131–140 of 183 posts
I'm more pessimistic. The internet and the apps we use frequently are like a public utility. The space is undergoing an era of massive consolidation and centralization. This happened with railroads, and electricity, in the past. That period of consolidation was never followed by counterbalanced period of decentralization , a period of people operating their own mini-rail-car services, or micro power plants (solar, bu…
My problem with all those pro-privacy apps is that privacy has a price[0], and a price most consumers (me included) are not willing to pay. There are, essentially, two business models on the web. One is to provide the services for free and sell ads, the other is to charge for the services directly. To earn substantial amounts on ads, you need to track consumers massively. As a consumer, I definitely prefer being trac…
As much as I like the idea (and the people behind it), I have an hard time seeing how this can succeed. The idea of pod reminds me of the self-hosting movement: people -including myself - host a bunch of services to avoid sharing fundamental data, like email, GPS-history or contacts. Still, "self-hosters" interact with all the big personal data hoarder out there (FB, Google, the many ad and tracking companies) which…
Facebook is not the social network but an advertising company. Their product is not the data but ads. 1) They will play ball because they can incorporate the pod data into their advertising platform. They may even start hosting pods for the people who trust them. Pods allow them to sell advertisement for all the people who refuse to create facebook accounts. 2) People will instantly care once you can sell your data a…
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> Should I ask solid to update protocol for this I imagined it more like a schemaless database. Apps could save and use whatever data in your pod without any protocol changes. > i can move my email data to another provider, but about my filters? On other tiny stuff that gmail builds on email The other provider would provide those integrations, or a superior competitor will. > Now all other chat apps supporting solid,…
"I imagined it more like a schemaless database." schemaless database would destroy the system immediately. All providers putting their own meta-extensions will make my pod trash "The other provider would provide those integrations" Yeah but imagine I moved from gmail to let's day new competitor smail, let's say they implemented filters too. Now they have 2 options, import my gmail filters, make new data structure as…
> Your data is no longer in a bazillion places on the Internet, controlled by you-have-no-idea-who. It's yours. If you want your insurance company to have access to your fitness data, you grant it through your pod. Nothing stops a third party to record the data once you gave access and sell it. Even after you remove access they can keep their copy. So what use is this pod thing?
The problem I have with these sort of initiatives is that they don't solve the real problem. Here's the thing: I want to own some of my data, but I don't want to own most of it, because it shouldn't be collected in the first place. Solid and other alike work in theory, but in practice I have some serious doubts. I believe that instead of owning your data is far much better to camouflage or destroy your data before it…
One positive aspect of Inrupt could be it would make it easier to clamp down on nefarious data overcollection because you’d actually be able to see all the data Google et al were collecting on you in the first place. Google Takeout exists, but Inrupt turns the tables and essentially makes Takeout the standardized real time default rather than an optional extra. It could be the foundation for new work to protect consu…
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> How will I move let's say my data from superwiki to wikipedia? Your data is not on superwiki, but on your Pod. So you can connect Wikipedia to your Pod, see your data in their app, but it's still in your Pod, rather than having been moved. > Does wikipedia then have to somehow implement some import functionality? As follows from the previous answer: no, because the data never moves to Wikipedia. However: > Or Solid…
I understand data is not moving but if data structures are different there has to be some kinda merge or cloning of the data. So basically I am at Wikipedia and Superwiki's mercy for interoperability. What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move. "unilaterally imitate the other's data model" sounds good at the beginning, but what will happen when superwiki is constantly evolving its data structur…
Assuming each service has the capability to create and store data, that new data is still yours, and other actors could request access to it.
I think this will result in various actors taking on the burden of keeping up with the Joneses—which, I think, would eventually coalesce into similar services establishing their own versions of shared data schemas with their own unique value-adds on top. Of course, these value-adds are likely still your data, and it should create somewhat of a feedback loop for similar, even competing, services. You likely would only be bothered to grant additional data access as the shape of that data changes.
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Don't they already? The people in society pay for what matters to them. I think the real truth trying to get out here is that we wish what matters to society were different.
That is a simplistic view. People also pay for what society values, ie systemic pressures, which is why different cultures and in different epochs value things differently. Eg before people would give a monthly donation to church because they believed it would help getting into heaven.
> Your data is no longer in a bazillion places on the Internet, controlled by you-have-no-idea-who. It's yours. If you want your insurance company to have access to your fitness data, you grant it through your pod. Nothing stops a third party to record the data once you gave access and sell it. Even after you remove access they can keep their copy. So what use is this pod thing?
Some other mechanism can then be put in place to detect and deal with bad actors. Perhaps there could even be some sort of verification of compliance, whereby services/companies must undergo a process that requires proving these systems/processes are in place and operational.
This does nothing for the results of what a third party does with your data—such as models trained with your data—but there are options for removal of data. Of course, it’s ultimately up to users to be cautious about sharing their data.