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Ask HN: What are we doing about Facebook, Google, and the closed internet?

• amatus 9y ago
  I'm working on GNUnet[1]. It needs a lot of help. [1] https://gnunet.org https://gnunet.org
  • msutherl 9y ago
    I'm having trouble finding information about what GNUnet is on the website. Is there an overview somewhere?
    • amatus 9y ago
      The website is one of the things we need help with. If you want something more detailed than the About GNUnet paragraph there's the key concepts[2] and user handbook[1]. [1] https://gnunet.org/user-handbook https://gnunet.org/user-handbook [2] https://gnunet.org/concepts https://gnunet.org/concepts
• pascalxus 9y ago
  Walled Gardens - Do consumers really feel that it's a big enough problem? As for filter bubbles, a consumer need only visit another news site, right? I hope I'm wrong about this.
  • prodmerc 9y ago
    Consumers don't care, they'll start caring when their last dollar is squeezed out of them and they start wondering why is their life so shit. At which point, it will be too late.
    • rexpop 9y ago
      Is there another way?
• turblety 9y ago
  The UK government is working on it's own Internet [1]. It's going to really take off and be the next big thing!! No encryption too, so it's nice and safe from all those terrorists. Can't wait!! [1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/theresa-may-internet-conservatives-government-a7744176.html http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/new...
  • trendia 9y ago
    That's really cool! Does that mean that my bank records will be sent in plaintext over those series of tubes?
    • danso 9y ago
      Brings to mind the series of tubes that powered the information system in 1984's Oceania, and how antiquated the mindset that envisioned that system, with its memory holes that could eradicate past information forever. That said, even if today's distributed system prevents a gatekeeper from having sole veto on information, today's filter bubbles and chaos of viral disinformation campaigns can be such a barrier against truth that perhaps they can be considered, for all practical purposes, a type of modern day memory hole.
  • prodmerc 9y ago
    Jesus fucking Christ. Global leader in online fascism, more like. I wonder at which point citizens will stop and say "wait, what the hell?". Probably too late.
  • petre 9y ago
    May has just lost the Tories their already weak parliamentary majority maybe even her position as PM. Although both Tory and Labour agenda is virtually the same when it comes to pushing anti privacy laws.
  • leppr 9y ago
    Well if that can end the confusion caused by all these fake news and trolling on social media, I'm all in. Plus last week's attacks really reminded me of how dangerous the world can be, hopefully the new internet will catch more terrorists than the pathetic current one does.
• lallysingh 9y ago
  Should we add github to that list?
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • akerro 9y ago
    and netflix
    • bogomipz 9y ago
      I am curious why you are suggesting Netflix? The filter bubble created by the recommendation system? It seems like they are relying on original content more and more. Or maybe you mean because of the centralization of it? Is there a decentralized and legal alternative?
      • dandelion_lover 9y ago
        http://stallman.org/netflix.html http://stallman.org/netflix.html
        • bogomipz 9y ago
          The meat of this is really anti-DRM and while I agree with that sentiment completely I am failing to see how this relates to the centralization trend or filter bubbles that are the topic of this discussion.
          • dandelion_lover 9y ago
            Are you aware of usable alternatives to Netflix? (I am not). This is the problem I guess...
            • bogomipz 9y ago
              Useable? What do you mean? Bit Torrent, iTunes, Amazon are all "useable." Netflix is hardly the only game in town.
• gobengo 9y ago
  * W3C Social Web Working Group - https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg * ActivityStreams 2.0 - https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/ * ActivityPub - https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ * https://distbin.com https://distbin.com - My implementation of the above. Who wants to federate?
• Arathorn 9y ago
  Building matrix.org as a decentralised & e2e encrypted comms alternative. The filter bubble problem is particularly relevant for us because it's critical for an open network to let users filter out abusive content (whether that's spam, stuff they find offensive, or just a topic they don't care about)... but doing that in a way which doesn't result in creating a profiling db or creating bubbles and echo chambers. The problem is one of letting users curate their own filters (including blending in others' filters), whilst keeping the data as privacy protecting as possible. It's a fun problem, but on our medium-term radar.
• bounded 9y ago
  What would it take for a new social network to take users off facebook in 2017?
  • a3n 9y ago
    Someone with the talent and drive to create a billion dollar closed social network that eclipses Facebook.
    • bounded 9y ago
      What about a for-profit open-source social network then? Reading through comments on threads here it seems the events pages make it difficult for people to switch somewhere else without having a large part of their social life cut off.
  • pascalxus 9y ago
    Start by making a list of cons. What do people not like about facebook? What's the problem with using facebook? That's where your answer lies.
    • ams6110 9y ago
      Most people don't have any problem at all with Facebook. We're in a very small echo chamber here on this thread.
  • juliangoldsmith 9y ago
    The real problem would be network effects. Nobody uses a new social network, because nobody they know uses it. To get people off of Facebook, you'd have to find a way around that.
    • dhimes 9y ago
      Yep. You need a niche. Like yik yak, but not.
  • devrandomguy 9y ago
• dmschulman 9y ago
  Would any solution be tangible for the type of user who is attracted to Favebook? That is, would there be any solution which a non-technical user would flock to? Would it meet their needs and abilities in a meaningful way?
• aaronpk 9y ago
  I am a member of the W3C Social Web Working Group (https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg), and have been organizing IndieWebCamp (https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/) conferences in this space for the last 7 years. We've been making a lot of progress: * https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/ https://www.w3.org/TR/webmention/ - cross-site commenting * https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/micropub/ - API for apps to create posts on various servers * https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/ https://www.w3.org/TR/websub/ - realtime subscriptions to feeds * More: https://indieweb.org/specs https://indieweb.org/specs We focus on making sure there are a plurality of implementations and approaches rather than trying to build a single software solution to solve everything. Try commenting on my copy of this post on my website by sending me a webmention! https://aaronparecki.com/2017/06/08/9/indieweb https://aaronparecki.com/2017/06/08/9/indieweb
  • pascalxus 9y ago
    This looks like an interesting list. I'm giving myself homework: Read the above. Now, Attempting a Webmention right now.
  • menacingly 9y ago
    I had no idea these standards were in any phase of existence and I'm really excited about them.
    • jfktrey 9y ago
      Existing is one thing. Adoption is something else entirely.
      • weego 9y ago
        More important I think is this misunderstanding that this is a technical problem to solve.
        • jeremyjh 9y ago
          The technology is insufficient but necessary. Users want features. Open standards that allow implementation of those features are a (small) but necessary part of the solution.
• vdnkh 9y ago
  I believe it's more effective to focus on a "small business" approach to decentralizing the web, where we focus on smaller companies providing services, rather than a "tin foil" approach where we encrypt and decentralize everything into tiny islands. I work for a video player company and while we aren't a platform like Youtube, we indirectly compete with them for ad dollars (along with Facebook). Something like 90% of ad dollars go towards them already. Most publishers do not like them. I think it's a lot easier to decentralize the internet by having the websites that 99% of users visit powered by smaller internet businesses rather than AmaGooFaceSoft.
  • mental_ 9y ago
    Convenience has usually won over these goals. That's why Google/Facebook/Microsoft/etc have no problem attracting users.
  • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I agree. I moved to FastMail for stronger privacy behavior and good quality service. But it's not the level of like... ProtonMail. But I'm patronizing a great company with great customer service that treats me like an adult. Note that while I'm happy to deal with smaller businesses, and happy to spend money on them, I am still pretty wary of advertising-based businesses. It is a slippery slope of doom, and I think it's ideal to try and stay off of it.
    • dhimes 9y ago
      I don't mind ads, it's the tracking that I don't like.
    • bogomipz 9y ago
      >"But it's not the level of like... ProtonMail" Can you elaborate on this? Are there some privacy issues with Fast Mail that don't exist with ProtonMail?
      • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
        FastMail chooses not to mine your data (even for spam filtering, they only optionally collect emails you permanently delete from the spam folder). They're a paid service, with no advertising. And they have a very strong privacy policy. ProtonMail encrypts your email storage in an end-to-end manner for client access and storage. (Obviously, unencrypted mail sent to or from other servers could be intercepted.) But their goal is essentially to be mathematically unable to view your email. Of course there are tradeoffs, things like IMAP don't work (without some sort of relay), for example. Essentially, FastMail makes a point to not violate your privacy, ProtonMail tries to make it so it can't violate your privacy. I lean towards FastMail because it's 'good enough' on privacy, and has a lot of powerful features, but if you're looking to run afoul of state intelligence agencies, you might wanna lean for the latter.
• gwicks56 9y ago
  Be interested in what HN thinks of Maidsafe, Storj etc. Basically decentralised versions of the internet or the cloud based around blockchain technology. Storj for example is an order of magnitude cheaper than AWS, uses peoples spare hard drive space, encrypts everything and back it up using peer to peer tech. I am currently pretty comfortable as an Android dev, but I am wondering if I should start learning everything I can about blockchain tech in order to help on projects such as these?
