A good moment to mention again that you cannot actually delete your Hacker News account.
Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
51–60 of 210 posts
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Federated communities would be neat and basically are how the "real world" already interconnects, socially speaking. I don't think that's exclusive of what I had in mind. But you have to actually have the communities before you can do the federation (this is also how it works in the offline world — it's not like people design interoperability protocols and THEN found villages).
So what you're saying is, we should try to convince the existing villages (Facebook, reddit, Twitter) to adopt interoperability protocols?
Ha no, of course I think that is impossible.
It's more like: we could build nicer, community-funded, sanely run social software, and alongside them we could support XMPP type features for hackers who are able to use them, or to interoperate with other alternative online communities that may be emerging.
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#53The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…
Before everyone had to be on Facebook, a few friends and relatives used a hidden forum on someone's spare domain, and it worked really nicely. A co-op social network sounds an interesting idea. Doubly so if it gave only the sort of features early Facebook had - i.e. the ones useful to the users, before it became about the algorithm, engagement and so on. Wouldn't be surprised if there's something along those lines on…
I'm not on Facebook. I know plenty of other adults who don't have an account. My daughter tells me that the young folks have completely abandoned it, a good while ago.
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#54The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…
In some extends this is what the Movim project ( https://movim.eu/ ) is building for several years now. A light solution that you can deploy on a server and that handle the communication of a small community (10 to a few hundreds people). The good thing is that it relies on XMPP for all the communication, therefore all the instances are still connected to each others allowing communication between all the users of th…
This looks excellent, I'm really glad to see this out there and will explore!
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#55The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…
I think that was the goal of App.net. It shut down last year.
A cautionary tale for sure.
My thought is that something new would need to not replicate the UX of existing social software, but would need to think of better alternatives. Competing with existing giants on their own terms, but with a different business model, is a hard sell, probably too hard.
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, while I dream the same dream, it feels awkward asking my family and friends to pay 5€ per year so that we can share the cost of running our XMPP-Server. Currently, I pay all the bills and manage the server myself (so no cost/effort for them), and they still keep using WhatsApp with most of their contacts. I don't know what the root of that evil is, but there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved. First of a…
I don't know if I would build something from scratch that was based on XMPP or even on the idea of messaging. I keep thinking that the Twitter/FB/chat models of socializing is a very limited form of online sociability and that we could do better. I think it would be better to build something that was sufficiently compelling and had enough new features/UX that people would want to use it all on its own, as something b…
I think the parent referred to fiddling with OMEMO fingerprints, that a) is automated in "good clients" (Conversations) b) can't be easy and paranoid-secure at the same time.
I also run XMPP server for friends and family and actually all of them are very happy with it. With Conversations this entire experience looks like any other modern messenger.
Network effects are of course a problem in any decentralized environments but looking at how quickly companies drop their solutions (Google?) or abuse the data you give them (Facebook?) I don't see any other reasonable option. Today Signal is nice and kind, tomorrow they are bought by Facebook and start "fiddling" with the app...
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#57The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…
Well, while I dream the same dream, it feels awkward asking my family and friends to pay 5€ per year so that we can share the cost of running our XMPP-Server. Currently, I pay all the bills and manage the server myself (so no cost/effort for them), and they still keep using WhatsApp with most of their contacts. I don't know what the root of that evil is, but there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved. First of a…
This is all summed up in one word: friction.
What the big platforms have done is eliminate friction at all the critical parts, to make it easy for users to onboard, easy to share, easy to grow within the platform, and of course hard to leave.
I've been thinking about a low cost but not free platform too. If it ever happens, it will have to be AT LEAST as frictionless and enticing as the existing platforms. The table stakes are very high. Since cost in of itself is a source of friction, that means the rest of the platform needs to be even MORE frictionless.
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#58It's not like people design interoperability protocols and THEN found villages http://www.lvbagses.com/
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#59The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…
if the SafeNetwork ever gets released we could easily have things like that. with monetisation being built in it will be fairly frictionless for poeple to pay or for an app or service to take a micropayment any time you use it.
so if getting more users means getting more money, then the focus could be just on making the best service possible instead of focusing on ads and tracking to keep things running
Re: Delete Your Account Now: A Conversation with Jaron Lanier
#60The thing I keep thinking is that I want to have social software built on a co-operative model (like a food co-op): you all pay some nominal membership fee (could you fund servers and developers on $5/year/user?), and the software would then be developed to fit the agreed-upon needs of the community, without dark patterns or behavior modification projects, openly, and with some kind of community governance (which nee…
Well, while I dream the same dream, it feels awkward asking my family and friends to pay 5€ per year so that we can share the cost of running our XMPP-Server. Currently, I pay all the bills and manage the server myself (so no cost/effort for them), and they still keep using WhatsApp with most of their contacts. I don't know what the root of that evil is, but there are undoubtedly multiple factors involved. First of a…
Do you have a recommended guide for setting an XMPP server that supports end-to-end encryption?