There is such a things as the intellectual idiot. There is the learned that is not wise. This is common. There are the other ones who have many great past results to show, yet turns out to be completely ignorant/biased/misguided when it comes to the new things that can truly change the world.
For those who don't know, Lawrence Mark Sanger is one of the co-founders of the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia. This status has been contested by Jimmy Wales. But at least we can be sure that he played an important part in creating Wikipedia.
Does Anybody Remember These Reactions from Steve Ballmer (Former CEO of Microsoft)
I think what we have here is something very similar. To provide you with a better context I will link the forum that was created.
https://larrysanger.org/community
Any sensible person would consider blockchain or some other Decentralized Ledger Technology such as DAG or Hashgraph will be the perfect solution for this. But some people can be blinded by their own past achievements and scoff at the new developments like Nokia, Yahoo!, Steve Ballmer or Blockbuster did.
He Was Originally Willing To Check It Out
Reply From The Next Day
He Even Rejects Sia & Handy
I personally don't know much about https://github.com/HandyMiner Therefor I will refrain from saying anything about it. You can check out this article abot the project. On the other hand I can say that https://sia.tech is one of the best cryptocurrency projects that will help to create a more decentralized world.I have been a fan of the project since 2017 and I love how far the project has come.
As a storage solution, DAPPs based on SIA have completely changed the game when it comes to pricing. I doubt Larry Sanger will ever achieve something similar in his own despite all the talk about "Decentralizers".
Arrogance and Disconnect From Real World Users and Business
If you have used @dbuzz and experienced true decentralized microblogging, you should understand how superior of an option it is compared to the techno-ideologybabble Larry Sanger is spewing.
Content Discovery; Not Treated As A Priority
Anybody who has tried to find their own old work even with https://www.hivesearcher.com knows how difficult of a job finding content is. A person who cannot understand these basic practical things is fit to be called ignorant and out of touch with reality.
More From The Personal Blog
Some startups aren’t even seriously trying to be a good decentralized, free speech social network. A lot of blockchain “social media” projects are sold as “decentralized” (because they’re on a blockchain! That makes them decentralized, man!), but they aren’t really decentralized, because a few people are in control of the chain, there’s one client (a website and/or app), and basically it works like a regular website…built on a blockchain. Who cares? Minds.com is probably the closest we have to a fairly successful and growing site that is committed to free speech and open source, which does use blockchain; but I don’t think it’s quite fully decentralized yet.
Source: https://larrysanger.org/2021/01/what-it-means-to-decentralize-social-media
On top of being unaware of the modern technological developments in the decentralized social media space, Larry Sanger overrates Minds.com and goes to state the following:
Comment below if you even have even personally met 10 people with a WordPress blog. https://wordpress.org/download/counter shows that WordPress 5.6 has been downloaded 14,225,384 times. That is less than 1 in 500 people. Downloads doesn't perfectly correlate with the amount of people who have WordPress blogs. But we can at least say 99% of the world don't have WordPress blogs.
There is No Decentralization When 99% is Excluded
This is a lesson for all of us to remember. It is easy to get tunnel vision and get disconnected from reality. When you are doing so well in a specific niche it is easy to think that you know everything. yet in reality you could be a mere pipe dreamer. You are never going to change the world by getting 0.2% of the population involved in your "decentralized" social media.
HIVE DAPPs have taken necessary steps to make onboarding easier. @khaleelkazi and @leofinance team has done a great job with their Lite accounts. @yabapmatt @aggroed and @splinterlands team have done an equally amazing job creating worlds #1 blockchain game. I'm seeing many great things coming from @threespeak and @dbuzz has become "The Gateway Social Media DAPP" IMHO.
We have a long road ahead of us. We have a lot of onboarding to do. We have lot of changes to make in the current social media climate. We have no real competitors as a community and the world doesn't have many other alternatives apart from us. Even @dan recently stepped down from his position preserving his principles under various pressures EOS was facing when it comes to proper decentralization.