Back in 2004 Orkut and Google were sued by Affinity Engines, alleging Orkut stole their source code to start the social network at Google. The lawsuit was settled in 2006 but the details of that settlement have never been made public. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/402902/did-google-steal-s...
Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
171–180 of 215 posts
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#172The social network I'd like to try is this: * Funded by subscriptions. * Free from ads. * Since it is not ad dependent, yes, it can also provide a chronological timeline. * Two post types supported: Text and Photo. Because sometimes a photo does tell a thousand words. * Links to websites not supported in posts. Avoids viral proliferation of dumbed down politics, fake news, or stupid memes. If you want to get to the w…
> Links to websites not supported in posts.
That seems, with all due respect, bananas. There are loads of reasons to have a link in your post, not least because you may use a third party photo host and you want to link to your holiday snaps without having to copy everything everywhere.
Even ignoring that though, you can't share recipes, tracks on youtube, programming blog posts, a cool pair of shoes, a link to a book your friend has been looking for for years...?
Links are the web, it would feel hollow without them.
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can Jane Average understand how email works? Because that's really all their is to understand about distributed social networks: you own your data, but if you send someone a message you should consider it public (could be shared/forwarded to anyone) unless you trust the recipient not to share it.
I am not really sure what you are talking about...a email account consists of either emails you received or emails you sent. So naturally for all your emails you have in your inbox the sender has them in their outbox...and every email you sent also exists as a copy in somebody else’s inbox. And you can’t control whether the other parties host their own email server or if they use a hosted service...in which case, gue…
spam filters work pretty well for email these days. are you suggesting that effective spam filtering mandates a centralized single-company controls-everything architecture for email? why social networks?
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#174The social network I'd like to try is this: * Funded by subscriptions. * Free from ads. * Since it is not ad dependent, yes, it can also provide a chronological timeline. * Two post types supported: Text and Photo. Because sometimes a photo does tell a thousand words. * Links to websites not supported in posts. Avoids viral proliferation of dumbed down politics, fake news, or stupid memes. If you want to get to the w…
> Funded by subscriptions This sounds like it might be a good idea because it seems like it would remove the incentive to monetize personal information, but in practice it creates a barrier to adoption and makes the social network kinda useless. I joined a subscription-based social network that was designed for expats [1]. It was by all-accounts well-designed, well-managed and had everything going for it. But no one…
Facebook makes something like $25 per user on average. I’d pay that to Facebook if it meant no advertising and no tracking all year.
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#175The social network I'd like to try is this: * Funded by subscriptions. * Free from ads. * Since it is not ad dependent, yes, it can also provide a chronological timeline. * Two post types supported: Text and Photo. Because sometimes a photo does tell a thousand words. * Links to websites not supported in posts. Avoids viral proliferation of dumbed down politics, fake news, or stupid memes. If you want to get to the w…
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Funded by subscriptions This sounds like it might be a good idea because it seems like it would remove the incentive to monetize personal information, but in practice it creates a barrier to adoption and makes the social network kinda useless. I joined a subscription-based social network that was designed for expats [1]. It was by all-accounts well-designed, well-managed and had everything going for it. But no one…
Facebook makes something like $25 per user on average. I’d pay that to Facebook if it meant no advertising and no tracking all year.
That's only in the US and Canada, globally it's more something like $5.
And you and I (and probably some more people of HN) would pay that. But 99% of the 2 billion people that use FB wouldn't.
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they wanted to verify my phone number, text me a code. That isn't a problem. It's the app install requirement we're talking about. Which both gives them access to some data on your phone, and also means only Android and iOS users can sign up. (On Android, Hello gets access to your contacts, your rough location, the ability to read and modify your storage, use your camera, and view your Wi-Fi connections)
Read and Modify Storage and Camera permissions are needed so that it can take pictures, presumably to post (Why so many Android apps think they need to be their own camera instead of just dumping out to the user's preferred camera app I'll never understand). Everything else seems pretty sketchy.
Well, and as you point out, the camera permission is arguably completely specious. Android should, if I recall, also have a photo picker so you can select a single photo to give to the app, rather than giving it global access to your stuff.
I understand why it wants contacts, to make it easy to add people, but again, it can be done in a "let the OS offer the contact picker" way, if we're making a privacy-respecting app.
If Google is expected to be the steward of protecting users, they should not allow apps on the Play Store which don't use the most privacy-respecting method possible to implement the needed functionality.
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#178The social network I'd like to try is this: * Funded by subscriptions. * Free from ads. * Since it is not ad dependent, yes, it can also provide a chronological timeline. * Two post types supported: Text and Photo. Because sometimes a photo does tell a thousand words. * Links to websites not supported in posts. Avoids viral proliferation of dumbed down politics, fake news, or stupid memes. If you want to get to the w…
I support subscription funding but most of the rest sounds terrible. When I go scuba diving and post underwater photos on Facebook the likes are useful feedback on whether or not I'm taking good pictures and help me improve as an amateur photographer. Plus I enjoy it when people share my photos. It makes the world a brighter place and hopefully encourages viewers not to trash the ocean.
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t understand the decentralized part of your comment. There’s a reason Facebook and perhaps AOL before it was successful - it’s easy and everyone is there. I’m a huge privacy advocate but the decentralized Facebook alternatives are a little wonky for most to get their heads around. Jane Average user could care less about blockchain hosted personal data. In most cases Jane just wants Facebook and is a little worr…
I don't really see the decentralized argument. I believe it's meant to solve a noble intent but in reality for a network to be successful all the information has to be readily available. You can't have a social network that says "Hey, thanks for posting about your birthday... we'll ensure it filters out to all nodes within at least 21 days". So if all information has to be accessible and any node has access to all of…
this. First, the thing that none of the decentralize advocates recognize is that outside of HN and the tech community, no one cares! When you mention the word "decentralized" to Joe Schmo of the world, you already lost him. He has no idea what you're talking about and doesn't care.
Second, there is no way that a decentralized social network is going to have the quality and feature development that a centralized company will have. There is a reason people build great things in this world from buildings, to widgets, to software etc. It's called incentive. Capitalism drives innovation and it's a requirement to have the quality of product that is needed to draw eyeballs off existing platforms.
Lastly, I don't buy the argument that centralized companies can't be responsible with data. Do we trust banks to hold our money? The future is not decentralized social networks.
Re: Hello: A new social network founded by Orkut's creator
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not really sure what you are talking about...a email account consists of either emails you received or emails you sent. So naturally for all your emails you have in your inbox the sender has them in their outbox...and every email you sent also exists as a copy in somebody else’s inbox. And you can’t control whether the other parties host their own email server or if they use a hosted service...in which case, gue…
spam filters work pretty well for email these days. are you suggesting that effective spam filtering mandates a centralized single-company controls-everything architecture for email? why social networks?
Spam filters work well because they are centralized! It requires a lot of data to train the ML models...its not just a static blacklist