  • tobydownton 9y ago
    I came here to see if anyone would mention blockchain technology (which I personally believe is an important part of the solution). Yes, there are the DApps you've already mentioned, but I think the following might be as important in addressing the concern raised: uPort: Self-Sovereign Identity (https://www.uport.me/ https://www.uport.me/) Userfeeds - Content Ranking System (userfeeds.io/) Status - Messaging Platform (https://status.im/ https://status.im/) Brave - Browser (https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/)
    • gwicks56 9y ago
      Thanks for the info. I was not familiar with Userfeeds, it looks interesting. Work is currently offering to pay for any online/university courses I want to take in Machine Learning, which is interesting and probably profitable, but not really a huge interest for me. Making the internet ( and the world ), more decentralised is basically my personal religion however, so trying to decide what I should do, and more info is always good, so thanks for the links!
    • avarun 9y ago
      Has Brave gotten any traction among users?
      • AndrewUnmuted 9y ago
        Personally I quite like the iOS app. The browser seemed slow on my arch Linux laptop.
• bhhaskin 9y ago
  I think the solution is pretty simple. Keep building things. Make person websites and build communities. Don't host everything on major hosting providers like Google or Amazon. Don't rely on Facebook or Google for login or integrations. They only have so much power because we let them. It's more often than not the easier solution. Use tools like GPG, IRC, Email and encourage your friends and family to do the same. The internet hasn't changed, we have, and the only way to take the internet back is if we change ourselves back.
  • jshelly 9y ago
    I have a love hate relationship with oAuth, and I completely agree with you statement.
  • tucosan 9y ago
    How many people do you know, that are able to properly use GPG (i.e. understand the pitfalls of misconfiguration, subkeys, key verification,...)? TBH, I believe the GPG ship has sailed a long time ago, even within the IT community. Using Email does help in what way? Most people do use Mail , Gmail that is. Do you mean Email as a protocol in opposition to Whatsapp, FB Messenger? How does not hosting on the major hosting providers solve the problems of walled gardens and filter bubbles and the closed internet? That's just ephemeral infrastructure. Login integrations can make a lot of sense. I don't really see how not deploying integrations will protect us from walled gardens.
    • throw2bit 9y ago
      I sign my commits with GPG.
  • bogomipz 9y ago
    >"Don't rely on Facebook or Google for login or integrations." I think this is a really important point. When I see services that give me a choice of either 1)logging in with Google or 2) logging in with FB, I don't do either. I simply elect to not use that service.
    • 9y ago
• dkarapetyan 9y ago
  In some sense open and federated information networks go against the grain. Popularity of Facebook is a pretty strong indicator that all the things techies worry about are irrelevant to the general public. Most walled gardens are built for convenience of consumption whereas most federated networks seem to assume a more active and informed participant. The kinds of features you'd build for one group are at odds with what you'd build for the other one. Then again Brave seems to be tackling the problem from the right angle. I hope their model takes off and people start incorporating similar ideas into other open networks that respects the network participants instead of just treating them as passive consumers.
• mundo 9y ago
  Here's a thought I've been turning over for a little while now. It occurs to me that all extant social media apps have, at a high level, exactly the same requirements: 1. Allow users to upload some data to cloud storage 2. Make that data discoverable to certain other users 3. Show everyone ads Whether FB, Twitter, etc were to be dislodged by another app that is essentially the same app is not terribly interesting. So let's look at which of these reqs are amenable to change: a. "ads" - No one actually wants them, so get rid of them b. "Cloud storage" - Lots of people would rather own their data, so switch this to "the user's own server." That sounds pretty compelling. I don't hate FB, but I'd sure rather switch to something that allows me to own my own data, and share pics of the kids with Nana without having to run them through Facegoog's billion-dollar snooping engine. However, there are two big hurdles: i. Most people don't have a server on which to host it ii. Most people won't pay for it, so someone would have to write it and make it really easy to use, for free ...and by a lucky cooincidence, both of those objections have the same answer: Amazon. Most people don't have a server? Amazon will rent you one. Who would develop a self-hosted FB clone for free? Amazon, to get people to rent servers. Just a thought...
  • TulliusCicero 9y ago
    You're kidding yourself if you think people actually want to run their own server for the purposes of social networking.
    • mundo 9y ago
      You're implicitly assuming that Amazon does a bad job of implementing the front end. If the goal is to get even a tenth of FB users to be paying EC2 customers, they can probably spare a couple of UX developers to give it a easy-as-a-ios-app interface.
    • lifeformed 9y ago
      It could be pre-made and run on AWS automatically be default. More advanced users could tinker with it if they want. You would pay money for the costs of running it, plus an extra something.
• rglover 9y ago
  Keep a personal website (avoid Medium, et. al.) The internet is only closed if we keep acting like it is. The protocol is the same. Go build stuff. http://ryanglover.net http://ryanglover.net
  • lnalx 9y ago
    Nowadays, it's difficult to be read and to be visible to a large audience and gain followers without a platform like Medium. You can read unknown author and discover new topics. Unfortunately you still inside the Medium bubble showing you a lot more famous article than other. You are more likely to spread your ideas about open internet in a public place like Medium than the faraway countryside like your website.
• dcow 9y ago
  urbit.org
• hxn 9y ago
  Would it help if more people would have a personal website? Or would that just put the power into the hands of whoever runs the DNS system
  • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    It would definitely help. Use things like RSS feed features so that people can subscribe to updates from your personal site/blog. DNS is (relatively/-ish) decentralized, and isn't AFAIK, heavily used for data collection. And you can't exactly show ads via DNS.
  • nobodynoes 9y ago
    People do have their own personal websites. Brought to you by SquareSpace.
  • tajen 9y ago
    I strongly believe it would be good. A few friends already run their DNS, so DNS censorship is limited too. Not even mentioning .onion routing.
• daveid 9y ago
  Mastodon is a federated, open-source social network based on open web protocols https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon https://mastodon.social https://mastodon.social
• Tharkun 9y ago
  My biggest gripe with the "modern internet" is e-mail. MS and Google dominate the e-mail scene, and they are making it ever more unpleasant to run your own mailserver. They will frequently blackhole mails, without bounces, warnings or any recourse. I'm not sure what can be done about that, but it's certainly becoming an up hill battle.
  • Fezzik 9y ago
    I try and get everyone I know to use (and pay for) Fastmail. It has a great interface. Great calendar. Awesome spam filter. Etc... It costs $30/year to send messages around the globe. That seems like a steal to me. Ultimately, email clients are services that have maintenance and development costs - if you're not paying for it, someone is selling your information to fund the service.
    • greglindahl 9y ago
      He was talking about servers, not just clients, and not just free. I've been running my own email server for a couple of decades, and it's getting harder and harder over time.
    • bogomipz 9y ago
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts on Fastmail. I am curious if you or anyone else might be able to share any tips or resources for successfully migrating from something like Gmail to Fastmail. How do you get everyone to update their contacts? Also it seems like even if you forward form Gmail to your Fastmail account Google still knows your business. I'm not trying to make a case for not doing it but rather would be interested in hearig what has worked for others.
      • Fezzik 9y ago
        It took a lot of time, honestly. But I really wanted to extract myself from Google and cleanup my email, so I did everything manually, sending emails to friends and family from the new account, getting rid of any old emails I absolutely did not need, and forwarding any archival stuff I could not let go of to Fastmail and/or exporting emails and docs to my PC. That said, Fastmail does have an import function, but I did not use it when I migrated: https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/migratemail.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/receive/migratemail.html edit: word choice
• doublerebel 9y ago
  I'm working on a project to separate data from presentation. Too much data is overly wrapped with presentation (e.g. HTML) so we are forced into using a certain display method (popular commercial web browser). A related problem is that human readable data is often unnecessarily encoded into binary machine data. If we weren't wasting so much space on presentation, we could have just served the human-readable data. In this future I think it will be considered ridiculous that you had to load an entire webpage full of unrelated images and icons just to read an article or weather report. This concept will be huge for AR. In AR extra unnecessary information and uncontrollable presentation is beyond annoying, it actually makes users angry and uncomfortable. Look out for Optik.io .
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Too much data is overly wrapped with presentation (HTML) The design of HTML5 and associated web tech separates semantics (HTML) from presentation (notionally CSS, but this bleeds over into JS) and behavior (JS).
    • doublerebel 9y ago
      HTML does a fine job with semantics but the reality is that most of it is used for presentation. HTML says what text is but not what it means, so reading a plain unrendered HTML document is a rough experience that doesn't add much usefulness for humans. The vast majority of internet data can be relayed through something as simple and readable as markdown and/or YAML, and still convey enough useful semantics.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • toomim 9y ago
    I'm working on something similar. Can you email me at toomim@gmail.com, and/or check out https://stateb.us https://stateb.us?
