23 ms·

> These services track us everywhere, while claiming to give us a better “user experience”. That's kind of the problem though; they usually _do_ offer a better

by Ajedi32 10y ago

> These services track us everywhere, while claiming to give us a better “user experience”. That's kind of the problem though; they usually _do_ offer a better user experience. If we want users to start using open source software rather than walled garden solutions from large companies, we're going to have to start building open source solutions which offer a comparable user experience to proprietary ones from large companies; a difficult task to say the least.

ksk 10y ago
I agree with your larger point, but should user privacy be part of the user experience?
- Ajedi32 10y ago
  Privacy _is_ part of the user experience, but only insofar as users actually care about that particular feature. Most users I believe do consider privacy a positive, but often it's a low priority compared to other "more important" features like convenience and usability.
cookiecaper 10y ago
The most crucial thing for the future of information freedom is to fix American intellectual property and network access laws. "Walled gardens" exist because anyone who effectively frees a user's data on the user's terms is at least sued, if not jailed, under statutes like the Soviet-era, pre-Internet Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and luddite interpretations of the Copyright Act that consider a RAM copy that exists for milliseconds an infringement. Allow coders to make it easy to cart your data around and suddenly the major tech incumbents will have to compete on merit instead of merely holding your data hostage, which is exactly what they don't want. The powerful make laws to prevent others from challenging their power. If we update copyright and the CFAA to address conventional internet use (from the user's perspective, not the corporate giants who were quick to legislate themselves a safe harbor with the DMCA) and constrain the scope of browsewrap and clickwrap agreements to reasonable liability disclaimers, we'll have no problem maintaining a vibrant and accessible marketplace for user-facing services.
- matt4077 10y ago
  "Walled Gardens" have nothing to do with IP laws. The user obviously retains copyright on whatever he posts/uploads to fb/twitter/etc. If the user grants you permission, IP laws cannot be used to stop you. The CFAA did indeed come into play with the guy who wanted to automate Facebook profile transfers. But apart from the questions of that specific case, it's just not true that there are millions of people waiting to migrate away from Facebook if only they could transfer their photo library. Most of the value in these networks is in "network effect", i. e. it's usefulness is a function of the number of other people using it. And then there's good old "this service is actually pretty good". Case in point: Gmail. It's quite easy to move away from it: you can download all your data via SMTP and set up forwarding or an autoresponder. That people do not do so has nothing to do with your conspiracy theories. They actually like the service.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    >Most of the value in these networks is in "network effect", i. e. it's usefulness is a function of the number of other people using it. No, the only reason "network effects" matter on something that is useful specifically because it makes the transfer of information instantaneous and fluid is because we have artificial barriers (CFAA/IP) in place to keep that data stuck with one vendor. Without this, the number of people using Facebook to access Person Data would be transparent to the average user, much like the number of people using Chrome or Firefox to access hypertext. And much like Chrome and Firefox, the switching penalty would be reasonably surmountable for most users. It's the difference between learning a new interface to the data (as in switching from Chrome) and being cut off from the data completely (as in switching from Facebook). SaaS sites have network effects specifically because we (accidentally) legislated those effects into existence. There are no physical barriers locking people in -- the "wall" of this garden is entirely artificial. >"Walled Gardens" have nothing to do with IP laws. >If the user grants you permission, IP laws cannot be used to stop you. This is 1000% false. IP laws absolutely CAN and HAVE been used to stop people from accessing online resources, even to get information that the user has authorized the data gatherer to collect. That's because when you download a page from one of the major tech services, you're not just downloading the user's copyrighted content to which the host has a license, you're also downloading the host's copyrighted code and parsing through it to extract the user's requested data. That's been interpreted to be an infringement under the Copyright Act on multiple occasions: Ticketmaster v. RMG, Facebook v. Power Ventures, Perfect 10 v. Amazon (in which the judges ruled Google's use fair on appeal, because it was Google), and others. While you may be able to argue there's an implied license if the robots.txt is blank, that is only going to last you through the first notification that the host doesn't like your activity, which is not necessarily