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Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

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Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#51

Post by Ajedi32 »

smt88 wrote: post #20
Ajedi32 wrote: post #12

Wow! I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide. It opens up a whole lot of possibles for things like alternate clients, standard UIs for interacting across multiple sites, etc. Also eliminates the possibility of sites engaging in annoying or abusive behavior by putting users in full control of the client rather than the sit…

> I actually love the idea of being able to interact with websites via a standard API rather being forced to use web-based UI they provide. For a while, people were pitching this as Web 2.0. It's also what RSS and podcasts still are. Unfortunately, most of the websites we visit are revenue-generating and want to control their presentation.

> most of the websites we visit are revenue-generating and want to control their presentation

This project seems designed to work even without the cooperation of the sites you're interacting with; all the site-specific modules are maintained by the community. Adversarial interoperability at its finest.

In extreme cases, one could imagine a module running a full headless browser on the back-end, pretending to be a user scrolling around and clicking stuff, while presenting the actual user with a clean front-end.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#52

Post by hombre_fatal »

dylan-m wrote: post #31

I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source. That was really the dream of the semantic web, after all. This kind of idea would be really nicely paired with good Microformats[1] support, which continues to be a very good idea. That way we can find, say, a recipe or an address on a web…

One problem is that it takes a lot of work and effort to build any of the valuable hubs where people post information.

Ever try to start a forum? It's a monumental task with no guarantee of success. You may even need to employ people to grow and maintain one.

And once you've finally grown one of these hubs that accumulates recipes, lyrics, real estate listings, classifieds, etc. (whatever you had in mind) there's no incentive to make it as easy as possible to share it with the world. Once you get over "ugh, everyone just wants to make a buck", there's the fact that it wasn't free to build and maintain the platform to begin with. And perhaps the only incentive to build the platform was the idea that people would pay for the value.

Or, who is supposed to do the work of curating and organizing all of this information and then producing an API so that others can build on it, and why haven't they started? There are probably some inconvenient truths in the answer beyond cynicism.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#53

Post by vmception »

vorpalhex wrote: post #47
vmception wrote: post #46

Reading the linked site and some of the discussion, I highly recommend finding your nearest Chinese friend or person and getting authorized on Wechat. Its a whole parallel other internet! Kinda similar to how a private set of Facebook pages are otherwise inaccessible with an account, except in a parellel reality where people use them for all business and have no other internet presence. Yes, as a user another governm…

Weibo is a heavily censored and manipulated platform. The CCP uses it to track dissidents abroad. Do not install or operate on any trusted device. Do not connect to your home network. Do not store personal details on your weibo device. Do not ever send sensitive information or talk to real contacts on Weibo.

As you know, it is not possible to separate corporate China from government China due to the structure of that system so no analogy exactly works, but our day to day experience is exceedingly similar as we rely on heavily censored and manipulated private platforms. Although we retain options to express ideas, there is not enough saturation of other people to view those ideas except to participate on heavily censored platforms and risk complete deplatforming. Its an almost daily topic here, for example.

So the user experience on a Chinese service is simply not different enough for me to treat it differently.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#54

Post by Karrot_Kream »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #42
dylan-m wrote: post #31

I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source. That was really the dream of the semantic web, after all. This kind of idea would be really nicely paired with good Microformats[1] support, which continues to be a very good idea. That way we can find, say, a recipe or an address on a web…

> I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source. I'm not sure I'm interpreting you correctly here, but I think I'm on the other side of this. The problem is that many modern websites are godawful. I think the story pretty much ends there. If websites were not awful, we wouldn't find ou…

How do you know someone uses Gemini? They'll tell you the moment they can! Like the vegans of the web...

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#56

Post by vorpalhex »

vmception wrote: post #53
vorpalhex wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weibo is a heavily censored and manipulated platform. The CCP uses it to track dissidents abroad. Do not install or operate on any trusted device. Do not connect to your home network. Do not store personal details on your weibo device. Do not ever send sensitive information or talk to real contacts on Weibo.

As you know, it is not possible to separate corporate China from government China due to the structure of that system so no analogy exactly works, but our day to day experience is exceedingly similar as we rely on heavily censored and manipulated private platforms. Although we retain options to express ideas, there is not enough saturation of other people to view those ideas except to participate on heavily censored…

I'm someone who is heavily critical of Facebook and Twitter.

However there is a world of difference between sloppily shutting down vaccine or election misinformation, and actively censoring a Tennis star reporting a sexual assault by a politiburo member.

