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Time to rebuild the web?

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Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#341

Post by kilo_bravo_3 »

>We'd also need to avoid many of the privacy and security flaws that were rampant in the early internet, and for which we're still paying.

How many third (and first!) party trackers would you guess were blocked by my privacy and security flaws-preventing browser plugin when I clicked on the link to read the story?

I'm sure they "add value" to my experience and I am missing out on all of the incredible opportunities that they present, but that's a chance that I'm willing to take.

That website even (attempts to) logs when and where you click and what text you highlight, and then tries to send that info off to a third party.

The Vice President of Content Strategy for ORM, Inc. seems to be advocating against content strategies he has implemented.

Is "society made us do it" still a thing?

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#342

Post by CM30 »

martin_drapeau wrote: post #137
skummetmaelk wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 years ago people who smoked didn't care about the adverse effects mainly because they didn't know the dangers. As people who know the dangers of poor privacy choices we should protect those who have not had the opportunity to consider it yet.

Smoking will kill you. Liking funny cat videos on Facebook won't. I think you are comparing oranges and apples here.

Gambling won't kill you either, but we still try and encourage people to gamble responsibly rather than become addicts. An unhealthy behaviour doesn't have to be physically unhealthy to be an issue.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#343

Post by matte_black »

mac01021 wrote: post #339
jasode wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's the trend of turning software into services. [...] But it also makes you no longer in control of your data, and the code that runs on it. The availability of your work becomes completely dependent on business decisions of third parties, which can - and frequently do - disappear suddenly. Here's a thought experiment I'd like people to ponder: Suppose we had this decentralized hardware utopia where every homeowne…

> Youtube does things that localized technology installed in the home doesn't solve and can't solve. Are you talking about search and content discovery? Are you talking about replicating the most popular videos over many servers so that the system can efficiently serve all the demand to watch those videos? Maybe existing, fully-distributed products don't solve these problems. But it isn't obvious to me that they can'…

He is talking about monetization.

It’s not even that counterintuitive with some capitalist forethought.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#344

Post by stev0lution »

api wrote: post #224
kingnight wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a mobile phone sync dats? The main drawback I see currently with beaker is their is no mobile version (for iPhone)

Mobile as a whole is an unsolved problem for decentralized systems. The mobile revolution is and has been by far the most powerful driver of centralization in the last 10-15 years. Mobile devices are slower, have less memory, and must consume less power than desktop, laptop, or server devices. To achieve good battery life they really need to be in an almost-off state most of the time. Add to this the fact that cellul…

I really enjoy your thinking.. Do you have some kind of blog where I can follow you? :D As you already mentioned, contributing whatever resources you consume is relatively unreasonable on mobile devices, because it would pretty much double data and battery usage. So while there is most likely some kind of overhead connected to the third solution you suggested, I still think it is probably the easiest one because it doesn't require any new specialised hardware.

Maybe regulation can solve some of the problems with the current systems, but the idealist in me really wants to see provably transparent (open source) and secure solutions which don't require trust in the hardware so we can still make use of modern, efficient (federated) server farms without having to giving up control over our data.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#345

Post by CM30 »

laumars wrote: post #79
realpeopleio wrote: post #13

I agree that having a few walled gardens is a problem, but having more smaller walled gardens probably won't change much. Bad actors can still sign up, post, spam, harass, etc. on several small walled gardens. What we need is a way to better identify and handle bad actors. The internet in the 90s seemed more fun and more open. Perhaps it's because the only people really participating were not interested in abusing si…

> The internet in the 90s seemed more fun and more open. Perhaps it's because the only people really participating were not interested in abusing sites or people. It was mostly nerds sharing nerdy things. Once money got involved, and free everything was available, it turned into this soup of bots, trolls, AI, fake this and that, big money, swaying public opinion, and gross content. The 90s had fair share of the above…

Yeah, a lot of things that are seen as modern social media problems have been issues online (especially on community websites) for a while now.

