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Zero Data App

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Re: Zero Data App

#91

Post by techrat »

jeswin wrote: post #51

As someone dabbling with such an app right now, there are several hurdles if you want to exclusively use self sovereign identity. 1. Local data gets lost, so you need to sync for backup. But when your device gets lost or when you need to access it from elsewhere, how would you login to the said backup service? The most intuitive option is still a username and a password. 2. It's hard to transfer data from one device…

The internet also fundamentally changed how people perceive of their data being accessible. When I was trying to give advice to someone after their Chromebook bit the dust (from being dropped too many times), doing things like using a thumbdrive to maintain portable copies of the local data on the device... It was met with a can of worms of further questions starting with:

a) what's a thumbdrive?

and

b) what's local data?

Each answer resulted in even more questions. Why isn't it in the cloud? What do you mean I'd have to copy it again? I can run out of room?

I could understand needing to get across to some people that not all data ends up synced (eg, saved memes are not necessarily automatically backed up to Drive)... but reaching a point to where people could be completely unaware of USB storage media actually shook me to my core.

People now expect it all to just "be there" after they log in.

Re: Zero Data App

#92

Post by Vinnl »

loceng wrote: post #72
Vinnl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a web app, you can check whether it's sending data anywhere but your Pod - but of course, by then it's too late. In practice, Solid is only the technology that enables control of your data; it doesn't provide the incentives. It's still up to apps to actually provide you with that control, and reasons for it doing so can include customer demand or regulatory pressure. But Solid can't force apps to give you con…

So these services/libraries are meant to be included in apps to provide this capability? The solution, help, I'm looking for is to be able to easily integrate this into development - to give users control of running the apps with their data but also for the ability to give access/send the data to a centralized platform - or request/command for it be removed; obviously that decision will be if they trust the platform,…

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "these services/libraries", but yes, in Solid, apps need to be explicitly built to support Solid, and data can only be stored in Solid Pods.

Although it's not Solid, an older project is https://remotestorage.io, which is a library that needs to be explicitly used by apps supporting RemoteStorage, but does allow users to store the data on Google Drive or Dropbox too, IIRC.

Re: Zero Data App

#93

Post by Vinnl »

somdax wrote: post #88
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of reasons you might prefer an architecture like this. The main two are resilience (don't place all your eggs in one basket -- if your computer is damaged or lost you don't lose your data) and availability (if your computer is shut down you can still access your data from your phone, tablet, or another device). It would make great sense to have a non-hosted backend option, though, for power users w…

You can host your own solid server, right?

Yes, Solid comprises open specifications and anyone can implement it. The open source implementation that sees most development atm is https://github.com/solid/community-server, which is nearing a 1.0 release.

Re: Zero Data App

#95

Post by ClumsyPilot »

Grimm1 wrote: post #76
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I imagine that most users dramatically prefer the sharing, backup, and organization capabilities of proprietary cloud apps to local files." My mother has burned family photos to optical disk 20 years ago, we have physical photos that lasted generations. Tell me which app or cloud product I can trust with data for my grandchildren? Which app will not dissapear, be discontinued, ban you or delete my data if I stop pay…

Okay but you didn't address their point you just made a think of the children argument. It doesn't change the fact that most people use and prefer, google photos, amazon photos icloud etc. You're one person. "In May 2017, Google announced that Google Photos has over 500 million users, who upload over 1.2 billion photos every day."

Do they actually prefer it? I am talking about my elderly mother as an example here. People are becoming increasingly more aware of the issue.

Also many phones come woth google photoes preinstalled and enabled by default, I am counted towards that statistic because it uploaded a few things before I disabled it. Even if they really use it, I am betting most of them Also use store same photos as normal files.

I would like to see fresh numbers now that you have to pay for google photos.

Re: Zero Data App

#96

Post by anderspitman »

conradev wrote: post #83
gibsonf1 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are developing both server and apps for [3] https://solidproject.org/ The effort is backed by Tim Berners Lee, with great auth libraries including dPop and PKCE token exchange

Why is Solid architected such that your data resides on a computer that you don’t own, when people own computers and phones that are plenty capable of storing data and communicating via the Internet?

You can self-host a Solid server. And if you combine it with a tunnel proxy[0], get the best of both the cloud and personal hardware worlds.

[0]: https://github.com/anderspitman/awesome-tunneling

Re: Zero Data App

#97

Post by anderspitman »

k__ wrote: post #27

I saw remoteStorage years ago and had the impression the idea was nice, but without a bunch of easy to set up hosting providers this won't work.

Storage protocols like remoteStorage and Solid have a chicken/egg problem. They need really good apps, but no one is going to write apps, services (like backup), or other integrations until there are lots of users.

But how do you attract users without these things already in place?

There needs to be a killer service that offers something better than Google Drive, Dropbox, etc can provide. They're unlikely to be able to compete on storage price, so they'll need to differentiate in some other way.

I'm bullish on Solid in the long run, but it's a tricky problem.

Re: Zero Data App

#98

Post by anderspitman »

I've been thinking of starting a community (forum + wiki, etc) based around similar principles, but I haven't settled on what to call it yet. The core ideas are self-hosting, privacy, control of data, open source clients, etc.

The best term I've come up with so far is "data ownership". I like this, but the principles are broader than just data storage. Having control over your computation can also important.

Any suggestions for a better term?

Re: Zero Data App

#99

Post by oscargrouch »

justapassenger wrote: post #73

While some people care about privacy, huge majority doesn’t (even if they say they do), as you can see be various services that have billions of users. The only way to make privacy happen is if it’s dead simple, works out of box, and not only doesn’t regresses your experience, but meaningfully enhances it. I’ve failed to see projects that would do that so far, and same here - it adds extra complexity for end user, wi…

Im working on something that also have the goal to give the power back to the user in terms of control, but i've also understand it the same way you do.

That in the end the platform have to provide a better experience to the end user and also give more power/flexibility to the developer, otherwise no one will use it.

That's the reason i think it requires a lot more work to make this feasible. Only "iterational innovation" wont do it.

I hope that what i'm almost about to launch here, might reach those goals.

Re: Zero Data App

#100

Post by peterthehacker »

From the end user’s perspective, what would the advantages of an app without centralized storage, like these, have vs. an app with E2E encryption and traditional centralized storage? If the end user’s data is encrypted on the service provider’s side and cannot be read without the user providing a key, doesn’t that achieve the same level of privacy from the user’s perspective?
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