[deleted]
Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
331–340 of 444 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#332Make 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…
I was with you until logins. I'm tired of creating accounts and managing umpteen million passwords.
"I'm tired of creating accounts and managing umpteen million passwords."
That's your choice. You can use the same credentials for all accounts you create and manage the entire mass as one. It's a bad practice, I know, but it's still a solution.
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#333Here is what I have been doing:
A wordpress-like open source platform that communities can install and have their own facebook.
A platform that allows developers to release apps that communties can install. Or turn their existing app into one.
An auth protocol that works with everything else out there and lets people manage their identities across the web, and link up with their friends from their private address books.
And more.
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't fully read your link yet, but wasn't that the point of the original opened spec too?
Yes? But indieauth does not require you to personally run an auth server, which makes it easier to adopt. Basically it will search through different online identities that you list on your home page and letting you choose any of their OAuth services.
Neither did OpenID, you would just list your auth server in a special meta tag. IndieAuth even seems to support acting as your OpenID server, see https://indieauth.com/openid .
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because maybe Facebook nukes her account, for whatever reason.
When has this actually happened? And by this I mean that out of nowhere Facebook suddenly has deleted someone's page and then not restored it? I get what you are suggesting, but I can't help but to think you are making this way bigger issue than it actually is. Also all of you are missing the most obvious point: if it hasn't happened to a lot (and I mean literally more than 10-20% of user base) it is not a significan…
> When has this actually happened?
Germany and France do this regularly for what they consider "hate speech" (for example retweeting newspaper articles about attacks by migrants). Germany has just installed a law that allows imposing multi million EUR fines on companies for repeatedly violating requests to delete user content that violates these fuzzy criteria.
There's a huge influx of German users to gab.ai because of this.
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
Website in a box (docker), put it wherever. This might be a good idea.
Yes. But by website in a box, it would have to be as dirt simple as signing up for FB. So, gramma goes to a web page, clicks the signup, the website deploys a docker image on a webhost and spins up a UI that is not unlike what she is already used to. Next, comment and "likes". You have to have a comment system that runs on there also. Gramma would invite others to her site by clicking invite. This would generate a sp…
To monetize you could make referral deals with web hosts. I assume this setup means that gramma is paying the web host a fee.
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
and netflix
I am curious why you are suggesting Netflix? The filter bubble created by the recommendation system? It seems like they are relying on original content more and more. Or maybe you mean because of the centralization of it? Is there a decentralized and legal alternative?
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
I only know two passwords: one for my password manager and one to unlock my computer.
But you're still "managing umpteen million passwords", hence the name password manager.
That makes no sense. You use a password manager so you don't need to manage the passwords. If you don't like the concept of having passwords at all then use a stateless, hash-based password generator instead.
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Gmail, and other big email providers, are exactly what we don't want these open/free social media protocols to become. Gmail reads your emails regurgitates them as AdSense.
Personally, I think we need to be encouraging people to pay small fees for services. A dollar a month to use Twitter? Sure! $20 a year to use Gmail minus the data mining? No problem.
Re: Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?
#340Keep a personal website (avoid Medium, et. al.) The internet is only closed if we keep acting like it is. The protocol is the same. Go build stuff. http://ryanglover.net
Nowadays, it's difficult to be read and to be visible to a large audience and gain followers without a platform like Medium.
You can read unknown author and discover new topics. Unfortunately you still inside the Medium bubble showing you a lot more famous article than other.
You are more likely to spread your ideas about open internet in a public place like Medium than the faraway countryside like your website.