Changing Public Perception | Hacker News Reader

Changing Public Perception

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16 pointsjger1515 comments

Step 1 might be for "web3" proponents to stop publishing visions of the future that sound like grim dystopias. When you have game company executives mocking the idea of "play to have fun" and NFT owners pushing for browser extensions that would make copy/paste illegal without permission from the blockchain what is the expected reaction? Should I be excited for a world of all-pervasive DRM and "games" that feel like working a second job?

>Step 1 might be for "web3" proponents to stop publishing visions of the future that sound like grim dystopias. When you have game company executives mocking the idea of "play to have fun" and NFT owners pushing for browser extensions that would make copy/paste illegal without permission from the blockchain

Is this an accurate depiction of "web3 proponents" in general or just a case of nutpicking[1]? I've heard of something vaguely similar to the first claim, but I can't remember whether it actually involved NFTs or was standard games-as-a-service rhetoric. For the second claim I heard something adjacent (eg. copy pasters), but I can't tell whether they're representative of the community or extremism/satire, and haven't heard of the specific proposal of browser DRM.

[1] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Nutpicking

Square-Enix’ President, earlier this year. Last three paragraphs before the sign-off.

https://www.hd.square-enix.com/eng/news/2022/html/a_new_year...

"I realize that some people who “play to have fun” and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandably so. However, I believe that there will be a certain number of people whose motivation is to “play to contribute,” by which I mean to help make the game more exciting... with advances in token economies, users will be provided with explicit incentives... this will lead to more people devoting themselves to such efforts and to greater possibilities of games growing in exciting ways. From having fun to earning to contributing"

You weren't kidding. They really want people as grunt workers in the virtual world. I guess that's why they are trying to remove any association with the words 'games' and 'fun'.

I read the three paragraphs and don't see anything that can be construed as 'mocking the idea of "play to have fun"'. The first sentence of the second paragraph literally says

>I realize that some people who “play to have fun” and who currently form the majority of players have voiced their reservations toward these new trends, and understandably so.

Which seems like the opposite of "mock" to me.

Good point. "Dismiss" would be a better word.

He's saying that the people who play for fun aren't important. The people who play in the hopes of getting money are.

It's actually very accurate.

web1 - it's open! web2 - it's open (but really controlled by social media billionaires) web3 - you own digital property but good news, you can be a landlord and get money by leasing out that digital property, or you can be a speculator, or you can be a serf and work in an nft farm. Ignore the wash trading, paid celebrity endorsements, and the rugpulls.

It's even worse than that. No one can think of anything to do with web3 other than make money off web3.

Most young technologies promise more than they can deliver, and the result is underwhelming or disappointing. Nuclear had regulatory and safety concerns that has slowed its adoption, early TVs had nothing to watch, self-driving cars haven't materialized though we can see progress, and machine learning gave us tags for photos.

web3 has given us Ponzi schemes and nothing else. Not decentralized finance, not usable currencies, not "stores of value", not even games that are fun. Cryptokitties was kind of the bright spot.

At least with other technologies, you could imagine benefits, even if they were cost-prohibitive or unlikely to develop soon.

The proponents of web3 cannot articulate any desirable future state that will be brought about by their technology.

"No one can think of anything to do with web3 other than make money off web3." Agreed. And that in and of itself wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that "The proponents of web3 cannot articulate any desirable future state that will be brought about by their technology. " it is trying to do things already done, and with zero value add except it theoretically rewards those who connive others into it first.

The reason people distrust Web3 is because it's a VC-fueled gold rush. The vast majority of people involved are trying to get in early to position themselves where they can become an indispensable pillar of the future ecosystem. They have plausible deniability using the narrative of de-centralization, but they also know that the tech is too complicated for the masses to ever self-manage.

I know there are people in the space trying to do the right thing, but public perception is not going to be moved by some VC claiming how amazing this will be for the world.

Comparing web3 to nuclear energy is so hilariously laughable.

This is a weird and misleading analogy... Vaccines and nuclear power have been demonstrated to work for decades.

As for web3, what about it works right now? What's the best web3 app?

Do the users meaningfully control their data and migrate it between applications controlled by different companies?

I'm not saying it can't ever work, just that it doesn't make sense to compare it to vaccines and nuclear power.

Right! I was talking with a guy in... 2017-2019 who was a founder of a different company that got acquihired. I asked what he thought was so interesting about the web3 space (still just called blockchain then).

He noted that all he wanted to work on was the UX of it. That it was very cool at the time but that it was so complicated, that was where the value creation needed to be.

I think we're still waiting for that to come to fruition.

I wonder if there's an anti site for this one: https://web3isgoinggreat.com

Decisions around nuclear power and vaccines are primarily driven by state regulations for good reasons. When properly designed, self-sovereign web3 communities are not capable of being regulated. Putting these three into the same basket as this article does is confusing. Public perception matters in areas of regulation but does not where regulators cannot exert power. Perhaps the author meant to point towards web3 banking institutions? But from the perspective of decentralization, these organizations such as coinbase are a threat and are also a real danger to the financial system.

Strange post.

There are much simpler and proven ways to change public opinion - relentless repetition, combined with suppression of dissenting views, is pretty much how you build consensus

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