5 ms·

It doesn't really matter whether Google was "in the right" or what the backstory of this case is. It's also not a question of bringing this to the attention of

by Udo 10y ago

It doesn't really matter whether Google was "in the right" or what the backstory of this case is. It's also not a question of bringing this to the attention of the "right" people at Google. This is an issue inherent to the entire system. The problem is that people entrust their work and often their entire public persona to entities that are guaranteed not to act in their interest. I don't even think this is about access to decentralized alternatives, after all if you devote years of content to a platform you can probably manage to go through some technical setup pain. Gmail, Blogger, Youtube, Twitter, Facebook - there are self-hosted alternatives out there to all of them, but the big trade-off is that content creators have to shoot themselves in the foot on discoverability if they opt out of the big platforms. Either at some point we will collectively wise up and re-decentralize or we'll go further down the path we're already on. Our lives ruled arbitrarily by DRM and ToS. I do recognize that I'm personally part of the problem, it's really hard to opt out.

DanBC 10y ago
The other problem is that backups are too difficult for most people. (Until they lose all those photos of their child, or their dissertation, or their novel, or their business accounts.) We need some way to communicate the need for backups to people; and we need simple backup solutions. While it's not always a backup, the guy in submitted article would have been okay with Time Machine or similar.
jacquesm 10y ago
> Either at some point we will collectively wise up and re-decentralize or we'll go further down the path we're already on. It'll have to get a lot worse before it will get better. This is just another case of the pendulum swinging, and for me the reason to stay away from these centralized services as much as I can. This isn't always easy, especially not when for other people the web is now synonymous with Facebook and Google (and maybe one or two other websites). Over the years the trend has been a steady reduction in the number of websites that the average surfer uses on a daily basis, this is now < 10 for most people, with a shockingly low 90 or so websites visited per month. Silo-forming is a logical response to the messy free-for-all that we had (in part Facebooks success is the fact that it limited freedom of expression over HTML), but this has now far overshot the mark where dependency on these very large services is fast becoming an Achilles heel.
- Udo 10y ago
  As someone who in the past tried very unsuccessfully to get a distributed social network off the ground, I'm frustrated by the utter lack of interest in the silo dilemma. Even when a high profile case of someone getting screwed makes it onto the news (and it recently did!), nobody seems to have a problem with the basics of our way of doing things. It's stunning to me that we live in a world where the technological infrastructure for a federated web is better than it has ever been, yet at the same time interest is at an all-time low. But I still believe it doesn't take much to start a swing in the other direction. If tomorrow a couple of HN users got together and formed a loosely-affiliated working group for decentralization, there is a decent chance the current momentum could be meaningfully changed.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > If tomorrow a couple of HN users got together and formed a loosely-affiliated working group for decentralization, there is a decent chance the current momentum could be meaningfully changed. I hope with you but I fear it's not the case. In the end user convenience will overpower all of the good reasons not to do this and a federated system will - unless it has been specifically designed from the ground up not to have these issues and I'm not sure it can be done - always be slightly less easy to use than one that is just a single silo. That's the heart of the problem and to date I have not seen anything that even comes close to solving that. In my opinion that's the only problem worth solving in this arena, but of course it is much more fun to go and code up 70% or so of FB in a federated manner with all kinds of usability issues related to the fact that it is now a federated system. This is a hard problem to solve.
    - Udo 10y ago
      I sort-of agree with you about user convenience, that's what I meant by discoverability issues, but I'm a bit more optimistic that it could be overcome. Absolutely, when people go and have fun coding 70% of FB until the software is able to federate with itself, that's not going to work. But if they would consider it mandatory that their project can talk to other federated projects, that's what I would see as a potential turning point. The second component that's necessary in my opinion to achieve some kind of real momentum is early adopters that are not from the same techo geek background as we are. There are a lot of these groups that have an acute interest in circumventing silo restrictions, but they're usually not the kind of people I like to associate with - yet if there was one such community with a sufficiently non-deplorable ideology interested in this, it could eventually propel the idea into the mainstream.
Confusion 10y ago
I think main problem here is that Google can get away with not adhering to their own terms of service: We believe that you own your data and preserving your access to such data is important. If we discontinue a Service, where reasonably possible, we will give you reasonable advance notice and a chance to get information out of that Service. It is 'reasonably possible' for Google to give this person access to his data.
- asuffield 10y ago
  (Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google. I don't know what's going on in this particular case, and I don't really want to, because it's probably a huge pile of lawyers.) > It is 'reasonably possible' for Google to give this person access to his data. This is not necessarily true. For example, the data might contain material which is illegal to distribute. I'm not sure what can be done in a case like that.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > This is not necessarily true. For example, the data might contain material which is illegal to distribute. I'm not sure what can be done in a case like that. In this case the best decision is probably to stop distributing them to the world but still enable the original owner/uploader to download them.
    - asuffield 10y ago
      I'm no lawyer, and don't fully understand these things, but would that not also be illegal distribution?
  - AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
    Sure, but unless the guy has a massive stockpile of CP that he was storing on Google's servers, how difficult would it be to let him access his data sans the illicit material? It's not as though a handful of illegal pictures somehow taints every email, blog post, and story he's ever uploaded so as to make them all contraband.
amelius 10y ago
It can go two ways. If the only thing people really need are basic blogs, videos and chat/email, then in sufficient time, good decentralized solutions will emerge. But if people become dependent on more and more features, then probably we will always have to rely on big companies.

