The Myth of Decentralization and Lies about Web 2.0 · EmilyGorcenski.com

But what web3 gets wrong is that Web 2.0 was about centralization. This is not the case. A brief glance at the edit history of the Wikipedia page for Web 2.0 shows that Web 2.0 was itself all about decentralization.

While the blockchain offers promise in addressing some of the challenges present in Web 2.0, the blockchain alone does not comprise the entirety of the web3 experience. In fact, the complexity of working on the blockchain means that the barrier for entering this space is somewhat higher, and as a result there are few companies building the required... See more

This matters, because while Web 2.0 failed at preventing centralization, we need to explore how and why these failures occurred. Without a proper retrospective analysis of what Web 2.0 was trying to do and why it failed, we risk repeating these failure modes with web3.

Social networking depends on content development. Web 2.0 sought to address the biggest challenge that plagued Web 1.0: content creation is difficult. Coding is really only fun for coders; for everyone else it is a huge and expensive pain in the ass. Web 1.0 was about finding content; Web 2.0 was about generating content. Web 1.0 waited for the con... See more

This approach was not without its challenges, of course. Decentralized networks create a discovery problem, where you can’t find information if you don’t know where to look. The maturation process of Web 1.0 involved the development of tools and practices for information discovery: search engines, knowledge repositories, purpose-built forums, and s... See more

The early days of the World Wide Web, which now bears the retronym Web 1.0, gave us a promise of a decentralized and democratized way of sharing information. Web 1.0 was truly revolutionary; it stood in stark contrast to any other information sharing mechanism in all of human history. The idea was simple: people who held information could make that... See more

Some claim web3 is about ownership, but it is more appropriate to say that web3 is about wealth. Very little in the web3 advocacy space addresses how it will match Web 1.0 and 2.0’s successes in terms of discoverability and sharing. It offers little by way of guarantee that it will protect its users' digital rights, in some cases making them much w... See more

The problem is that by telling a lie about the intentions of Web 2.0 and promoting the myth of decentralization, web3 advocates are attempting a razzle-dazzle maneuver to distract from these very important matters. By making web2—even going so far as to renaming it—about centralization and web3 about decentralization, web3 advocates claim it is vir... See more

By lowering the bar to content creation, what Web 2.0 actually achieved was the simplification of sharing. It became easier to distribute knowledge, rather than just discover it. The ability to push content to our friends and followers enabled upheavals in media and culture; blogs became reliable sources of news, celebrities found news ways to engi... See more