A decentralized web would give power back to the people online • Hacker News Board

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#131

Post by ivansavz » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:14 PM UTC

aninhumer wrote: post #17

dcposch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switching from Facebook to, say, Diaspora or something is more than just "slightly inconvenient". One of them has all of my friends on it and the other has none. -- Two ideas for how we can help decentralization win. 1. Don't just clone an existing app. The two decentralized protocols with the most adoption by far are Bitcoin and BitTorrent. Both of them have capabilities that no centralized system can match. Same wi…

>The two decentralized protocols with the most adoption by far are Bitcoin and BitTorrent. What about email? It's become quite centralised in practice, but it is ultimately a decentralised protocol, and it is used by pretty much everyone on the internet. And even in its semi-centralised form, it's nowhere near the walled garden of Facebook.

> What about email?

That's a really good idea! Email is an good existing source of messaging and "identity." People can choose to participate in the "network" either using one of the big hosted providers, a privacy-oriented email host, and eventually over time, using self-hosted email.

Project idea: what if all the social shit could be sent over email? You'd need to setup your email client to hide emails that represent the "data packets" for the social communications so they don't pollute your INBOX. A completely separate personal browsing interface (client side .js) would be used to browse the social stream you receive at your email address.

It's already happening a bit like that with the "Social" tab in gmail, but instead of containing links to walled garden URLs, the proposed new "social email" packets will contain the full content and won't require access to any external servers. Perhaps we wouldn't even need a "central" browsing interface, since each social item can come with its own .js to render a simple UI adapted for the social item (e.g. message, photos, album, event, links).

To make the picture more concrete, let's analyze the Event data type. Alice wants to host a party, so she invites Bob, Betty, and Boris, by sending each of them a paragraph of invitation text, some images(<1MB), two RSVP links I'm going || Not going, and a [FWD] button. When Bob clicks "I'm going" Alice is notified by email. When Bob clicks [FWD] and sends to Charlie, and Charlie clicks "I'm going" Alice will be notified again. Social functionality. No central servers.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#132

Post by witty_username » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:15 PM UTC

Alex3917 wrote: post #4

The real issue is that we need to make it illegal to give out free content, unless it's distributed under an open license. Otherwise advertising-supported businesses will always be able to outcompete everyone else via dumping, and these businesses always benefit from being increasingly centralized. That's why we don't have liberal newspapers anymore in the U.S., because ad supported papers put them all out of busines…

How is it dumping? Dumping means artificially reducing the price, i.e. running at a loss.

Aside, this destroys free speech.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#133

Post by witty_username » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #42

brador wrote: post #5

A decentralised web is not viable until we can create an NP soft or better mesh network. Until then the network load to manage itself crushes it before it can walk.

+1 for bringing up mesh networks. I have been reading about mesh network projects in Germany and other places. What I think is needed to increase adoption is something like the raspberry Pi, a cheap and open mesh router that would allow setting up community networks, with hooks for volunteers to provide low bandwidth gateways to the web, tools for sharing locally hosted copies of Wikipedia, projects for local social…

> tools for sharing locally hosted copies of Wikipedia,

Why?

It's much easier for the ISP to peer with Wikipedia/etc.

Why would you want a low bandwidth gateway to the web?

I don't understand the advantages.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#134

Post by dsacco » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

zer0gravity wrote: post #116

So nobody can "give the power back" to anybody, but people can stop giving their power away to others. We all have power, and we manifest it through our actions and choices. Some say knowledge is power, but in order to gain knowledge you have to make that choice. One can try to educate people about the benefits of hosting their own data, but unless they make the choice to listen and understand it's all for nothing. I…

>>I tend to agree with others that posted here, that in general, people are just not interested. It may be too hard for them to grasp the real implications of giving all those informations about them to third parties.. They may also consider that it's too hard to handle all those problems by themselves so they're willing to pay the prices...

It's true that many users who give away their data are not cognizant of the consequences, and there are others who understand but do it reluctantly because of peer pressure or usability. But there's a huge swath of people who fully understand the privacy implications of giving away all their data in exchange for the products they use daily, and they're perfectly happy with the deal.

They're not as vocal as the zeitgeist here on HN, and they're not irrational, naive or helpless; they just have a different set of values.

I agree with you that people who care deeply about this issue have the power to change it through focused, collective effort (even if that means supporting open alternatives, like DuckDuckGo). However, I disagree with your characterization of people who willingly support this as being predominantly exploitive.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#135

Post by adrianN » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #127

mark_l_watson wrote: post #24

I went to the Decentralised Web conference in June. Fantastic venue, good talks, and lots of interesting people to talk with during the breaks. I blogged about the experience http://blog.markwatson.com/2016/06/action-items-after-attend... Until recently, I was trying to go 'all in' by favoring GNU Social over centralized social media, almost always running Linux on the laptop, etc. I have backed off somewhat, realizi…

Facebook and goog is build by armies of full time folks with average salaries of 150k. Competing with volunteers doesn't get you far. Even the rise of git was because of github. A for profit centralized company. May be the best case is to have open, decentralized protocols, with for profit companies providing hosting and simple signup. ICQ or XMPP, never quite took off like slack. Is it because of the interface?