• mbrock 9y ago
  I'm a resident in a "neighborhood activist collective" and I made a self-hosted web site for the house. Now it's expanding into a web app that's a tool for the organization (planning, etc). It's also being set up for similar houses in the same city, and we plan to make it into a kind of federated small-scale "social network" built around our own principles and premises. Another aspect of the project comes from a "house terminal" that I set up here, basically an offline Raspberry Pi running GNU/Linux and a custom chat/guestbook program that runs as a "kiosk". This terminal will morph into a kind of in-house only access to the federated network with real time communications etc.
  • afriend4lyfe 9y ago
    Sounds interesting! Any links you can provide to the project?
  • mxuribe 9y ago
    Are there opportunities to cross-pollinate your efforts with GNU social? Sort of best-of-both-federated-worlds? See https://gnu.io/social/ https://gnu.io/social/
• Raphmedia 9y ago
  > What projects or companies are you working on to combat filter bubbles, walled gardens, emotional manipulation, I walled it myself by making a small social network for close friends. Sure, it's probably a big bubble but at least I don't emotionally manipulate my friends by showing them ads or changing the order of their posts.
• c_r_w 9y ago
  Seems like the first thing we need is organization. Even if the effort is spent on diversified efforts, having an organization of like-minded people agreeing on overall objectives and prioritizing would probably be the starting point. Is that organization SocialWG? Something else? I have no idea, but I would be open to participate.
  • rexpop 9y ago
    Whichever team invents the best co-governing system will win, no? So the organization that arises naturally from ActivityPub, Mastodon, ActivityPub, etc. will provide the activation energy. The question is: can ANY of these solutions compete against private, financial incentives?
• doke01 9y ago
  Make your website of record your website. Make social media platforms and others (e.g. Google) secondary to that. Don't let Google and Facebook control how you build your website. I am amazed at companies that take their websites and subjugate them to their Facebook page. You may gain social attention but you are handing over control. Never, ever, ever say to contact me go to facebook.com/xxxx or my email address is xxx@gmail.com. Your site is yoursite.com and your email is youremail.com. Your login to the sites you build are email addresses, not tied to social media providers. The closed internet providers are enhancements to your sites. They do not take the place of your site. If you follow this philosophy, you are supporting the open internet. Own your .com. Don't let others own you by taking that from you.
  • sillysaurus3 9y ago
    Looks like there's a typo in your first sentence. I could sort of figure out what you meant, but it took a bit of digging. EDIT: Never mind, I was straight-up wrong. Sorry!
    • mysterypie 9y ago
      You mean the following sentence? > Make your website of record your website. I don't see a typo (and your comment is 3 minutes more recent than his, so I don't think he made any corrections). Maybe "record" is throwing you off? What he means is that "Your official or authoritative website (i.e., website of record, like owner of record) should belong to and be controlled by you." Edit: If you're saying that the sentence could be hard to parse, yes I agree.
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
      • odbol_ 9y ago
        Ah, much better way of phrasing it. Thanks
    • gitpusher 9y ago
• asselinpaul 9y ago
  https://status.im/ https://status.im/ is doing something interesting in this space too.
• shea256 9y ago
  In my view a big way to fix these problems is to allow for multiple clients to compete on the same underlying social network protocols. Semi-decentralized (federated) social networks like Mastodon have done great work here. Even better would be completely decentralized equivalents of Twitter, Facebook, etc. There are several impressive projects working on enabling these decentralized apps. One such project is IPFS. Another is one I'm working on called Blockstack.
• austenallred 9y ago
  Honestly? I'm not doing a damn thing. Forgive me for this, but the internet has been a walled garden for some time now, and the vast majority of humans just don't care. I haven't seen anything that's going to change that. The Internet requires a login, and your privacy being dead is a foregone conclusion. It's easy to trash Facebook, but clearly it provides an insane amount of utility, and people aren't willing to stop using it because of others saying that en masse that is bad for a hypothetical Internet they never really took part in anyway. IMO the focus should be getting the government to keep its hands off of it. That's not only more possible, but infinitely more important than not letting Facebook try to show us the right ads.
  • intended 9y ago
    You will likely have to get Governments around the world more selectively involved in it. As systems, governments are playing catch up in many areas, while leading in areas we don't want them to have power. For example - governments should have already put out rules against skinner box games, the most popular kind on Facebook and the rest of the net. Governments made rules against things like subliminal messaging - because it targeted and manipulated human choice at a subconcious level. We wont be able to protect ourselves against corporations, unless we have coordinated action. The mechanism for this is always going to end up being political.
• adamnemecek 9y ago
  I actually think that in the long run internet will become more open and here's why. Why do both Facebook and Google exist? They exist to manage servers. Why do we need servers? Because your personal computer/phone might not be able to handle all that much traffic and might not have dem five nines. How much traffic does it need to handle? What if your phone could handle all the traffic the entirety of humanity could generate? The need for these companies would go away.
  • davidjnelson 9y ago
    sounds like the plot of the show silicon valley this season ;-)
• slyzmud 9y ago
  I think there is something even worse than walled gardens and those are the closed platforms apple, Google and Amazon are creating. One thing is creating websites where they control the content users can see. But the web is still "open", even if facebook bans my content I can still create another website and share it with everybody (probably nobody will ever see it, but that's another problem). The real problem is the new tendency of app stores (Apple Store, Google play, Alexa skills...) If Google/Facebook/Amazon decide to block my content, I have no way to reach other users.
• grizzles 9y ago
  The UI bit is really important. To do it well would be to make a pixel perfect open source clone of Facebook that works over a distributed protocol like scuttlebot. theacebook.org is the closest ui attempt that I've seen.
• aanm1988 9y ago
  I honestly think it's already too late. A bunch of tech people complaining isn't going to do anything against dominant companies worth hundreds of billions each. The solution is probably to actually get the government to view things like Google's near monopoly on search as harmful, even if they aren't actually being explicitly harmful to consumers. Behaviour like AMP eliminating URLs in favour of showing google, internet.org, pushing chrome via their other offerings, etc... is pretty questionable IMO. The other problem is that people don't want to leave facebook. They are perfectly happy scrolling through their feed and just reading whatever pops up.
• SeaDude 9y ago
  Have you ever warwalked or wardrove your neighborhood? What is the # of AP's / mile? Think of all that NAT not being used. Where are the specs for the Outernet Protocol: a NAT to NAT DNS system that doesnt rely on gatekeepers/ISP access. Use the 198.162.xxx.xxx addresses on all of our existing routers for neighborhood scale networking. Build trust by proximity by allowing only known neighbors to connect. Could be very interesting. Especially when Joe mirrors Wikipedia and Samantha mirrors Archive.org and Jan has a realtime mirror of some good Reddit feeds. Automate the mirroring the internet. Scrape every last bit, in real time, without the ads and crap. Make it available to those trusted folks in your proximity.
  • sillysaurus3 9y ago
    I like the ambition, but it's limited to regional effects at best.
    • znpy 9y ago
      Actually, there once was something somewhat similar to what you're describing: netsukuku - http://netsukuku.freaknet.org http://netsukuku.freaknet.org
• sillysaurus3 9y ago
  What I'm getting from this thread is that we're sort of fucked. The only way to stop Facebook and Google was to become them before they had a chance to. That way you'd presumably be more benevolent. Maybe that's true for Facebook, but it's still hard to imagine for Google. I think the bigger problem is cross-generational power. YC itself is somewhat terrifying in this regard, but that's a different topic. In regards to Google and FB, even if we like Google now, we probably won't like the Google 60 years from now. But what is there to do? Google stopped Microsoft by making Microsoft irrelevant, in the "Microsoft is Dead" sense: Nobody is afraid of them anymore. But people fear Google and FB. Imagine a Microsoft competitor to your startup vs a Google or FB competitor. This could be a lack of imagination, but it's very difficult to imagine some new company making Google or FB irrelevant in the same way they made their predecessors irrelevant. Think of oil fields. At one point, before oil fields were monopolized, I've heard the ecosystem seemed pretty similar to Silicon Valley circa 2008. Everybody seemed to be able to get a slice of the action, and while it took determination and luck to get involved, it was possible. Now the oil industry is on lockdown. Imagine asking "What are we doing about Exxon Mobil?" or Walmart. You can't do a damn thing, and there's no shame in admitting that. As defeatist as it is, we may want to start thinking about ways of riding out the next 40 years in a productive fashion. It's more beneficial to say: Ok, Facebook, Google, and the closed internet are here to stay. Now what? For example, if you're really set on doing something about it, one of the most effective things you could do is try to join the companies and shape them yourself.
  • ptr_void 9y ago
    Software is easy to copy and replace. There's little, if any, monopolization of software technology resources. Software doesn't require huge investment/over-head like oil industry. I don't think FB/Google/etc. provide much of anything (or of high value like oil) that is not already replaceable by million other alternatives. One of their key business model is selling ads spaces, but adblocks are also on the rise. I wouldn't bet too highly on those services.