formal (cf. Craigslist v. 3Taps), which would matter both for CFAA and copyright purposes. It's not an issue limited exclusively to something sneaky done by Power. Even if IP law itself was irrelevant (and it's not), there would be a lot of work to do here just in fixing up the laws around network access and blocking onerous Terms of Use. >it's just not true that there are millions of people waiting to migrate away from Facebook if only they could transfer their photo library. Whether you believe someone could do a better job than Facebook or not, surely you don't believe it should be, for all practical intents and purposes, illegal for them to attempt to do so. >That people do not do so has nothing to do with your conspiracy theories. Please try to start this type of service and get back to me about "conspiracy theories" after a C&D destroys your business, as it has hundreds of others, including mine. Not to be rude, but you clearly have never dealt with this in a serious manner. Please be more careful before you go around making assumptions and dismissing the perspective of those with direct experience.
syphilis2 10y ago
I believe this is true. But I also have found that sometimes the user experience is diminished when not "logged in" to encourage people to create accounts. Pinterest has a box that slowly covers up more of the screen as you scroll drown. Facebook has a login prompt box that stays at the bottom of the screen and occasionally expands as a reminder. Quora prevents internal redirects to new pages. With enough know-how these can be worked around but it is an effort and I often find myself making the undesirable choice between doing the work around, ignoring the content, or signing up for an account.
- tomphoolery 10y ago
  Is signing up for an account really that big of a deal to you?
  - myowncrapulence 10y ago
    Did you even read the post? This is about avoiding tracking. And yes, signing up for accounts can be grueling. Try making a google account without submitting a blood sample.
    - StevePerkins 10y ago
      Wat? It's been years since I created my "real" Google account, so I just created "fakeasdlkvjasklfvjasdkljfgasdf@gmail.com" out of curiosity. It literally took 20 seconds, with a fake name and birthday. There are form fields for your phone number and alternate email address, but you can leave them blank.
      - takeda 10y ago
        Can you create a new account on every visit? If not you essentially volunteered to uniquely identify yourself.
        dpark 10y ago
        Whether you want to opt out of tracking is irrelevant to the BS claim that it's difficult to create a google account. StevePerkins was specifically responding to the difficulty claim.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
I personally believe the approach proposed by Daplie is the way forward, not only because it allows users to take back control of their own data, but also because you don't have to give up on a friendly user experience to do so: https://daplie.com/ https://daplie.com/
- drivingmenuts 10y ago
  Hmm. Go read their TOS about hyperlinking and see if you still think they're friendly.
  - brysonchill 10y ago
    Daplie doesn't have a TOS on the Server. The TOS is established by the owner of the device, literally.
    - drivingmenuts 10y ago
      They actually changed it - when I looked at it, they had some BS about approving linking to their site. Tried finding the backup on archive.org, but it's having a difficult time with that site.
      - ZenoArrow 10y ago
        >"They actually changed it - when I looked at it, they had some BS about approving linking to their site." How long ago did you first read about it? Was it before the Indiegogo campaign started? https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/daplie-the-cloud-system-to-take-back-the-internet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/daplie-the-cloud-system-t...
        coolaj86 10y ago
        Hello! I'm AJ. I manage the website. We started the site with a cookie cutter template and left a garbage TOS and Privacy Policy in there by mistake. Someone told me about this post and so I pretty much pulled the TOS and I've been working through the Privacy Policy too. Consider this a draft, would love your feedback on github issues: https://github.com/daplie/daplie.com/ https://github.com/daplie/daplie.com/
__jal 10y ago
"Better" is in the eye of the beholder. It creeps me the hell out, which is why I block the data flows that feed them.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- BeingIncubated 10y ago
  This. I'm not sure if the other user means better experience with the services Google et al. offers or if he directly means how Google/Facebook/etc. cater ads/search results/friend suggestions to your web behavior. If it is the latter, then I personally want none of it and I get creeped out in much the same way as meeting a stranger who knows a little too much about me.
- neaden 10y ago
  I think it's a mixed bag. Real life example, my mom is flying in today for a visit, she emailed me the flight info. Close to the time of departure my android phone that's link to my google account gave me a push notification about it's status which it regularly updates in case there is any delay. Is this a little creepy? To me, yes. Is it also useful? Yep.
ne01 10y ago