by Udo 10y ago

DanBC 10y ago

The other problem is that backups are too difficult for most people. (Until they lose all those photos of their child, or their dissertation, or their novel, or their business accounts.) We need some way to communicate the need for backups to people; and we need simple backup solutions. While it's not always a backup, the guy in submitted article would have been okay with Time Machine or similar.

jacquesm 10y ago

> Either at some point we will collectively wise up and re-decentralize or we'll go further down the path we're already on. It'll have to get a lot worse before it will get better. This is just another case of the pendulum swinging, and for me the reason to stay away from these centralized services as much as I can. This isn't always easy, especially not when for other people the web is now synonymous with Facebook and Google (and maybe one or two other websites). Over the years the trend has been a steady reduction in the number of websites that the average surfer uses on a daily basis, this is now < 10 for most people, with a shockingly low 90 or so websites visited per month. Silo-forming is a logical response to the messy free-for-all that we had (in part Facebooks success is the fact that it limited freedom of expression over HTML), but this has now far overshot the mark where dependency on these very large services is fast becoming an Achilles heel.

Udo 10y ago
As someone who in the past tried very unsuccessfully to get a distributed social network off the ground, I'm frustrated by the utter lack of interest in the silo dilemma. Even when a high profile case of someone getting screwed makes it onto the news (and it recently did!), nobody seems to have a problem with the basics of our way of doing things. It's stunning to me that we live in a world where the technological infrastructure for a federated web is better than it has ever been, yet at the same time interest is at an all-time low. But I still believe it doesn't take much to start a swing in the other direction. If tomorrow a couple of HN users got together and formed a loosely-affiliated working group for decentralization, there is a decent chance the current momentum could be meaningfully changed.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > If tomorrow a couple of HN users got together and formed a loosely-affiliated working group for decentralization, there is a decent chance the current momentum could be meaningfully changed. I hope with you but I fear it's not the case. In the end user convenience will overpower all of the good reasons not to do this and a federated system will - unless it has been specifically designed from the ground up not to have these issues and I'm not sure it can be done - always be slightly less easy to use than one that is just a single silo. That's the heart of the problem and to date I have not seen anything that even comes close to solving that. In my opinion that's the only problem worth solving in this arena, but of course it is much more fun to go and code up 70% or so of FB in a federated manner with all kinds of usability issues related to the fact that it is now a federated system. This is a hard problem to solve.
  - Udo 10y ago
    I sort-of agree with you about user convenience, that's what I meant by discoverability issues, but I'm a bit more optimistic that it could be overcome. Absolutely, when people go and have fun coding 70% of FB until the software is able to federate with itself, that's not going to work. But if they would consider it mandatory that their project can talk to other federated projects, that's what I would see as a potential turning point. The second component that's necessary in my opinion to achieve some kind of real momentum is early adopters that are not from the same techo geek background as we are. There are a lot of these groups that have an acute interest in circumventing silo restrictions, but they're usually not the kind of people I like to associate with - yet if there was one such community with a sufficiently non-deplorable ideology interested in this, it could eventually propel the idea into the mainstream.

Confusion 10y ago

I think main problem here is that Google can get away with not adhering to their own terms of service: We believe that you own your data and preserving your access to such data is important. If we discontinue a Service, where reasonably possible, we will give you reasonable advance notice and a chance to get information out of that Service. It is 'reasonably possible' for Google to give this person access to his data.

asuffield 10y ago
(Tedious disclaimer: my opinion only, not speaking for anybody else. I'm an SRE at Google. I don't know what's going on in this particular case, and I don't really want to, because it's probably a huge pile of lawyers.) > It is 'reasonably possible' for Google to give this person access to his data. This is not necessarily true. For example, the data might contain material which is illegal to distribute. I'm not sure what can be done in a case like that.
- wolfgke 10y ago
  > This is not necessarily true. For example, the data might contain material which is illegal to distribute. I'm not sure what can be done in a case like that. In this case the best decision is probably to stop distributing them to the world but still enable the original owner/uploader to download them.
  - asuffield 10y ago
    I'm no lawyer, and don't fully understand these things, but would that not also be illegal distribution?
- AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
  Sure, but unless the guy has a massive stockpile of CP that he was storing on Google's servers, how difficult would it be to let him access his data sans the illicit material? It's not as though a handful of illegal pictures somehow taints every email, blog post, and story he's ever uploaded so as to make them all contraband.

amelius 10y ago

It can go two ways. If the only thing people really need are basic blogs, videos and chat/email, then in sufficient time, good decentralized solutions will emerge. But if people become dependent on more and more features, then probably we will always have to rely on big companies.