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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?

#361

Post by jstanley »

ookie wrote: post #321
jstanley wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the prospect of DApps with the client-side code served out of IPFS, and the backend on Ethereum.

Yeah, I completely agree. There are already some services in this space trying to combat filter bubbles and walled gardens, Akasha [ https://akasha.world/ ] for social networks, DNN Media [ http://dnn.media/ ] for news and Lemon Email [ https://ipfs.io/ipns/dapp.lemon.email/#/ ] (dApp and the full beta version) for email system. The last one is completely in line of what you're talking about. I like the approach thro…

Lemon Email looks really cool, thanks for sharing.

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

#363

Post by Fezzik »

cedex12 wrote: post #250
Fezzik wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try and get everyone I know to use (and pay for) Fastmail. It has a great interface. Great calendar. Awesome spam filter. Etc... It costs $30/year to send messages around the globe. That seems like a steal to me. Ultimately, email clients are services that have maintenance and development costs - if you're not paying for it, someone is selling your information to fund the service.

What's the advantage of fastmail compared to, for instance, the free iirc 5 mail addresses that gandi offers you when registering a domain name: https://www.gandi.net/domain ?

I have not explored what Gandi offers, but I can tell you Fastmail has a very user-friendly & intuitive interface for email, calendar, contact management, etc... a la Gmail many years ago. If not better. The $30/year includes all these services. And, I would think, since email is Fastmails bread and butter, it gets all the attention, as opposed to being an add-on/additional item that may not be top priority for a company.

And, to be clear, I have no stake in Fastmail, nor do I work for them, I am just enamored with their product. I wish I would have made the switch years ago.

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

#364

Post by fusion_cow »

We're running a nonprofit online conversation service, Lyra. It's a space for online conversation which respects language and attention, provides powerful tools to control audiences and news feeds, and doesn't take investment or ad revenue. We're already sustainable!

www.hellolyra.com

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

#365

Post by iamatworknow »

xiaoma wrote: post #247
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're spending some energy, time, and money to protect against a perceived threat. Perceived by some but apparently not by many others who are still clueless. I know multiple people who invested considerable time and energy into building up Facebook pages only to suddenly be cut off from fans who had followed them when fb decided to go the pay to play route. I personally lost my YouTube channel, due to sheer incom…

>I know multiple people who invested considerable time and energy into building up Facebook pages only to suddenly be cut off from fans who had followed them when fb decided to go the pay to play route.

An anecdote on a similar note, there's a comedian I'm a fan of who had an Instagram account he used to post funny boudoir style photos as a big, bald, overweight man. All of his posts were well within Instagram's terms of use, in that he never showed full nudity or anything overly suggestive. Basically he was doing the same thing thousands of "butt models" do on Instagram. These weren't just cell phone snaps, either; they were staged and professionally shot images.

He gained a few thousands followers with this, until one day when he was locked out of his banned account with no explanation. With the help of a friend he managed to contact someone who works at Instagram and was told his account was removed for "harassment". Since no other explanation was given the only conclusion that seems reasonable is that people reported him for "making fun of" plus sized female models by doing the same thing himself, which is absolutely ridiculous, as he was always positive about what he was doing. He just happened to be a bald fat man while doing it.

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

#366

Post by bogomipz »

dandelion_lover wrote: post #343
bogomipz wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The meat of this is really anti-DRM and while I agree with that sentiment completely I am failing to see how this relates to the centralization trend or filter bubbles that are the topic of this discussion.

Are you aware of usable alternatives to Netflix? (I am not). This is the problem I guess...

Useable? What do you mean? Bit Torrent, iTunes, Amazon are all "useable." Netflix is hardly the only game in town.

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

#367

Post by amatus »

msutherl wrote: post #129
amatus wrote: post #2

I'm working on GNUnet[1]. It needs a lot of help. [1] https://gnunet.org

I'm having trouble finding information about what GNUnet is on the website. Is there an overview somewhere?

The website is one of the things we need help with. If you want something more detailed than the About GNUnet paragraph there's the key concepts[2] and user handbook[1].

[1] https://gnunet.org/user-handbook [2] https://gnunet.org/concepts

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

#369

Post by alphydan »

hibikir wrote: post #190
ptr_void wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here's an idea: A team of coders in a basement combine lots of AI discoveries done by others (Think merging orthogonal approaches like Numenta + Google Brain + Vicarious + etc). With it, they crack the neo-cortex algorithm (or a rough approximation). It learns outdoors (cameras, actuators), indoors (talking), on the internet, in libraries, on wikipedia, etc. It becomes actually useful. Not: "OK, google set an alarm.", but: "Hey Peter, I'm really stuck with this problem, can you find a solution on SO. Oh, and send flower to my Aunt, you know ... the one who likes pink".

If it was freely available I could see a massive migration of users abandoning google. Who needs google in such a context?

-- far fetched, yes. But it is a scenario where the breakthrough is algorithmic rather than Huge-data based. The learning can then happens slowly (2 years undercover from that basement?), and emerge as a powerful intelligence and company.

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

#370

Post by s73ver »

restalis wrote: post #332
Pxtl wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's such a bad practice that it is not a solution.
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