And I was thinking the exact opposite when I started advertising Safe to the common man…
At the moment I am convinced that no one cares about freedom, security, privacy. I very much hope that things will change.
But in any case, I will continue to promote Safe, because this is the best chance to have these things, and I believe in them, regardless of whether the mass of people believe in them.
What if you could take the data with you?
Consider a situation where section node counts double, chunk redundancy doubles, and then all network sections “fork” to create two identical but (maybe) independent safe networks. After the fork each network might run different protocols, and might contain different data, but all data prior to the fork would be identical. This would be a way to encourage innovation while also keeping the data safe. Node operators would need to be willing to take part in the fork. The two networks might coexist for a time until one proves superior. In the end there can be only one. Alternatively, it would be great if the data could be mirrored across forks so that data was universally unique and that forks only consisted of major changes to network logic or farming algos etc… This rambling might just be a naive and expensive way to do network upgrades though…
Well you always take a backup before any non-trivial network change…
Suddenly the network requires farmers to double capacity within some period of time before the proposed fork. Whats that going to do the farming rate? Node operators would need to be very motivated and reluctant to invest until they were assured most other farmers would as well. Thats a significant barrier that will only get higher as the network grows,
No, the node counts in a section would increase until you have enough extra adults/elders, and all sections have enough nodes willing to adopt the new protocol (ex. Safer Network 2.0). It is an analogous process to a section split. In stead of splitting one section into two sections within the same network, you would split into the same section on different networks. For a network fork, all sections would need to coordinate so that they all fork simultaneously.
Lovely insight, and foresight to a possible future where there is not complete consensus on an upgrade, which may be an inevitable one if SAFE is to stand the test of time. I guess then we have to classify a fork… maybe hostile or benevolent?. If the data (and thus the currency?) splits then it’s an evolutionary possibility and people just need to hunker down and be future proof … I’m all for that scenario. I guess my previous post would then be more relevant to an external “let’s use SAFE code to compete with them” scenario which I see very little chance of succeeding.
The scenario you outline is probably the better one to discuss then… how would operators keep their sites functional and synced? etc. etc. There would be a (big) measure of consolation in that most could simply wait it out and be secure in the new network.
What is this unique data that billions of people will want and will not have elsewhere?
I’m afraid that the commons data suffers from the problem of the Tragedy of the commons. In my opinion, in the first Age of Safe, there will be no valuable data that is not found elsewhere. What is valuable is the potential to one day we have such data.
So I think there will be a lot of copies of Safe exploiting the financial side…
Another good question. My attempt at an answer would be that it’s not just the data (which is replicable) but also the user base that knows where to look for it and the apps that depend on it.
Data can be more than something you download and has a context. I mean, I have Wikipedia and a bunch of other stuff on my phone. But what if SAFE has your secure messages, contacts to a bunch of otherwise anonymous people, token ecosystems, etc. The first mover advantage here seems a lot more all-or-nothing to me. I do also hope that SAFE technology can be used to spawn e.g. internal networks, but it seems that this is an increasing-returns-to-scale game.
In my opinion, we do not have enough money to take advantage of being the first. There is no way we can spread the information that we exist fast enough.
How many people are willing to pay for ads? How many people are willing to promote Safe? Almost every month we have community members who want us to delete their accounts. Some of them are worried that their name may be associated with Safe because of the illegal content that will exist on the network.
In my opinion, very few people will risk their name, prestige and life to promote Safe…
Safer Network 2.0 would need to offer truly significant advances/mitigations on the original SAFE then for farmers to “jump ship”
some/most may want to hedge their bets and hence would need to double their capacity by running both versions. Or at least have two farms, one possibly much larger than the other. So “double” is worst case However any serious proposal is going to need a lot of extra capacity to test thoroughly. Hence a spike in capacity must ensue with economic consequences.
Can you share rough numbers? Totals of requested deletions per year/ quarter perhaps…
How many state this fear?
1-2 a month (may be less), I immediately can think of two who told me in plain text that they were worried about their name being associated with Safe. But the good news is that then at least 1 of them registers anonymously and is actively involved 
Your analysis seems too narrow and that it is not wide enough to get the full picture. When proof of a fully functional product is delivered then we can look at how many are willing to pay for ads, support, upload sites and data. I think it will be very good.
And for how long have we been losing members who state this as a reason for leaving? What rough % of ALL leavers do you estimate these are?
Are we gaining net members or losing them? What is our churn rate?
You are obviously concerned, I can see that.
Should this be in Meta?
And I hope at the moment my feeling is like that because of the lack of a product. But I am mentally preparing that the struggle for a Safe world will be like this for years and there will be no serious change.
I rather think that very few people are leaving us. Given how long the development lasts, I think we have a very strong foundation as a community. 
You may be able to work something out from the history kept once a week here:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/https://forum.autonomi.community/about.json
Something in stats.user_count maybe?
This is not decisive, the forum software deletes users inactive from 2 year without posts…
There are many bots that register constantly. Only the last month there has been some lull
I send a welcome message to all new people in the forum who do not write immediately. I have written for August to 28 people, for September to 26, for October to only 7 people. This month we have a few newly registered people, maybe Google has moved us back somewhere or in CoinMarketCap we are too far back…
You’re being too pessimistic. BG lockdown doldrums?
Safe after stable launch will spread faster than this nonsense did in no time flat. (3.8B views??? Are you kidding me? I have no clue what he’s singing, Why can’t I stop watching??? 
)
I currently give 5% of my income for advertising on Facebook. We have over 25k likes of the ad, over 1000 people have come in to read the article about the Safe Network and we do not have a single new registration from India. So I think we don’t have enough money to advertise to the common man. This is the reality:
But to be fair there is nothing to promote at this point. It’s not like you can say come and try farming, storage ect. All we have to share is theory, “progress” and the promise of maybe eventually completing something that has no timeline and has been being worked on for 15 years. I’m not negative about it but that’s a tough set of facts to promote even for a car salesman.
I have no doubt that Safe will be successful. In this case, I comment on the probability that we will take advantage of being the first Safe network. There are people with more money who will see the potential of Safe and will release their own versions and reach more people than us because they have money for advertising.