    • hibikir 9y ago
      Every few days we have an article here in HN about a relatively big company, and people throw the classic comment that they don't understand how they need hundreds/thousands of programmers to do what they do, when the prototype of their website can be done by 2 people over a weekend. What you are doing is just a slightly more complex version of this, but the answer is still the same, scale. Software is easier to copy and replace than many other things, but make no mistake: The amount of engineering done at the largest software companies is massive, and has gone way past the point of being easy to replicate. Let's talk someone smaller, like Twitter. Building a Twitter for 100 people is trivial. Scaling it to work well for serious volumes, building all the pieces that make it have actual revenue, and not be just a giant money pit, and all the effort required to build the userbase itself is just enormous. When we go past Twitter, and we think Facebook and Google, serious disruption of their core businesses is really, really hard, because every single user they have is an efficiency you don't. In practice, every large software company today is running a whole lot of machine learning under the hood. Whether it's figuring out which ads to send you, just get you to stay on the site longer, or just have great fraud protection, the difference in data matters. Imagine your machine learning model is trying to sell ads. How much of a disadvantage are you in vs a company that is the user's default search engine, and has analytics hooks in the websites that your target person is on 75% of the time? What if they also have their text messages, know their friends, and their friends' purchases? You can have much better algorithms, but they have such an insane data advantage that you have to be orders of magnitude better to even compete with them! So I'd definitely bet highly on those services, because they've spent years building moats. That doesn't mean they are unbeatable: We all remember the time when Microsoft and IBM looked unbeatable, and we all know what happened, but I don't think anyone without massive funding and a completely new, must have product has a prayer of entering their space and not be swallowed whole.
• s73ver 9y ago
  With regards to advertising, what are you doing to offer a realistic alternative to getting content creators paid online? Paywalls work, but people hate them (go into the comments of any article from the WSJ or such on here). The automatic tipping things offer very little friction, but hardly anyone uses them. So what's your answer?
  • prodmerc 9y ago
    I see digital artists making a living with Patreon, which is pretty interesting. I wonder if it would work well enough for other types of content.
  • rjeli 9y ago
    I think automatic tipping is the way to go. If blog posts and online content feature flattr (or any) widgets prominently, people will naturally be curious about it and contribute. People also fund patreons, donate to charity etc to show off and get recognition - maybe some integration into one's social media to show which content creators you enjoy (support).
  • ptr_void 9y ago
    What if we don't pay them at all? I don't think we'd miss out on too much. It might even make things better, getting rid of professons like 'youtuber' and article writers who'se main goal is to distribute ads with poor quality content and clickbaits. People interested in sharing what they know will still do it. Wikipedia exists without writers getting paid. Walled garden can still exists, if people value them, they will buy to get content, nothing wrong with this. If people aren't willing to buy to get content, it will then be a hint that the content isn't worth the money.
    • s73ver 9y ago
      "What if we don't pay them at all?" What if your employer didn't pay you? I'm sorry, but this idea that one shouldn't be allowed to make money being a "youtuber" or anything else just because you don't like it doesn't hold water.
• throw2bit 9y ago
  First world country problems. In India, we dont really care. And China ofcourse. So half of the world dont care and I dont think India and China has any penetration or audience for these services.
  • prodmerc 9y ago
    Most people everywhere don't care, really.
• delegate 9y ago
  There is no going back, this 'battle' was lost a long time ago. We've tried so hard to make technology ubiquitous and accessible to everyone. We thought that that was a good idea at the time, except we didn't really understand it entirely. The consequence of ubiquitous technology is that the majority now has access to powerful tools to 'express' themselves while being subjected to constant brainwashing into behaving in predictable ways - purchasing, thinking, liking, voting, etc. By 'expressing' themselves, they contribute to a cacophony of content, which makes it very hard to discern truth from fabrication, leading to confusion, apathy and insecurity, exactly the sweet spots that advertisers of all kinds target. A small minority profits greatly from this system, while the users themselves are rewarded with a 'virtual self' which is slowly taking over their 'real' self, making even the idea of losing it scary. This mental trap is very powerful - just look at the number of 'zombies' on the streets - people interacting with their phones there and then, disregarding others and their personal safety.. The remaining 5% who are aware of these issues get to share all the alternative technological solutions and monetary scraps left over from the big fishes. So I don't think there's anything to 'do' about it - just be aware of it and try to stay away from large crowds. I respect and applaud the efforts of so many who try to build distributed and anonymous systems, but I'm very bearish about any of them becoming 'mainstream' for the reasons described above plus this one: most people don't care about these things. Those who control these systems are some of the most powerful people in the world. In time, they will get older and more conservative. Soon they will venture into politics on a global scale. Considering the alternatives, maybe that's not the worst thing after all.
  • paulddraper 9y ago
    Forgive me if I exaggerate, but you sound a chef who is appalled by the lack of variety in fruits and vegetables distributed at a shelter. Billions of people can communicate and learn in ways never before possible. This is overall A Very Good Thing.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • erikpukinskis 9y ago
• ianopolous 9y ago
  I'm betting on (and contributing to) IPFS [1]. Some friends and I are working on Peergos [2], which is built on top of IPFS to replace dropbox, email and facebook with a P2P secure and private alternative. [1] https://ipfs.io https://ipfs.io [2] https://peergos.org https://peergos.org
  • tracker1 9y ago
    How do you feel about where keybase has been going with some of this (related to peergos)
    • ianopolous 9y ago
      I think keybase are doing some great work. Their social proof using existing websites is great. Their keybase fs has some similar properties to peergos, but is still centralised and, to the best of my knowledge, closed source (open sourcing only the client doesn't count in my mind). I want something that is fully decentralised, open source, doesn't depend on DNS, and doesn't expose metadata (including the social graph).
      • tracker1 9y ago
        I think there is a need for an announcer system, some known endpoints to connect into to feed p2p though... Also, haven't thought of a good way to mitigate poison injection/ddos attacks in terms of open/anonymous/decentralized communication.
        • ianopolous 9y ago
          There is an authenticated pub-sub in the works for IPFS. The idea being that only the holder of a given private key can publish updates to something (nodes would just refuse to propagate anything else).
  • dyukqu 9y ago
    The e-mail sign-up button doesn't work properly on the Peergos page. It shows "Page Not Found" error: https://peergos.org/Thank-you.html https://peergos.org/Thank-you.html
• jgon 9y ago
  The biggest thing you can, in my humble opinion, is to make choices predicated on a long term view instead of what is most convenient for you, in the next five minutes. It doesn't require you to code up some sort of amazing app, or dedicate your free time to open source, although both of those are great. I liken it to the attitude people are starting to take with regard to other aspects of their lives, such as food and materialism. When I go to the store I know that I can save a few dollars by buying the absolute bargain basement produce, flown in from south america, taken from high intensity factory farms, or packaged up and made mostly out of HFCS. Or I could see what I can buy from local producers and from farms that prioritize ethically raising animals. It means my eggs cost 3 bucks more, and I can't have kiwi fruits in February. But wanting kiwi fruits right this minute, even though it is February in a northern latitude is the exact sort of attitude I am speaking of. So how can you put this into practice? Well a few people have already made similar suggestions so some of this will be duplicating their suggestions, but I still think it is worth saying. 1) Use your own email. I personally like Fastmail. For $50CAD/year I get a great service. I know that I am paying for a service and am not the product. They are doing good work with the open email protocols that exist, and working to produce new open standards for the future. 2) Use Firefox. Do we really want to give a dominant majority marketshare in the browser market to a browser made by a company that makes 90% of its money through advertising to you? This isn't even some sort of rant about google being "evil", it's just a common sense decision. It wasn't a good idea back in the day to give dominant marketshare to a company who incentives were aligned against the web and towards desktop single platform applications, and it won't be a good idea to give that sort of power to company that is beholden to shareholders and makes it money through tracking and gathering data on users. 3) Delete your facebook account. I don't have a fallback here, but honestly I don't think you need one. Between messenging apps, smartphones, email and other communication tools, you will be able to stay in touch with people you care about. Facebook is not irreplaceable and I say that as someone who was in University when Facebook blew up. I am still happily communicating with all of those people. 4) In general, think about your purchasing decisions and who they empower and what the long term gain is. Shopping at the new walmart in your town may save you money for a year or two until they have devastated the local economy and have no incentive to keep prices low. Even if they do, your local area is made worse by the unemployment they cause, and the underemployment they provide. Same thing with Amazon. Are you saving yourself a dollar today to wonder where the retail jobs that helped underpin your community went in a few years? Are you doing all your searches through google when you could maybe do them through Duck Duck Go, or Bing, or just anything that slightly breaks the monopoly that Google has on search? All of this is stuff that Richard Stallman has been saying for years, and people keep being surprised that he is "correct", but it's usually pretty easy to see that he is just taking a longer term view of things, and understanding that just because an organization acts decently when they are not in a position of power doesn't mean anything about how they will act once they are on top. In summary, try to think longer term about your decisions, instead of prioritizing immediate convenience, and paltry economic savings, especially when we, as privileged engineers and developers, have the ability and monetary flexibility to do so.
