I wonder if we could implement a decentralized version of SO. It can be a CLI app since it is used by developers only. The app can keep all question/answers of topic relevant to the developer locally. This will allow developer to find answers offline as well. Since it is only text data it should not take more than a GB.
There's a lot of metadata not being caputred by MetaData which would be insanely useful for a lot of purposes. It would be kind of neat if a lot more of that was captured... and if SO answers had more programatic access.
I feel like a piece is missing in the current Internet infrastructure although I have no idea what it is.
Consider this, WhatsApp stories are not much different than personal blog but putting up stories takes few clicks while self hosting is whole new endeavor. Ideally everyone should own a blog/self host. This would solve the issues with centralization.
The problem is hosting a blog and discovering it is still not as easy as creating WhatsApp/Insta stories. Nor the users are ready to pay the price for running that blog. Centralized services solve all these problems. If some platform ever solves issues with self hosting and makes it easy to self host for minimal cost, I think we will have changed the face of Internet forever.
tl;dr We haven't achieved the required level of software/hardware abstraction for everyone to self host
I don't think the missing bit is the "ease" of self-hosting a blog.
The missing piece is that social networks are not about publishing your thoughts ideas or knowledge, they are about propagating your thoughts ideas and knowledge to others. The emphasis of a social network is on "propagation" aka, propaganda.
Social networks push opinions into people's face, it promotes, markets and advertises messages in ways that people can't avoid reading even if they're not looking for it.
They're not designed to make accessible information for those looking for it, but to allow you to advertise yourself and your ideas to others. And definitely not designed in any way to filter for accurate and high quality information.
What social networks do is make it really easy to voluntarily subscribe to propaganda and be subjected to it day in/day out. It's bonkers when you think about it that we all agree to participate in this.
> they are about propagating your thoughts ideas and knowledge to others. The emphasis of a social network is on "propagation" aka, propaganda.
That is the issue with centralization: you have no control over your feed, no control over your data, no control over discussion on your content.
On the other hand blogs/websites are all federated by design. You can control who views your content, shares your content. You control discussion on your website. You are also responsible for your content and moderation. You can also curate your own feed with RSS.
You missed my point, I'm saying that the reason for social networks being popular is because they allow various actors to submit others to their propaganda.
The reason people prefer posting to facebook or twitter (or even medium) say compared to their own blog, isn't the challenges in setting up a personal blog. It's because on facebook and twitter they can push their post to a big audience, even if no one is searching for the kind of content they're publishing.
A self hosted blog/website does not have this feature.
Just as an example, the government does have an official self-hosted blog: whitehouse.gov and the President could have simply published all their thoughts and messages there instead of Twitter. They could also easily have a personal self-hosted blog. But why didn't and don't they? Instead choosing to post to Twitter?
Interesting point. Could we see part of the contrast as the extremely low friction involved in the equivalent of "reblogging"?
On a blog, there is always the possibility that a post would "go viral", but the odds of that happening (and the potential reach) seem dramatically lower than for something like Twitter and Facebook. Maybe, to borrow a possible-not-quite-applicable concept we've been hearing about from epidemiology, the R₀ for popular posts on blogs is intrinsically going to be much lower than that for popular posts on these kinds of social media?
After all, Twitter and Facebook (eventually) added a standardized means for reposting something without changing it, typically with a very rapid and easy user interface flow. There's probably never been anything as quick, easy, or standardized for reblogging, including because reblogging always has potential to remove or change the format, context, and content of what gets reblogged (and in the case of reblogging as a link, to require blog readers to follow the link in order to see the content, which could also be seen as reducing the blog's R₀-equivalent, since fewer people will follow a link than would read something in a feed that gets pre-rendered for them).
I think 'Social Networking' is really just a bad name for an internet identity and sharing model no different from the same problem in Operating Systems. The internet is the computer but it's missing identity and acls. With those things anybody could write an indexer that could build a feed for you.
That's the salient point. When you re-frame social media as collaboration tools, the answer to the question, "collaboration on what?" comes to the fore.
What is the underlying project that requires collaboration? I have a few ideas, but I hope framing that way yields ideas for others.
Eventually, all what media does is information routing from producer to consumer. The existing Big Tech paradigm is just one of [many][1], if you think that way.
I think you might want to look at something like Solid[0]. It resembles your idea, but is more general. People host their data in a personal data store (a pod, which can be either self-hosted or by a 3rd party) and Web applications read to/write from this data store. It is more general in the sense that this data can then also be used by other applications to provide their own features (which is a hard problem to tackle, since you don't want to restrict all current and future different types of data to one interface).
E.g. When you create a new blog post this is stored in a pod of whichever data provider you chose. The fact that you wrote this blog post can then be discovered e.g. on your social media, after which people can read it in their favorite blog post reader.
