Neil Kandalgaonkar6d ago

Beloved programming community: many of you are hearing about the US DoJ threatening Wikipedia.

Some of you are thinking of ways to thwart this. Download the Wikipedia dumps, put it on IPFS or hand-couriered USB drives or other less-censorable systems.

A good impulse, but missing the point.

Wikipedia is not just a big document or a software artifact.

Its true value is that it is effortlessly available to a wide audience, can be updated rapidly, with no preconditions to view or edit.

Show threadNeil Kandalgaonkar6d ago

Many nerds dream about less-censorable distributed tech, and think a great event like this will finally make their dream relevant. Move Wikipedia over and the audience will switch!

The audience will not switch. Distributed networks with no chokepoints are possible, but are always inconvenient or insecure. The audience was already finding it more convenient to chat with AIs.

The audience may not even be allowed to switch! The government can easily influence device manufacturers.

Show threadLicho
@neilk get it on a drive, donate the drive to a local library.
Apr 27 at 8:42amWeb