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Brexit for Facebook - really? Is that all we learned from this recent referendum? Yes, it is weird to have this much personal information about so many people

Brexit for Facebook - really? Is that all we learned from this recent referendum? Yes, it is weird to have this much personal information about so many people in the world in the hands of a corporation. But Facebook serves a real need - to connect. And they do it well. The problem is real - we need to have a non-commercial entity run this. But if Facebook dies tomorrow another company will take its place. How do we solve the need while addressing these issues? Should the government take it over? Which one? Should it become a non-profit? How should it be run? The problem is real but the solution is not to shut it down, but to work together to find the best way to serve all users. So Facebook is now a political issue - an international one. For all the bad things that came out of Facebook, there is also a lot of good - some would argue more. Let's address it by working together instead of shutting off.

daveguy 10y ago
> How do we solve the need while addressing these issues? I always hoped that something like diaspora[0] would take off. With blockchain technologies and ipfs style distributed filesystems it might be possible without any central organization. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)
- saynsedit 10y ago
  There's also GNU social. It's a decentralized (a la email/XMPP) social network. Distributed technology is not there yet but decentralized gets us pretty far.
- wtbob 10y ago
  The Indie Web camp[1] guys have ideas for how to implement pretty much all of the value of Facebook using HTTP and other stuff on top of it — no need for a blockchain, no need for IPFS, just web servers talking to one another. They have protocols for mentions, for notifications, for authorisation. It's pretty cool. If folks would implement it, then we could each have our own feed, like Facebook offers, and all we'd need is Apache or nginx and some server-side code. [1] https://indiewebcamp.com/ https://indiewebcamp.com/
rhaps0dy 10y ago
Where in the article is "Brexit for Facebook", or anything similar? I don't understand your comment, please clarify.
- george_ciobanu 10y ago
  I compare it to Brexit because it is the same spirit - if we are not the driver, we'll get out of the car. Any project will have some issues - to simply give up is to say that people don't want to connect. We clearly want and need to. I like that he points to the problem, but I disagree with the solution.
mtmail 10y ago
I don't see the word Brexit in the article or HN comments. The article was first published 2011.
zanny 10y ago
The ostatus protocol already is in use through various projects, albeit relative to RMS GNUSocial would be the topical one. It replaces Facebook and Twitter with a federated newsfeed / profile protocol where you can either run your own server or use a third party server to connect to any other ostatus user in the same user@server semantics as email, xmpp, or matrix.

daveguy 10y ago

> How do we solve the need while addressing these issues? I always hoped that something like diaspora[0] would take off. With blockchain technologies and ipfs style distributed filesystems it might be possible without any central organization. [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)

saynsedit 10y ago
There's also GNU social. It's a decentralized (a la email/XMPP) social network. Distributed technology is not there yet but decentralized gets us pretty far.
wtbob 10y ago
The Indie Web camp[1] guys have ideas for how to implement pretty much all of the value of Facebook using HTTP and other stuff on top of it — no need for a blockchain, no need for IPFS, just web servers talking to one another. They have protocols for mentions, for notifications, for authorisation. It's pretty cool. If folks would implement it, then we could each have our own feed, like Facebook offers, and all we'd need is Apache or nginx and some server-side code. [1] https://indiewebcamp.com/ https://indiewebcamp.com/

rhaps0dy 10y ago

Where in the article is "Brexit for Facebook", or anything similar? I don't understand your comment, please clarify.

george_ciobanu 10y ago
I compare it to Brexit because it is the same spirit - if we are not the driver, we'll get out of the car. Any project will have some issues - to simply give up is to say that people don't want to connect. We clearly want and need to. I like that he points to the problem, but I disagree with the solution.

mtmail 10y ago

I don't see the word Brexit in the article or HN comments. The article was first published 2011.

zanny 10y ago

The ostatus protocol already is in use through various projects, albeit relative to RMS GNUSocial would be the topical one. It replaces Facebook and Twitter with a federated newsfeed / profile protocol where you can either run your own server or use a third party server to connect to any other ostatus user in the same user@server semantics as email, xmpp, or matrix.