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Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

web.hypothes.is

31–40 of 84 posts

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#31
post #14

Does this fingerprint text to be annotated and collect annotations, allowing the "top rated annotation" to be the most strongly "trusted" annotation for this unique slice of text? And does it ensure the integrity of the text, so that no bad actor may modify the text to turn it into "fake news"? I think that ^^ could help diminish corruption of knowledge / the negative impact of information distribution which the Inte…

[deleted]

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#32
post #26

Quick background. Hypothes.is was founded by Dan Whaley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danwhaley Dan built and sold an Internet travel app in the 90s, and then became involved in climate work. He's been committed to it for many years. Hypothes.is was created in order to address the problem of disinformation on the Internet, especially related to climate change; e.g. the Wall Street Journal publishes an Op-Ed from Charl…

Wow that's interesting. This makes total sense as to why you can't change URLs then (which I just posted my use case needs), I suppose to maintain provenance on the original documentation. I hadn't considered that.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#33
Privacy question: is this typical wording? "By giving us this information, you agree to it being collected, used, disclosed, transferred to the USA and stored by us."

Does "USA" here mean the geographical USA, the legal jurisdiction, citizens of the USA or the government of the USA?

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#34
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a great point. Is a strong privacy policy the solution? I do have one in place. I'm happy to put in stronger commitments. Another thing to highlight here: Histre is a paid product. I'm bootstrapping it. I think that it is the "free" products that go the adtech route. By charging the users, I'm making it clear that it is their money that supports Histre.

I would say a legal poison pill, something that builds a framework that the company is dissolved if the core tenants are violated, or that all digital assets are forfeited to a no-profit privacy group.

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Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#36
post #28
post #2

I tried them a while ago. Really liked it but put it aside till they implement https://www.w3.org/annotation/ as promised. Just checked https://h.readthedocs.io/en/latest/api/ and the v2 API in development has nothing to do with the W3C standard. UPD: there is not a single issue open on the main repo wrt W3C standard implementation: https://github.com/hypothesis/h/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aope... . The post I took as…

If your use of a piece of software is contingent on something like that, it sounds like you didn’t really have a need for it in the first place

Rather, OP is probably already using one and don't see the point of migrating to yet another closed system.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#37
post #33

Privacy question: is this typical wording? "By giving us this information, you agree to it being collected, used, disclosed, transferred to the USA and stored by us." Does "USA" here mean the geographical USA, the legal jurisdiction, citizens of the USA or the government of the USA?

It probably means their servers are hosted in the USA (geographical) under it's jurisdiction. Not sure what "citizens of the USA" means in this context, but you can assume the US government may access the data if needed.

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#38
The idea of collaborative annotation has been around since the beginning of the web. I tried to launch an annotation startup myself back in 2000, and there were several funded competitors back then. It never catches on. It would be interesting to analyze why people just don't use these systems when given the opportunity. Is this a solution in search of a problem?

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#39
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the change with success. Page and Brin where once idealistic hackers and even came up with a catch phrase of "Don't be evil", fast forward and it did not work and the reality is it probably had very little to do with them. Success and size whittle away at idealistic visions. You need to put together a framework before you are successful, on how you are going to enforce that your core values reflect wit…

Yes, that's a great point. Is a strong privacy policy the solution? I do have one in place. I'm happy to put in stronger commitments. Another thing to highlight here: Histre is a paid product. I'm bootstrapping it. I think that it is the "free" products that go the adtech route. By charging the users, I'm making it clear that it is their money that supports Histre.

Your target audience might not care, but I don't think that's strong enough.

- Companies display a willingness to force agreement to new policies in order to continue using the service, even for paid customers, and often on questionable or void legal footing.

- The fact that it's a paid service right now might not be a strong enough signal. Even large device manufacturers (e.g. HTC) have retroactively patched ads into paid-in-full, physical products. What's to say that you won't have to pivot to make Histre succeed?

- What happens if you are bought out or otherwise personally leave the product? Even if success doesn't affect how you act on your commitments, what's to keep others from malicious actions?

- Adding to the above (re-iterating an ancestor comment), if you're successful enough to need employees you won't have a hand in every decision. How then is privacy still protected?

Privacy aside, if Histre goes under what options do customers have for, e.g., exporting their data?

Re: Hypothes.is: An Open Annotations Platform

#40
Love this project. I definitely have some long-term concerns around filtering out spammers and being able to grok a heavily annotated page with resolved/unresolved conversations but I have faith they'll figure them out.

In the meantime, I've embedded the sidebar into my site [0] and hope more people do the same! Original idea from this [1] post.

0 - https://jborichevskiy.com/about-blog

1 - https://blog.cjeller.site/annotate-this-post

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