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Personal data storage is an idea whose time has come

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

#31

Post by erlend_sh »

InMice wrote: post #26

Among the first page and 2nd page (top 60) there is always atleast 1 post about how we're gonnna "take back the web" or make it back into some form of our 90s millenial nostalgia memories, self hosting, federated this or that, etc etc. Meanwhile - Nothing changes, everything generally gets worse and younger generations come into the world with no memories of the 90s internet or the world before mobile devices or surv…

This is demonstrably not fantasy as the example case is a fully productionized network (Bluesky and the rest of AT-net) that’s having real-world impact to the point where it’s under threat from several authoritarian states.

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

#32

Post by nubinetwork »

9dev wrote: post #23
Khaine wrote: post #11

It was an idea that never went away. Many people have wanted to self host everything. Sadly companies have found it easier to centralise, and then as a bonus can monetise that data.

It wasn’t the companies but the users that found it easier. There’s a reason why everyone’s on Facebook, instagram, and gmail instead of running their own hosts—because it’s vastly easier for the majority of people to do so, and because everyone else is there. We have not solved decentralisation in an accessible and useful way yet, and the incentives won’t change until we do. If ever.

God forbid that people actually have to learn and do something instead of sitting around being a doomscrolling tiktok zombie... /s

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

#33

Post by gibsonf1 »

Systems Twin Intelligence, where a Pod represents the full space-time information for part of the world, using Solid Protocol: https://graphmetrix.com/trinpod-server

The W3C Linked Web Storage (LWS) working group is transforming Solid into a web standard: https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/lws/

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

#34

Post by erlend_sh »

crazygringo wrote: post #22

> Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. I don't see how this follows. The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it? The only thing this seems to attempt to solve is portability/interop (and moving control of and responsibility for blocking/moderation/spam to…

> The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it?

If I can clearly assert origin and personal ownership of my data, I can forbid further reselling of it.

EU legislation shows that we can actually have the right to demand that a company forgets about us. Asserting such rights become easier the more accurately we define what data is ours.

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

#35

Post by kalaksi »

dist-epoch wrote: post #8
pydry wrote: post #3

The problem isnt technical feasibility it is market incentives. Most companies have no incentive to let you hold your data when they can just hold it for you. If they do this they can mine it for data to improve their product as well as sell or otherwise indirectly profit from it. And, it's easier. Also, while the market for privacy focused products isnt nothing, the number of people willing to pay a lot extra to com…

You got the market incentives wrong. Most people have no incentive of owning their data. Otherwise the companies which don't give you that would die out because people wouldn't use them if they cared. Same fallacy as believing smartphones are giant and with non-user swappable batteries because somehow smartphone making companies are forcing this on the market, instead of the real reason which is that it's what consum…

I don't think it's so black-and-white. There are multiple forces at play simultaneously.

I agree that people don't care enough about owning their data for it to matter more than what the companies want to push, which is of course monetizing the data and maximizing user lock-in.

Similarly, I think it's in the companies' interests to use non-swappable batteries: simpler and cheaper to manufacture (I think this is the main reason) and the device is made obsolete earlier which is an added bonus. Maybe small improvements in size etc., but that's a very small difference. Modern phones are already larger even with non-swappable batteries so I'm not sure it mattered. But again, having a non-swappable battery has to be weighed against other features, and availability of alternatives. In the end, people just care more about the other features, even though swappable battery would be a good thing.

Just to conclude: I don't believe markets work to fully cater to what customers actually want. It's more like customers (and other parties) get a compromise between what different parties in the market want.

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

#36

Post by majkinetor »

crazygringo wrote: post #22

> Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. I don't see how this follows. The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it? The only thing this seems to attempt to solve is portability/interop (and moving control of and responsibility for blocking/moderation/spam to…

Nothing is preventing it, but 3rd party operates on a copy. You are still owner of the data and it is on one place which makes it easier for you to access it, share it, backup it, analyze it. So, this doesn't prevent reselling in general but prevents data locking. From there, I guess its not that hard to demonstrate which 3rd party sold your data and sue them. It also mandates nonproprietary data formats.

All that is much, much better than what we have now.

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

#37

Post by zeroCalories »

I find the ideas of data coops to be very appealing. I don't want to depend on faceless mega-corps like Google to host stuff like my email, but I also don't find the idea self-hosting to be realistic. I wouldn't mind paying for the security since losing access to certain accounts would be a disaster, but I'm already locked in, and the benefits of existing services would be marginal compared to the cost of moving.

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

#38

Post by erlend_sh »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #9

Who has an incentive to provide a Solid server? Not big social media companies, who want the personal information that Solid attempts to withhold. I don't think anyone is prepared to offer a convenient, high quality Solid-based social media experience to everyone for free, because that costs a lot of money. And if you know anything about human nature, it will have to be convenient and completely free in order to have…

See this response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45480884

Aka: I agree it can’t be dine with technology; it has to be done with regulation, and the EU example already models a lot of it.

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

#39

Post by lotsofpulp »

9dev wrote: post #23
Khaine wrote: post #11

It was an idea that never went away. Many people have wanted to self host everything. Sadly companies have found it easier to centralise, and then as a bonus can monetise that data.

It wasn’t the companies but the users that found it easier. There’s a reason why everyone’s on Facebook, instagram, and gmail instead of running their own hosts—because it’s vastly easier for the majority of people to do so, and because everyone else is there. We have not solved decentralisation in an accessible and useful way yet, and the incentives won’t change until we do. If ever.

95% of Americans had shitty upload bandwidth until very recently, since coaxial broadband is all they have at home. It still probably sucks for most.

There was no choice but to use someone else’s computers for moving around large files. Plus CGNAT and whatnot making people have to use dynamic DNS. If a turnkey solution could have existed 20 years ago, maybe a market for it would have developed before the big companies locked it down.

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

#40

Post by crazygringo »

majkinetor wrote: post #36
crazygringo wrote: post #22

> Rather than being in countless separate places on the internet in the hands of whomever it had been resold to, your data is in one place, controlled by you. I don't see how this follows. The moment you create/share data with a site, what's to prevent them from reselling it? The only thing this seems to attempt to solve is portability/interop (and moving control of and responsibility for blocking/moderation/spam to…

Nothing is preventing it, but 3rd party operates on a copy. You are still owner of the data and it is on one place which makes it easier for you to access it, share it, backup it, analyze it. So, this doesn't prevent reselling in general but prevents data locking. From there, I guess its not that hard to demonstrate which 3rd party sold your data and sue them. It also mandates nonproprietary data formats. All that is…

> From there, I guess its not that hard to demonstrate which 3rd party sold your data and sue them.

But it doesn't? Obviously every site's TOS will say that by providing them with your data they can use it for all sorts of purposes. If you sued, you'd lose.

And you're generally going to want to make your data available to the various services requesting it, because otherwise most people won't see your posts and comments on their preferred platform.

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