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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?

#71

Post by mysterypie »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #61
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…

Looks like there's a typo in your first sentence. I could sort of figure out what you meant, but it took a bit of digging. EDIT: Never mind, I was straight-up wrong. Sorry!

You mean the following sentence?

> Make your website of record your website.

I don't see a typo (and your comment is 3 minutes more recent than his, so I don't think he made any corrections). Maybe "record" is throwing you off?

What he means is that "Your official or authoritative website (i.e., website of record, like owner of record) should belong to and be controlled by you."

Edit: If you're saying that the sentence could be hard to parse, yes I agree.

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

#72

Post by sillysaurus3 »

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 to Google and FB, even if we like Google now, we probably won't like the Google 60 years from now. But what is there to do?

Google stopped Microsoft by making Microsoft irrelevant, in the "Microsoft is Dead" sense: Nobody is afraid of them anymore. But people fear Google and FB. Imagine a Microsoft competitor to your startup vs a Google or FB competitor.

This could be a lack of imagination, but it's very difficult to imagine some new company making Google or FB irrelevant in the same way they made their predecessors irrelevant. Think of oil fields. At one point, before oil fields were monopolized, I've heard the ecosystem seemed pretty similar to Silicon Valley circa 2008. Everybody seemed to be able to get a slice of the action, and while it took determination and luck to get involved, it was possible.

Now the oil industry is on lockdown. Imagine asking "What are we doing about Exxon Mobil?" or Walmart. You can't do a damn thing, and there's no shame in admitting that.

As defeatist as it is, we may want to start thinking about ways of riding out the next 40 years in a productive fashion. It's more beneficial to say: Ok, Facebook, Google, and the closed internet are here to stay. Now what?

For example, if you're really set on doing something about it, one of the most effective things you could do is try to join the companies and shape them yourself.

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

#73

Post by greglindahl »

Fezzik wrote: post #56
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.

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.

He was talking about servers, not just clients, and not just free. I've been running my own email server for a couple of decades, and it's getting harder and harder over time.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

doublerebel wrote: post #48

I'm working on a project to separate data from presentation. Too much data is overly wrapped with presentation (e.g. HTML) so we are forced into using a certain display method (popular commercial web browser). A related problem is that human readable data is often unnecessarily encoded into binary machine data. If we weren't wasting so much space on presentation, we could have just served the human-readable data. In…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by weego »

jfktrey wrote: post #47
menacingly wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Existing is one thing. Adoption is something else entirely.

More important I think is this misunderstanding that this is a technical problem to solve.

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

#76

Post by gitpusher »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #61
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…

Looks like there's a typo in your first sentence. I could sort of figure out what you meant, but it took a bit of digging. EDIT: Never mind, I was straight-up wrong. Sorry!

* website-of-record should be your own.

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

#77

Post by sillysaurus3 »

SeaDude wrote: post #70

Have you ever warwalked or wardrove your neighborhood? What is the # of AP's / mile? Think of all that NAT not being used. Where are the specs for the Outernet Protocol: a NAT to NAT DNS system that doesnt rely on gatekeepers/ISP access. Use the 198.162.xxx.xxx addresses on all of our existing routers for neighborhood scale networking. Build trust by proximity by allowing only known neighbors to connect. Could be ver…

I like the ambition, but it's limited to regional effects at best.

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

#78

Post by s73ver »

With regards to advertising, what are you doing to offer a realistic alternative to getting content creators paid online? Paywalls work, but people hate them (go into the comments of any article from the WSJ or such on here). The automatic tipping things offer very little friction, but hardly anyone uses them. So what's your answer?

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

#79

Post by bogomipz »

Fezzik wrote: post #56
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.

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.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Fastmail. I am curious if you or anyone else might be able to share any tips or resources for successfully migrating from something like Gmail to Fastmail.

How do you get everyone to update their contacts?

Also it seems like even if you forward form Gmail to your Fastmail account Google still knows your business.

I'm not trying to make a case for not doing it but rather would be interested in hearig what has worked for others.

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

#80

Post by s73ver »

bhhaskin wrote: post #20

I think the solution is pretty simple. Keep building things. Make person websites and build communities. Don't host everything on major hosting providers like Google or Amazon. Don't rely on Facebook or Google for login or integrations. They only have so much power because we let them. It's more often than not the easier solution. Use tools like GPG, IRC, Email and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Th…

If they're the easier solution, then we need to make not using them even easier. You're never going to win by saying, "Yes, using their stuff is easier, but it's bad! Use this complex thing instead!" The only way to encourage others to use the other things is to make them easier.
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