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Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

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Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#21

Post by MikeGale »

People who want to take control of their own lives, and curate the mix of knowledge / fact / falsity / opinion / propaganda / disinformation / useful-idiocy in their own heads can technically head in this direction today.

I think a key ingredient is translators that move content out of the platform-bubbles into the world you control. You can move material between RSS, email, blog channel easily, if you choose. Harder but doable is to crack the walled gardens of social media.

These can fuel development of better forms of expression than the primitive nonsense so often used today.

Many people have major barriers; not interested in taking control, not going to build anything myself, fear of leaving the mob, will accept advertising, want somebody to tell me what to do, too rushed...

That's fine, they will continue. Those who want can, and are, going down the other road.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#22

Post by zzo38computer »

I agree to use protocols, and not platforms (it would be better to do that rather than what a lot of stuff including Hacker News are doing). I wrote my own software for IRC and NNTP (both client-side and server-side), but you don't have to use mine and you can use your own or others too. Regardless of protocol services are still required, but you can use other services with the same protocol; you can set up your own server if you do not want to (or cannot) use theirs, for example. And, SMTP is good for email, compared with having to use a web browser. (And, there still are free Usenet servers (some require registration and some don't).)

Decentralized systems also will help. However, I think ActivityPub and so on are too complicated; NNTP and IRC is good. Also, sometimes some federation with others might not be wanted, or only partially, or whatever reason; sometimes the policy also might not match what someone else has. That is one reason I write a specification of Unusenet, which specifies a format for newsgroup hierarchies which are not part of Usenet (it is possible for the same server to feed both Usenet and Unusenet, though). Perhaps I think even should set up a NNTP for Hacker News, too. (I also invented a Netsubscribe protocol, which could be a simpler alternative to ActivityPub/Mastodon.)

Let's Make Internet Great Again

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#23

Post by zzo38computer »

patrickaljord wrote: post #16

The "Protocols, Not Platforms" debate is naive and misses the point. Here is why: - Let's say someone builds a social network protocol (including messaging, photo sharing etc). - Let's be generous and say this protocol becomes so successful it turns into a de facto standards. - The market will rush to build the best client for the protocol. Facebook, Google, maybe an outsider will come up with the best client that ha…

I do have my own email server, but it is only for receiving and not for sending; the ISP's SMTP server is used for sending. Probably anyone could do this, if they have a ISP with email (which they ought to have, for this reason).

(Also, it seem that in Ubuntu, when installing Exim there is an option to do specifically this.)

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#24

Post by dogcomplex »

patrickaljord wrote: post #16

The "Protocols, Not Platforms" debate is naive and misses the point. Here is why: - Let's say someone builds a social network protocol (including messaging, photo sharing etc). - Let's be generous and say this protocol becomes so successful it turns into a de facto standards. - The market will rush to build the best client for the protocol. Facebook, Google, maybe an outsider will come up with the best client that ha…

An excellent counterargument. Yes, one might concede that protocols have not and probably will not win out over platforms in a free market. But if we're advocating that the big tech utilities be required by law to open source their protocols then your argument doesn't apply, as of right here:

> Overtime, the most popular client will get a quasi-monopoly and will become incompatible with the rest of clients, no one will notice except for us nerds on HN.

As soon as those popular clients get incompatible, they cross the line into a new protocol - and we force them by law to open-source license that too. Sure, the major platforms will still own 90% of the traffic since the public is mindless (for now, until its educated over generations), but third party options will again be possible.

So all this advocating for protocols is still very relevant, it's just probably not going to happen by itself or from some magic invention.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#25

Post by dogcomplex »

dragonwriter wrote: post #17
naringas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why not? it certainly is technically feasable

> it certainly is technically feasable It's technically feasible to build a protocol that supports the distributing social status updates group chat, direct messaging, etc.; many such things are around, some are, IIRC, older than Facebook. The product Facebook, and why people use it, is more than just that technical underpinning, but involves active management. A protocol doesn't replace that, and a distributed proto…

Can you give an example of how active management is done by Facebook (etc) in a way that a distributed protocol (with a team of developers and incentivized crowds) could not?

