Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time • Hacker News Board

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#111

Post by gmax » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:37 AM UTC

kodablah wrote: post #8

I think the part ignored by so many is the need to decentralize the computers into the home. I'm not talking meshes or shared resources. For the majority of use cases, we don't need distributed storage, compute, etc. Just start making these self-hosted "servers", "data pods", etc as easy to install as desktop software and make it clear that they are inaccessible when the computer is off. People that aren't already wi…

What if everyone had a personal always-on cloud storage like dropbox, or even their ISP, where data is encrypted and access managed via crypto keys exchanged directly between clients so that plaintext never leaves the client. This gets us around devices being offline and NATs. Clients communicate via these always-on cloud stores using them as store and forward network, along the lines of http://cweb-services.com/intro.html

There are challenges like establishing initial connections, or push notifications, but these can hopefully be worked out.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#112

Post by cortesoft » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:39 AM UTC

ken wrote: post #102

cortesoft wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that not freedom? Each site owner has the freedom to use google analytics or not, no one forces them to. And each user has the ability to block requests to google analytics if they want, or avoid sites that use it.

How am I supposed to know that any particular domain is used for analytics, versus core functionality? How am I supposed to know what scripts a webpage loads, before viewing it? > "But look, you found the notice, didn't you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'"

I am curious to how this could be solved. I mean, i guess you could have your browser ask before every request generated for a page, but that seems very cumbersome.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#113

Post by rickcogley » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:40 AM UTC

The problem is people. To put it charitably, not everyone is "technical" enough to figure out how to own their own data, so I think silos and walled gardens are here to stay, because they are quick and easy for people. I for one, fully support keeping my own data in (as much as possible) future-proof formats, and although I've had a blog in some form for years, I want to move away from standard social media as much as possible.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#114

Post by kjetilk » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:40 AM UTC

pbalau wrote: post #44

This is a load of ... You can't descentralize the web for 2 reasons: DNS and SSL. And then you have the IP organisation, the name escapes me right now.

Oh, but that's more a matter of where you start and what you bootstrap.

In both cases, DNS and TLS CA-based stuff is about trust. You need to trust the DNS server, as there could be malicious servers sneaking in, and you need to trust the cert.

But once you have a social network with a large strong set, you could base the trust on the strong set, and in particular, individuals in that strong set who can demonstrate that they have a clue.

Once we have that, we can get rid of these achilles heels, but quite frankly, I don't believe in a strategy that takes on those problems first.

Sure, I obviously got OpenNIC in my DNS resolution. Haven't once seen an address that required me to use it beyond when I set it up. I think our approach is much better. Base it on people and the strongest part of their network.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#115

Post by alexashka » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:44 AM UTC

Huh...

> The situation becomes problematic when we are robbed of our choice, deceived into thinking there is only one access gate to a space that, in reality, we collectively own.

Robbery - the action of taking property unlawfully from a person or place by force or threat of force. [0]

Deceit - The action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or misrepresenting the truth [1]

That's what those words mean. They also have nothing to do with anything that has happened with the internet over the last 20 years.

[0] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/robbery

[1] https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/deceit

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#116

Post by jpollock » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:44 AM UTC

Technology won't help with this, regulation will.

We have parallels from other platforms - specifically the fixed and mobile phone networks.

There used to be monopolies in local phone service. There were new competitors, but to change provider, you had to change phone number.

Even changing cell phone provider required a number change.

This obviously had strong network effects pulling you to stay with your provider. You had to tell _everyone_ in your extended network where to find you and have them update all of their business records when you changed from one carrier to another.

Eventually, everyone figured out this was stupid, and Number Portability [1] was forced on carriers by regulation.

This problem is completely gone now. You can take your number with you.

If we allow people to take their data to new social networks, and force federation, then we will get decentralization. However, it won't happen without regulation anymore than it did with the phone companies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_number_portability#Histo...

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#117

Post by TylerE » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:47 AM UTC

jpollock wrote: post #116

Technology won't help with this, regulation will. We have parallels from other platforms - specifically the fixed and mobile phone networks. There used to be monopolies in local phone service. There were new competitors, but to change provider, you had to change phone number. Even changing cell phone provider required a number change. This obviously had strong network effects pulling you to stay with your provider. Y…

If you have ever seen any attempt by any government to regulate software you would know this to be a Lovecraftian nightmare, and not a solution.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#118

Post by misttar » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:52 AM UTC

rococode wrote: post #61

zozbot123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, they can't. There are reasonably-strong legal protections against police entering your home, because it's the main place where you actually have a legally-acknowledged expectation of privacy.

Aren't there similarly-strong legal protections against police entering a data center and accessing servers?

Not really.

There are protections in both cases. But they are different.

For instance, in the USA, there is no requirement that you have a mechanism to provide information stored at home to law enforcement, even under warrant/court order. If you have one, they can compel you to use it, but if you don't they have no remediation.

But a cloud provider is legally required to have that mechanism, and when order if they don't exercise it, they are punished. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stored_Communications_Act and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CLOUD_Act.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#119

Post by kjetilk » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

beat wrote: post #22

zozbot123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, they can't. There are reasonably-strong legal protections against police entering your home, because it's the main place where you actually have a legally-acknowledged expectation of privacy.

Most people have no real reason to be concerned about police looking at their data, even if it does somehow happen (not in America, anyway). So as a need , it's a vanishingly small market, limited to people who actually have something illegal to hide - drug business, child porn, whatever. As a want is a different thing - people, convinced to be afraid of Big Brother, want to shield themselves. But that's still not a…

Right, but if you had data that were just that confidential to you, that's the easy part. Just encrypt it and don't let anybody look. I don't really have that kind of data, but I do have a lot of stuff that's just private, in the sense that I don't have anything to hide, but I close the door when I'm in the toilet. So, really private data, encrypt it, store copies in many safe places, you're done.

That's not really what Solid is about. Solid is not just about me, it is about us. The stuff we do together. The sharing we do, but we share not just with anybody, but with someone we trust. It may be something really trivial: I share my grocery shopping list with my wife. It is not sensitive by any means, but it is also nobody else's business. Those are data used on my terms. Nobody should be peeking into my life to map me, as I go along with my daily business, but my daily business consists of interacting with a lot of people, and I do share and I want to share, but I want personal data control.

Now, personal data control is really the key to permissionless innovation. So, we're not just doing it to protect from snooping, once people have their data then you get a level playing field were there can be competition for the best user experiences.

Re: Re-decentralizing the Web, for good this time

#120

Post by anomie31 » Sat, Jan 12, 2019, 12:55 AM UTC

rubenverborgh wrote: post #97

tmcw wrote: post #79

It puzzles me that the linked data future is still discussed, as if we didn't already try it, and didn't already discover that developers dislike arcane RDF standards and the academic-rooted designers of the specifications have a terrible track record of solving real-world problems. And that now they're presenting linked data as some critical component of the decentralized web while skipping out on the debates that e…

You'll be surprised to hear that developers like Linked Data. People starting with Linked Data development today are not burdened by the Semantic Web legacy and mistakes of the past. We've been working with front-end devs who have never seen RDF, and never will. They enjoy how Linked Data is able to cross borders and leads to more data than a centralized database could ever give you. The confusion in your comment is…

By RDF did you mean RDF/XML specifically? JSON-LD is still RDF, it's just serialized differently, which is fine, I like RDF, but OP may have more specific concerns than the syntax.