traffic without a hitch, while DTube (and perhaps IFPS as a whole) has failed to demonstrate the ability to even host a few videos in a fast and stable way.
I hope to see more "alt-tech", and blockchain, which does not aim to merely emulate the successful sites of the centralized web. We should be building NEW structures, both on a technological level and on a social level.
It reminds me of the telephone - when it was invented, people thought it would only be used to improve communication between telegraph operators. It took enormous creativity to realize that everybody could have a phone in their own home! Are we making the same mistake today?
Thanks!
I'm still skeptical of DTube being adopted en masse by regular people. It just doesn't make sense for them unless they want to commit to Steemit too. While the few videos I've seen on DTube seem to work fine for me, until compatibility issues with mainstream browsers are ironed out, people aren't even going to use it.
I'd like to see the Alt-Tech take off too. But for it to be successful, it has to offer a superior experience over existing tech. Or it will be left behind.