• jewbacca 9y ago
  At least Google and Twitter have data takeout. I recently discovered that, on Reddit, anything beyond your more recent 1000 posts/comments/upvotes is totally irrecoverable to you, even via scraping.
  • avarun 9y ago
    Wait, really?
    • jewbacca 9y ago
      Yeah. This was pretty upsetting to discover. I had been blindly using my reddit upvote history as a supplementary personal log of sorts, for many years. And most of that's now just gone. Thank god I haven't made over 1000 comments or posts with any one account. The data's all still in the database, but due to their caching setup, only the last 1000 of anything is publicly indexed. While everything's technically reachable, it's all deep web. To recover something private like upvoted or saved posts, we're talking heat-death-of-the-universe, through a full-table-scan squeezed through brute-forcing a search box, while authenticated, with rate limits.
• foxhop 9y ago
  I'm blogging on my own domain whenever I get the chance. Also bootstrapping https://www.remarkbox.com https://www.remarkbox.com
• bluetwo 9y ago
  These are problems but they ignore the bigger threats. Once ISPs get into selling your history and other reports and net neutrality is killed, we are all toast.
• jamesmishra 9y ago
  The rest of the Internet didn't disappear. If anything, Facebook and Google are tools to drive traffic to your own corner of the Internet. I don't really believe social media filter bubbles exist, relative to the bubbles of the past. Even the most isolated Facebook user is more enlightened than my parents were during their childhoods in India. Emotional manipulation was probably worse when the United States only had 3 TV networks. Before that, "yellow journalism" helped lead the US into the Spanish-American war. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Spanish.E2.80.93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism#Spanish.E2.8... Of course, we should still work to do better than the status quo, but I enjoy being able to develop a following on social media and/or purchase ads for whatever distributed Internet ideal I want to create.
  • intended 9y ago
    Lordy no. I've been watching emotional manipulation in India and around the world for decades now. Its always been among my top concerns, and its definitively become worse. I'd argue its a lot worse on all axes, but if you want a singular reasons - targeting has now all encompassing. Its on all the time, it knows where you are, who you know, what you like, in a dramatic way. Also - you have a third confounding variable in your data. Parents in India from that era were not as educated as counterparts in the west. The west went through its periods of darkness, where the average person was not educated, and when religious institutions dominated the scene. They had decades to over come this, generally following the Enlightenment. India too will hopefully struggle with these same issues. But the new medium for ideas is more dangerous than the one which came before - for ideas themselves. In a slower news cycle there is also time to reflect. The lack of being always connected, meant that the transfer of memetic force was always broken up. Emotion is the lever by which most of the world is moved. Whatsapp forwards come at any time, can contain any content and will be accepted by the receiver often without reflection. The world has iterated, and for the worse.
• warmfuzzykitten 9y ago
  Most of this thread seems to interpret "we" as referring to people who think Facebook and Google are problems. If the "we" refers to internet users as a whole, then the answer is clearly that we like Facebook and Google very much and are using them more and more because they are best for doing what we actually want to do - talk to our far-flung friends and find answers to questions.
  • intended 9y ago
    So my question to people who point this out is - If this is inevitable, and this is best for "WE"/"OUR" needs - then does it just make more sense to accept it and strive to be in charge of the process instead? Is it now OK, to just accept that people will be manipulated by those who know the method to do so? And apply to those firms? ---- Yes - If people turn out to be harder to model, it may be harder to corral people and ideas. The model and assumptions in the larger discussion being held in this topic will be logged as hyerbole and we will move on. Yet - its clear that people DO have some obvious levers, essentially the human hind brain is an easy target to throw emotionally laden messages at. The brains react and then oppose whatever target they are provided.
• tunesmith 9y ago
  I think the general incentive we've been seeing is the incentive towards faster and thoughtless opinion-sharing. Reactive (in the bad way) behavior is incentivized, and thoughtful behavior is discouraged, because by then people have moved on to the next thing. So I'd generally like to see more effort put into making it easier for people to engage in more thoughtful ways. This can also be applied to advertising. I'm trying to avoid chips, but if they're in front of me I'll eat a handful. So then the internet thinks, "This guy wants more chips!" So if advertising were more about my long-term values rather than my short-term behavior, then it'd be more valuable. Anyway, it's pretty hard on social media to share deeper analysis and arguments and thoughts. I get that medium was sort of an effort in this direction, counter to twitter, but that's really just blogging with some extra algorithms thrown in. Need something else.
  • intended 9y ago
    No it cant. You miss the critical purpose served by more emotional hind brain thinking - its easier to repeat and get predictable responses to. Think of this as much older hackers using new tools to do better at their subject - their subject being the hacking of human brains. --- A simple way to test the effectiveness of your proposal is to see how forums perform. The more complex a topic, the fewer participants and the fewer posts. People don't want to engage in complex topics, unless they fulfill certain selection criteria. You can't make people consume more complex information - unless you remove all other mental food options from the table in the first place. It is very much like making children eat broccoli. Except the children are grown adults, and are being bombarded by companies selling them thought sugar because it generates click revenue. There is no market solution to this - there may not even be a regulatory solution to this. The best I can expect is a legal challenge, but who would the injured parties be, and what would be the injury?
    • tunesmith 9y ago
      Your point about forums assumes that forums encompass the full gamut of how people can communicate. "There is decreasing participation for complex topics in forums, therefore people don't want to engage in complex topics." But that doesn't account for the possibility that the form of forums themselves are the problem. With a new kind of forum, perhaps people would engage more in deeper arguments. At the least, lack of participation in other forms of forums wouldn't disprove that.
• a1exyz 9y ago
  I believe that the internet is powerful because it connects us to people rather than content. My dream is for our portal into the internet (currently google or Facebook) to become a search engine for people. I am interested in x. This person is the top authority on x. Here is a chat window. You can ask it questions that his/her bot will answer at first (to save this person from being spammed). However, eventually if you ask the right person, he/she will be interested enough to join in the conversation. What am I doing about this? Nothing yet, but I have been thinking about this recently.
  • austenallred 9y ago
    Honestly what you just described is pretty much Facebook.
    • AznHisoka 9y ago
      more like Twitter. Hard to meet strangers on FB.
• spenrose 9y ago
  I argue that "the Internet" has become a category error: http://www.sampenrose.net/civilization-absorbs-technology/ http://www.sampenrose.net/civilization-absorbs-technology/ There is just civilization, which the Internet used to be meaningfully separate from but is no longer.
• jeeshan 9y ago
  To foresee the perils of a closed internet, look at healthcare. Instead of using open standards, most of our medical data is trapped in proprietary vendor systems that are at best antiquated. Patients are unable to move their data easily, doctors and hospitals have to pay huge sums to access their own data. The vendors extract massive rents but were all left in the dark and our health suffers
• p1k 9y ago
  It's not much but I work on decentralized comment software in my sparetime. [0] https://pik.github.io/Interlocutor/blog/ https://pik.github.io/Interlocutor/blog/ [1] https://github.com/pik/Interlocutor https://github.com/pik/Interlocutor
• deleted 9y ago
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• beefman 9y ago
  It's too late. The culture of free exchange that existed on the usenet, over e-mail, and on the early web died circa 2013. It's tempting to blame Google and Facebook, and they definitely converted a lot of public value into private value. But I suspect it's mainly down to self-selection bias of internet early-adopters. I call the present state of affairs "eternal October".
  • pikachuaintcool 9y ago
    Why do you say 2013?
    • beefman 9y ago
      That's the year Google killed Reader, and all the mailing lists I'd been on since the '90s spontaneously moved to Facebook. I think it was also the year mobile really took off http://tumblr.jackdawresearch.com/post/136750883723/digesting-apples-new-app-store-numbers http://tumblr.jackdawresearch.com/post/136750883723/digestin... (The last two charts are trailing-year, which better show the derivative than the more typical cumulative charts)
      • pikachuaintcool 9y ago
        Hm. Personally I thought it was around 2010, when Facebook chat replaced AIM. And the iPhone 4 came out.
        • beefman 9y ago
          The decline was definitely underway. 2010 is also the year Duke dropped usenet. But the blogosphere was still going strong and mailing list traffic was still strong. Facebook group versions of many mailing lists and private forums existed but discussions were high-quality and didn't cannibalize the parent forums much. Forum/list traffic collapsed in 2013 and meaningful Facebook group discussions followed about a year later.