Of course, part of the reason they seem worse now is because sites like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit have completely ignored all community management advice found online and done nothing to discourage bad actors or keep the quality control up.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#346

Post by CM30 »

woranl wrote: post #96

Unlike in the past, people don’t build websites for fun anymore. I remember I used to visit topsite ranking sites just to explore what other had built. Nowadays, it’s all templated design hosted in a walled garden.

Sadly, I don't think many people do anything for fun anymore. Feels like every site/channel/project/venture now is done with the possibility of a career in mind, and nothing online is made without some sort of extrinsic benefit to the creator.

Seems like the idea of a hobby in general has died off sometimes.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#347

Post by JohnBooty »

Alex3917 wrote: post #314
hueving wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. I strongly disagree. These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. All of this crap tied up in walled gardens means we just have to cry on the outside with #DeleteFacebook hash tags and hope stuff changes. You claim we nee…

> These giant monopolies on different corners of tech caused by centralization are the very reason we end up having to have these stupid discussions about how everything should work. NPR basically has a monopoly on public radio, and yet we don't constantly hear about all the evil stuff they're doing. Why? Because they're not being run as a loss leader to sell missiles and landmines or whatever. Centralization isn't b…

I think you may be using "monopoly" in the colloquial sense of "dominant market share" and not in the more specific sense of "using dominant market share to prevent competition" which is the legal sense.

There is nothing about NPR that discourages other public broadcasters.

(I'm not sure I'd call Google or FB a monopoly by that definition either, despite their market shares.

> and yet we don't constantly hear about all the evil stuff they're doing

We do, though, from conservatives.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#348

Post by pvg »

always_good wrote: post #333
pvg wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I told you that when AOL started, you could not access arbitrary web sites from it because there weren't any.

I'd say that your core distinction then is nonsensical and I'd wonder what it contributed. What if I said that? Is this hypothetical tense helping the conversation?

I don't think this bit really requires much conversation, you can just read the relevant wikipedia pages for a quick rundown on things like the history of AOL, the internet, the world wide web and the seemingly nonsensical but curiously real distinctions between them over the years. What if you did that?

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#349

Post by api »

stev0lution wrote: post #344
api wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile as a whole is an unsolved problem for decentralized systems. The mobile revolution is and has been by far the most powerful driver of centralization in the last 10-15 years. Mobile devices are slower, have less memory, and must consume less power than desktop, laptop, or server devices. To achieve good battery life they really need to be in an almost-off state most of the time. Add to this the fact that cellul…

I really enjoy your thinking.. Do you have some kind of blog where I can follow you? :D As you already mentioned, contributing whatever resources you consume is relatively unreasonable on mobile devices, because it would pretty much double data and battery usage. So while there is most likely some kind of overhead connected to the third solution you suggested, I still think it is probably the easiest one because it d…

My seldom-updated personal site is http://adamierymenko.com/

It's actually worse than doubling. The nature of distributed systems means that participating in resources consumed normally triples resource consumption at least. I'm not aware of any approach to decentralization of services like Facebook, Twitter, etc. that would merely double it.

Your typical desktop or laptop has a lot of resources to spare. Your typical mobile device has none. Mobile promotes a client/server mainframe/dumb-term architecture for fundamental technical reasons.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#350

Post by bartread »

snug wrote: post #279
TeMPOraL wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just social media, and it's not just ads, about which other people responded to you. The root of the problem - or at least the trunk very close to the root - is Software as a Service. It's the trend of turning software into services. Sure, it's nice for the vendors, and it's nice for corporate clients who can write off responsibility to a third party. But it also makes you no longer in control of your data,…

> If technology is meant to be - or at least is capable of being - empowering to individuals, then turning everything into a service is an exact opposite of that. What? No. Plenty of new companies are being built off these SaaS providers. Why should a company just starting out build their own infrastructure, host their own CRM, build their own AI models. Companies would move much more slowely if they couldn't rely on…

> host their own CRM

I take your point but, for this one, you'd be surprised how far you can get with a decent email client and a spreadsheet.

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