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Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

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Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#41

Post by pmlnr »

tadzik_ wrote: post #34
zoul wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I noticed this too, and it's both quite annoying and rather sad.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#42

Post by grinsekatze »

I think many people that are moving away from Facebook move away from social networks in general. Personally, I am not interested at all in a Facebook replacement. I gave a couple a try, but quickly realized that spending time on these social networks is even more boring than Facebook, especially if none of your friends are on there.. and therefor a total waste of my time. If I need to communicate with friends I do this “directly” via WhatsApp or email.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#43

Post by fwdpropaganda »

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…

> Tell me why I should care.

I don't care if you care. That's your decision.

> The same thing happens with loyalty cards at Walgreens.

It's not the same thing at all. With loyalty cards I get the OPTION of being rewarded for allowing a company to track me. So I weigh getting rewarded (positive) against sharing my data (negative), and I make a decision.

With Facebook there is no option, they track everyone regardless.

> 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

Yes, so? Peopple are outraged and legislators act. Isn't that how democracy works? It seems you're only just now discovering this.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#44

Post by pmlnr »

hudon wrote: post #31
transpostmeta wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's true that when or if you need to communicate with them, you need to play by their rules, but it's also true that email has the potential, the power, and the technical solutions to shift away from it, should it ever be needed or wanted. This is not true for centralised by design systems.

EDIT: I don't think people will be able to abandon email, given it's a replacement for paper mail (banking, official papers, etc). If the big players won't play nice, people will need to get to another provider, simply because the source of email won't be willing/fast enough to jump on [system X].

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#45

Post by rglullis »

hudon wrote: post #31
transpostmeta wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Sorry, it is still decentralized.

- Even if it were true that "everyone uses Google/Microsoft/Apple/etc", the ones that don't can still send/receive emails from everyone else. - If one of the of the big providers disappear, the system as a whole will continue to function.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#46

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#47

Post by codyswann »

chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #39
codyswann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

More people believe the world is flat than know what a "decentralized social network" is.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#48

Post by davidy123 »

icc97 wrote: post #3

I did try to mention this before, with creating a Slack clone [0]. PHP and MySQL which is what this is written in are not very sexy but they're perfect for when you want the entire world to be able to use it. There's reasons why PHP has been so successful with WordPress and Facebook. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16567271

I find it very strange that nobody includes, y'know, Wikipedia in these kinds of conversations. Don't you think Wikipedia is more important than Facebook and Wordpress? As a person involved in mainstream Internet adoption, I consider it as important as the Internet in establishing free, participatory hypertext information. In addition to the fact people now assume they can just find something out without commercial supplication, all the major Internet media companies and pretty much the modern field of AI depend on the knowledge it provides.

Yes, "most people" may not know it's participatory / non commercial / that search results are largely based on it / that you can download all its content and tools and run your own. It still is.

Anyway, Wikipedia is mainly written in PHP and uses MySQL.

But past this point, if we are talking about decentralized peer to peer systems, something based on Javascript that runs entirely in the browser is the real gold standard, at least until a protocol-based network breaks through.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#49

Post by chrstphrknwtn »

codyswann wrote: post #40
chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, your whole argument seems to be based on what ill-informed people will tolerate, not was is ethical.

I agree marketing is intended to manipulate your thinking... or "market towards you". I suspect I have a different attitude about marketing than you do.

I don't use facebook, I used for a week in 2007, and thought "this is just a marketing data machine, no thanks".

Further, the innocuous sounding "Connecting the world" mission doesn't equate to "monitor your social interactions and help people convince you to buy things" (amongst other things) in most people's minds.

Re: Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

#50

Post by pmlnr »

grinsekatze wrote: post #42

I think many people that are moving away from Facebook move away from social networks in general. Personally, I am not interested at all in a Facebook replacement. I gave a couple a try, but quickly realized that spending time on these social networks is even more boring than Facebook, especially if none of your friends are on there.. and therefor a total waste of my time. If I need to communicate with friends I do t…

I don't know who's downvoting this; this is an actual trend I'm experiencing as well. Those who leave facebook tend to leave for good, and not replace it with anything. I'm yet to decide if it's good or not; I definitely want homepages (not strictly blogs) back, hence see https://indieweb.org , but I know most will just simply walk away from social media completely.
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