          • 9y ago
• pdfernhout 9y ago
  I've been working towards a distributed social semantic desktop in my spare time. My latest experiment along those lines: https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip7 https://github.com/pdfernhout/Twirlip7 Related concept video from a few years ago: "Twirlip Civic Sensemaking Project Overview" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mRy4sGK7xk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mRy4sGK7xk Wish I had more time to work on it.
• pascalxus 9y ago
  I've seen a lot of good comments on this page, but we really need to start looking at the problem from a customer's point of view. Why should the end user care about this problem? Have you heard your non-entreprenuer/engineer friends or others online complain about this problem? If the answer to above two questions is Negative, then the problem/pain point simply is not large enough to fix. And, as a potential success case to model our strategy off of, we should be looking towards DuckDuckGo, they've written some good material on how to do it.
  • krupan 9y ago
    It's getting there. Facebook is now a monopoly and is not improving their service in ways that benefit the users, they have no need to. They are only working to keep you locked in and to serve those who actually pay the bills, advertisers.
    • nextlevelwizard 9y ago
      You didn't actually answer the question(s). So what if Facebook as stagnated with user features? Why should your average Joe care? It's already serving their purposes, most if not all of their friends and relatives are on the platform. Again why is this bad for the end user?
  • oceanbreeze83 9y ago
    curious to read the ddg material referenced
  • a1exyz 9y ago
    This thread provides a wide enough sample population of people who have a problem with these services. Additionally, this population is getting bigger. I do hear friends and family concerned about facebook -even in the early days. Does grandma care? no. She doesn't need to. We just need to create replacements for these services that replace the need to use them (facebook and google for instance) to 100% satisfaction for those interested. Then we can worry about growing them. We don't need to worry about the entirety of mankind... yet. Startups 101
• nolanl 9y ago
  I contribute to Mastodon, an open-source federated social network based on the OStatus set of W3C standards. Most of my work has been on making the web frontend faster, trying to add the kind of fit-and-finish that proprietary apps like Twitter and Facebook have.
• quelsolaar 9y ago
  Im re-engineering the internet (http://unravel.org http://unravel.org). There are many more who are trying. If enough of us try, someone will sucseed.
• pvnick 9y ago
  By slowly withdrawing from the internet entirely. Cancelled my facebook and twitter accounts; the variety of websites I visit has dwindled to just a handful; I use a blackberry and will likely go to a flip-phone when I can find a decent cheap one (recommendations welcome). I read more books now. "filter bubbles, walled gardens, emotional manipulation" are things I no longer think about
• american-desi 9y ago
  Why isn't there an open sourced version of google and facebook similar to what ubuntu is to os x and windows alternatives.
• deleted 9y ago
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• deleted 9y ago
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• unityByFreedom 9y ago
  Is this some sort of attempt to claim Facebook and Google are somehow worse than Ajit Pai's FCC? I'm specifically objecting to the phrase "closed internet". It sounds like the opposite of net neutrality, but in reality, any privacy options within Facebook and Google have been user-driven. The focus should be on removing Pai. Regarding Facebook and Google, you can simply choose to not use them if you wish. You only have one choice for broadband, and Pai wants to extend ISPs' monopolies. Let's not let that happen without a fight.
• toomim 9y ago
  I'm convinced of something surprising -- that walled gardens are actually the result of limitations in ... HTTP! And to prove it, I've implemented a replacement for HTTP called Statebus that adds power to HTTP and breaks down walled gardens: https://stateb.us https://stateb.us Check it out! Statebus makes web programming wayyyy easier, and opens up the insides of websites -- you can go to any page, hit a hotkey, and edit the code live to add a feature, or incorporate state from a different site, or re-use the state or code from somewhere else, just as easily as you use your own site's state and code! Because it puts the insides of sites onto the web protocol itself. In Statebus, every piece of state has a URL! And you can synchronize with it as easily as <a href="state://..."> today! This breaks up walled gardens like Facebook! Today, we have monopolies at the level of websites, because each different website is implemented with a different proprietary stack of web gunk -- MVC server frameworks, reactive view frameworks, networking frameworks, babel, webpack, and -- YUCK! Statebus replaces all this gunk with the web protocol itself -- the statebus protocol -- which opens the state, and itself automatically synchronizes all this state together! Statebus transforms HTTP from State Transfer to Synchronization: HTTP: Hypertext *Transfer* Protocol REST: REpresentational State *Transfer* Statebus: State *Synchronization* Protocol It turns out that all web frameworks are really just state synchronization libraries, and we only need them because HTTP doesn't know how to synchronize! By adding synchronization to the web protocol itself, we eliminate the need for all these frameworks, and put all the internal state of a website onto the web protocol itself, making it open for other websites to use! Statebus makes websites wayyy easier to program, and this means that the easiest way to program websites is now the most open way. This changes the economics of the web, and is going to break up the walled garden monopolies that have arisen around websites -- just like the web itself broke up the AOL walled garden in 1995! Remember AOL? It provided a lot of the same features as the web -- shopping, chat rooms, forums -- but then was outcompeted by the open web around 1995! Why? Because programmers found it was easier to put their content online with HTTP and HTML than by convincing CEO Steve Case to add their content to AOL's garden! In the same way, Statebus is going to make it easier to build social content than by going through Facebook's walled garden! The future will be a diverse, realtime, synchronous symphony of social state! You can find technical docs here: https://github.com/invisible-college/statebus/ https://github.com/invisible-college/statebus/ And a demo video here: https://stateb.us https://stateb.us
• daraosn 9y ago
  Brendan Eich, the inventor of Javascript and co-founder of Mozilla, launched this recently: https://www.basicattentiontoken.org/index.html https://www.basicattentiontoken.org/index.html It's a token for advertisement that rewards the user, to be used at Brave browser: https://brave.com https://brave.com https://github.com/brave https://github.com/brave
  • tmccrmck 9y ago
    I love the idea but if we can't get 70% of the population to use ad blockers, what chance do we have of people moving over to a new, unheard of browser? People switched to Chrome because Google told you it was a better experience every time you made a search. I don't see how people of my parents generation (60s) will ever hear about Brave.
    • BrendanEich 9y ago
      The BAT is for more apps, Brave is just first. Do your parents like paying half their data plan ($23/month in the US) to load tracking scripts and ads? See https://medium.com/@robleathern/carriers-are-making-more-from-mobile-ads-than-publishers-are-d5d3c0827b39 https://medium.com/@robleathern/carriers-are-making-more-fro.... Brave is 3-7x faster on top news/media sites than Chrome on Android. All this and more is discussed at https://basicattentiontoken.org/ https://basicattentiontoken.org/. How do small faster browsers get big? Marketing. To counter, big browsers have to block by default and none will (Apple comes closest and is our best ally). They're all beholden.
• thejohnhenry 9y ago
  One harsh truth that must be swallowed before we (the Hacker News community) makes progress on this problem: We live in the land of Startups. All good technology innovation we're used to over the last 20 years has come from the Startup/VC world, when the internet was fresh and nobody knew what would work. Over the coming decades, we'll need vehicles for technology innovation that go beyond the "take over the world & prayer" model, assuming that silicon valley's vehicle of ultragrowth monoliths will eventually align with civic values. They won't. To illustrate this, let's say you want to improve some problem with Facebook/Google/etc. To even begin, you need $50 million and a minimum of 3-5 years building a userbase. By then, you have payroll, growth obligations, & investor pressure & are forced to monetize, usually in a way that compromises longer-term values. We can solve this with smarter internet infrastructure. If you could share social graphs between applications, for instance, you eliminate an incredible amount of overhead in developing and experimenting with new social applications. There's a number of great initiatives trying versions of this (IPFS, Urbit, Blockstack -- I'm tracking a number of popular ones over at http://decentralize.tech http://decentralize.tech). The community needs more organization and more funding around these problems, especially in the field of developing new business models that work for software that don't involve selling out user priorities to global ad networks. I'm in San Francisco and working on this problem full-time if anyone wants to meet up and discuss solutions; Email's in profile.
• mythrwy 9y ago
  Maybe Google and Facebook shouldn't be lumped together. Google (however big they are) provides a lot of value to my world at least. Just for search alone. Sure, there are other search engines but none nearly as good. Making it easy to find relevant information is of huge benefit and really does "change the world". I consider this enhancing. Facebook is like the owner of a seedy bar. Preying on people's need to socialize and serving rotgut. Profiting from degradation rather than enhancement. (IMOP). People should stop drinking rotgut. That's the way to stop Facebook. Rotgut is cheap anyway. You can even make your own in the basement. But if you want to stop Google you need to build a better search engine. Best of luck with that (seriously, I'd use it, no loyalty but so far Google has some truly useful products).
