Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Social Filesystem

overreacted.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 243 posts

Re: A Social Filesystem

#171

Post by zahlman »

danabramov wrote: post #138
zahlman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. My first reaction was: > Files are the source of truth—the apps would reflect whatever’s in your folder. Now that the "app" is a web site that supports itself with advertising revenue, it has no incentive whatsoever to work this way.

I think it's on open social apps to show that they're actually meaningfully better products, and that is possible because they're open. With luck, this may lead to an ecosystem where it's worth staying compatible and interoperable, and where users scoff if someone is trying to break it, and where users have an easy way to walk away. I know this sounds super idealistic but this did essentially happen with open source…

I do really appreciate your vision, FWIW. (It also seems very compatible with my ideas about software complexity and dependencies etc.)

Re: A Social Filesystem

#172

Post by black_puppydog »

The premise of this article resonates so much with me! I didn't see the angle on ATproto coming, and frankly this description of it is the first that makes me want to dig into it a bit.

The issue of "file-less" computing has been bothering me a lot. It's worst on iOS, where apple are really pushing hard to have users never ever think in "files". Closely followed by MacOS and only then android, imho. "That thing over there? That's not a file! That's a photo! Very different thing, that. No, you can't use $app to view it or share it, sorry. And if you want to copy it, you have to go through our export functionality which is buggy and strips all kind of info and generally works best through iCloud.

My mind's insistance that behind all the flashy apps must he a backing store, and that it's most likely file based, makes it even more infuriating when trying to get unprocessed photos off a relative's iPhone or such.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#173

Post by aembleton »

Why would we need to store the createdAt value in a file? The filesystem already stores this information. We could just store the text which would mean no Json would be needed.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#174

Post by isodev »

danabramov wrote: post #138
zahlman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. My first reaction was: > Files are the source of truth—the apps would reflect whatever’s in your folder. Now that the "app" is a web site that supports itself with advertising revenue, it has no incentive whatsoever to work this way.

I think it's on open social apps to show that they're actually meaningfully better products, and that is possible because they're open. With luck, this may lead to an ecosystem where it's worth staying compatible and interoperable, and where users scoff if someone is trying to break it, and where users have an easy way to walk away. I know this sounds super idealistic but this did essentially happen with open source…

> meaningfully better products

That are yet to become monetised. It's all fun and games until Bluesky announced how users and developers will pay for all this and what happens with your "social file system" when you stop paying.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#175

Post by theturtletalks »

articsputnik wrote: post #167
theturtletalks wrote: post #84

POSSE and AT Protocol can be understood as interoperable marketplaces. Platforms like Reddit and Instagram already function this way: the product is user content, the payment is attention, and the platform’s cut is ads or behavioral data. Dan argues that this structure is not inevitable. If social data is treated as something people own and store themselves, applications stop being the owners of social graphs and bec…

not sure if you understood the article, isn't the whole point to own your data as "it's just a filesystem". Reddit, Instagram, etc. are the total opposite.

Yes, I should have been clearer. Reddit and Instagram do not operate this way today, but open social alternatives to them could. The idea is that people create personal websites where posting, commenting, and other social actions live, and that becomes the filesystem they own.

Open social networks would simply index or pull from those sites using agreed-upon lexicons and protocols. Existing platforms could either adopt the open social model, or, more realistically in the short term, be treated as syndication targets where posts are pushed via their APIs when someone publishes on their own site.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#176

Post by danabramov »

mike_hearn wrote: post #165
zahlman wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. My first reaction was: > Files are the source of truth—the apps would reflect whatever’s in your folder. Now that the "app" is a web site that supports itself with advertising revenue, it has no incentive whatsoever to work this way.

There was never any such incentive. MS Office formats were undocumented for years because MS had no incentive to document them. Merely using files did not help at all. Actually the vast majority of all file formats have never been open. Think about all the custom file formats used by video games, for instance.