There is a world of difference between taking down shit talking politicians twitter profiles, and actively censoring the genocide of an ethnic minority.

Ads that slurp up personal data are bad. Threatening political dissidents abroad directly is incomparable.

To say "well they are all the same bad" is to be willfully blind to the basic facts.

[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-...

[2] - https://www.thecut.com/2021/12/the-disappearance-of-peng-shu...

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#57

Post by jka »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #42
dylan-m wrote: post #31

I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source. That was really the dream of the semantic web, after all. This kind of idea would be really nicely paired with good Microformats[1] support, which continues to be a very good idea. That way we can find, say, a recipe or an address on a web…

> I like the idea of this. There's so much information on the web, but we still need a way to bring that information to other applications, without being tied to a particular source. I'm not sure I'm interpreting you correctly here, but I think I'm on the other side of this. The problem is that many modern websites are godawful. I think the story pretty much ends there. If websites were not awful, we wouldn't find ou…

Also entirely possible that I'm misunderstanding both of you, but I think what the parent comment was imagining was something like common schemas (like schema.org[1]?) for content that is currently around the web and encased in the challenging web design you mention.

With common (and evolving) formats -- and incentives for publishers to provide their information within those formats -- we could then have much simpler, more streamlined tools to use and remix that data in application-specific ways.

[1] - https://schema.org/docs/full.html

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#58

Post by mxuribe »

Qub3d wrote: post #49
mxuribe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There has been a desire to go back to older days where text was more prevalent, and so Gemini has begin and is gaining popularity - though I'm sure very slowly. See: https://gemini.circumlunar.space/ Also, separately (though i wouild not be surprised if frequented by same/similar folks who have interets in Gemini), there is also the tildeverse...again, more text-heavy environments. See: https://tildeverse.org/ And, a…

The tildeverse looks pretty cool, but why does it redirect me to a Rick Roll on Firefox? I can see the normal site just fine on Lynx browser (maybe that's the point?) Edit: ah, I see, they're doing a JWZ and redirecting based on referral, but going a step further and setting a cookie. Cute, but also terribly immature.

Oops, sorry about that. I never had an issue before...but funny after visiting HN, see exactly what you mean. (Clearing the cookies avoids the classic rick roll video). Anyway, yeah i guess the tilde folks are "characters". But, separate of that, the community i've interacted with is quite fun, respectful, and good-natured. I also failed to mention a sort of equivalent to HN, which i frequent (with similar topics to HN but often nicer crowd): https://tildes.net/

...Tilde.net used to be only open to invite not open to anyone creating an account...so if interested - and still not open to the public - i can trigger to send you an invite.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#59

Post by vmception »

vorpalhex wrote: post #56
vmception wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you know, it is not possible to separate corporate China from government China due to the structure of that system so no analogy exactly works, but our day to day experience is exceedingly similar as we rely on heavily censored and manipulated private platforms. Although we retain options to express ideas, there is not enough saturation of other people to view those ideas except to participate on heavily censored…

I'm someone who is heavily critical of Facebook and Twitter. However there is a world of difference between sloppily shutting down vaccine or election misinformation, and actively censoring a Tennis star reporting a sexual assault by a politiburo member. There is a world of difference between taking down shit talking politicians twitter profiles, and actively censoring the genocide of an ethnic minority. Ads that slu…

> To say "well they are all the same bad" is to be willfully blind to the basic facts.

Haha I’m not saying that, I’m saying it has nothing to do with my participation in those platforms because I know what to expect and my lack of participation changes nothing.

My words are the user experience is not different enough.

For everyone else, check out that great robust example of a web outside of browsers.

Re: Woob: Web Outside of Browsers

#60

Post by anderspitman »

Something I've been thinking about lately is how browsers have essentially become a dependency for any sort of auth on the internet. Pretty much everything uses OAuth2, which requires you to be able to render HTML and CSS, and in many implementations JavaScript.

That's ~20M (Firefox) to ~30M (Chromium) lines of code as a dependency for your application, just for auth. This applies even if you have a slick CLI app like rclone. If you want to connect it to Google drive you still need a browser to do the OAuth2 flow. All of this just so we have a safe, known location to stash auth cookies.

It would be sweet if there was a lightweight protocol where you could lay out a basic consent UI (maybe with a simple JSON format) that can be rendered outside the browser. Then you need a way to connect to a central trusted cookie store. You could still redirect to a separate app, but it wouldn't need to be nearly as complicated as a browser.

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