I find the implications of such a platform to be the most interesting thing. It effectively creates two different markets: that of data providers, which compete to provide the best service, and of application providers, which compete to provide the best features.
I just learned about Perkeep and in my fantasy world it or something exactly like it plays a key role in putting people back in control
of their content.
If based on a single cooperative user, writing a blog/photo sharing Facebook/Twitter lite site is relatively straightforward. Equally, spinning up its backend (pico-)services with Kubernetes and Docker is also far easier than it used to be, albeit missing the App Store install experience just yet.
No, what's missing is that outside of mining their data to sell ads, or possibly having it as a nascent feature of expensive walled garden phones, no one has figured out how to get consumers to pay for those services as a standalone offering - yet.
The real problem is that the data generated by the user is very valuable to the social network owner, there's no way to make money allowing a user to have a private self hosted federated infra unless you charge the user and then no one wants it since Facebook is free. If you really wanted to, you could easily build a federated easy to use distributed social network, but no one does because you don't make money on it and passion projects only go so far.
And there has never been the incentive. People complain about walled gardens, but unless you dedicated to FOSS, any commercial venture (with a few exceptions) produces apps and tools that feed the master and excludes other parties.
It might even be profitable to start a venture that allows complete easy self hosting of content.
Wasn’t Berners-Lee working on something like this with his pods?
How can both Google and Apple cannot have a single rival platform against Facebook? We do have competitors like Twitter, Telegram, Signal but none of them are from Google or Apple. If we had we could have kept Facebook in check.
Have they given up on network effect of Facebook's platforms? If they can't solve network effect problem then I wonder how much hope there is for apps like Matrix or Signal.
P.s. We do have YouTube from Google but that's an entirely different story.
It's a moderation nightmare. Facebook is a toxic name to many people. If I were Tim Cook I would leave social networks well alone to keep the Apple brand clean, if for no other reason.
I don't think Google+ ever got to the scale where that was an issue.
They only have to worry about moderation if they host anything. They can keep Apple clean of social networks while endorsing and supporting an open protocol or format for fetching/presentation into a thin client (something like ActivityPub/ActivityStreams, to pick an existing implementation that could make sense to adopt/adapt). I don't know, I think that'd be a very "Apple" thing to do with integrations into the rest of their client side ecosystem.
> They only have to worry about moderation if they host anything.
I don't think that is the case. At least many users, possibly even most users, would not understand the difference between Apple hosting a social network themselves and Apple promoting a thin client that views decentralized content. If you have an Apple Decentralized Social Networks app, and a parent sees their child viewing objectionable content through that app, a bulk of their ire is going to be directed at Apple; they will likely not even know the name of the entity actually hosting the content.
The "we're not actually hosting it so we're not responsible" argument, I don't think it's ever really worked. I don't think it would work in this case. See: torrent websites.
I think the benefit to Apple also goes down. They give up control, and for what gain?
The trite answer is a modal going something like "the content you're trying to access A) isn't available on your <AppName-Level subscription> or B) isn't in our walled garden of third party providers". I don't like how it sounds but I'm confident they could sell that.
Heck, integrate it into messenger and treat all content like emoji/stickers you must acquire from a controlled source to circulate.
> They only have to worry about moderation if they host anything.
Legally maybe, but it's nevertheless presented under the Apple brand... which means as soon as the first pedos, QAnon cultists, antivaxxers and other undesirable elements take a look, people will reflect that negatively on Apple.
Apple's brand is basically to be "clean and safe" for users. Engaging in the shitshow that is any modern social network would be one of the fastest way to tank their stock price.
Remember Google Plus? They tried but were ultimately found wanting.
Apple was focused on hardware. Their services play is only recent and my best guess is if they ever considered social, they rightfully saw how toxic it is and decided it wasn't worth the effort/risk of tarnishing their brand. Not that I think they'd have a compelling product. Personally, Apple's web products are average at best. See their stock apps.
Apple scraped that so quickly most never knew it existed. I think this shows a company that knows what it does well and has the discipline to stick to it.
Except they allowed Ping to get released in the first place. If they knew themselves so well, that idea would have been left to die on the vine rather than having X number of employees working on it at whatever expense.
Elon Musk was publicly bashing Facebook a few hours ago. We already have 3 threads on front page here. The more this bad press happens the more people become aware of Facebook's malpractices and better it is for everyone in long run.
This stunt will put WhatsApp blunder on back burner and it is exactly the kind of thing that Facebook does to spin the narrative.
Most people on Hacker News are entrepreneurs that run their own private businesses. Social media platforms are not some sort of public utility. Social media platforms are private businesses owned by private individuals who can choose who they want to let in and who they want to kick out just like any restaurant or bar or concert hall. If you dislike who a social media platform allows or does not allow, just use a different one. For example, many Trump supporters use parler... A platform which is known to kick off liberal voices.
