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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?

#161

Post by krupan »

jfim wrote: post #109
jeremyjh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology is insufficient but necessary. Users want features. Open standards that allow implementation of those features are a (small) but necessary part of the solution.

> Users want features. They want more than just features, they want to get them for "free." We've had equivalent standards in the late 90's and early 2000's (RSS, ATOM, XML-RPC pingbacks, etc.), had open/free code for that (MovableType and WordPress) and yet personal blogging mostly died because it was easier to just post on Facebook and there was a bigger audience there. Facebook from that perspective is "free," as…

These services could all still be provided for "free" and still follow open standards. Just like email is an open standard yet we all still use "free" Gmail.

The success of Facebook is that they offered these services in a very user friendly manner and for "free". The tragedy of Facebook is that their implementations are a proprietary walled garden, and now pretty much a monopoly.

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

#162

Post by monk_e_boy »

bhhaskin wrote: post #148
monk_e_boy wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why not use another single sign on service? Why do you have to use Google? Google is the largest advertiser in the world, and is more and more encroaching on the free and open web.

> Why not use another single sign on service?

Look. I'm not an idiot. I write open source. I love free and open web.

Google login works. We use use Gmail - it works. We use google classroom - it just works. Most websites offer Google Login - it just works.

When you have 30 students and you waste 2 minutes logging into a website -- that is 2 x 30 == 60 minutes of student learning lost. Little things like that add up.

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

#163

Post by krupan »

pascalxus wrote: post #160

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…

It's getting there. Facebook is now a monopoly and is not improving their service in ways that benefit the users, they have no need to. They are only working to keep you locked in and to serve those who actually pay the bills, advertisers.

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

#164

Post by zakki »

kakarot wrote: post #133
sjg007 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think It is time to reinstate geocities.

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

#165

Post by livingparadox »

zakki wrote: post #164
kakarot wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I think It is time to reinstate geocities.

You might be interested in its spiritual successor neocities, then

https://neocities.org/

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

#166

Post by ewjordan »

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…

By making your email something custom instead of @gmail, you're spending some energy, time, and money to protect against a perceived threat.

I guess my real question is, what exactly is that threat, how damaging is it, and how likely is it to occur?

By my mental math, I can't really justify spending even a few bucks, or more expensively, a few hours, protecting against some consequence that I can't really quantify at any real level of risk.

For business, sure, because there are other benefits to having a custom domain, but for personal stuff, I don't really see the cost/benefit analysis making sense. The biggest threat seems to be that the government will have my data and I'll be advertised at, but having my own domain doesn't help either way. Am I missing something?

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

#167

Post by hinkley »

deegles wrote: post #115
curiousgal wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Don't let others own you by taking that from you. Others doesn't include whoever provides your MX records.

I don't generate my own power either, the line has to be drawn somewhere.

"Please stop posting our website on HackerNews. It's a cloudy day, and poor Kevin can only pedal his exercise bike so fast."

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

#168

Post by kyledrake »

livingparadox wrote: post #165
zakki wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think It is time to reinstate geocities.

You might be interested in its spiritual successor neocities, then https://neocities.org/

And the founder of Neocities thinks it's time to instate a distributed web https://blog.neocities.org/blog/2015/09/08/its-time-for-the-...

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

#169

Post by bogomipz »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #124
bogomipz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"But it's not the level of like... ProtonMail" Can you elaborate on this? Are there some privacy issues with Fast Mail that don't exist with ProtonMail?

FastMail chooses not to mine your data (even for spam filtering, they only optionally collect emails you permanently delete from the spam folder). They're a paid service, with no advertising. And they have a very strong privacy policy. ProtonMail encrypts your email storage in an end-to-end manner for client access and storage. (Obviously, unencrypted mail sent to or from other servers could be intercepted.) But thei…

>"ProtonMail encrypts your email storage in an end-to-end manner for client access and storage."

Is this just TLS + block level encryption like LUKS? If so I would be surprised if FastMail wasn't offering the same. But maybe Proton is offering something else at the client level? It was my impression that the big differentiator was Proton Mail's infrastructure was all co-located in Switzerland.

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

#170

Post by ben174 »

ewjordan wrote: post #166
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…

By making your email something custom instead of @gmail, you're spending some energy, time, and money to protect against a perceived threat. I guess my real question is, what exactly is that threat, how damaging is it, and how likely is it to occur? By my mental math, I can't really justify spending even a few bucks, or more expensively, a few hours, protecting against some consequence that I can't really quantify at…

You can still host your domain on google apps which is simple and painless. The key is that you can take your domain with you and move it wherever you want later on, if you choose to.
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