Only I should protect my freedom. If I give it up for the slightest inconvenience then I don't deserve it.
pierre_d528 10y ago
Well, Alan Kay and a couple of friends built an entire system in 2.8MB in 1998[1]. It is 2016 and "large companies" are still overrated. People who think we cannot do better are ignorant and probably overrated. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUud1gcbS9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUud1gcbS9k
- KirinDave 10y ago
  I don't want to think or speculate. I want to see people do better and then we can congratulate people. Not before. Do better and people will recognize it. That's the best part of this industry.
  - pierre_d528 10y ago
    People I know think before they act and sometimes do better. They also see much more than an "industry" or a "product". Best thing of all: we may have ≠ POV and still not hurt each other. Freedom!
    - KirinDave 10y ago
      I do not want ideology. I want tangible results that will improve the freedom, privacy and safety of the western world. Quite frankly, Google does more for this right now than any 3 open source competitors to gmail do, combined. Open source is irrelevant in most fields of user-facing software because they have insisted on being irrelevant. And any time a group forms a structure to do better, they're ceaselessly attacked by the community and given increasingly worse components to build off of.
      - pierre_d528 10y ago
        The cloud is going back to mainframes (e.g. Chromebook). Kay and 2.8MB system (Squeak). TCP/IP in 160 SLOC (Ian Piumarta). You mix Open source and Free software. Go have a real degree first (real science like physics), then maybe go back to computing. Cannot catch up with the 70s!
tombrossman 10y ago
I think this isn't necessarily about open source, it's about tracking users in order to manipulate them with relevant ads. A company could use a fully open-source stack and still cross that creepy threshold with user tracking no problem. A few years back I was using a paid Google Apps account (which IIRC excludes you from some tracking?) and FastMail simultaneously. Both were excellent from a technical perspective, but FastMail was just better. They make all their money from selling their service to end users and I trust this model more. So I switched to using FastMail exclusively. I use free and open source software and strongly prefer it - but I don't see it as some kind of 'automagic' solution to tracking and privacy concerns. Buying the product, and not being the product, is what is important to me. Also don't forget to self-host what you can, for example it's not that difficult or expensive to set up Nextcloud on a VPS for file and contacts/calendar syncing. And don't be a cheap bastard with the FOSS you use, make donations to developers of useful tools. You're going to pay for all this one way or another.
r00fus 10y ago
What we need are ways to anonymize and abstract our presences in more ways than just creating new logins for each user. Some kind of "TOR-like" way of aggregating login and thus behavior to nullify this kind of tracking.
username223 10y ago
"Open source" is irrelevant here; the issue is whether services are part of the surveillance economy. Google search is sometimes better than DuckDuckGo, possibly because they can afford more crawling, and sometimes worse because you need to try to out-smart their algorithm to escape your personal filter bubble. Neither company is "open source," but DDG has a simple, non-invasive business model: they show ads based on search terms. "Open source" and "walled garden" are orthogonal.
bigbugbag 10y ago
That's because you omit to factor in the tracking and everything that comes with it. When you add advertising, profiling, censorship, surveillance and worse suddenly the experience is not so desirable anymore. We get tricked into it because the consequences of tracking are not immediately obvious and often delayed, (and a handful of cognitive biases) but it is still part of the user experience. For the users where this downside is obvious because they've been jailed, silenced, murdered the user experience is arguably not better. It's not only about tracking, Wanna talk about the user experience of google reader to cite one famous example of google's better user experience ?
- pas 10y ago
  > For the users where this downside is obvious because they've been jailed, silenced, murdered the user experience is arguably not better. So we need a site that takes this into perspective and educates users. The "true" value of tracking = [user benefits][number of users] - [mad regime oppressing people][oppressed people] How bad is the oppressing? How great are the benefits? What's the correct mental model for evaluating this? What would happen without tracking? What's the value of the alternatives?
hobarrera 10y ago
> That's kind of the problem though; they usually _do_ offer a better user experience. Except for search, where DDG is superior to Google Search, and has been for some time, amongst others... > If we want users to start using open source software [...] There are paid alternatives that are also superior to Google's ones. Fastmail works a lot better than GMail, even if you have to pay for it. The problem is when people want zero-effort, perfectly-polished, zero-cents services. Nothing is completely free.

