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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?

#401

Post by kakarot »

mirimir wrote: post #399
kakarot wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened for me was that people stopped seeing my controversial posts to the point where the only reason I still had facebook, which was to discuss tech, philosophy, and politics with the masses, became void. That was an awakening moment for me. Promptly deleted the damned thing and every other social media account I had. Technological echo chambers are going to do so much harm to society.

Yes, Facebook has an insidious shadow-ban system. Its goal is showing people what they like, and not what they don't like. So they're happy Facebook users, seeing happy Facebook ads.

Some suggest it shows a healthy balance of things users like and dislike. That addicting loop of frustration and redemption we often find in the mobile gaming sphere. Not to mention it does this using machine learning techniques to get the timing down juuuust right.

Something something something beauty without pain.

I think my posts were well beyond the "frustrating but redeemable" category, because I had a purposeful tendency to discuss abrasive subjects in order to elicit strong reactions.

So the question is, how the hell do we create a platform that encourages people to challenge their preconceived notions in a way that doesn't make them unbearably uncomfortable in an age where people will do just about anything to not feel uncomfortable, even if it leads to stronger discomfort later?

I have a nascent idea of an anonymous conversation app that pairs users and groups together with various conversation starters, migrating them to new groups over time, while still allowing them to have conversations with users and groups they have befriended over time.

What do you think of such an app and its potential utility for solving this problem?

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

#402

Post by PatentTroll »

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…

Is the tendency towards mono/duo/trioploy a feature or a bug? You might say that increased concentration of proven tech/ideas allows them to be more efficient, which in the long run is better for consumers. But is efficiency a good in itself? On the other hand, the trade off is concentration of wealth and power, resistance to change, perhaps stagnation by favoring the momentum of the enterprise over innovation ... But without efficiency gains in farming we wouldn't have had, well, civilization or the industrial revolution. I guess what I'm getting at is this: as the internet transitions from the wildcatter era to a more stable, monopolized form, is that a good thing? Will it release thousands of entrepreneurs and 'laborers' to work on the next big thing? It doesn't feel like it. And when does the pursuit of progress or technology stop? I suppose that's an inherently Luddite stance to take, and I'm not even saying I agree, but it is an interesting question. Pretty much leads to requiring a 'meaning of life' or at least a 'meaning of civilization' philosophy to answer. Which I don't think we have. It was survival for a long time. Then expansion and conquering. And now ... ? What does a 'steady-state' earth and humanity look like? Is capitalism the best organizing principle for that era? All very good questions.

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

#403

Post by beefman »

pikachuaintcool wrote: post #400
beefman wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the year Google killed Reader, and all the mailing lists I'd been on since the '90s spontaneously moved to Facebook. I think it was also the year mobile really took off http://tumblr.jackdawresearch.com/post/136750883723/digestin... (The last two charts are trailing-year, which better show the derivative than the more typical cumulative charts)

Hm. Personally I thought it was around 2010, when Facebook chat replaced AIM. And the iPhone 4 came out.

The decline was definitely underway. 2010 is also the year Duke dropped usenet. But the blogosphere was still going strong and mailing list traffic was still strong. Facebook group versions of many mailing lists and private forums existed but discussions were high-quality and didn't cannibalize the parent forums much. Forum/list traffic collapsed in 2013 and meaningful Facebook group discussions followed about a year later.

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

#404

Post by PatentTroll »

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…

I disagree. First is the immense capital investment these companies have in physical servers and data centers. They have economies of scale in delivering content over the internet. Second is mindshare and data lock-in. Users log onto Facebook because other users are there. There are no examples at that scale of user divestment from a platform (in lieu of a major technological or social blunder, ala MySpace or Friendster). Just being 'better' than Facebook means diddly squat. I think it is still theoretically possible to be a 'better' search engine than Google, but they have plenty of other moats and momentum to stave that off. Don't kid yourself, these are certainly monopolies .

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

#405

Post by PatentTroll »

s73ver wrote: post #380
alphydan wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."…

And we have the same problem we have now. We've just changed the company.

what is the end of this cycle? Does capitalism always tend toward innovation->monopoly->decline->disruption->innovation->monopoly .... ?