A couple of years ago everybody had ICQ, at least here in Germany. I wouldn't say that it "didn't take off".

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#136

Post by jshen » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #45

chestnut-tree wrote: post #35

A real barrier to a decentralised web is the difficulty of installing software on a server. I know that sounds really mundane and inconsequential in the broader debate about a decentralised web, but consider the following... Imagine if installing a server-side chat app, message board, project management app, or CMS were as easy as installing a desktop app. In a desktop app, it's usually one click to start the install…

Have you looked into Sandstorm? Their whole goal is to make installing server apps as easy as in mobile platforms, while securing them from the outside and each other, and allowing the user to switch providers bringing their apps and data along. It's really quite awesome: https://sandstorm.io/

Here's something from the first part of the install which is not something a normal person would ever do:

Configure the EC2 security groups (firewall) to let you reach Sandstorm

By default, Amazon EC2 protects your virtual machine from being reached over the Internet.

In the above tutorial, we allow the virtual machine to be reached on port 80. By default, Sandstorm uses port 6080, so look through the above tutorial and add another security groups rule allowing port 6080.

SSH in, and run the Sandstorm install script

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#137

Post by ZenoArrow » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

grondilu wrote: post #114

chestnut-tree wrote: post #35

A real barrier to a decentralised web is the difficulty of installing software on a server. I know that sounds really mundane and inconsequential in the broader debate about a decentralised web, but consider the following... Imagine if installing a server-side chat app, message board, project management app, or CMS were as easy as installing a desktop app. In a desktop app, it's usually one click to start the install…

A web server is not that hard to set up. I personally have one on my local network. I'm sure many people do. It seems to me that a more difficult part is to make this server public, that is with a fixed IP or domain name. I've never quite went this far.

That should be fixed with IPv6, no need for NAT at that point, and home routers could perform simple DNS functions.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#138

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

dsacco wrote: post #134

zer0gravity wrote: post #116

So nobody can "give the power back" to anybody, but people can stop giving their power away to others. We all have power, and we manifest it through our actions and choices. Some say knowledge is power, but in order to gain knowledge you have to make that choice. One can try to educate people about the benefits of hosting their own data, but unless they make the choice to listen and understand it's all for nothing. I…

>>I tend to agree with others that posted here, that in general, people are just not interested. It may be too hard for them to grasp the real implications of giving all those informations about them to third parties.. They may also consider that it's too hard to handle all those problems by themselves so they're willing to pay the prices... It's true that many users who give away their data are not cognizant of the…

But we're not talking about them. We're talking about the millions of people who don't want that deal, or wouldn't if they thought about it, but are currently being forced into it by network effects and lack of existing viable alternatives.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#139

Post by powera » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

jshen wrote: post #136

icebraining wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you looked into Sandstorm? Their whole goal is to make installing server apps as easy as in mobile platforms, while securing them from the outside and each other, and allowing the user to switch providers bringing their apps and data along. It's really quite awesome: https://sandstorm.io/

Here's something from the first part of the install which is not something a normal person would ever do: Configure the EC2 security groups (firewall) to let you reach Sandstorm By default, Amazon EC2 protects your virtual machine from being reached over the Internet. In the above tutorial, we allow the virtual machine to be reached on port 80. By default, Sandstorm uses port 6080, so look through the above tutorial…

Uh, if you can't figure that out from the directions, maybe you shouldn't run your own server?

It's ludicrous to suggest that everyone should run their own server. It's like saying they should all build their own cars.

Re: A decentralized web would give power back to the people online

#140

Post by cocktailpeanuts » Sun, Oct 09, 2016, 4:30 PM UTC

zer0gravity wrote: post #116

So nobody can "give the power back" to anybody, but people can stop giving their power away to others. We all have power, and we manifest it through our actions and choices. Some say knowledge is power, but in order to gain knowledge you have to make that choice. One can try to educate people about the benefits of hosting their own data, but unless they make the choice to listen and understand it's all for nothing. I…

The "People don't understand" is a condescending statement and is exactly the reason why the people who try to build these decentralized systems never succeed, because they don't even understand why people use information silos.

If you really think that's the problem and you think you know better than other people, you should quit using every single centralized system out there, like your bank (they take your money and invest it elsewhere! And most people don't even know about it!), credit card (It's just a small piece of plastic but you have to pay them money just to pay money, and they even track your purchase history, how ridiculous is that!), etc.

Sure there are shitty aspects to this (and I don't like it either), but the reason they are still around is NOT because most people don't know, but because most people have better things to worry about. I know EXACTLY what's going on but still use centralized silos for certain things because it makes sense at the moment, even though there are many downsides.

It is these "decentralized" people who are out of touch, not the ordinary people.