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Time to rebuild the web?

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Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#381

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

magduf wrote: post #357
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is 'flair' which is essentially a signature. And people get creative with usernames to replicate avatars.

Not so much. The "flair" I've seen is very, very limited (so a bunch of people will end up with the exact same ones; there might only be a handful of choices). And part of the usefulness of Reddit is having the same user account across the entire site, so you don't have to separately log into a dozen different forums about different topics. A creative username for a car-related subreddit is going to be pretty useless…

Most of the subreddits I frequent allow you to choose freeform flair, and it's specific to each subreddit. Sure, though, it's limited in length and it's more closely analogous to a signature than an avatar.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#382

Post by brandon272 »

Dibbles wrote: post #373
swlkr wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't really understand what the term "protocol" means in this context or how a protocol can provide the foundations of a social network. Can you elaborate?

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#383

Post by danyork »

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…

Very good analysis. I found myself thinking about this phrase:

> The mobile revolution is and has been by far the most powerful driver of centralization in the last 10-15 years.

Many of us who were active users of Skype in its earlier days (mid-2000s) might remember Skype's first attempt at a mobile client. They took all the distributed P2P goodness of the desktop client and tried to have that run on the mobile environment.

The result was sadly a smartphone app that was slow and rapidly drained your battery. For those of us with many Skype group chats open, the mobile client was basically unusable.

So Microsoft/Skype had to go back and rethink the mobile client. To your points in your reply... they made it a "thin client" with all the power in the centralized servers.

As they did that, it seemed from the outside that they determined over time that maintaining a desktop P2P source code and a mobile thin-client/server source code didn't make sense. And so ultimately the desktop P2P was abandoned and everything became client/server. (Which is the case now - Skype on your desktop is basically a wrapper for a web client.)

And so... the quest for a good mobile user experience wound up being one of the drivers for centralizing one of the original decentralized P2P apps. [1]

Good analysis!

[1] Yes, there were, I'm sure, many other contributing factors, including the issues around the supernodes that led to one of the major outages. And yes, I do realize that Skype, even its earliest form was NOT a completely-decentralized communications app. They did have a centralized mechanism for logins / authentication and also for PSTN gateways and other services.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#384

Post by carussell »

WhiteNoiz3 wrote: post #230
randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

I've always felt that we need some kind of ubiquitous and low friction micro transactions for small time websites to succeed and to move away from the ad driven model. A niche blog could be successful with a small audience if each of them donates a penny or two to read new stories. That way people are directly supporting content that they find useful, rather than having to create controversy to drive ads and clicks.

The projects emerging to build a P2P Web bring an additional non-monetary reward system to this, which is that in return for publishing good content, you get readers/viewers who are willing to help offload server costs.

The naive implementation might work by simply reseeding, say, the Wikipedia articles you've already got in your browser cache to whomever is also interested in them.

There are also UI concepts, however, to give you fine control over how much and how long you're willing to help seed. (Like [1].)

The latter might end up being the currency of low-friction microtransactions that actually stands a chance of taking off. The downsides here are that it only helps in offsetting distribution costs, but it's not good for turning a profit (i.e., funding the creator's real life living situation). It might be fruitful to create a more fungible currency on these principles, though.

1. https://twitter.com/taravancil/status/983361106461720576

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#385

Post by reaperducer »

gkya wrote: post #319
reaperducer wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just watch what the big advertisers do. Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Procter & Gable, etc... When your company spends millions on advertising, you have teams of people to figure out if your strategy is effective. Follow the leaders.

I haven't seen one of them advertise online. Online adverts are way different than TV adverts. For one the latter costs way more, if I'm not mistaken. And even if that's not the case, still, those companies have so much money that running ads is like a hobby for them. So I'd rather not follow them. Just like Google can get away with killing Reader, they can get away with many things which if a smaller company did wou…

Remember that if you're not in an advertiser's target demographic online, you won't see their ads.

