4 ms·

In some ways, it may be worse than the OP suggests as we apparently race towards mobile apps. Seems about the right time for PointCast+. Its the proverbial te

In some ways, it may be worse than the OP suggests as we apparently race towards mobile apps. Seems about the right time for PointCast+. Its the proverbial technology pendulum. It seems obvious that we'll continue our momentum and maybe even abandon the generic browser and revert to the (now mobile-based) fat client past. Much of the article seems devoted to concerns about proprietary protocols and closes with a plea to keep protocols open with a published specification. I think this is a reasonable concern and a noble plea, but yet also an (unfortunately) unreasonable request. Companies are developing their protocols to support their needs, not yours. Its reasonable to want access to the data companies are collecting. Its valuable data. But these companies are not in the data services business. And if they were, its reasonable for them to charge a handsome price for the access you are looking for. Imagine the black eye a company would get for trying that approach. Perhaps there's a view that says, users freely give the data so they should be able to freely get it back. But there's a counter argument that users are "compensated" for contributing their data in the form of free access to the services it provides. Given the amount of time people spend on social apps, its reasonable to think they value the "free" service highly. IIRC there was a start-up that attempted to build an alternative social network based on open standards... It didn't go very far. Perhaps people need to learn to vote with their actions. Maybe we need to try that again and convince more of the influential technical folks to jump ship. Maybe through competition the non-open establish players can be shown the value of openness.

EdSharkey 11y ago
I suppose personally serving all of one's own data is the only reliable way for users to "freely give their data". As you say, one can't expect service providers to be their remote harddrive so they can get their data back. Service providers are in the business of presenting one's data through the lens and filters of their service. Personally serving one's own data such that a service can lens and filter it would require an entirely new protocol. It would need to have the data properly secured so the parts of you that are an open book (cat pics, blog posts) are served freely, and secrets (bitcoin wallet, personal notes) are not. For apps that shouldn't be centralized, processing related to your shared data would need to be distributed such that a service could be formed entirely from peer-to-peer user nodes. In a perfect world, no central organization could hoover up all the data and do their analytics on it/share with the repressive governments. For availability, you'd want your data to replicate to many trusted peers so that you could always get at it. As if the world were one giant cassandra ring, you'd always want to reach consistent states eventually. It seems like there are too many hard computer science and networking problems for this to be a community effort (at least any time soon...)
hohenheim 11y ago
I agree that user data is driving the "free" service of social media. But I don't see your point when you say an open social media implementation failed because it was open. You imply that Facebook succeeded since it was a closed protocol implementation. Why did Facebook succeed? Would have it succeeded if it was open? Perhaps market needs and competition scene has more to do with success than the nature of protocol. What percentage of users even care about protocols?
- bsaunder 11y ago
  For the open facebook alternative, I believe I was thinking about Diaspora (apparently it's still alive and kicking). https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ Maybe its worth investigating. As for the "failed because it was open" comment. Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that it failed because it was open. Merely that it was open and failed (apparently maybe not so much failed). I had thought it failed for the obvious reason: not attaining the necessary critical mass that a social network needs. One of its primary propositions was an open data policy. Apparently this might not have been sufficient to launch it into success. Again, there's still something there so maybe its still rumbling on.

EdSharkey 11y ago

I suppose personally serving all of one's own data is the only reliable way for users to "freely give their data". As you say, one can't expect service providers to be their remote harddrive so they can get their data back. Service providers are in the business of presenting one's data through the lens and filters of their service. Personally serving one's own data such that a service can lens and filter it would require an entirely new protocol. It would need to have the data properly secured so the parts of you that are an open book (cat pics, blog posts) are served freely, and secrets (bitcoin wallet, personal notes) are not. For apps that shouldn't be centralized, processing related to your shared data would need to be distributed such that a service could be formed entirely from peer-to-peer user nodes. In a perfect world, no central organization could hoover up all the data and do their analytics on it/share with the repressive governments. For availability, you'd want your data to replicate to many trusted peers so that you could always get at it. As if the world were one giant cassandra ring, you'd always want to reach consistent states eventually. It seems like there are too many hard computer science and networking problems for this to be a community effort (at least any time soon...)

hohenheim 11y ago

I agree that user data is driving the "free" service of social media. But I don't see your point when you say an open social media implementation failed because it was open. You imply that Facebook succeeded since it was a closed protocol implementation. Why did Facebook succeed? Would have it succeeded if it was open? Perhaps market needs and competition scene has more to do with success than the nature of protocol. What percentage of users even care about protocols?

bsaunder 11y ago
For the open facebook alternative, I believe I was thinking about Diaspora (apparently it's still alive and kicking). https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ Maybe its worth investigating. As for the "failed because it was open" comment. Sorry, I didn't mean to suggest that it failed because it was open. Merely that it was open and failed (apparently maybe not so much failed). I had thought it failed for the obvious reason: not attaining the necessary critical mass that a social network needs. One of its primary propositions was an open data policy. Apparently this might not have been sufficient to launch it into success. Again, there's still something there so maybe its still rumbling on.