by Ajedi32 10y ago

ksk 10y ago

I agree with your larger point, but should user privacy be part of the user experience?

Ajedi32 10y ago
Privacy _is_ part of the user experience, but only insofar as users actually care about that particular feature. Most users I believe do consider privacy a positive, but often it's a low priority compared to other "more important" features like convenience and usability.

cookiecaper 10y ago

The most crucial thing for the future of information freedom is to fix American intellectual property and network access laws. "Walled gardens" exist because anyone who effectively frees a user's data on the user's terms is at least sued, if not jailed, under statutes like the Soviet-era, pre-Internet Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and luddite interpretations of the Copyright Act that consider a RAM copy that exists for milliseconds an infringement. Allow coders to make it easy to cart your data around and suddenly the major tech incumbents will have to compete on merit instead of merely holding your data hostage, which is exactly what they don't want. The powerful make laws to prevent others from challenging their power. If we update copyright and the CFAA to address conventional internet use (from the user's perspective, not the corporate giants who were quick to legislate themselves a safe harbor with the DMCA) and constrain the scope of browsewrap and clickwrap agreements to reasonable liability disclaimers, we'll have no problem maintaining a vibrant and accessible marketplace for user-facing services.

matt4077 10y ago
"Walled Gardens" have nothing to do with IP laws. The user obviously retains copyright on whatever he posts/uploads to fb/twitter/etc. If the user grants you permission, IP laws cannot be used to stop you. The CFAA did indeed come into play with the guy who wanted to automate Facebook profile transfers. But apart from the questions of that specific case, it's just not true that there are millions of people waiting to migrate away from Facebook if only they could transfer their photo library. Most of the value in these networks is in "network effect", i. e. it's usefulness is a function of the number of other people using it. And then there's good old "this service is actually pretty good". Case in point: Gmail. It's quite easy to move away from it: you can download all your data via SMTP and set up forwarding or an autoresponder. That people do not do so has nothing to do with your conspiracy theories. They actually like the service.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  >Most of the value in these networks is in "network effect", i. e. it's usefulness is a function of the number of other people using it. No, the only reason "network effects" matter on something that is useful specifically because it makes the transfer of information instantaneous and fluid is because we have artificial barriers (CFAA/IP) in place to keep that data stuck with one vendor. Without this, the number of people using Facebook to access Person Data would be transparent to the average user, much like the number of people using Chrome or Firefox to access hypertext. And much like Chrome and Firefox, the switching penalty would be reasonably surmountable for most users. It's the difference between learning a new interface to the data (as in switching from Chrome) and being cut off from the data completely (as in switching from Facebook). SaaS sites have network effects specifically because we (accidentally) legislated those effects into existence. There are no physical barriers locking people in -- the "wall" of this garden is entirely artificial. >"Walled Gardens" have nothing to do with IP laws. >If the user grants you permission, IP laws cannot be used to stop you. This is 1000% false. IP laws absolutely CAN and HAVE been used to stop people from accessing online resources, even to get information that the user has authorized the data gatherer to collect. That's because when you download a page from one of the major tech services, you're not just downloading the user's copyrighted content to which the host has a license, you're also downloading the host's copyrighted code and parsing through it to extract the user's requested data. That's been interpreted to be an infringement under the Copyright Act on multiple occasions: Ticketmaster v. RMG, Facebook v. Power Ventures, Perfect 10 v. Amazon (in which the judges ruled Google's use fair on appeal, because it was Google), and others. While you may be able to argue there's an implied license if the robots.txt is blank, that is only going to last you through the first notification that the host doesn't like your activity, which is not necessarily formal (cf. Craigslist v. 3Taps), which would matter both for CFAA and copyright purposes. It's not an issue limited exclusively to something sneaky done by Power. Even if IP law itself was irrelevant (and it's not), there would be a lot of work to do here just in fixing up the laws around network access and blocking onerous Terms of Use. >it's just not true that there are millions of people waiting to migrate away from Facebook if only they could transfer their photo library. Whether you believe someone could do a better job than Facebook or not, surely you don't believe it should be, for all practical intents and purposes, illegal for them to attempt to do so. >That people do not do so has nothing to do with your conspiracy theories. Please try to start this type of service and get back to me about "conspiracy theories" after a C&D destroys your business, as it has hundreds of others, including mine. Not to be rude, but you clearly have never dealt with this in a serious manner. Please be more careful before you go around making assumptions and dismissing the perspective of those with direct experience.