It seems to me the major differences between centralized and decentralized solutions are first-mover advantages, network effect advantages (big gets bigger), and advertising budget. I'm skeptical that the quality of the product is the defining reason for Facebook et al's success, or that it would save them against a viably-large decentralized solution.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#26

Post by paulryanrogers »

MikeGale wrote: post #21

People who want to take control of their own lives, and curate the mix of knowledge / fact / falsity / opinion / propaganda / disinformation / useful-idiocy in their own heads can technically head in this direction today. I think a key ingredient is translators that move content out of the platform-bubbles into the world you control. You can move material between RSS, email, blog channel easily, if you choose. Harder…

Export options, even if mandated by the GDPR, are one avenue people could use. Though I imagine the tooling probably demands a lot of maintenance to harmonize all the different forms.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#27

Post by zzzcpan »

patrickaljord wrote: post #16

The "Protocols, Not Platforms" debate is naive and misses the point. Here is why: - Let's say someone builds a social network protocol (including messaging, photo sharing etc). - Let's be generous and say this protocol becomes so successful it turns into a de facto standards. - The market will rush to build the best client for the protocol. Facebook, Google, maybe an outsider will come up with the best client that ha…

> Overtime, the most popular client will get a quasi-monopoly and will become incompatible with the rest of clients

Yes, but it doesn't have to be this way. It's possible to design systems that align all those predatory capitalist incentives of participants with keeping control decentralized. Bittorrent and bitcoin are prime examples of this. And it definitely can be done for more applications. There is one problem though, creating such systems is not lucrative, it can't make creators rich even if it changes the world.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#28

Post by hinkley »

patrickaljord wrote: post #16

The "Protocols, Not Platforms" debate is naive and misses the point. Here is why: - Let's say someone builds a social network protocol (including messaging, photo sharing etc). - Let's be generous and say this protocol becomes so successful it turns into a de facto standards. - The market will rush to build the best client for the protocol. Facebook, Google, maybe an outsider will come up with the best client that ha…

When France had a lot of socialized businesses, they used them to enforce Proper French. There are variations on this theme that could potentially work here.

Years ago there was a push to get government to make all public documents exist in a standard format so that nobody was locked into a particular vendor's (potentially for-pay) reader.

If some independent entity as large as the Public Sector supported an open standard, then it would provide a lot of friction toward efforts to balkanize the standard. Because if you weren't at least backward compatible with the standard, then people would notice.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#29

Post by joe_the_user »

rolleiflex wrote: post #12
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

What I'd like to see is a model where you a federated network of moderated groups. Something like Discord except more micro-blog than chat and where you can see popular posts of sister/brother servers, very popular posts on cousin servers and so-forth. Basically, a filter-tree keeping things reasonable and creating groups of folks with some relation to each other.

I made something like this, called Aether. ( https://getaether.net ) It’s not federated, but distributed / fully serverless. It has already made its way up here on HN a few times already, this was the latest one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19161171 The protocol underlying Aether is called Mim, and it’s close to what the article is asking for: https://getaether.net/docs/developers/

I will take a more detailed look.

Still, I think "federated" is important in that different pieces of the system should be able to break off. If a mod can't leave a group, what use is it?

Also, "mod election" doesn't make sense. Mod should be (able to be) petty dictators - a member doesn't like a mod, they can easily go to another group and a majority means little-to-nothing online where a random number of socks or confederates can be easily recruited.

Re: Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech

#30

Post by joe_the_user »

cameronbrown wrote: post #3
joe_the_user wrote: post #2

What I'd like to see is a model where you a federated network of moderated groups. Something like Discord except more micro-blog than chat and where you can see popular posts of sister/brother servers, very popular posts on cousin servers and so-forth. Basically, a filter-tree keeping things reasonable and creating groups of folks with some relation to each other.

Decentralised group chat communication seems like it would work very well as the future model of social networking. Content online could spread organically instead of the surveillance panopticon telling us exactly what we want to hear.

Just to explain my preference for something allowing post/micro-blogging/blogging, I use discord for organizing real life activity but it really doesn't seem set-up for discussion of "issues" (political, programming, etc), here Facebook, Reddit or HN does best imo.

That said, topics are a bit like tags and a bit like sub-channels and if you could combine these qualities, you might have a nice merger of the approaches.

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