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Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

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Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#131

Post by paulcole »

doke01 wrote: post #60

Make your website of record your website. Make social media platforms and others (e.g. Google) secondary to that. Don't let Google and Facebook control how you build your website. I am amazed at companies that take their websites and subjugate them to their Facebook page. You may gain social attention but you are handing over control. Never, ever, ever say to contact me go to facebook.com/xxxx or my email address is…

> You may gain social attention but you are handing over control.

Yeah it's a tradeoff and for many people giving up that control is worth it.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#132

Post by tunesmith »

I think the general incentive we've been seeing is the incentive towards faster and thoughtless opinion-sharing. Reactive (in the bad way) behavior is incentivized, and thoughtful behavior is discouraged, because by then people have moved on to the next thing.

So I'd generally like to see more effort put into making it easier for people to engage in more thoughtful ways.

This can also be applied to advertising. I'm trying to avoid chips, but if they're in front of me I'll eat a handful. So then the internet thinks, "This guy wants more chips!" So if advertising were more about my long-term values rather than my short-term behavior, then it'd be more valuable.

Anyway, it's pretty hard on social media to share deeper analysis and arguments and thoughts. I get that medium was sort of an effort in this direction, counter to twitter, but that's really just blogging with some extra algorithms thrown in. Need something else.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#133

Post by kakarot »

sjg007 wrote: post #125
kakarot wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but what about the other 99% of the population who are too busy to completely learn ops and opsec? My mom isn't going to leave facebook to make her own website and host her own email, even if you give her all the tutorials in the world.

Website in a box (docker), put it wherever. This might be a good idea.

I like the idea, but the goal would be to make configuration, deployment, maintenance, and good security as easy as possible. So easy that you don't have to touch a command line. Mind expanding on the idea a bit?

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#134

Post by a1exyz »

I believe that the internet is powerful because it connects us to people rather than content. My dream is for our portal into the internet (currently google or Facebook) to become a search engine for people. I am interested in x. This person is the top authority on x. Here is a chat window. You can ask it questions that his/her bot will answer at first (to save this person from being spammed). However, eventually if you ask the right person, he/she will be interested enough to join in the conversation.

What am I doing about this? Nothing yet, but I have been thinking about this recently.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#135

Post by tracker1 »

ianopolous wrote: post #130
tracker1 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about where keybase has been going with some of this (related to peergos)

I think keybase are doing some great work. Their social proof using existing websites is great. Their keybase fs has some similar properties to peergos, but is still centralised and, to the best of my knowledge, closed source (open sourcing only the client doesn't count in my mind). I want something that is fully decentralised, open source, doesn't depend on DNS, and doesn't expose metadata (including the social grap…

I think there is a need for an announcer system, some known endpoints to connect into to feed p2p though... Also, haven't thought of a good way to mitigate poison injection/ddos attacks in terms of open/anonymous/decentralized communication.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#136

Post by dualogy »

delegate wrote: post #84

There is no going back, this 'battle' was lost a long time ago. We've tried so hard to make technology ubiquitous and accessible to everyone . We thought that that was a good idea at the time, except we didn't really understand it entirely. The consequence of ubiquitous technology is that the majority now has access to powerful tools to 'express' themselves while being subjected to constant brainwashing into behaving…

You have expressed my current assessment of the situation so well, mad props.

To the OP, "combating" these tsunamis-that-already-happened is akin to various other (past or ongoing) "wars on intents"/ideas (won't name them here to not derail but insert any of the various "war on XYZ" memes that have been floated for the past century+ where XYZ is not a specifically identifiably nation or group) --- unwinnable.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#137

Post by ianopolous »

tracker1 wrote: post #135
ianopolous wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think keybase are doing some great work. Their social proof using existing websites is great. Their keybase fs has some similar properties to peergos, but is still centralised and, to the best of my knowledge, closed source (open sourcing only the client doesn't count in my mind). I want something that is fully decentralised, open source, doesn't depend on DNS, and doesn't expose metadata (including the social grap…

I think there is a need for an announcer system, some known endpoints to connect into to feed p2p though... Also, haven't thought of a good way to mitigate poison injection/ddos attacks in terms of open/anonymous/decentralized communication.

There is an authenticated pub-sub in the works for IPFS. The idea being that only the holder of a given private key can publish updates to something (nodes would just refuse to propagate anything else).

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#139

Post by monk_e_boy »

bogomipz wrote: post #65
bhhaskin wrote: post #20

I think the solution is pretty simple. Keep building things. Make person websites and build communities. Don't host everything on major hosting providers like Google or Amazon. Don't rely on Facebook or Google for login or integrations. They only have so much power because we let them. It's more often than not the easier solution. Use tools like GPG, IRC, Email and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Th…

>"Don't rely on Facebook or Google for login or integrations." I think this is a really important point. When I see services that give me a choice of either 1)logging in with Google or 2) logging in with FB, I don't do either. I simply elect to not use that service.

For me and my students -- we always use a google login. With 35 students all using 4 or 5 online services each with a login....

There is no way we can keep control of all those separate login details. There needs to be a central control over login.

Sure, login details are pretty old skool bonkers.

I'm going to get downvoted to oblivion, but in the real world where I have to hand a class of 35 students over to another teacher and they need to have confidence that all 35 can log in and complete the lesson.

Repeat this across all classes and all years. That's a lot of users.

Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

#140

Post by sbov »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #72

What I'm getting from this thread is that we're sort of fucked. The only way to stop Facebook and Google was to become them before they had a chance to. That way you'd presumably be more benevolent. Maybe that's true for Facebook, but it's still hard to imagine for Google. I think the bigger problem is cross-generational power. YC itself is somewhat terrifying in this regard, but that's a different topic. In regards…

Any new piece of tech can do it. Facebook's last existential threat was mobile, and they seemed to handle that well. But it doesn't mean they will handle the next, and the next, and the next well, too. Each step is a place they can stumble.
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