syphilis2 10y ago

I believe this is true. But I also have found that sometimes the user experience is diminished when not "logged in" to encourage people to create accounts. Pinterest has a box that slowly covers up more of the screen as you scroll drown. Facebook has a login prompt box that stays at the bottom of the screen and occasionally expands as a reminder. Quora prevents internal redirects to new pages. With enough know-how these can be worked around but it is an effort and I often find myself making the undesirable choice between doing the work around, ignoring the content, or signing up for an account.

tomphoolery 10y ago
Is signing up for an account really that big of a deal to you?
- myowncrapulence 10y ago
  Did you even read the post? This is about avoiding tracking. And yes, signing up for accounts can be grueling. Try making a google account without submitting a blood sample.
  - StevePerkins 10y ago
    Wat? It's been years since I created my "real" Google account, so I just created "fakeasdlkvjasklfvjasdkljfgasdf@gmail.com" out of curiosity. It literally took 20 seconds, with a fake name and birthday. There are form fields for your phone number and alternate email address, but you can leave them blank.
    - takeda 10y ago
      Can you create a new account on every visit? If not you essentially volunteered to uniquely identify yourself.
      - dpark 10y ago
        Whether you want to opt out of tracking is irrelevant to the BS claim that it's difficult to create a google account. StevePerkins was specifically responding to the difficulty claim.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

I personally believe the approach proposed by Daplie is the way forward, not only because it allows users to take back control of their own data, but also because you don't have to give up on a friendly user experience to do so: https://daplie.com/ https://daplie.com/

drivingmenuts 10y ago
Hmm. Go read their TOS about hyperlinking and see if you still think they're friendly.
- brysonchill 10y ago
  Daplie doesn't have a TOS on the Server. The TOS is established by the owner of the device, literally.
  - drivingmenuts 10y ago
    They actually changed it - when I looked at it, they had some BS about approving linking to their site. Tried finding the backup on archive.org, but it's having a difficult time with that site.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      >"They actually changed it - when I looked at it, they had some BS about approving linking to their site." How long ago did you first read about it? Was it before the Indiegogo campaign started? https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/daplie-the-cloud-system-to-take-back-the-internet https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/daplie-the-cloud-system-t...
      - coolaj86 10y ago
        Hello! I'm AJ. I manage the website. We started the site with a cookie cutter template and left a garbage TOS and Privacy Policy in there by mistake. Someone told me about this post and so I pretty much pulled the TOS and I've been working through the Privacy Policy too. Consider this a draft, would love your feedback on github issues: https://github.com/daplie/daplie.com/ https://github.com/daplie/daplie.com/

__jal 10y ago

"Better" is in the eye of the beholder. It creeps me the hell out, which is why I block the data flows that feed them.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
BeingIncubated 10y ago
This. I'm not sure if the other user means better experience with the services Google et al. offers or if he directly means how Google/Facebook/etc. cater ads/search results/friend suggestions to your web behavior. If it is the latter, then I personally want none of it and I get creeped out in much the same way as meeting a stranger who knows a little too much about me.
neaden 10y ago
I think it's a mixed bag. Real life example, my mom is flying in today for a visit, she emailed me the flight info. Close to the time of departure my android phone that's link to my google account gave me a push notification about it's status which it regularly updates in case there is any delay. Is this a little creepy? To me, yes. Is it also useful? Yep.

ne01 10y ago

Only I should protect my freedom. If I give it up for the slightest inconvenience then I don't deserve it.

