Time to rebuild the web? • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#371

Post by jimmaswell » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:25 PM UTC

throw2016 wrote: post #115

martin_drapeau wrote: post #30

When I ask friends and family who use Facebook daily, privacy and security never come up as pain points. Media is blowing everything out of proportion. Replacing Facebook with RSS or Feedly is nonsense. My friends and family have no idea what those are. Facebook makes it easy for people to connect with old friends and family members through active human interactions: like this, follow her, read that. By doing so you…

There is nothing wrong with Facebook. Its a legitimate use of the web. We just need to tweak the advertising model to disable micro targeting by both advertisers and platforms. Google is a far worse offender here. This will kill the incentives for surveillance and stalking at source.

What's wrong with micro targeting?

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#372

Post by jiveturkey » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:30 PM UTC

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #288

fragmede wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ongoing success of Netflix proves not everybody is a freeloader, and a report from Spotify made the news for their estimate that 2 million people are using ad-block software to get premium without paying for it - the bigger news should really be that they have 150-some million users that aren't cheating the system, and that 70 million people pay money to Spotify. Everybody wants something for free, but there are…

As a paying customer, I'm genuinely surprised that adblocking is possible with Spotify considering they control both the servers and the client. That said, I started on the free plan and have friends who still use it and the ads really aren't intrustive at all - it hardly seems like it would be worth the effort?

It’s probably intentionally tolerated. It gains them mindshare.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#373

Post by Dibbles » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:31 PM UTC

swlkr wrote: post #338

brandon272 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You claim we need to change the business model. I claim the business model is irrelevant if we instead focus on open source and distributed platforms. I think the organizational model is relevant. Would we be having the discussions around the most popular social network selling our data and completely disrespecting user privacy if the most popular social network were a non-profit organization? I have to think there…

I agree with this. Everyone using the internet today can learn SQL and store all of their personal data in their own SQLite database, with blobs pointing to folders in their hard drives. Which sounds impossible, because it is. The middle ground is instead of a few major players in a given market, we have thousands of players in a market that people can move between easily. Kind of like mastodon, but every node is a d…

Which is why we need a social media protocol more than just a new platform.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#374

Post by petepete » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:32 PM UTC

herbst wrote: post #268

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they were raising the possibility of having multiple reedits, each owned by a separate entity, yet still compatible. Like we have multiple email providers, for example.

Which kind of is the concept of reddit. What am I missing?

The each owned by separate entity bit. I think the earlier posters meant that if (somehow) a Reddit-like service was federated and anyone could set up their own server that hosted its own subreddits while sharing auth, it would be a very interesting product.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#375

Post by vbezhenar » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #237

snarf21 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed 1000%. Everyone wants unlimited high quality content that is also free but no ads and conditional privacy and "true" information and ... and ... and ...

The ongoing success of Netflix proves not everybody is a freeloader, and a report from Spotify made the news for their estimate that 2 million people are using ad-block software to get premium without paying for it - the bigger news should really be that they have 150-some million users that aren't cheating the system, and that 70 million people pay money to Spotify. Everybody wants something for free, but there are…

May be that's a consequence of poor society I'm living in, but if I learned any lesson about life, it's that most people won't pay a penny if they can get away with it. You won't make a profitable business believing that some people will recognize the need to pay, because they won't.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#376

Post by paulryanrogers » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:50 PM UTC

api wrote: post #224

kingnight wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does a mobile phone sync dats? The main drawback I see currently with beaker is their is no mobile version (for iPhone)

Mobile as a whole is an unsolved problem for decentralized systems. The mobile revolution is and has been by far the most powerful driver of centralization in the last 10-15 years. Mobile devices are slower, have less memory, and must consume less power than desktop, laptop, or server devices. To achieve good battery life they really need to be in an almost-off state most of the time. Add to this the fact that cellul…

Most families have an Internet router which could help there

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#377

Post by TACIXAT » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

matte_black wrote: post #343

mac01021 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Youtube does things that localized technology installed in the home doesn't solve and can't solve. Are you talking about search and content discovery? Are you talking about replicating the most popular videos over many servers so that the system can efficiently serve all the demand to watch those videos? Maybe existing, fully-distributed products don't solve these problems. But it isn't obvious to me that they can'…

He is talking about monetization. It’s not even that counterintuitive with some capitalist forethought.

Monetization is easily possible, we just need a reliable way to transfer small amounts of money electronically at a low fee. Right now the large credit card players have a stranglehold on digital transactions, we just need something new that makes it not awful to pay someone a few cents online.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#378

Post by api » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:52 PM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #376

api wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mobile as a whole is an unsolved problem for decentralized systems. The mobile revolution is and has been by far the most powerful driver of centralization in the last 10-15 years. Mobile devices are slower, have less memory, and must consume less power than desktop, laptop, or server devices. To achieve good battery life they really need to be in an almost-off state most of the time. Add to this the fact that cellul…

Most families have an Internet router which could help there

Yes, the personal router is a logical spot to put an always-on converged router/server device. Unfortunately nobody's done it well enough yet. It's an area that's ripe for an "iPhone moment."

The other problem is that we're in an era where it's very hard to market anything if you're not Google, Amazon, or Apple, and those firms have negative interest in promoting any form of decentralization.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#379

Post by dumbfounder » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:54 PM UTC

bhaak wrote: post #11

quantumwoke wrote: post #4

The article mentions the demise of Google Reader (rest in peace) as a turning point for the spread of fake news. I agree that there needs to be some counterweight to the deluge of news designed to influence public opinion. However, I don't think the tool to build that with is RSS. I recently learned about jsonfeed [0] from Hacker News and built a news aggregator for my own personal use. I believe the future of news c…

That makes no sense. RSS and jsonfeed are just containers. Both may contain real or fake news. Everybody can put up a feed in RSS or jsonfeed without any trouble.

The point is you generally choose sources that you personally find to be reputable when you use an rss aggregator. It isn't just a craphose of random sources spread throughout your social connections. The basic problem with fake news is that anyone can create and distribute it.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#380

Post by fenwick67 » Mon, Apr 16, 2018, 7:55 PM UTC

Hedja wrote: post #23

It feels like this is already a work in progress using Beaker Browser and Dat. - Beaker lets you browse entire websites (dat archives) and fork them. - It lets you create and serve your own sites directly from the browser and seed it from a server (like a torrent). - It lets other sites create templated sites under your name for user generated content. - Visitors by default temporarily seed your website which may red…

Beaker looks rad!

Are there any DAT:// homepages or web-rings or whatever that I can start using to browse around? I have it installed but can't find any cool DAT sites to browse.