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Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

blog.muni.town

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Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#241
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them Free services funded by ads have been a boon for the poor.

That rips off the advertisers and/or leaves the poor poorer. For any given ad supported service, one of two things must be true: (1) the ad spend was more than or equal to the cost of the service for those users (2) the ad spend was less than the cost of the service for those users From fork (2), it follows that the service isn't sustainable anyway. From fork (1), it follows that the buyers of the ad slots in turn on…

This assumes that poor people's attention is liquid and can readily be turned to cash whenever they please.

It doesn't matter how much you think my attention is "really worth". If I want the service now, have no cash, but can pay with my attention, I am strictly more enabled than if the service only accepts cash.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats why this is a legal battle as much it a technological one it comes down to the rights to own the data you produce, and have it easily accesible. Solid is just a way of giving people option to excercise this right

Well its a double whammy -companies are disincitivized, but also the average consumer does not understand or care what this means. Most comsumers just want websites to work. Something like SOLID would add friction. People who care about privacy are a vocal minority.

when AI starts thinking on peoples behalf, then they will care more about privacy

i believe that this is rising tide, maybe those who care are minority, but not for long

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#243
post #241
post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That rips off the advertisers and/or leaves the poor poorer. For any given ad supported service, one of two things must be true: (1) the ad spend was more than or equal to the cost of the service for those users (2) the ad spend was less than the cost of the service for those users From fork (2), it follows that the service isn't sustainable anyway. From fork (1), it follows that the buyers of the ad slots in turn on…

This assumes that poor people's attention is liquid and can readily be turned to cash whenever they please. It doesn't matter how much you think my attention is "really worth". If I want the service now, have no cash, but can pay with my attention, I am strictly more enabled than if the service only accepts cash.

I make no assumption there.

The fork between (1), (2) is how much cash their attention is actually turned into.

To put it another way: what's the attention of a poor person really worth, in dollars? Answer is always less than or equal to the amount they can spend.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#245
post #6

The fact that the AT Protocol relies on everyone having a domain name, which is a centralized system over which few people have control, and about whose workings most people have no clue about, is problematic. Also impractical, once we consider that - as far as I can understand - 8 billion people should have their own domain name.

> everyone having a domain name

This idea is an incremental improvement over "everyone is posting x.com"

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that they still use the services/products. It's just ad-blocking and piracy. So to follow your analogy, they eat meat by stealing it, and feel like they are sending a message about animal welfare.

The only reason why I ever use these services is because they killed off any alternatives through anti competitive practices. And I hate it every time because they are awful and disrespect me every single millimeter of the way. You are arguing on the premise that ads would somehow be a fair exchange. That is simply the opposite of the truth. Ads are parasitic. Services with ads are almost always worse than services w…

Vid.me was the salvation from YouTube, showing up around 2015 and actually pulling creators from YouTube. They gained traction and were well known, at one point even surpassing YouTube on /r/videos.

But they went bankrupt in 2017.

Why? Because people don't want to view ads and they don't want to pay a subscription. Vid.me was unable to monetize and collapsed.

Nebula is a more recent example. Creators falling over themselves to promote it, yet conversation rates are still It's not anti-competitive practices killing these companies. It's childish entitled users who get offended when asked to compensate.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very easy to sign up to Facebook, Instagram, Gmail and everything else. No manual is needed for doom-scrolling and on-boarding is instant. Personally I would prefer to have my own full-on LAMP stack at home, with Postfix for email and everything accessible via my own subdomain. So, why can't I have that? During my standard install of my favourite distro, I would only need to enter my name, subdomain and email p…

> why can't I buy a glorified router box that does all of this? Step 0 is to secure that box, as routers are obvious targets, even before they have self-hosted data. There are some products based on RPi, NAS and router form factors. > suspicious absence of products in this space Earlier efforts: Apache Wave (federated) Chandler Diaspora FreedomBox Microsoft Groove (p2p) Urbit.org Sandstorm.io Active OSS projects incl…

Thanks for the links, however, everything above is off the mark, even NextCloud, which I once used to really like. The only problem is that you are instantly deep into the weeds that no PC/Apple consumer-civilian would ever wade into. Facebook and their ilk don't need a manual, and neither should a webserver with email server need a manual to get you started, just subdomain, email domain and username should get you started.

As for security, it is all a bit meh. If you have a box that only runs https: with no other ports open, you are half the way there. If you are just running static pages then you are done. If you run a NextCloud type of beast then you are opening things up, but my hunch is that it works just fine with nobody losing sleep on it.

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them. They distort the idea of a free and fair marketplace by poisoning consumer expectations of what things should cost.

> We need to (once again) define “free” pricing models as predatory and broadly outlaw them Free services funded by ads have been a boon for the poor.

Have they though? Have you seen the scammy, misleading, trash ads that litter most sites and wondered, "who falls for this crap and gives these people money?"

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#249
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if Europeans think these rules improved the situation, they are smug and dont count. Frankly, in here EU did a good job, certainly better then USA does. It would be neat if USA made similar laws too. Megacorps do get bigger fines then small companies, actually. Megacorps existence is also literally result of winner takes all and rich are untouchable legal system cranked to 11 Americans are proud of.

> Frankly, in here EU did a good job People in the EU are still using Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp. Zuckerberg did a "ok, if you don't want us to track you, you can pay 12€/month" and everyone just smashed the "I consent to get my data mined forever" button. Not to mention that we *still* have lobbying for chat control. Every measure from the EU is, as always, meant to look like our beloved bureaucrats are doing somet…

Elsewhere there is no choice. How is that better?

What do you suggest instead?

Re: Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Frankly, in here EU did a good job People in the EU are still using Instagram/Facebook/WhatsApp. Zuckerberg did a "ok, if you don't want us to track you, you can pay 12€/month" and everyone just smashed the "I consent to get my data mined forever" button. Not to mention that we *still* have lobbying for chat control. Every measure from the EU is, as always, meant to look like our beloved bureaucrats are doing somet…

Elsewhere there is no choice. How is that better? What do you suggest instead?

> How is that better?

Things elsewhere are bad, but the EU is worse because it lies to people about the efficacy of its regulations and the whole apparatus only exist to make lawmakers and lobbyists a justification for their existence.

Let's stop pretending that the EU has done anything more than political theater.

> What do you suggest instead?

Break apart any company that has more than 150 employees (by employee, also count individuals working more than 50% of the time to the same company): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31317641

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