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Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

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Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#31

Post by hudon »

transpostmeta wrote: post #27
common_ wrote: post #21

All communities have leaders, whales, whatever you want to call them. Even Bitcoin is now controlled by a small group of mostly Chinese people. Decentralization does nothing other than put control in the hands of an unpredictable and potentially unaccountable group of people, whereas centralized systems have people you can point to and hold accountable (or so we hope). There is a reason it's never worked throughout h…

Email is a decentralized system.

Its design intended it to be used that way, but that's not how people use it. Everyone uses a centralized email provider now (Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc.), and these providers act as gatekeepers to email. If they disappear, people will find an alternative centralized messaging scheme, not start learning how to run their own mail servers...

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#32

Post by codyswann »

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #16
codyswann wrote: post #4

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own bullshit that we fail to realize that the average Facebook user has no idea what "decentralized" means; nor cares that their personal data is being sold. This is another example of faux outrage that will pass with the next news cycle.

"No one cares that their personal data is being sold" is a HN talking point. A lot of people care. Example: In the EU so many people care that legistators are taking measures to protect the people. Perhaps it's just the people around you that don't care...?

"A lot" of people also think the world is flat.

Let's be specific here.

I would say 90% or more of Facebook users couldn't care less if their data is sold to advertisers.

I'm one of those people.

Tell me why I should care. The same thing happens with loyalty cards at Walgreens.

It's the people on Facebook that make Facebook trash, not Facebook itself.

As for your "legistators" (sic), that is the faux outrage I'm talking about.

That's the name of game in politics.

1) Something happens. 2) The media tells people they should get outraged about it 3) People get outraged about it 4) Legislation is enacted to appease the outrage 5) Something else happens. 6) People move on to getting outraged about that.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#33

Post by d3ckard »

I don't know about others, but I don't care if my social media platform is centralized or not. I use FB mainly as news feed(I don't even get that many friends' posts), but I can easily migrate that. What I need is nothing more that somehow fancy address book. FB gives me a way to contact people I don't keep strong relationships with, it lets me organize an event with those people relatively pain-free and it allows me to keep at least a bit in touch. That's all. Give me just those basic features, pour some serious privacy management over that and I will be happy to lead the way switching.

I don't care about fancy tech in this case.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#34

Post by tadzik_ »

zoul wrote: post #26
common_ wrote: post #21

All communities have leaders, whales, whatever you want to call them. Even Bitcoin is now controlled by a small group of mostly Chinese people. Decentralization does nothing other than put control in the hands of an unpredictable and potentially unaccountable group of people, whereas centralized systems have people you can point to and hold accountable (or so we hope). There is a reason it's never worked throughout h…

Like e-mail or the web, perhaps?

Exactly like email or the web. Certain services (shame on you, booking.com) now consider it a potential bug if you email doesn't end in gmail.com (they do their "did you mean: tadzik_@gmail.com?" when I enter the proper one, with my own domain). The web itself also tends to gravitate towards either "cloud" providers or at least stuff like cloudfare for ddos protection. Yes, it is still decentralized, but people keep choosing the centralized subsets of it for convenience.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#35

Post by kodablah »

> Friendica runs on PHP with MySQL as a database. If you can run WordPress, you can run Friendica.

Not the biggest fan of the stack, but no problem. These networks are getting closer. Now create a desktop installer that: has its own web server + php + mysql pieces embedded and execute on their own ports on startup. (I say I don't like the stack because I'd prefer something that can all be statically compiled). Make sure the desktop can easily setup/change/admin this self host and can guide or automatically dyndns and NAT bust. Or if you want to do it right, embed tor, and create a hidden service for me (an ephemeral v3 one would be nice, maybe from a deterministically derived key from a few factors, I'll figure out how to give the unwieldy name to my friends).

We have to make self hosting as easy as running mspaint if we're going to tackle this problem right.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#36

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

bausshf wrote: post #14
codyswann wrote: post #4

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own bullshit that we fail to realize that the average Facebook user has no idea what "decentralized" means; nor cares that their personal data is being sold. This is another example of faux outrage that will pass with the next news cycle.

Another thing is that this will only appeal to people who are generally tech-minded and not the average joe who uses social media. Most people who uses social media etc. doesn't want to download a lot of things, access should be fairly easy and painless without some sort of "guide", which is what I can see as the downfall for this "social network"

It's more to do with convenience. It was more convenient (and cheaper) to just get Napster / Limewire / Soul Seek / other p2p sharing app and download music than buy it online. In the beginning it was a tech-minded group, but the software got better and easier... and the communities grew.

In short order it was not only tech-minded people who did this en-masse. If a platform is convenient for people to do X, it has a good change of also being popular.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#37

Post by mcs_ »

Is the "Rebuild from scratch the same thing but using another paradigm" a good option to improve social?

I don't have any Facebook accounts but after 15 years programming stuff, I don't see the copy/paste as a powerful solution.

Also, distribution is not really the problem here. From architecture point of view Facebook is distributed.

The problem is the need of store huge amount of data in the cloud and pretending that to be free.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#38

Post by amelius »

tscs37 wrote: post #22
amelius wrote: post #5

They promise privacy, but in a decentralized system, do I have to trust every node admin?

You have to trust your node admin and the admin of any node you talk to (ie your friend's node)

Obviously, I have no control over what nodes my friends are using.

Can I whitelist/blacklist nodes?

And how is the situation we're arriving at better than having a single party, in this case Facebook, who is to blame when things go sour?

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#39

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

codyswann wrote: post #32
fwdpropaganda wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No one cares that their personal data is being sold" is a HN talking point. A lot of people care. Example: In the EU so many people care that legistators are taking measures to protect the people. Perhaps it's just the people around you that don't care...?

"A lot" of people also think the world is flat. Let's be specific here. I would say 90% or more of Facebook users couldn't care less if their data is sold to advertisers. I'm one of those people. Tell me why I should care. The same thing happens with loyalty cards at Walgreens. It's the people on Facebook that make Facebook trash, not Facebook itself. As for your "legistators" (sic), that is the faux outrage I'm talk…

    "A lot" of people also think the world is flat.
Not really.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#40

Post by codyswann »

chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #28
codyswann wrote: post #4

Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own bullshit that we fail to realize that the average Facebook user has no idea what "decentralized" means; nor cares that their personal data is being sold. This is another example of faux outrage that will pass with the next news cycle.

Leaving aside "an average facebook user" (which is just an average person really), and weather they understand what decentralised means, I believe most people would care if they were aware of why the data is sold. If you said to someone "I'm going to collect information about you whether you like it or not, and then sell it to someone who wants to manipulate your thinking", then I suspect they wouldn't be so keen on…

And yet if you said "Or you can pay me directly to use this service," how do you think people would respond?

And you literally just described the profession of marketing. So if you replaced the inflammatory phrase "manipulate your thinking" with "market toward you", I think they'd be totally fine with it.

I mean, why else do you "Like" something on Facebook anyway unless you want other people to know that you like it?

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