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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?

#181

Post by nitemice »

andrewwharton wrote: post #159
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.

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 fo…

I think this is the right attitude to take. It strikes the perfect balance between offloading your problems to the big guys, and keeping control if they decide to screw you over, or run off into the wild yonder.

That doesn't mean they couldn't still mess you up pretty bad. You'd want a pretty solid backup scheme, and you'll still have to accept the loss of some levels of privacy etc. but that might be worth it to you to subsidise cheap services, while still having an escape plan.

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

#182

Post by eximius »

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…

So we're doomed to the tradgedy of the commons?

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

#183

Post by znpy »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #77
SeaDude wrote: post #70

Have you ever warwalked or wardrove your neighborhood? What is the # of AP's / mile? Think of all that NAT not being used. Where are the specs for the Outernet Protocol: a NAT to NAT DNS system that doesnt rely on gatekeepers/ISP access. Use the 198.162.xxx.xxx addresses on all of our existing routers for neighborhood scale networking. Build trust by proximity by allowing only known neighbors to connect. Could be ver…

I like the ambition, but it's limited to regional effects at best.

Actually, there once was something somewhat similar to what you're describing: netsukuku - http://netsukuku.freaknet.org

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

#184

Post by pyre »

ben174 wrote: post #170
ewjordan wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly this. I'm lucky though in that I signed up when it was Google Apps for Domains (and free). I've been using it for years without paying (having been grandfathered in). If I ever decide that I don't want to be on Google anymore, I can take my domain and move to (e.g.) FastMail without having to go through the pain of shifting everything over. I don't have to:

* spam everyone I know to use a new email address.

* go through authorship information in any READMEs out there for projects I may contribute to.

* deal with an invalid email address embedded in public commits (ala Github).

* deal with possibly important, time-sensitive emails ending up in a blackhole.

* updating email information for online accounts. Especially for sites that use a combo of email address/password rather than login/password.

* etc...

I only have to pay ~$12/year (or less if I buy years in bulk) to keep the domain, and I also get the benefit of being able to grant emails on the domain to other people too.

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

#185

Post by [deleted] »

ben174 wrote: post #170
ewjordan wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by mirimir »

sumeno wrote: post #143
sjg007 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why would my mother do that instead of just using Facebook which is already there and already had all of her friends and family on it?

Because maybe Facebook nukes her account, for whatever reason.

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

#187

Post by AndrewUnmuted »

avarun wrote: post #105
tobydownton wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to see if anyone would mention blockchain technology (which I personally believe is an important part of the solution). Yes, there are the DApps you've already mentioned, but I think the following might be as important in addressing the concern raised: uPort: Self-Sovereign Identity ( https://www.uport.me/ ) Userfeeds - Content Ranking System (userfeeds.io/) Status - Messaging Platform ( https://status.im…

Has Brave gotten any traction among users?

Personally I quite like the iOS app. The browser seemed slow on my arch Linux laptop.

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

#188

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

pyre wrote: post #184
ben174 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly this. I'm lucky though in that I signed up when it was Google Apps for Domains (and free). I've been using it for years without paying (having been grandfathered in). If I ever decide that I don't want to be on Google anymore, I can take my domain and move to (e.g.) FastMail without having to go through the pain of shifting everything over. I don't have to: * spam everyone I know to use a new email address. *…

i have many domains grandfathered in, and last i checked, if i created a new account for someone on those accounts, the new accounts would not be grandfathered in, and i'd have to pay.

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

#189

Post by pknerd »

aaronpk wrote: post #14

I am a member of the W3C Social Web Working Group ( https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg ), and have been organizing IndieWebCamp ( https://indieweb.org/ ) conferences in this space for the last 7 years. We've been making a lot of progress: * https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/ - cross-site commenting * https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/ - API for apps to create posts on various servers * https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/ - realt…

looks awesome.

Is there way I can be notified about different such projects being done at W3C?

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

#190

Post by hibikir »

ptr_void wrote: post #142
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…

Software is easy to copy and replace. There's little, if any, monopolization of software technology resources. Software doesn't require huge investment/over-head like oil industry. I don't think FB/Google/etc. provide much of anything (or of high value like oil) that is not already replaceable by million other alternatives. One of their key business model is selling ads spaces, but adblocks are also on the rise. I wo…

Every few days we have an article here in HN about a relatively big company, and people throw the classic comment that they don't understand how they need hundreds/thousands of programmers to do what they do, when the prototype of their website can be done by 2 people over a weekend. What you are doing is just a slightly more complex version of this, but the answer is still the same, scale.

Software is easier to copy and replace than many other things, but make no mistake: The amount of engineering done at the largest software companies is massive, and has gone way past the point of being easy to replicate. Let's talk someone smaller, like Twitter. Building a Twitter for 100 people is trivial. Scaling it to work well for serious volumes, building all the pieces that make it have actual revenue, and not be just a giant money pit, and all the effort required to build the userbase itself is just enormous. When we go past Twitter, and we think Facebook and Google, serious disruption of their core businesses is really, really hard, because every single user they have is an efficiency you don't.

In practice, every large software company today is running a whole lot of machine learning under the hood. Whether it's figuring out which ads to send you, just get you to stay on the site longer, or just have great fraud protection, the difference in data matters. Imagine your machine learning model is trying to sell ads. How much of a disadvantage are you in vs a company that is the user's default search engine, and has analytics hooks in the websites that your target person is on 75% of the time? What if they also have their text messages, know their friends, and their friends' purchases? You can have much better algorithms, but they have such an insane data advantage that you have to be orders of magnitude better to even compete with them!

So I'd definitely bet highly on those services, because they've spent years building moats. That doesn't mean they are unbeatable: We all remember the time when Microsoft and IBM looked unbeatable, and we all know what happened, but I don't think anyone without massive funding and a completely new, must have product has a prayer of entering their space and not be swallowed whole.

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