Freenet as a censorship resistant tool had potential a long time ago, through in my view the failure points had more to do with the design and the positioning in the censorship resistant tool chain than with the unsolved problems. A shared "data store" that shuffles its pieces around was a good idea in theory, but torrents without any privacy did a better job of being a shared data store. Copyright enforcement has been too slow and ineffective to push people into using Freenet.
Tor won over most of the anti-censorship users of Freenet by adding hidden services. The model of servers and clients seemed to be easier to model around than a shared data store, for reason that might have to do with how websites on internet has moved on from the 90's and early 2000s.
I am unsure if the concept of a anonymized and censorship resistant shared data store has a place in the future. If copyright enforcement actually become effective in stopping torrenting, then maybe Freenet will see a renewal (possible as a patch to the torrent protocol). Hopefully without java.
Nowadays you can actually see privacy-dependant services test Freenet. To quote research from Bern university who do health data exchange research: “This broker is based on the peer-to-peer network Freenet. This network has been defined to be censorship resistant and to protect the privacy of persons sharing data. This covers the needs for protection expected from a secure data broker.” https://www.igi-global.com/chapter/using-freenet-as-a-broker...
Tor won over most of the anti-censorship users of Freenet by adding hidden services. The model of servers and clients seemed to be easier to model around than a shared data store, for reason that might have to do with how websites on internet has moved on from the 90's and early 2000s.
I am unsure if the concept of a anonymized and censorship resistant shared data store has a place in the future. If copyright enforcement actually become effective in stopping torrenting, then maybe Freenet will see a renewal (possible as a patch to the torrent protocol). Hopefully without java.