• zitterbewegung 9y ago
  I'm working on a manifesto and a set of blog posts to influence people that use closed internet services to think differently about it. What I believe we need to do to fight this is to make people care about who we give our data to and have organizations share their machine learning models so that we can have a more secure and open web. One of the ways we can do this is to allow people to execute machine learning models so that everyone can restrict it to the data that they own
• macawfish 9y ago
  We need local bookmarking and indexing tools that can become primary to search. You have no idea how many times I end up searching the same thing over and over again. I'm using the search engine as a bookmarking tool. If there were more streamlined, humane, well designed local bookmarking tools, that wouldn't be an issue. As a matter of fact, the fact that the browser by default sends everything I type into that bar up to some 3rd party, whether I've pressed enter or not, is pretty scandalous. It's not necessary. I want local copies of pages that are important to me, for offline viewing, and I want to be able to bookmark specific parts of them in annotated, searchable, useful ways. I want to be able to share these. I want to be able to upvote and downvote their relevance as I use them again and again. I want human readable formats for storing these things. I want them on my filesystem, but not in a bunch of jumbled, strangely named files hidden deep somewhere on the computer. And I want to be able to share them peer to peer. Remember the good old days, when people had WWW hyperlink indices? It's 2017 and centralized search/social platforms have all but destroyed the artform of digital curation. It is an artform that deep learning will clumsily fumble again and again. This website is a perfect example of how powerful human curation can be. The articles are curated and annotated collectively by human beings. The protocols and the web standards are more or less masterfully designed. We have unlimited programming languages. I want to subscribe to notable peoples public web-bibliographies. I want them available in formats that are interoperable with my web browsers bookmarking and annotation tools.
  • vvvkkk 9y ago
    What can you say about this beta: https://bubblehunt.com https://bubblehunt.com? Bubblehunt is the search platform, where you can get free and personal search engine for your bookmarks and other information that you think is interesting.
• stretchwithme 9y ago
  Just because there are closed houses in the US doesn't mean I can't travel from coast to coast. Or build my own house with whatever rules I want. If, instead, I had no freedom to build a house at all or the rules were dictated to me by others, I would be less free. And poorer.
• jgaa 9y ago
  Me? I don't use Facebook. I consider Google evil and harmful and avoid them. On my phone I run my own apps, and apps from F-Droid - I don't even register with Google. I have a shit-list of companies I will never work for (Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon and every Government entity anywhere in the world). I browse the net from VM's with specific purposes (one for HN). I use Tor for most browsing, including reading news. If I have to provide data somewhere, I make sure it's incorrect. I host my own content on my own servers, or on rented VM's (not AWS). I host my personal home-page on a VM hosted by a pro freedom of speech NGO, that will go to great measures to keep it on-line, no matter what. I hosted my own content long before Facebook was even a sexist rating site for stolen pictures of pretty girls. I will host it long after Facebook is history and mostly forgotten :) The internet is only closed for those who choose convenience before freedom.
  • fivestar 9y ago
    You sound like me--I'm not quite as radical wrt Microsoft and Apple (the devil you know), but a long time ago I made up a list of "places I won't work for and why" and the MIC was on the top, you know, the Lockheeds and the Raytheons who help murder innoncents and subjugate Americans (looking at you Level III System and your asinine naked body scanners in the airports that you just had to sell to the government). I know some of it is not completely ratioanal--Boeing makes civilian aircraft as well as military. And I accept that not all "defense" products are bad. We need a strong defense. What we don't need is bombs falling 24x7 for 17 years now jus so some a-holes can make billions of dollars off the suffering of others. And yes, Microsoft, Oracle, and even Apple and Google products run a lot of military systems that enable that killing. What I found in this exercise is that many of the companies I worked for were indirectly compromised--it's amazing how many firms take money from government sales, money handouts from government/military programs, etc. It's truly amazing how little "private" there is in the private sector. All developers should take a course in ethics and not stray from those teachings. It would also be helpful to get some philosophy in your toolbox as well. And then maybe, maybe, some of this bullshit would finally cease.
  • staticelf 9y ago
    That sounds incredible time consuming and very frustrating. How do you manage to stay so hostile against everything around you? Do you never wake up and just feel depressed about the state of things? Ever wanted to just say fuck it and create a facebook account?
• perfunctory 9y ago
  I ignore facebook entirely, use duckduckgo for search, and pay for journalism.
• Kiro 9y ago
  You're hosting your stuff on Github so you are part of the problem. Fix that before you start talking.
  • nsebban 9y ago
    Came to post this. I have nothing against Github, but I wish developers knew better :/
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• lalalander 9y ago
  I am of the opinion that Facebook and Google will continue to be relevant simply because of the perceived value in working for these companies. There was a recent top news on HN about a programmer who self-learned and applied to Google. The line "Feeling more confident, he set his sights high. He began to wonder if he might be able to work at Google" made me realise that as long as people look up to Google as a pinnacle of software engineering (or if pinnacle is too much of a hyperbole, at least I admit that Google has high software engineering standards), there will always be an influx of good engineering talent to these companies. I feel that one way to combat their grip on the Internet would be to change the mindsets of these programmers, and to change the narrative that all good engineers should work at Google et all. Without a constant stream of programmers willing to work for these companies, the quality of their offerings should decrease, hopefully to a point where the average Joe would start to look for alternatives.
  • 5_minutes 9y ago
    More simple would be: as long as the wage and perks are awesome, google will attract talent
• VvR-Ox 9y ago
  Thank you for starting this interesting debate. I have a slice of hope still that we (the whole community, dev's just like users who need to use services) can "make the world a better place". The proble I currently see is that: 1. We are too few ATM 2. Facebook, Google, Apple,... already nested into the minds of many people, even the one's who claim to "think different" 3. There has to be something: - big - useful - attractive - free of costs to use instead of their sh*tty services and you somehow need to convince "Jenna to take here FB profile and also their friends with her to the new place in town". The same goes for other services like WhatsApp, searching with G., buying on A. etc. How will we be strong enough (against companies with billions of $$ and the brightest minds in tech cause they wanna earn 120k/yr) to put something up that can not only withstand them but convince all the zombies? How will you get those zombies moving? The most of the ppl. not even reads news anymore and if they do they just believe what they see & hear. There is no discussion, if someone is pissed she/he is right. There is no science for someone who doesn't even know the value of a scientific method. We are royally screwed and there has to be A BIG UNITING OF ALL ACTIVISTS under one flag. If we go on like this with every hackin' Joe trying to construct his own facebook clone then we will just die like the rest.
  • fivestar 9y ago
    Think: FTP, TELNET, IP. You know, protocols. The open things the Internet was originally based upon.
    • s73ver 9y ago
      Those protocols were superseded for a reason.
• NotUsingLinux 9y ago
  Most comments here are quite pessimistic. Matrix.org is a start. On a much much broader scale the Web 3.0 will be build on Blockchains, the so called Fat protocols will surpass the Web 2.0 or eventually merge. https://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols https://www.usv.com/blog/fat-protocols Ethereum will build up a considerable part of the ecosystem, with Dapps like status.im https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Je7yErjEVt4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Je7yErjEVt4
• teekert 9y ago
  I play with IPFS, use Linux, use Mastodon, use Nextcloud in my basement with davdroid. I use FB only in the browser I don't use in (both on mobile and laptop I reserve Chrome for these things). I avoid where possible Whatsapp and use Signal. I have a mailserver with a local (Dutch) company with my own domain. I publish anything on my self hosted Drupal instances. Is it more time consuming and more difficult? Yes! But also more fun. I like the term slow computing: https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/slow-computing https://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/slow-comp...
• bellajbadr 9y ago
  we are developing alternatives based on decentrlized and fair platforms like the blockchain
• amelius 9y ago
  I think the developer community should distance itself more from big companies that act badly. One way to do this could be for open source authors to introduce a section in the README file expressing the wish that the software will not be used in ways the user is not aware of, such as user-tracking.
• realcr 9y ago
  I'm working on freedomlayer.org. It is a research project for finding out solutions to various questions: - Distributed and secure routing, specifically in mesh networks. - Creation of scalable economy of digital goods (Storage, computation power and networking) between computers. I believe that these will provide a foundation to build things like distributed email. Currently freedomlayer contains mostly research documents, though I plan to implement some of it in the near future.
• amelius 9y ago
  In my view, algorithms that deal with user data (our social data) should be designed by universities and perhaps government agencies, like in the old days of the internet. The role that big companies can play (we still need them) is supply hardware, and perhaps subordinate software libraries, also like in the old days.
• a_imho 9y ago
  Install a content blocker in disagreement?
• intended 9y ago
  Heres a question - what are the kids using?
