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I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

theguardian.com

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Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#161

Post by sly010 »

krapp wrote: post #104
garrettspringer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with the need of a new web. The bad information all across the web is gimmicky and flashy click bait is everywhere. Many people are becoming weary and desensitized to everything out there. We need to create a clean and simple, no bs web where information is clear and reliable. Wikipedia I think is a small picture of what it could look like. Especially if better monitors are enforced.

> The bad information all across the web is gimmicky and flashy click bait is everywhere. That's the price you pay for a web that isn't controlled entirely by governments or the media. The alternative is some service like Facebook determining what the truth is on your behalf, and you becoming nothing more than a pig feeding at their trough. People cite disinformation, bad information and "fake news" as evidence that…

> People cite disinformation, bad information and "fake news" as evidence that the web is broken, but it's not. That's evidence the web is working as intended - the problem is with the humanity it's reflecting.

This should be on top.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#162

Post by pdimitar »

Silhouette wrote: post #155
pdimitar wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, they've never known technology to work any other way and assume there's nothing they can do about it, and they value the social aspects of sharing stuff online so they keep using these services. I'd argue that how did the modern people end up indifferent to the growing centralization and surveillance is largely irrelevant. The sad result is still there. We all have anecdotal evidence and mine isn't more im…

I suspect we agree on more than we disagree on here, at least as far as the principles go, even if I might lack your flair for the dramatic. :-) That said, I really don't think developing standards for interoperability and federation is such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, modern networking -- including the Internet -- is built on numerous such standards, carefully designed and documented, widely…

> I don't know whether most people do prefer to have only one source for their information; I'd like to see more data before forming any strong view on that one.

I admit I have no scientific sources. This is just a gut feeling birthed from my numerous interactions with people during my whole life. I also happen to believe that not everything can be measured scientifically and there are a lot of things "all people know but almost nobody will admit in an official survey" and that "almost everyone prefers buying only one newspaper" is one of them -- but that would go wildly off-topic and I'll stop right here.

> Is that a problem?

Of course it is a problem. If we assume there are malevolent people who would want to suppress certain kinds of news (and with Trump, Kim Jong-un et. al. in power I don't think anyone can doubt the existence of these people anymore) it's much easier for them to bribe or coerce a single entity to censor things. For a true free speech, we need a fully anonymous but attack-resilient immutable decentralized network (sorry to keep repeating myself but... like IPFS). Good luck DDoS-ing or bribing/coercing that. It's made to be resistant against planting fake data, man-in-the-middle attacks, and DDoS -- right from the get go.

Admittedly IPFS isn't still there, for example it lacks automatic replication and the fact that there are already organizations whom you must pay so they "pin" (replicate) your content is telling me IPFS might eventually lose its credibility as well :( again though, off-topic. Sorry, you caught me in a very chatty mood.

>Is it really so far-fetched that we could cut out the middle-man in some of these cases and move back to a more peer-to-peer, decentralised system with neutral infrastructure?

In technical terms, it is not far-fetched at all. We're actually very close to it. Man, I'd love to work on that, only if that was my main source of income. I would pour a lot of energy and heart into such a work.

In economical and general reality terms however, it's almost impossible. As I mentioned, I am convinced there will be a lot of resistance from agents who would be negatively impacted in the pockets or their data collection. But you know what, if I am wrong, I'll be the happiest little panda.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#163

Post by maroonblazer »

phy6 wrote: post #141
Razengan wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opinion. I mean we tell kids to be wary of strangers, but we can't assign a policeman to every stranger. Easier to teach people that they can be deceived or that bad things can happen, than to prevent any deception or bad thing from ever occurring.

