Put simply, almost no one can publish their own content on the web without very significant and costly help.
Sure, you can publish your blog on a blogging platform. But then you’re not really publishing it. The platform owner is publishing it. That is, if they allow you. They may decide tomorrow that your content is bad for their business, and start censoring you. This was never how the web was supposed to work.
Sure, you can run a website on your own server. That is, if you have server hardware, know how to install a webserver, how format your content in html and css (or whatever equally arcane framework built on top of those things, how to authenticate your content, how to resist DOS attacks, etc. The web as originally conceived, solves none of these things. A bunch of stuff built on top of the web doesn’t solve it either. It is just more of the same: complexity that almost no one can manage. No one specifically wants to build a website - a nearly endless series of hurdles to be cleared. They want to publish content.
Subverse allows you to publish your content directly, from your smartphone if you like. Share photos, stories, music, anything you like. You don’t need special programming knowledge. You also don’t have to have a server device that remains online all the time.
When you visit a site, such as your bank, are you sure you spelled the domain name exactly correct? If you didn’t, you might be visiting a cybersquatting imposter that steals your banking credentials and all your money.
In Subverse, phishing and cybersquatting are not possible because there is no universal name system (which on the web is done by DNS). All identification is by public key. There are no names in the subverse protocol, but you can add your own personal names to keys in your own Contacts database, so that you can refer to people by name. But it’s your name for them, not theirs.
The web has no built-in authentication - every website makes you create an account and each one has its own way of identifiying you. It’s maddening! It goes something like this: “Type in my email, type in my password, oh I guess I forgot my password, reset the password, go to my email, click the link, type a new password, oh i have to set up two factor auth, where is my phone, I just want to get this done, why isn’t the text arriving, oh finally after 5 minutes, type in my email again, type in my password again”. And creating new accounts is just as much of a pain as logging in - you have to manually type in the same information over and over.
Authentication is built-in to the Subverse protocol and you don’t have to think about it. The businesses you talked to before, know you when you talk to them later. There is no login page, you just get straight down to business. Data like your home address, phone number etc are exchanged automatically with trusted parties. When you buy something online, even from a merchant you’ve never used before, you just choose the item and and buy it. That’s it. No typing in credit card numbers or expiration dates or addresses.
You’ve been searching for an answer to an obscure question, and you’ve found where the answer is, you just have to click this link! Uh oh, the website that had your answer is gone and now it is a porn site.
Content on Subverse is authenticated and distrubuted, so that whoever came up with the content you need doesn’t have to stay around forever. Anyone else can host a copy of it and you can find it easily and still be sure it’s authentic. That doesn’t guarantee that all content ever created will be accessible forever, but it goes a lot further than the web does.
You are doing something on a website and you turn away for a few minutes to do something else. You come back and you’re back at the login screen. You log back in and where is all the stuff you were doing? Good luck finding it, hopefully you remember where in the menu system that was. Hopefully the site doesn’t make you start all over, but often that’s exactly what they do.
Subverse is conversation based, so you and the other party both know where you left off. You can continue a conversation 10 minutes later or 10 years later and it will work exactly the same.
Humans talk in a back and forth conversation. The web is a series of linked documents. How do humans use a series of linked documents to communicate? Poorly. It’s a square peg in a round hole.
The web is nice for documentation, but it’s terrible for interaction.
Subverse is a message-based protocol. On the surface it looks like WhatsApp or other messenger apps, but it’s secure, programmable, and supports rich content.
On the web, how many times do you have to go through the exact same procedure? Creating accounts, checking out to complete a purchase, filling out a form, paying bills, etc.
Some browsers have gotten a bit better helping you fill in forms (typically just your address/phone/email). But what about the rest?
What if you had an autonomous agent that did all these repetitive tasks for you? What if it auto-responded to requests for form filling? What if it knew how to navigate from your cart to completed purchase? What if it knew how to pay your bills and even when to bother you with something that looked anomalous? Subverse makes this not only possible but relatively simple.
The web only has data available to your eyes, not an automated agent acting on your behalf. In Subverse all presentation is done locally - the store doesn’t get to decide how they look to you. So all they can do is send you the data of their catalog. Subverse presents it.
What makes this powerful is that when companies can’t silo their data, you are empowered: imagine being able to say “buy me this widget from any retailed i previously trusted, whichever is cheapest, and automatically share my shipping info and pay for it”. Then subverse can gather the data and execute the plan without having to be specially programmed to understand each retailer’s website separately (and then consequently breaking with any tiny change they make to their site.)