3 ms·

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 sil

by 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.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Compare with news, arguably a much easier to solve problem. We had a pretty good system in place for federation: RSS. All the big players have done their best to cripple it or outright destroy it to the point where it is no longer feasible. And the overhead for the user was relatively minimal with integration in the browser.
    - nercht12 10y ago
      One of the problems with RSS is that it's very one-sided. Facebook capitalized on user interaction, not just a news feed. Diaspora is like a boring Twitter feed. We already have Twitter. Browsers also put no emphasis on making RSS experience any better. They could have devoted a section to feed following. But no. I have to use Liferea for a decent RSS experience.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Every Wordpress blog out there has a comments RSS feed; interaction is certainly not precluded by the technology. If you want to have Facebook-style comments and likes, for example, you can simply have the commenter send the message to the original poster, which will then incorporate it in their feed for everyone else.
jasode 10y ago
>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, In my opinion, this type of "technical" thinking contributes to misdiagnosing why the majority do not use decentralized services. Likewise, thinking in terms of technology & software like the "fathers of Internet"[1] have done to try and "solve" the adoption of decentralized ecosystem is misguided. Instead of thinking in terms of the "software stack", think about the economics. Yes, luminaries like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee are smart but they don't seem to ever address the economics of why a billion people won't choose to run a decentralized stack from home computers. Not just economics of bandwidth and harddrives but also economics of diffused trust, security updates, etc. My theory on why they don't put economics at the forefront of their pleas for a decentralized internet: their formative years of the internet happened when the entire Internet was sponsored by the government and universities. So to them, it just seems like today's problem can be solved with "technology". >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 respectfully disagree. I think creating a "decentralized-Facebook" such as Diaspora to be adopted by a billion people is extremely difficult ... because it's a very hard economics puzzle. I'm dismayed that 99% of blog posts advocating for decentralization never deconstructs this factor. It's handicapping our ability to analyze the situation. [1]http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/internet/the-fathers-of-the-internet-revolution-urge-todays-pioneers-to-reinvent-the-web http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/intern...
- mxuribe 10y ago
  I really, really hate to admit it, but your points on economic perspective are very good. :-) I say "hate to admit" because I'm very much a proponent of decentralized services, and wish for more people to use them...but i guess like others my optimism might blind me a tad to the realities of typical/common user behaviors (and expectations), as well as the reasons and sources of those behaviors (and expectations). I guess users of decentralized services can continue to "throw their own parties", but it might mean not everyone will ever go to said parties. Ah well.
  - 10y ago

by Udo 10y ago

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.
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Compare with news, arguably a much easier to solve problem. We had a pretty good system in place for federation: RSS. All the big players have done their best to cripple it or outright destroy it to the point where it is no longer feasible. And the overhead for the user was relatively minimal with integration in the browser.
  - nercht12 10y ago
    One of the problems with RSS is that it's very one-sided. Facebook capitalized on user interaction, not just a news feed. Diaspora is like a boring Twitter feed. We already have Twitter. Browsers also put no emphasis on making RSS experience any better. They could have devoted a section to feed following. But no. I have to use Liferea for a decent RSS experience.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Every Wordpress blog out there has a comments RSS feed; interaction is certainly not precluded by the technology. If you want to have Facebook-style comments and likes, for example, you can simply have the commenter send the message to the original poster, which will then incorporate it in their feed for everyone else.

jasode 10y ago

>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, In my opinion, this type of "technical" thinking contributes to misdiagnosing why the majority do not use decentralized services. Likewise, thinking in terms of technology & software like the "fathers of Internet"[1] have done to try and "solve" the adoption of decentralized ecosystem is misguided. Instead of thinking in terms of the "software stack", think about the economics. Yes, luminaries like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee are smart but they don't seem to ever address the economics of why a billion people won't choose to run a decentralized stack from home computers. Not just economics of bandwidth and harddrives but also economics of diffused trust, security updates, etc. My theory on why they don't put economics at the forefront of their pleas for a decentralized internet: their formative years of the internet happened when the entire Internet was sponsored by the government and universities. So to them, it just seems like today's problem can be solved with "technology". >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 respectfully disagree. I think creating a "decentralized-Facebook" such as Diaspora to be adopted by a billion people is extremely difficult ... because it's a very hard economics puzzle. I'm dismayed that 99% of blog posts advocating for decentralization never deconstructs this factor. It's handicapping our ability to analyze the situation. [1]http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/internet/the-fathers-of-the-internet-revolution-urge-todays-pioneers-to-reinvent-the-web http://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/intern...

mxuribe 10y ago
I really, really hate to admit it, but your points on economic perspective are very good. :-) I say "hate to admit" because I'm very much a proponent of decentralized services, and wish for more people to use them...but i guess like others my optimism might blind me a tad to the realities of typical/common user behaviors (and expectations), as well as the reasons and sources of those behaviors (and expectations). I guess users of decentralized services can continue to "throw their own parties", but it might mean not everyone will ever go to said parties. Ah well.
- 10y ago