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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?

#31

Post by menacingly »

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…

I had no idea these standards were in any phase of existence and I'm really excited about them.

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

#33

Post by mundo »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #26
mundo wrote: post #25

Here's a thought I've been turning over for a little while now. It occurs to me that all extant social media apps have, at a high level, exactly the same requirements: 1. Allow users to upload some data to cloud storage 2. Make that data discoverable to certain other users 3. Show everyone ads Whether FB, Twitter, etc were to be dislodged by another app that is essentially the same app is not terribly interesting. So…

You're kidding yourself if you think people actually want to run their own server for the purposes of social networking.

You're implicitly assuming that Amazon does a bad job of implementing the front end. If the goal is to get even a tenth of FB users to be paying EC2 customers, they can probably spare a couple of UX developers to give it a easy-as-a-ios-app interface.

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

#34

Post by lifeformed »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #26
mundo wrote: post #25

Here's a thought I've been turning over for a little while now. It occurs to me that all extant social media apps have, at a high level, exactly the same requirements: 1. Allow users to upload some data to cloud storage 2. Make that data discoverable to certain other users 3. Show everyone ads Whether FB, Twitter, etc were to be dislodged by another app that is essentially the same app is not terribly interesting. So…

You're kidding yourself if you think people actually want to run their own server for the purposes of social networking.

It could be pre-made and run on AWS automatically be default. More advanced users could tinker with it if they want. You would pay money for the costs of running it, plus an extra something.

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

#35

Post by gwicks56 »

tobydownton wrote: post #23
gwicks56 wrote: post #17

Be interested in what HN thinks of Maidsafe, Storj etc. Basically decentralised versions of the internet or the cloud based around blockchain technology. Storj for example is an order of magnitude cheaper than AWS, uses peoples spare hard drive space, encrypts everything and back it up using peer to peer tech. I am currently pretty comfortable as an Android dev, but I am wondering if I should start learning everythin…

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…

Thanks for the info. I was not familiar with Userfeeds, it looks interesting.

Work is currently offering to pay for any online/university courses I want to take in Machine Learning, which is interesting and probably profitable, but not really a huge interest for me.

Making the internet ( and the world ), more decentralised is basically my personal religion however, so trying to decide what I should do, and more info is always good, so thanks for the links!

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

#36

Post by ocdtrekkie »

vdnkh wrote: post #15

I believe it's more effective to focus on a "small business" approach to decentralizing the web, where we focus on smaller companies providing services, rather than a "tin foil" approach where we encrypt and decentralize everything into tiny islands. I work for a video player company and while we aren't a platform like Youtube, we indirectly compete with them for ad dollars (along with Facebook). Something like 90% o…

I agree. I moved to FastMail for stronger privacy behavior and good quality service. But it's not the level of like... ProtonMail. But I'm patronizing a great company with great customer service that treats me like an adult.

Note that while I'm happy to deal with smaller businesses, and happy to spend money on them, I am still pretty wary of advertising-based businesses. It is a slippery slope of doom, and I think it's ideal to try and stay off of it.

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

#37

Post by ellius »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #26
mundo wrote: post #25

Here's a thought I've been turning over for a little while now. It occurs to me that all extant social media apps have, at a high level, exactly the same requirements: 1. Allow users to upload some data to cloud storage 2. Make that data discoverable to certain other users 3. Show everyone ads Whether FB, Twitter, etc were to be dislodged by another app that is essentially the same app is not terribly interesting. So…

You're kidding yourself if you think people actually want to run their own server for the purposes of social networking.

I do wonder though if you could create a compelling product that would keep the customer from ever knowing they "own" a server. I've thought about a service where I effectively would run one big "load balancer" front end that would route a customer's traffic entirely to prefab cloud servers that I would spin up & configure via tools like Terraform and Ansible on the back end. I wanted to load those mainly with privacy tools--things like Pi-Hole, encrypted DNS, etc. I don't see why I couldn't say "hey in addition to this you get an app portal" that is effectively providing a standardized social media app. So for a regular price you get privacy, ad blocking, and a social media / cloud storage app that doesn't spy on you. It seems doable.

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

#38

Post by ocdtrekkie »

hxn wrote: post #29

Would it help if more people would have a personal website? Or would that just put the power into the hands of whoever runs the DNS system

It would definitely help. Use things like RSS feed features so that people can subscribe to updates from your personal site/blog.

DNS is (relatively/-ish) decentralized, and isn't AFAIK, heavily used for data collection. And you can't exactly show ads via DNS.

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

#39

Post by rhcom2 »

mundo wrote: post #25

Here's a thought I've been turning over for a little while now. It occurs to me that all extant social media apps have, at a high level, exactly the same requirements: 1. Allow users to upload some data to cloud storage 2. Make that data discoverable to certain other users 3. Show everyone ads Whether FB, Twitter, etc were to be dislodged by another app that is essentially the same app is not terribly interesting. So…

You might want to read about urbit [https://www.urbit.org/]. I think it might be similar to your thinking.

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

#40

Post by dhimes »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #36
vdnkh wrote: post #15

I believe it's more effective to focus on a "small business" approach to decentralizing the web, where we focus on smaller companies providing services, rather than a "tin foil" approach where we encrypt and decentralize everything into tiny islands. I work for a video player company and while we aren't a platform like Youtube, we indirectly compete with them for ad dollars (along with Facebook). Something like 90% o…

I agree. I moved to FastMail for stronger privacy behavior and good quality service. But it's not the level of like... ProtonMail. But I'm patronizing a great company with great customer service that treats me like an adult. Note that while I'm happy to deal with smaller businesses, and happy to spend money on them, I am still pretty wary of advertising-based businesses. It is a slippery slope of doom, and I think it…

I don't mind ads, it's the tracking that I don't like.
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