• NoGravitas 9y ago
  A little late to the party on this but: 1. I have quit Facebook, minimizing Twitter use, and am using Mastodon[0] for my social networking fix. My existing Facebook friends aren't on it, but the people I'm "meeting" are very nice. Will be blogging about it soon. 2. I am re-launching my long-idle blog, but this time supporting indieweb[1] standards for identity. This way, I have a central identity on the web across social networking sites, that I control. [0]: https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/ [1]: https://indieweb.org/ https://indieweb.org/
• mikegerwitz 9y ago
  Talk to others. More importantly, learn _how_ to talk to others. Know your audience. Learn what examples turn people on and off---what gets their attention vs. what sounds like a parent lecturing to their child. You don't want to put people on the defensive. Learn how to relate it to them. Learn how to make them _understand_ the problem and why it's important---otherwise they won't care, or if they do, it'll be short-lived. Speak at events/conferences. Speaking generally to a broad audience with broad information and hard-hitting references not only gets the message out, but also makes it more difficult to make someone feel targeted, like you might one-on-one or in a small group. I target two groups: technical people who can actually do something about it and teach others (but might not care or be aware of the issues), and average users and groups who might know or not care. Talking to your family and friends (and spouse) helps gain great insight on what people are thinking without quickly ending the conversation if it makes them uncomfortable. As does HN. ;) Talk to groups you _know_ will be hostile to you. Learn common rebuttals. Learn how to respond to them. And harden yourself with relentless attacks on your facts and opinions. Offering practical alternatives is difficult. Even if you can, people want to socialize where others socialize---I'm not going to get my friends all on GNU Social or Mastodon (or the fediverse in general) for example. Work security and privacy into their current practices the best you can understanding that compromise is _essential_. Maybe they can transition further in the long-term as they get used to certain ideas. I encounter similar issues (and get a lot of practice with it) with free software activism---getting people to care about and understand software freedom is far more of a difficult battle than getting someone to care and understand about privacy and security issues. For those looking for some resources to get them started: https://mikegerwitz.com/projects/sapsf/plain/sapsf.bib https://mikegerwitz.com/projects/sapsf/plain/sapsf.bib https://mikegerwitz.com/talks/sapsf.pdf https://mikegerwitz.com/talks/sapsf.pdf And this is an _excellent_ resource: http://crackedlabs.org/en/networksofcontrol http://crackedlabs.org/en/networksofcontrol
• marcosdumay 9y ago
  I was writing an email extension for private communication, and easier sharing and organization of things¹... But then there was an epidemics of first instance judges blocking private messaging systems on my country. I'm currently waiting for our supreme court to decide if judges have that power before I spend more time on it (or not). Maybe I'll have my answer next week. 1 - https://sealgram.com/blog/yep-im-rewriting-email.html https://sealgram.com/blog/yep-im-rewriting-email.html
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• EGreg 9y ago
  Here is what I have been doing: https://qbix.com/platform https://qbix.com/platform A wordpress-like open source platform that communities can install and have their own facebook. A platform that allows developers to release apps that communties can install. Or turn their existing app into one. An auth protocol that works with everything else out there and lets people manage their identities across the web, and link up with their friends from their private address books. And more.
• lifebeyondfife 9y ago
  Echo Chamber Club exists to inform people with progressive views, alternative viewpoints on stories they wouldn't normally encounter within their own social media circle. https://echochamber.club/ https://echochamber.club/
• hedora 9y ago
  I use this to block surveillance, and bypass the big content aggregators. Think of it as full-text reader view for RSS feeds that don't support such things: http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ http://fivefilters.org/content-only/ Increasingly, I get my news from non-profits that do original research, or technolgists that are the primary source of the stories I read. They don't use advertising to fund their work, which eliminates the moral dilemmas around stealing content vs supporting our corporate surveillance state. Also, RSS is the opposite of a walled garden.
• svilen_dobrev 9y ago
  Maybe should try on another level alltogether. Here something from 6y ago. (i even posted it here then but with near-zero attention). A (personal) system that keeps your own notions (and versions of) and crosslinks them to each another, with translators to/from other persons/entity notions (and subsets - think i/o facades/faces). Like the tags u put on your images. And how u would explain them to somebody else. And take some of their images (i.e. of same event) with their tags. And tag them yourself. maybe in time. http://www.svilendobrev.com/rabota/notionery/ http://www.svilendobrev.com/rabota/notionery/ http://www.svilendobrev.com/rabota/notionery/1.html http://www.svilendobrev.com/rabota/notionery/1.html it's rough sketch, may live on top of any p2p technology. Back then noone could be bothered about "why would i put another layer around myself". Now maybe the awareness is better, i don't know. (contacts in profile or that site) have fun
• metaphorm 9y ago
  Take the like/+1/retweet/etc. buttons off your website.
• awinter-py 9y ago
  for better or for worse, advertising (or some kind of information) is necessary for running a business. Web ads are working less well than in the past, but they still work. The companies that have a high-visibility 'start page' (news orgs in 1990, yahoo in 1997, G & FB today) are going to have a lot of power. Create a compelling start page, get 30% of the world to use it once a day, and your problem will have been solved.
• krausejj 9y ago
  Keep using email and open messaging formats, ideally tied to an ID you own. How many people actually have their own website? Probably a minority. Everyone has an email address. If this gets subsumed by FB Messenger, Slack, and Snap, we lose the open web.
• sam_goody 9y ago
  Use Firefox. Develop on Firefox, and then adjust for Chrome if needed. Encourage friends to use FF. Google tracks every domain you visit and how long you visit it even with all the adblockers in the world (under the pretext that you might be searching for the domain instead of going there). You have no idea how much data they are collecting on every minute of your use (the local license in my non-U.S. version has some weird clauses, don't know about the U.S.) and all that info is damaging. FF is now faster than Chrome on every metric, so you don't lose anything for yourself or your users when they switch (though it is wise to make a new profile if you have a old version) If they are not targeted as the main platform, they will be gone. By keeping another browser alive, Google cannot force all of their crazy ideas and dreams in the guise of forwarding the internet. Develop for FF, encourage its use, and that definitely will help you and the free internet.
  • jitbit 9y ago
    How about an alternative Chormium-based browser (which is not Chrome)? Anyone tried this?
    • Johan-bjareholt 9y ago
      Chromium also has phone-home functionality, you could try Opera though.
• z3t4 9y ago
  I'm making a decentralized app that makes it easier to tell your friends what you had for dinner, then posting it on Facebook.
  • Danihan 9y ago
    You're covering input, but what about output?
• fusion_cow 9y ago
  We're running a nonprofit online conversation service, Lyra. It's a space for online conversation which respects language and attention, provides powerful tools to control audiences and news feeds, and doesn't take investment or ad revenue. We're already sustainable! www.hellolyra.com
• motiw 9y ago
  I am experimenting with a new approach to preventing manipulation and biases in feeds. We use an algorithm to randomly crowdsource people to rate articles on their topical relevance and usefulness. Results at postwaves are still preliminary but encouraging.
• pmoriarty 9y ago
  Don't work at these companies. Don't give them your business. Spread the word about their unethical practices.
• elihu 9y ago
  We need better tools, so that ordinary people can setup their own blogs, websites, email servers, forums, and whatever else they want without being an expert on systems administration or security. They should be able to deploy a system and be confident that it will keep working without intervention for decades. We're not there now, largely because of security vulnerabilities. We need it to be easier to write secure applications. We need to eradicate undefined behavior from our software stacks. Rust is a good step in this direction. We need well-thought-out APIs that are hard to misuse. I think we also need a better search engine, and tools to filter news. Tools that detect clickbait, overzealous advertisements, and other forms of low-quality content and push them to the bottom of the rankings, and also punish sites that link to low-quality content. We need email to be more user-friendly than it is; maybe we need a new protocol that's simpler and consistent with how email (and Facebook/linkedIn mail) is used in 2017. Setting up an email server should be easy, and the settings should be secure by default. We need tools to identify credible information sources, possibly by analyzing if a given information source is vouched for by someone we already trust. Flooding comment sections and forums with fake comments is an easy way to manipulate the public and create an illusion of consensus or a made-up controversy, but it's a little harder to be fooled if you have automated tools to filter out people that aren't connected to anyone you know by some kind of chain of recommendations.
• dontchooseanick 9y ago
  That's extreme for most but : 1. I don't talk to Google and Facebook - I mean, really, litteraly http://sling.migniot.com/index.html?filter=no_.*sh http://sling.migniot.com/index.html?filter=no_.*sh 2. A decade without Google Search and DuckDuckgo instead - sometimes I have to use !g at work 3. I have rooted phones without a Google account - but I know no single other person who does it And the corrolaries : - I get a lot less ads for free - I have to talk again to Google from time to time, for captcha purposes - I have real-life friends who call me - like in "phone-call", they know I have no Fb, no Insta', no Pinter', no Google, no Snap' - From Google and Fb's standpoints I'm like a blackhole: I don't leave intentional traces, opinions, preferences but I'm as traceable as a dead pixel on a uniform background. I left this comment because I feel like a Unicorn : I do this nearly as a hobby and to prove that "It's still possible" - but it takes a BC in computer science and constant fighting : Nobody does that
• cyberpip 9y ago
  email contact may be too important for everyone to be running their own mail server, at least with the solutions I'm familiar with?
• tripu 9y ago
  Not enough. We techies have a moral duty to choose wisely, and to educate users.