7 ms·

Why do we keep building centralized "decentralized" services to replace entrenched centralized providers? What hope of victory is there against the Twitters and

by xj9 10y ago

Why do we keep building centralized "decentralized" services to replace entrenched centralized providers? What hope of victory is there against the Twitters and Facebooks of the world? They already own that space! They aren't going to be disrupted by Yet Another Twitter Clone. Disruption means doing something that your competitors are effectively incapable of doing.

phowat 10y ago
I have high hopes for Akasha ( http://akasha.world http://akasha.world )
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  Seems interesting, but it is ridiculous that they have a profile in each other "social network". In case anyone mentions, https://twitter.com/facebook https://twitter.com/facebook is also ridiculous.
  - orthecreedence 10y ago
    > it is ridiculous that they have a profile in each other "social network". I disagree. Should socialists not be allowed to use computers because capitalism made computers and they are betraying their cause by using one? (Simple/contrived example, but it makes the point) How is anybody going to even hear about this project if it doesn't advertise on social media?
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      No, that wasn't my point. A socialist should be able to use a computer, but not own computers or sell computers, we may say.
mrcactu5 10y ago
maybe I don't want Twitter owning my Tweets however, I do agree... This is not the first Twitter clone on here?
- xj9 10y ago
  That's a fine reason to use an alternative social network, but building these things doesn't solve the larger problem in a way that is meaningfully competitive. GNUSocial has been around for ages, but you don't see anyone scrambling to compete against the rising tide of federated social networks. Most people are on Facebook and Twitter. That is our target market. The question isn't, "how do I maintain control of my media?", that's actually not a hard problem. The problem that needs solving is this: How can we, the people, compete directly with enormously wealthy corporate entities? We have them hooked on free software, that's a huge win, but how do we go from there to user acquisition? How do we do support? Marketing? How do we ensure good UX? Does it cost money? How do we pay for our time? I don't pretend to know the answer, but I think these are things the FOSS community needs to spend some time thinking about.
  - mxuribe 10y ago
    I hate to admit it, but you have great points here!
- optimuspaul 10y ago
  the trade off then is nobody reading your tweets. So which do you want? an audience or tweet ownership? And what does "owning" your tweets even mean?
  - mxuribe 10y ago
    I think in a better world/internet (need not be perfect), you would post your content (posts, tweets, whatever) on your site first. Or, maybe a decentralized site that you might not control alone, but is a separate community from the big silos (e.g. https://quitter.no https://quitter.no)...And then, your content is accepted (pushed out) and able to be read by users who only live (or spend most of their time) on the big silos. In other words, it is possible to have both worlds that you noted. This would allow freedom for indie authors to own their content (in the scenario where one of the big social network silos shuts down, or the big boys for some reason wish to censor an author's content, etc.) and post their content however they wish and from wherever they wish, but still allow them to retain audience (those users who are fine just living on the big social network silos)...This is not unlike email, where i can send a message to pretty much any legitimate email address regardless of the silo (I'm leaving out spam blocks out of discussion of course).
blowski 10y ago
Their USP, which Facebook and Twitter can never compete with, is self-hosting. Multiple companies could set up, some with ad-free paid options, others funded by advertising. And if you don't like those options, you can host it yourself for you and your family. I think that's a worthy goal, though I'm not convinced it we'll achieve it because of the amount of money the vested interests can throw at preventing it. But it remains a good idea, even if it never becomes mainstream.
- smacktoward 10y ago
  > They're USP, which Facebook and Twitter can never compete with, is self-hosting. USPs work best when they address an acute problem the person you're pitching it to has to struggle with every day. Nobody in the general public is looking at Facebook or Twitter and thinking "this would be so much better if it made me pay money and deal with installing software."
- eropple 10y ago
  > Multiple companies could set up, some with ad-free paid options, others funded by advertising. OK. But why would they? What is the raison d'etre for such a company to exist? What is the competitive advantage here for those companies to actually do that? How does this not turn into a hilarious race-to-the-bottom that zeroes out any reason for anybody to do it in the first place? I am profoundly unconvinced that you're going to ever beat a Twitter or a Facebook and it's not because of "vested interests preventing it", it's because the current options meet the needs and desires of the userbase. The size of the group that cares about self-hosting something like this is within epsilon of zero percent. Because nobody cares, there is no network effect to pull other people.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    It turns into a utility, like Wikipedia, or OpenStreetMap. Not all that provides value generates profit, hence the need for a different model. Mind you, Telegram is funded by one wealthy benefactor, and I'd argue its a reasonably large service not attempting to compete for profit against other incumbents.
uola 10y ago
Because building real decentralized services, i.e. cross-platform peer-to-peer clients that are stylish and secure, is really hard.
- xj9 10y ago
  Do Hard Things. Nothing interesting was ever easy. Granted, that's easier said than done.
daveid 10y ago
This isn't a startup, it's an open-source project. Most likely the Twitters and Facebooks will win, but people should have a viable choice... Plus this is an incredibly fun project to be working on, to be quite honest.
- omphalos 10y ago
  I kind of think of imminent battle between decentralized/centralized as analogous to the Linux/Windows wars of yesterday. Over the short term you're probably right that centralized services will win. But because decentralized services yield control of your data, they have the potential to be so much better for the consumer than centralized services.
- xj9 10y ago
  I'm not criticizing the project or the personal enjoyment you derive from working on it. Keep it up. Not everyone wants to make it a fight, and I respect that. Personally, I live for the struggle.
fiatjaf 10y ago
I guess people should make different kinds of "social networks". Twitter, Facebook, Instagram -- and all the decentralized clones -- are just the same thing. You have your own page/blog where you post your own things, others read those from their "news feed". Is that really everything that all the developers in the world could conceive? Is that the definition of "social network"?
- TuringTest 10y ago
  In the blogosphere (boy, has that word dated fast) there was such things called "planets", which aggregated the blogs from a community of interest. Kinda like hacker news, but if you found some interesting article you could keep track of everything the same author had published to the same site.
golemotron 10y ago
> Disruption means doing something that your competitors are effectively incapable of doing. Protecting free speech in the face of ideological pressure is an option.