pierre_d528 10y ago

Well, Alan Kay and a couple of friends built an entire system in 2.8MB in 1998[1]. It is 2016 and "large companies" are still overrated. People who think we cannot do better are ignorant and probably overrated. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUud1gcbS9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUud1gcbS9k

KirinDave 10y ago
I don't want to think or speculate. I want to see people do better and then we can congratulate people. Not before. Do better and people will recognize it. That's the best part of this industry.
- pierre_d528 10y ago
  People I know think before they act and sometimes do better. They also see much more than an "industry" or a "product". Best thing of all: we may have ≠ POV and still not hurt each other. Freedom!
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    I do not want ideology. I want tangible results that will improve the freedom, privacy and safety of the western world. Quite frankly, Google does more for this right now than any 3 open source competitors to gmail do, combined. Open source is irrelevant in most fields of user-facing software because they have insisted on being irrelevant. And any time a group forms a structure to do better, they're ceaselessly attacked by the community and given increasingly worse components to build off of.
    - pierre_d528 10y ago
      The cloud is going back to mainframes (e.g. Chromebook). Kay and 2.8MB system (Squeak). TCP/IP in 160 SLOC (Ian Piumarta). You mix Open source and Free software. Go have a real degree first (real science like physics), then maybe go back to computing. Cannot catch up with the 70s!

tombrossman 10y ago

I think this isn't necessarily about open source, it's about tracking users in order to manipulate them with relevant ads. A company could use a fully open-source stack and still cross that creepy threshold with user tracking no problem. A few years back I was using a paid Google Apps account (which IIRC excludes you from some tracking?) and FastMail simultaneously. Both were excellent from a technical perspective, but FastMail was just better. They make all their money from selling their service to end users and I trust this model more. So I switched to using FastMail exclusively. I use free and open source software and strongly prefer it - but I don't see it as some kind of 'automagic' solution to tracking and privacy concerns. Buying the product, and not being the product, is what is important to me. Also don't forget to self-host what you can, for example it's not that difficult or expensive to set up Nextcloud on a VPS for file and contacts/calendar syncing. And don't be a cheap bastard with the FOSS you use, make donations to developers of useful tools. You're going to pay for all this one way or another.

r00fus 10y ago

What we need are ways to anonymize and abstract our presences in more ways than just creating new logins for each user. Some kind of "TOR-like" way of aggregating login and thus behavior to nullify this kind of tracking.

username223 10y ago

"Open source" is irrelevant here; the issue is whether services are part of the surveillance economy. Google search is sometimes better than DuckDuckGo, possibly because they can afford more crawling, and sometimes worse because you need to try to out-smart their algorithm to escape your personal filter bubble. Neither company is "open source," but DDG has a simple, non-invasive business model: they show ads based on search terms. "Open source" and "walled garden" are orthogonal.

bigbugbag 10y ago

That's because you omit to factor in the tracking and everything that comes with it. When you add advertising, profiling, censorship, surveillance and worse suddenly the experience is not so desirable anymore. We get tricked into it because the consequences of tracking are not immediately obvious and often delayed, (and a handful of cognitive biases) but it is still part of the user experience. For the users where this downside is obvious because they've been jailed, silenced, murdered the user experience is arguably not better. It's not only about tracking, Wanna talk about the user experience of google reader to cite one famous example of google's better user experience ?

pas 10y ago
> For the users where this downside is obvious because they've been jailed, silenced, murdered the user experience is arguably not better. So we need a site that takes this into perspective and educates users. The "true" value of tracking = [user benefits][number of users] - [mad regime oppressing people][oppressed people] How bad is the oppressing? How great are the benefits? What's the correct mental model for evaluating this? What would happen without tracking? What's the value of the alternatives?

hobarrera 10y ago

> That's kind of the problem though; they usually _do_ offer a better user experience. Except for search, where DDG is superior to Google Search, and has been for some time, amongst others... > If we want users to start using open source software [...] There are paid alternatives that are also superior to Google's ones. Fastmail works a lot better than GMail, even if you have to pay for it. The problem is when people want zero-effort, perfectly-polished, zero-cents services. Nothing is completely free.