Thank you for the common sense analogy. I have a 'hunch' that one could whip up a proof based on countably vs uncountably infinite mappings where the number of ways to deceive/offend outweigh the number of authorities which could police them, even assuming such ideals as perfect enforcement and willingness to submit to being policed (i.e. international uniformity of laws). But that's just a first-coffee-of-the-mornin…

My math prowess isn't up to the task but I'd love to see such a proof if it exists. Not because I don't believe it would support the point (I have the same 'hunch') but because the math geek in me would eat it up.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#164

Post by kwhitefoot »

pfraze wrote: post #6
Andrenid wrote: post #2

I would truly love a new "web" which is effectively style-free. I think the existing one is fine to continue for the general public, online shopping, social networks, etc.. but a parallel information-dense system that uses ultra light weight browsers that work on every device and platform, accessing machine-readable data with some standard stylesheet that concentrates in readability, and the "good" bits of the modern…

I work on Beaker Browser. Version 0.7 will have markdown sites. Here's what that looks like: https://twitter.com/pfrazee/status/840228255529590784 If you ask a layman to differentiate between "the browser" and Facebook, they might not know the difference. In a lot of ways, Facebook is a browser for a set of content types like posts, videos, business pages, etc. Same logic applies to say YouTube: it's a specialized "s…

Sounds a bit like Opera Unite.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#167

Post by sly010 »

Silhouette wrote: post #155
pdimitar wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, they've never known technology to work any other way and assume there's nothing they can do about it, and they value the social aspects of sharing stuff online so they keep using these services. I'd argue that how did the modern people end up indifferent to the growing centralization and surveillance is largely irrelevant. The sad result is still there. We all have anecdotal evidence and mine isn't more im…

I suspect we agree on more than we disagree on here, at least as far as the principles go, even if I might lack your flair for the dramatic. :-) That said, I really don't think developing standards for interoperability and federation is such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, modern networking -- including the Internet -- is built on numerous such standards, carefully designed and documented, widely…

> TCP/IP / SSL / SMTP / HTTP

Were all invented long ago and were all first of their kind. Creating a new standard when there are no wide spread alternatives is easy, doing the same where everyone is already invested is hard. E.g. that's why payment systems suck universally.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#168

Post by [deleted] »

Silhouette wrote: post #155
pdimitar wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, they've never known technology to work any other way and assume there's nothing they can do about it, and they value the social aspects of sharing stuff online so they keep using these services. I'd argue that how did the modern people end up indifferent to the growing centralization and surveillance is largely irrelevant. The sad result is still there. We all have anecdotal evidence and mine isn't more im…

I suspect we agree on more than we disagree on here, at least as far as the principles go, even if I might lack your flair for the dramatic. :-) That said, I really don't think developing standards for interoperability and federation is such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, modern networking -- including the Internet -- is built on numerous such standards, carefully designed and documented, widely…

[deleted]

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#169

Post by chippy »

The current narrative of misinformation as a news item is a new thing, which arrived in our world during the recent US election process. The issue gets my suspicion-radar bleeping. The whole narrative smells funny to me.

It's not really a global issue, it's a current affairs issue and one particular to a specific geography. And its not really an internet issue I think but a human one.

What I find interesting is that Trump is adopting the narrative that emerged to criticise him, to criticise media bias in general. That's interesting because political bias and misinformation can be separated - actual wrong reporting of facts vs bias of interpretation, but they can be argued to produce the same effect.

Re: I invented the web. Here are three things we need to change to save it

#170

Post by _yosefk »

fiatjaf wrote: post #91
_yosefk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Defenders of democracies" live in democracies. Defenders of dictatorships and monarchies, from Jeremy Corbyn (who had kind words for Castro) to neoreactionaries, also live in democracies, presumably because they're not actually stupid enough to believe what they say. Democracy is a lesser evil, which many people born into it fail to appreciate because their imagination does not render the greater evils realistically…

Is there anyway to prove you wrong? Or is what you just said the absolute immutable truth forever? Because I have the impression that there's nothing I can say that will make you consider my arguments -- as I live in a democracy --, or to even think about them -- as you also live in a democracy, and as you seem to have accepted as a principle that "democracy is a lesser evil".

Of course you can prove me wrong or more precisely convince me I'm wrong (proofs are hard with these things.) Just show me enough monarchies or dictatorships fending off immigrants from established democracies instead of shooting would-be emigrants in their backs.

It also so happens that I'm dumb enough to have wasted time listening to arguments from neoreactionaries living in democracies and thinking about them. But mainly I think the test should be empirical.

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