Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 444 posts

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

#211

Post by Spivak »

paulcole wrote: post #131
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.

I maintain a website for a small nonprofit in my town. We did our best to get our name out there directly but 90% of our hits came from Facebook. For worse the site has serious levels of engagement.

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

#212

Post by thatcat »

it_learnses wrote: post #178
kyledrake wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

ok how will neocities or anybody hosting a node be compensated? How will the artists whose works are being distributed in this manner be compensated?

They probably won't, but could by using a distributed pay to host service like filecoin https://filecoin.io/

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

#213

Post by ryan-allen »

aswanson wrote: post #208
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…

just look at the number of 'zombies' on the streets Get used to the zombies...they are going to become far more prevalent. When Neuralink or whatever technologies converge to directly project experiences mind-to-mind, people will not be broadcasting selfies...they will be broadcasting self , as in their current, total sensate experience. People will tune in and live the most exciting virtual life that they need...whi…

Zuck looks pretty happy about it http://imgur.com/a/UL7HX

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

#214

Post by Spivak »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #139
bogomipz wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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…

Either everyone is crazy or I am -- does a site that's used by less than 100 users really need to outsource their auth?

If you're part of a school don't you have student accounts in some central place like LDAP/AD/IdM?

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

#215

Post by joshmarinacci »

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…

Hi Aaron. I didn't know you were part of that committee. Cool!

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

#216

Post by mythrwy »

Maybe Google and Facebook shouldn't be lumped together.

Google (however big they are) provides a lot of value to my world at least. Just for search alone. Sure, there are other search engines but none nearly as good. Making it easy to find relevant information is of huge benefit and really does "change the world". I consider this enhancing.

Facebook is like the owner of a seedy bar. Preying on people's need to socialize and serving rotgut. Profiting from degradation rather than enhancement. (IMOP).

People should stop drinking rotgut. That's the way to stop Facebook. Rotgut is cheap anyway. You can even make your own in the basement. But if you want to stop Google you need to build a better search engine. Best of luck with that (seriously, I'd use it, no loyalty but so far Google has some truly useful products).

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

#217

Post by Spivak »

Tharkun wrote: post #42

My biggest gripe with the "modern internet" is e-mail. MS and Google dominate the e-mail scene, and they are making it ever more unpleasant to run your own mailserver. They will frequently blackhole mails, without bounces, warnings or any recourse. I'm not sure what can be done about that, but it's certainly becoming an up hill battle.

Look, if you're using email to have actual conversations with other human beings then tech giants are certainly not dominating the email scene (except for Exchange).

Running your own email server takes quite a bit of maintenance but as long as you're not using it for marketing you'll be fine.

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

#218

Post by saurik »

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…

One really basic threat that just seems so obvious and i controversial to me is that in another five to ten years when there is a new service that comes out that is cooler and better, you can just switch to it without effort. When you see someone with an AOL or a Yahoo address, it says something about the person: remember that a true one point they had best of breed solutions.

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

#219

Post by andersonmvd »

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.

In the end of the day it looks like false freedom for me. You think that you can move everywhere you want, but you're still using a closed source platform (Google).

To have an "open web" we have to have as usable, hassle free alternatives. And as I don't see that day coming yet, because you have to invest your time and money to take care of something (e.g., your email) that wasn't a worry to you before, we won't have "an open web" any time soon.

Some may have the perception that they are "free" and "contributing to an open web" when they're not.

Furthermore you may argue that is best to post in your own website instead of facebook. But what if your business depends on posting on Facebook to earn more? Some may write a copy in their websites, but they will be secondary. Or everybody moves out from such closed source platforms (the masses won't), or we won't have an open web.

I'm looking forward to be completely mistaken. Tell me how wrong I am.

p.s.: my entire comment is not necessary a reply to the comment above, only part of it.

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

#220

Post by oceanbreeze83 »

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…

curious to read the ddg material referenced
Post reply on HN