I've seen plenty of McDonald's ads online. Coca-Cola, usually around Christmas and the Super Bowl. P&G? Occasionally, but probably more often than I realize because it has so many brands.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#386

Post by petepete »

magduf wrote: post #357
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is 'flair' which is essentially a signature. And people get creative with usernames to replicate avatars.

Not so much. The "flair" I've seen is very, very limited (so a bunch of people will end up with the exact same ones; there might only be a handful of choices). And part of the usefulness of Reddit is having the same user account across the entire site, so you don't have to separately log into a dozen different forums about different topics. A creative username for a car-related subreddit is going to be pretty useless…

There are custom text flairs available on some subreddits (for, say, camera models in r/photography) as well as icons (the club badges in r/soccer). It's quite flexible.

Reddit now has profile images too but they are only displayed there.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#387

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #249
randomsearch wrote: post #105

I don't believe the problem lies in any technology. We don't need blockchain, it's not JavaScript minification, it isn't the centralisation of services that are the problem. It's the business model. No amount of tech is going to change that. If you want to change the situation, start social media businesses with a different business model.

It's not just social media, and it's not just ads, about which other people responded to you. The root of the problem - or at least the trunk very close to the root - is Software as a Service. It's the trend of turning software into services. Sure, it's nice for the vendors, and it's nice for corporate clients who can write off responsibility to a third party. But it also makes you no longer in control of your data,…

> The root of the problem - or at least the trunk very close to the root - is Software as a Service

Once upon a time, to start a certain class of technology company, you needed to buy and provision a small data centre. There is a minimum capital cost associated with that. That cost presents a barrier to entry. Now, one spins up an AWS or Heroku instance.

Harvard economist Edward Glaeser argues the reason cities are more productive is they turn fixed costs into variable costs [1]. (The density allows for the expensive, fixed capital assets to be reliably distributed to variable payers.)

TL; DR It's complicated. Reducing all software as a service to being dis-empowering to individuals ignores the barriers to entry such models tear down.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/books/review/Silver-t.htm...

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#388

Post by NeoBasilisk »

ElCapitanMarkla wrote: post #99
freehunter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like subreddits.

I was reading something the other day about how reddit has killed the community feel of forums. And thinking about it I agree, I can remember pre reddit I used to be reasonably active on a few forums, made friends etc. Reddit interactions feel a lot more ephemeral if that’s the right word.

Subreddits also have a strong tendency to become echo chambers due to how Reddit works. Controversial opinions are downvoted into oblivion and fewer people see them. Traditional message boards have none of that.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#389

Post by jen729w »

KajMagnus wrote: post #351
icc97 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that makes a lot of sense, it's not that we need to have RSS replace Facebook, we need a resurgance of forums to take back from Facebook. Perhaps if forums could talk to each other you'd have an experience more like mastodon, but in concepts that more people understand. Something like an open source Stack Exchange network. So you can log-in to one of them but then easily create an account using the credentia…

1. Open source StackExchange :- ) There's Talkyard, which looks a bit like StackExchange. ... Minus the single-sign-on part though. I'm developing it. Here's an example StackExchange discussion, copied to Talkyard: (CC-By-SA license) https://insightful.demo.talkyard.io/-7/how-do-i-get-myself-o... 2. Single sign-on, and (as you wrote), "using the credentials of the original forum" : What about using Scuttlebut's ident…

And now that guy on the fishing charter can’t use it because he has no idea what that means.

Re: Time to rebuild the web?

#390

Post by magduf »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #381
magduf wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so much. The "flair" I've seen is very, very limited (so a bunch of people will end up with the exact same ones; there might only be a handful of choices). And part of the usefulness of Reddit is having the same user account across the entire site, so you don't have to separately log into a dozen different forums about different topics. A creative username for a car-related subreddit is going to be pretty useless…

Most of the subreddits I frequent allow you to choose freeform flair, and it's specific to each subreddit. Sure, though, it's limited in length and it's more closely analogous to a signature than an avatar.

Yeah, that was part of my point. That's not an avatar, it's just like a signature like you said.
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