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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?

#151

Post by ptr_void »

s73ver wrote: post #78

With regards to advertising, what are you doing to offer a realistic alternative to getting content creators paid online? Paywalls work, but people hate them (go into the comments of any article from the WSJ or such on here). The automatic tipping things offer very little friction, but hardly anyone uses them. So what's your answer?

What if we don't pay them at all? I don't think we'd miss out on too much. It might even make things better, getting rid of professons like 'youtuber' and article writers who'se main goal is to distribute ads with poor quality content and clickbaits. People interested in sharing what they know will still do it. Wikipedia exists without writers getting paid.

Walled garden can still exists, if people value them, they will buy to get content, nothing wrong with this. If people aren't willing to buy to get content, it will then be a hint that the content isn't worth the money.

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

#152

Post by AznHisoka »

austenallred wrote: post #146
a1exyz wrote: post #134

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…

Honestly what you just described is pretty much Facebook.

more like Twitter. Hard to meet strangers on FB.

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

#154

Post by bowlich »

jgon wrote: post #96

The biggest thing you can, in my humble opinion, is to make choices predicated on a long term view instead of what is most convenient for you, in the next five minutes. It doesn't require you to code up some sort of amazing app, or dedicate your free time to open source, although both of those are great. I liken it to the attitude people are starting to take with regard to other aspects of their lives, such as food a…

Been slowly weaning myself off Google's products.

Switched my default search engine to Startpage. I still end up on Google for half of my searches -- particularly if I need to get a map to a business -- but it helps that I now have to consciously type in the name of a Google product before I make use of it. It's like treating an addiction.

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

#155

Post by beefman »

It's too late. The culture of free exchange that existed on the usenet, over e-mail, and on the early web died circa 2013.

It's tempting to blame Google and Facebook, and they definitely converted a lot of public value into private value. But I suspect it's mainly down to self-selection bias of internet early-adopters. I call the present state of affairs "eternal October".

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

#156

Post by s73ver »

ptr_void wrote: post #151
s73ver wrote: post #78

With regards to advertising, what are you doing to offer a realistic alternative to getting content creators paid online? Paywalls work, but people hate them (go into the comments of any article from the WSJ or such on here). The automatic tipping things offer very little friction, but hardly anyone uses them. So what's your answer?

What if we don't pay them at all? I don't think we'd miss out on too much. It might even make things better, getting rid of professons like 'youtuber' and article writers who'se main goal is to distribute ads with poor quality content and clickbaits. People interested in sharing what they know will still do it. Wikipedia exists without writers getting paid. Walled garden can still exists, if people value them, they w…

"What if we don't pay them at all?"

What if your employer didn't pay you? I'm sorry, but this idea that one shouldn't be allowed to make money being a "youtuber" or anything else just because you don't like it doesn't hold water.

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

#157

Post by rhodysurf »

bhhaskin wrote: post #145
haburka wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with hosting on Google/Amazon? I understand that there is a paranoia of them taking control of your servers or stealing all of your data, but that is almost certainly not going to happen. I think the real issue is that they're monopolizing services that non developers use.

It's less about them taking control and stealing data and more about spreading out. If we keep only choosing Google/Amazon then one day there will be no more competitors. There are also plenty of good competitors for smaller/personal projects.

True, but there arent many places that I can host my side projects for free with zero server maintenance like I can on App Engine. Its a trade off.

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

#158

Post by pdfernhout »

I've been working towards a distributed social semantic desktop in my spare time. My latest experiment along those lines: https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip7

Related concept video from a few years ago: "Twirlip Civic Sensemaking Project Overview" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mRy4sGK7xk

Wish I had more time to work on it.

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

#159

Post by andrewwharton »

kakarot wrote: post #108
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…

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.

No one said anything about hosting your own email or making your own website.

eg. My wife has a small business with an online store hosted on Shopify and her email provider is Gmail. But her website is www.her_domain.com and her email address is @her_domain.com.

She can easily switch out her providers and her contact addresses don't change. No real tech knowledge needed except for how to register a domain name and follow some how-to docs from Shopify and Gmail.

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

#160

Post by pascalxus »

I've seen a lot of good comments on this page, but we really need to start looking at the problem from a customer's point of view.

Why should the end user care about this problem?

Have you heard your non-entreprenuer/engineer friends or others online complain about this problem?

If the answer to above two questions is Negative, then the problem/pain point simply is not large enough to fix.

And, as a potential success case to model our strategy off of, we should be looking towards DuckDuckGo, they've written some good material on how to do it.

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