Or better yet, just set up your own blog on your own host and do whatever you want.
> Most people on Hacker News are entrepreneurs that run their own private businesses.
I don't think that is true at all. There's definitely lots of business owners here (myself included!) but I don't think it's anywhere close to a majority.
> Most people on Hacker News are entrepreneurs that run their own private businesses.
Has there been a survey done on this? Because that's not the impression I have at all. Entrepeneurs are obviously over-represented in contrast to the general population, but I doubt they're the majority.
> Social media platforms are private businesses owned by private individuals who can choose who they want to let in and who they want to kick out just like any restaurant or bar or concert hall.
I hate to break it to you, but bars and restaurants and concert halls can't kick out anyone they want to. There are rules around access to semi-public places. For example they can't kick someone out just for wearing a MAGA hat, or for being black, or lots of other protected classes.
I’m aware of race, religion, sex, age, and some other federally protected statuses in the US that a business can’t discriminate against, but what protected class would political affiliation fall under?
I never said political affiliation was protected. I was just pointing out that the blanket statement "they can kick out anyone they want" is not correct.
I was referring to your example of being forced to do business with a person wearing a MAGA hat. I am unsure if that falls into a protected class, that is federally protected at least.
Note that this is only for employment. A california business must not discriminate in hiring based on political affiliation, but can refuse to serve customers based on political affiliation.
> they can't kick someone out just for wearing a MAGA hat,
Actually they can. In most jurisdictions that's not a protected class. Nightclubs are well-known for having dress codes with vague guidelines such as "no gang colors". Some fancy restaurants require men to wear jackets or women to wear dresses (this seems politically fraught to me). Some bars don't let you in if you're wearing shorts. And so on.
Generally a protected class is an unchangeable attribute.
Yeah this is just completely untrue. A business owner can refuse to serve you for any reason, as long as it isn't a specifically protected reason. Much as a company can fire you for any reason except for the legally protected ones.
Actually, a restaurant can ban you for anything outside of specific protected classes like race, gender, religion. A restaurant can ban you for your political beliefs, who your friends are as long as they are not a protected class, they don't like the breed of dog you have, or anything else. Welcome to a free country.
> hate to break it to you, but bars and restaurants and concert halls can't kick out anyone they want to. There are rules around access to semi-public places.
Yep. Like "No shirt, no shoes, no service." Or a more elaborate dress code.
Which is a simple "Terms of Service" for said establishment.
you can absolutely be denied entry for wearing a MAGA hat. businesses can have dress codes as broad or as specific as they want. must wear shoes and a shirt is pretty low bar. must have a collared shirt, no blue jeans, and no sneakers is also a common dress code. no hats, bandanas, or gang colors or MC colors are all common at bars/clubs/breastaurants.
Except that isn't true. Sure they can do it, but the person can sue, and if the business can't come up with a reasonable argument to single out that person, they will lose.
This is false. The only lawful grounds for a lawsuit is discrimination against a protected class such as race, gender, religion. Political affiliation is not protected in any way.
The sooner they take such actions the better it is for everyone in the long run. Someone somewhere will come up with an alternative that is better than anything we have today. And sorry but Signal is not the pinnacle of messaging.
I like what Matrix is doing but they are far away from becoming mainstream. Within 2-3 years a new platform will rise and it will fix flaws of existing messaging apps. This will then be followed by social media but it might take another 6-7 years to fix that mess.
God dammit we've had standards that work. Apple and Google are responsible for killing all of the decent messaging protocols by censoring the clients from their app stores.
When smartphones came out people modified IRC with support for push brokers and message replay but because of app stores this means push brokers for community maintained clients have to be maintained by the individual volunteer paying (yes! paying, shut up about the free dev accounts they don't allow you to send push notifications) for the "privilege" of submitting the app (meaning they have low to zero availability.) The relay Mozilla maintains allows servers and users to choose who brokers push messages but Apple and Google screw over their users for profit and this is the result.
This is a stretch for Android at least, Google charges a one-time $25 fee for a Play Store developer account and provides unlimited push notifications for no extra charge.
I just installed element today (the new name for riot)
It’s interesting and may have some features like rooms that will build interest outside of just being an IM tool. I do miss the days of AIM/Jabber/Google Talk/ where everything just worked. Bringing that experience to phones should be the goal rather than jumping from service to service.
My friends from Europe and Brazil are locked into WhatsApp, my American friends seem to prefer FB messenger. They’re really using 2 versions of the same company’s products which are “incompatible” at this point. Facebook could make them compatible with one another and with each other only OR they could do the socially beneficially thing and use an open protocol. Unless employees at FB push for this, they’re likely to take the former route.
