The Un-Censorable Internet

Making the decentralized web accessible to the people who need it

When I first Googled “decentralized web,” and “d.web”, it took me about an hour to find a definition I really understood. I soon realized that once you stop focusing on the technical jargon, from the outside, the decentralized web looks like the web we have today. But on the inside, it’s very different. The technologies, protocols, networks, and servers behind it are decentralized across many different interconnected and independent computers, eliminating single-actor control.

This is a good thing because it means that the d.web will belong to all of us and that the content shared there will be more resistant to censorship and attack. This future holds a lot of promise for those who need it most.

In a recent IDEO CoLab prototyping sprint, my team (Fiona Duerr, Debrena McEwen, and me) created an experiential prototype responding to the needs of the economic crisis in Venezuela. This led us to a greater exploration of how the decentralized web can empower citizens worldwide, and why designing for it is so important.

The Future of the Internet

Why centralization is a problem

When a single entity has control over a system, they have the power to restrict access to information and tools. This has happened many times throughout history¹ just like it is today in Venezuela

How decentralized technologies can help

Decentralized domains (when backed up by decentralized internet protocols) offer a way to publish content that can’t be taken down. Since there’s no centralized decision maker like ICANN to appeal to, people could access information that might otherwise be censored.

What Access Feels Like

For the d.web to deliver benefits for everyday people, it needs to be accessible . Currently, purchasing and accessing decentralized domains is mostly limited to technology enthusiasts. To achieve accessibility, designers need to understand what decentralized domains are and how to design for them in a way that maximizes their potential.

And this starts with building empathy for users. Let us take you on a journey of what it feels like to access content on decentralized domains. To participate in this exercise, we suggest you go and get your “d.web goggles” (some transparent red plastic will do) and try to read the blue text below:

Don’t have d.web goggles? Can’t read the blue text? You can click here to see a demonstration of the experience. The blue text is content I’ve decided to block and censor so that you can’t access it.

Now imagine this was information you really needed to know — things like your currencies exchange rate, your rights, legal assistance, etc. In the above analogous exploration, our eyes are Web 2.0 (the web we have today). We can only see the red text that is covering the blue text and have no way to see what it is hiding. But once we put on our d.web goggles, which symbolize a d.web domain enabled browser, we can see the blue text. Content is no longer able to be blocked or censored, and we can read the information we need.

Building a Better D.Web for All

To make sure “d.web goggles” are accessible to the people who need them, we need to build two things: new decentralized web infrastructure and user-friendly tools that make it easy for people to access content (i.e., your transparent red plastic goggles).

The good news is that developers are already working on this first piece. One great example of this is Handshake, a decentralized and permissionless domain naming protocol compatible with DNS. Handshake works by managing root zone files in a decentralized manner, meaning that when you type an address into your browser, you won’t have to rely on centralized authorities to view it. Another is the InterPlanetary File Systems (or IPFS) protocol. IPFS is a peer-to-peer file sharing system that decentralizes file and content storage across multiple computers, while still enabling browsers to find any one of them with only a single address. This could help prevent a governing body from censoring content hosting and enable people to get to that content in an easy manner.

But decentralized infrastructure is only half of the problem. Until we design user-friendly and accessible tools the power of the d.web will only be accessible to technology enthusiasts — thereby increasing the digital divide and the inequality between the people who know how to use it and the people who need it.

Our hope with this prototype is that it gives others a door into our learning space and enables an embodied understanding of the potential of the d.web. By “feeling” and “experiencing” its value, we gain greater empathy for its most vulnerable users, helping us to design and develop a more inclusive future.

All visuals and illustrations by Fiona Duerr.

P.S. Want to know what the above images said? Your centralized authority has uncensored them for you below.

¹ In The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains, Antony Lewis brings up SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), as an example of the weaponization of financial systems. SWIFT is meant to enable banks and other financial institutions across the world to exchange information about transactions in a politically neutral, secure, and reliable way…but SWIFT can and has shut out entire countries from participating in the global financial network because of political pressure from (more) powerful governments. Cutting off a country’s supply to financial information is the modern equivalent of a medieval siege.