How might SAFEnetwork's goals be subverted, as we've seen happen in the now centralised "clearnet" internet?

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A similar thought crossed my mind this week: how might SAFEnetwork’s goals be subverted, as we’ve seen happen in the now centralised “clearnet” internet?

At least I think this is along the same lines!

My thought was that powerful actors (companies, governments) could use their resources to persuade/manipulate most people into using Apps or services that bypass or subvert the goals of SAFEnetwork, centralise it’s usage by dominating ideas, changing perceptions etc.

This occurred to me when thinking about the way analytics on SAFEnetwork could be used to subvert it.

Example: BigEntity rewards users for opting into BigCorp Analytics and uses their resources to convince everyone this is better than farming. If SAFEnetwork gets bigger than the internet, BigCorp can use the data they gather (like Google do currently) to create monopoly services that make A LOT OF MONEY… and the cycle of centralisation of money and power, surveillance capitalism and mass population control is now alive and well on SAFEnetwork.

Obviously SAFEnetwork is designed to make this a lot harder, but if the masses can be manipulated into opting into such services, much of that might be subverted. I’ve no doubt the balance would have been shifted, but I’m concerned it might not turn out to be all that significant if this happens, and right now it seems likely.

Well that was my line of thinking, and I think it fits with what @WhiteOutMashups is raising here (if not Will, just say and we can have this spun into a separate topic).

EDIT: @moderators please move this to a new topic along with replies - ta

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Yeah sorry not really, that’s a cool idea though but I’m talking about launchers / APIs that might replace those that MaidSafe is currently developing. Kinda specific

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Of course anything is possible, but I think SAFE is part of a bigger trend towards the decentralisation of capitalism and productive assets. For perhaps the first time in history, millions of consumers who are not landlords will be able to make money not from the work they do but from their capital. So, as the cost of capital goods continues to fall consumers will be able to buy a PC, a robot, a 3-D printer, solar panel, or an autonomous car and have it earn money (perhaps managed on an IOT platform), while at the same time avoiding most of the overhead, SG&A, or payroll taxes that come with running a BigEntity.

I think the smart companies will make money from selling products to consumers that can earn those consumers a return instead of trying to extract value as an intermediary in rent-seeking behaviour.

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This is the question of sponsorship.

I see that given that a SAFE fork requires a sizeable set of nodes to be secure there will only be so many SAFE forks and only so much diversity- but it can be on end user owned mesh nodes at some point and let us not under estimate what FOSS can do. I have a feeling that q learning machines will pull the rug out from under the way control ideologies work even if they don’t get us beyond narrow AI. So many business models are trending downward, I think rent seeking capital itself is becoming obsolete where self sustaining cord cutting personal capital is not. I see a profit collapse coming for non constructive extractive businesses.

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