by xj9 10y ago

phowat 10y ago

I have high hopes for Akasha ( http://akasha.world http://akasha.world )

fiatjaf 10y ago
Seems interesting, but it is ridiculous that they have a profile in each other "social network". In case anyone mentions, https://twitter.com/facebook https://twitter.com/facebook is also ridiculous.
- orthecreedence 10y ago
  > it is ridiculous that they have a profile in each other "social network". I disagree. Should socialists not be allowed to use computers because capitalism made computers and they are betraying their cause by using one? (Simple/contrived example, but it makes the point) How is anybody going to even hear about this project if it doesn't advertise on social media?
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    No, that wasn't my point. A socialist should be able to use a computer, but not own computers or sell computers, we may say.

mrcactu5 10y ago

maybe I don't want Twitter owning my Tweets however, I do agree... This is not the first Twitter clone on here?

xj9 10y ago
That's a fine reason to use an alternative social network, but building these things doesn't solve the larger problem in a way that is meaningfully competitive. GNUSocial has been around for ages, but you don't see anyone scrambling to compete against the rising tide of federated social networks. Most people are on Facebook and Twitter. That is our target market. The question isn't, "how do I maintain control of my media?", that's actually not a hard problem. The problem that needs solving is this: How can we, the people, compete directly with enormously wealthy corporate entities? We have them hooked on free software, that's a huge win, but how do we go from there to user acquisition? How do we do support? Marketing? How do we ensure good UX? Does it cost money? How do we pay for our time? I don't pretend to know the answer, but I think these are things the FOSS community needs to spend some time thinking about.
- mxuribe 10y ago
  I hate to admit it, but you have great points here!
optimuspaul 10y ago
the trade off then is nobody reading your tweets. So which do you want? an audience or tweet ownership? And what does "owning" your tweets even mean?
- mxuribe 10y ago
  I think in a better world/internet (need not be perfect), you would post your content (posts, tweets, whatever) on your site first. Or, maybe a decentralized site that you might not control alone, but is a separate community from the big silos (e.g. https://quitter.no https://quitter.no)...And then, your content is accepted (pushed out) and able to be read by users who only live (or spend most of their time) on the big silos. In other words, it is possible to have both worlds that you noted. This would allow freedom for indie authors to own their content (in the scenario where one of the big social network silos shuts down, or the big boys for some reason wish to censor an author's content, etc.) and post their content however they wish and from wherever they wish, but still allow them to retain audience (those users who are fine just living on the big social network silos)...This is not unlike email, where i can send a message to pretty much any legitimate email address regardless of the silo (I'm leaving out spam blocks out of discussion of course).