I actually talk about this in the article. Merely using files is how we got out of the dependency on MS Office. Multiple efforts reverse-engineered them, including Google Docs. Yes they were undocumented, but as long as stuff has to be stored on the disk under user’s control, the overall dynamics are very different from you-can’t-see-the-files systems.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#177

Post by danabramov »

isodev wrote: post #149
swyx wrote: post #92

> Apps may come and go, but files stay—at least, as long as our apps think in files. yes: https://www.swyx.io/data-outlasts-code-but all lasting work is done in files/data (can be parsed permissionlessly, still useful if partially corrupted), but economic incentives keep pushing us to keep things in code (brittle, dies basically when one of maintainer|buildtools|hardware substrate dies). when standards emerge (forcin…

> At the same time we shoudl also watch out for companies extending/embracing/extinguishing standards Is ATProto actually a standard? But regardless, nothing prevents Bluesky from enschitifying. I’m somewhat concerned that the “file system” or the storage where all of our things are supposed to be stored is now suddenly in the cloud. We actually have a real file system … it backs itself up on iPhone even. It feels li…

It’s a long road but the plan is to standardize AT. See https://docs.bsky.app/blog/taking-at-to-ietf for ongoing first steps.

>I’m somewhat concerned that the “file system” or the storage where all of our things are supposed to be stored is now suddenly in the cloud. We actually have a real file system … it backs itself up on iPhone even.

I don’t know how this is related to what my article talks about. The data we’re taking about is already public and in the cloud, it’s just locked into specific app’s databases.

The point isn’t about some single specific app, but about creating an ecosystem where the things you create (StackOverflow posts, Reddit discussions, Instagram follows, Letterboxd recipes) are not tied to the fate of that particular app and the whims of its creators. Then, if a service shuts down or turns to shit, developers can compete without solving the cold start problem. You just need to make a better app for same data, not convince everyone to recreate everything on your app.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#178

Post by immibis »

danabramov wrote: post #177
isodev wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time we shoudl also watch out for companies extending/embracing/extinguishing standards Is ATProto actually a standard? But regardless, nothing prevents Bluesky from enschitifying. I’m somewhat concerned that the “file system” or the storage where all of our things are supposed to be stored is now suddenly in the cloud. We actually have a real file system … it backs itself up on iPhone even. It feels li…

It’s a long road but the plan is to standardize AT. See https://docs.bsky.app/blog/taking-at-to-ietf for ongoing first steps. >I’m somewhat concerned that the “file system” or the storage where all of our things are supposed to be stored is now suddenly in the cloud. We actually have a real file system … it backs itself up on iPhone even. I don’t know how this is related to what my article talks about. The data we’re…

Isn't this the design idea behind ATProto?

Re: A Social Filesystem

#179

Post by danabramov »

isodev wrote: post #174
danabramov wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's on open social apps to show that they're actually meaningfully better products, and that is possible because they're open. With luck, this may lead to an ecosystem where it's worth staying compatible and interoperable, and where users scoff if someone is trying to break it, and where users have an easy way to walk away. I know this sounds super idealistic but this did essentially happen with open source…

> meaningfully better products That are yet to become monetised. It's all fun and games until Bluesky announced how users and developers will pay for all this and what happens with your "social file system" when you stop paying.

I mean, I can literally already self-host my personal data if I want to. And there are also already forks of Bluesky (not just the client, but the server and the database) that can participate without fragmenting the network. It is not a perfect system but it's so far from where you are when you just rely on a closed app.

Re: A Social Filesystem

#180

Post by danabramov »

zahlman wrote: post #171
danabramov wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's on open social apps to show that they're actually meaningfully better products, and that is possible because they're open. With luck, this may lead to an ecosystem where it's worth staying compatible and interoperable, and where users scoff if someone is trying to break it, and where users have an easy way to walk away. I know this sounds super idealistic but this did essentially happen with open source…

I do really appreciate your vision, FWIW. (It also seems very compatible with my ideas about software complexity and dependencies etc.)

To be clear, the vision is not mine, I'm just describing how AT works. Kudos to the team who designed it.
Post reply on HN