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Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

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Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#121

Post by inanutshellus »

infinity0 wrote: post #43

I've never seen an actual well-thought out technical argument on why decentralised social networks can't work. That's because there isn't one. People who are familiar with the technical issues surrounding this are humble and don't make bogus over-generalised statements like "X can't work [ever, everywhere, in all contexts]". This article is not a well-thought out argument either. It's a bunch of random irrelevant ane…

What "advanced stuff" was/is Diaspora lacking for you?

The problems I had with it I can't imagine being able to solve technically. It was merely not top-of-mind for the group I set it up for. They came for a little while but weren't inherently invested (e.g. you're "inherently invested" in your football team's communication mechanism. don't log in, and you don't find out about a schedule change). Instead it was just a group of friends I wanted to "facebook-verb-without-facebook-noun with".

Point is, Diaspora worked for me technically, just not socially. What was it missing in your eyes?

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#122

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

ineptech wrote: post #103
gwenzek wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree with you. I think a successful decentralized network should come with pre-configured Raspberry Pi that would act as a web server hosting the user pictures, contacts… And maybe a bit of friends data for backup.

s/Raspberry Pi/EC2 instance/ A world where it's common for people to run their own server opens up exciting possibilities (just as a world where everyone carries a computer in their pocket has), but I don't think actual physical servers is going to get us there.

Though I guess the important point is that the technology shouldn't care--if you want, you can put your own hardware in your basement, or host it with some local cooperative, or with amazon, whatever you prefer.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#123

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

arkh wrote: post #69

Here is the problem I have with most advertised decentralized social networks. Their only added value is being decentralized. Decentralized twitter / facebook / instagram. What do you gain from using those decentralized things? Nothing aside from being a hipster. And you lose your current social connections. Even worse, decentralized solutions existed before and are still available: blog software, bulletin boards, IR…

What do you gain from a democracy over a monarchy or a dictatorship? The only added value is being decentralized.

Yes, the "only" added value of decentralized power structures is their decentralization. And the absense of all the terrible effects that centralized power structures tend to have in the long term.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#124

Post by crucialfelix »

codewithcheese wrote: post #3

What short sighted click bait. Steem has already solved or partially solved most of these problems and we haven't even scratched the service. Read the Steem white paper [1] if you want your mind blown. [1] https://steem.io

I find it and the white paper I interesting. It is very well thought out. I joined. But the stink of money is everywhere and this is distracting. Reddit and HN have worthless internet karma points but we can laugh it off. Making it explicit that we are whoring ourselves in a market pushes it too far I think. It makes us self conscious and that is an impediment to creative discussion. But something will come out of these attempts. Something with tokens and systems and weird rules. It's a game. We just need to find the right game to play in.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#125

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

ojr wrote: post #100
egypturnash wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralize the funding; rely on users rather than advertising or VC. Developing Mastodon is now the full-time job of he guy who wrote it, thanks to Patreon. I think he's starting to hire a few people, too. And a lot of Mastodon servers also have their own Patreons to help out with the hosting costs.

To be an accredited investor in the United States, you need to make at least $200,000 a year or have $1,000,000 in assets. Would you rather be funded by users of your app or accredited investors? I think in a free market, the most competitive companies will prefer the second option.

Except this isn't about companies, but about users. I as a user don't care about what the company prefers, I care about whether their goals align with my goals. And if I fund them, chances are potentially higher that their goals are aligned with my goals.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#126

Post by always_good »

dwringer wrote: post #85
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #32

"People do not want to operate their own servers" ... oh, how much I hate that argument. There are so many baseless assumptions in there. What does "operate a server" even mean? Is "loading a web page that accepts WebRTC requests" "operating a server"? Obviously, what people mean is some sort of "people don't want to learn how to manage the installation and configuration of a linux distribution on the command line".…

I think if the argument "people do not want to operate their own servers" were true, then ISP's like Comcast wouldn't have clauses prohibiting users from doing it, or filters in place blocking access to common service ports like 22 and 80 from the outside.

I don't follow. We're talking about whether enough people are willing to jump through the hoops to get decentralized social networking to work.

Pointing out that some people run servers isn't much of a distinction. Some people also use decentralized social networks. But virtually nobody.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#127

Post by always_good »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #123
arkh wrote: post #69

Here is the problem I have with most advertised decentralized social networks. Their only added value is being decentralized. Decentralized twitter / facebook / instagram. What do you gain from using those decentralized things? Nothing aside from being a hipster. And you lose your current social connections. Even worse, decentralized solutions existed before and are still available: blog software, bulletin boards, IR…

What do you gain from a democracy over a monarchy or a dictatorship? The only added value is being decentralized. Yes, the "only" added value of decentralized power structures is their decentralization. And the absense of all the terrible effects that centralized power structures tend to have in the long term.

I'll have to pop your analogy bubble and ask the question again: How are you going to convince people that the decentralization of a platform they use to get laid and keep up with friends/family is going to have a meaningful impact on their lives? And how are you going to do it to the point where you can cause an exodus large enough to cause any real change?

You're going to have to do better than draw some analogies to monarchies on Hacker News. And things like "but they sell your data!" has had no impact beyond desensitizing everyone with Chicken Little'ism.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#128

Post by gwbas1c »

I've experimented in this space. The biggest challenge, IMO, is that we don't have good federated user authentication.

What do I mean? Pretty much all major social networks need to re-invent user authentication, and then taking your profile from one social network to another is a very inconsistent user experience. Can I "friend" a Linkedin user via Facebook? If I sign into other sites via Facebook, they often demand that I enter personal info that I don't want to enter.

A decentralized social network needs to be built upon a better authentication system.

What we really need is something like government-backed user profiles. Imagine if the US government provided a government-backed user profile. Now imagine that web sites had to allow interaction with government profiles without registering, providing email addresses, ect.

That's the point where a decentralized social network could start working. Otherwise, the social networks end up needing to perform services that really are the government's job.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#129

Post by rainbowmverse »

zeratax wrote: post #87
timwaagh wrote: post #39

the benefits are non obvious. social media does not have bandwith issues and few people want to share illegal text/images. so centralized platforms can work almost just as well as decentralized ones. should social networks become subject to a lot of censorship, this will change.

But that's already happening? I constantly on Twitter see "7 replies", but I'm only able to see 2. Lots of users get shadowbanned. Now with perspective ai it looks like this will only increase and all of this is never a user choice, it's always the platform deciding for me what level of toxicity I'm able to handle. And it often plain fails. Lots of false positives. I see this on every platfrom, nontransparent moderat…

>> But that's already happening? I constantly on Twitter see "7 replies", but I'm only able to see 2. Lots of users get shadowbanned.

Those are probably locked accounts.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#130

Post by rainbowmverse »

ojr wrote: post #86

decentralized social networks won't work because in order to keep a business running you need profits or the expectation of profits to acquire the talent needed to provide a nice user experience. Solutions motivated by capitalism will not disappear anytime soon. "But email is decentralized". Actually not true, it is heavily centralized around gmail. Same true with bitcoin, it is centralized around exchanges.

Not everything has to be a business.
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