blowski 10y ago

Their USP, which Facebook and Twitter can never compete with, is self-hosting. Multiple companies could set up, some with ad-free paid options, others funded by advertising. And if you don't like those options, you can host it yourself for you and your family. I think that's a worthy goal, though I'm not convinced it we'll achieve it because of the amount of money the vested interests can throw at preventing it. But it remains a good idea, even if it never becomes mainstream.

smacktoward 10y ago
> They're USP, which Facebook and Twitter can never compete with, is self-hosting. USPs work best when they address an acute problem the person you're pitching it to has to struggle with every day. Nobody in the general public is looking at Facebook or Twitter and thinking "this would be so much better if it made me pay money and deal with installing software."
eropple 10y ago
> Multiple companies could set up, some with ad-free paid options, others funded by advertising. OK. But why would they? What is the raison d'etre for such a company to exist? What is the competitive advantage here for those companies to actually do that? How does this not turn into a hilarious race-to-the-bottom that zeroes out any reason for anybody to do it in the first place? I am profoundly unconvinced that you're going to ever beat a Twitter or a Facebook and it's not because of "vested interests preventing it", it's because the current options meet the needs and desires of the userbase. The size of the group that cares about self-hosting something like this is within epsilon of zero percent. Because nobody cares, there is no network effect to pull other people.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  It turns into a utility, like Wikipedia, or OpenStreetMap. Not all that provides value generates profit, hence the need for a different model. Mind you, Telegram is funded by one wealthy benefactor, and I'd argue its a reasonably large service not attempting to compete for profit against other incumbents.

uola 10y ago

Because building real decentralized services, i.e. cross-platform peer-to-peer clients that are stylish and secure, is really hard.

xj9 10y ago
Do Hard Things. Nothing interesting was ever easy. Granted, that's easier said than done.

daveid 10y ago

This isn't a startup, it's an open-source project. Most likely the Twitters and Facebooks will win, but people should have a viable choice... Plus this is an incredibly fun project to be working on, to be quite honest.

omphalos 10y ago
I kind of think of imminent battle between decentralized/centralized as analogous to the Linux/Windows wars of yesterday. Over the short term you're probably right that centralized services will win. But because decentralized services yield control of your data, they have the potential to be so much better for the consumer than centralized services.
xj9 10y ago
I'm not criticizing the project or the personal enjoyment you derive from working on it. Keep it up. Not everyone wants to make it a fight, and I respect that. Personally, I live for the struggle.

fiatjaf 10y ago

I guess people should make different kinds of "social networks". Twitter, Facebook, Instagram -- and all the decentralized clones -- are just the same thing. You have your own page/blog where you post your own things, others read those from their "news feed". Is that really everything that all the developers in the world could conceive? Is that the definition of "social network"?

TuringTest 10y ago
In the blogosphere (boy, has that word dated fast) there was such things called "planets", which aggregated the blogs from a community of interest. Kinda like hacker news, but if you found some interesting article you could keep track of everything the same author had published to the same site.

golemotron 10y ago

> Disruption means doing something that your competitors are effectively incapable of doing. Protecting free speech in the face of ideological pressure is an option.