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

#406

Post by alphydan »

p1esk wrote: post #387
alphydan wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."…

Yeah, maybe, but the coders able to "combine lots of AI discoveries done by others", as well as those who make those discoveries, are likely to work for Google/FB/MS/IBM/Apple/Amazon/etc already (or want to work there). A group like OpenAI also has a good chance to make a breakthrough, but you can hardly call them "a team of coders in a basement". It's unlikely that any a single company (even a large one) will have a…

The same could have been said of Brin and Page. Why were they not working for yahoo improving their search algorithm? Some people will have the hunger and drive to disrupt the incumbent.

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

#407

Post by elihu »

We need better tools, so that ordinary people can setup their own blogs, websites, email servers, forums, and whatever else they want without being an expert on systems administration or security. They should be able to deploy a system and be confident that it will keep working without intervention for decades. We're not there now, largely because of security vulnerabilities.

We need it to be easier to write secure applications. We need to eradicate undefined behavior from our software stacks. Rust is a good step in this direction. We need well-thought-out APIs that are hard to misuse.

I think we also need a better search engine, and tools to filter news. Tools that detect clickbait, overzealous advertisements, and other forms of low-quality content and push them to the bottom of the rankings, and also punish sites that link to low-quality content.

We need email to be more user-friendly than it is; maybe we need a new protocol that's simpler and consistent with how email (and Facebook/linkedIn mail) is used in 2017. Setting up an email server should be easy, and the settings should be secure by default.

We need tools to identify credible information sources, possibly by analyzing if a given information source is vouched for by someone we already trust. Flooding comment sections and forums with fake comments is an easy way to manipulate the public and create an illusion of consensus or a made-up controversy, but it's a little harder to be fooled if you have automated tools to filter out people that aren't connected to anyone you know by some kind of chain of recommendations.

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

#408

Post by elihu »

fuzzybeard wrote: post #301
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.

What's the alternative? To authenticate against our FB account? I'd much rather have a distributed system than to be forced to maintain a FB account just to login.

Persona seemed like a pretty good system, until it was shut down. I don't like single-sign-on systems in general, but having it managed by the Mozilla foundation seemed a lot safer than relying on Google/Facebook. I think their original long term plan was to transition users away from their single-sign-on service as browser support for the features they needed got better.

The only thing that bothered me about the general design is that it used email addresses as identification tokens, and for the site I was making I didn't even want that much personal information from my users.

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

#409

Post by pikachuaintcool »

beefman wrote: post #403
pikachuaintcool wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm. Personally I thought it was around 2010, when Facebook chat replaced AIM. And the iPhone 4 came out.

The decline was definitely underway. 2010 is also the year Duke dropped usenet. But the blogosphere was still going strong and mailing list traffic was still strong. Facebook group versions of many mailing lists and private forums existed but discussions were high-quality and didn't cannibalize the parent forums much. Forum/list traffic collapsed in 2013 and meaningful Facebook group discussions followed about a year…

Ah I see. There are still some good forums that exist (I won't link them cuz I don't want HN crossover). IRC is still going strong too.

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

#410

Post by ENGNR »

pgeorgi wrote: post #346
jeremija wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google uses AMP for caching. When you click on the link, they are serving cached content from their own servers. They say it promotes user experience because it is faster. The average user can hardly tell the difference, and they might never go to your server.

It really depends on what you want to do: disseminate information (with a canonical URL that you control) or shovel users to your server? In the former case, AMP caches are a reasonable compromise since it's really just a free CDN. In the latter case, that cache is annoying because of how it needs to fit in the design of the contemporary web. See the last paragraph of https://amphtml.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/why-amp-…

But it is an attack on the open web, Google is now sealing off the 'user leak' holes like Facebook did to keep people within their ecosystem. That's all well and good for Google, but we all rely on a relatively neutral search engine and we've relied on Google not to come back down the abstraction levels and into the application space. From a business point of view the game has changed and Google need to be treated as hostile even if they don't know it yet

If speed is the answer, then sure offer AMP, but also offer a lightning bolt next to pages that load within 'x' milliseconds. Reward speed regardless of implementation

It's only going to get worse with voice interfaces, see what Echo now does (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXEu8RcneZQ).

A vibrant ecosystem is key to competition, it's not in our long term interests to let the web consolidate into an oligarchy

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