7 ms·

What I'd like is distributed p2p linking. No personal data on a server that isn't yours. Any of your data hosted on a third party site if you choose so, is encr

by rmundo 16y ago

What I'd like is distributed p2p linking. No personal data on a server that isn't yours. Any of your data hosted on a third party site if you choose so, is encrypted to within an inch of its life: they can't do ANYTHING with it except forward it to whoever you designate. Venn diagrams for your social graph. Or trees. Preferably both. If Yelp/Microsoft/whoever wants my data, they become a member of my social graph, not some all-seeing entity that hovers above me recording every comment I make. Data that goes to them is encrypted as well of course. Make it distributed, because no company hosting user data will be able to resist the temptation to use it to make money. Or build it on top of Dropbox, and have Dropbox serve as the backup for your online social life, encrypted, of course. 2GB will eventually fill up, and hopefully people will be happy to pay for extra storage, especially if you make it easy.

ivenkys 16y ago
"What I'd like is distributed p2p linking. No personal data on a server that isn't yours." - This is exactly right. do, Currently my personal photos,emails etc. all run from a server hosted in my closet and when i need to share stuff i send a link by email. A distributed p2p linking will make things so much more easier.
swernli 16y ago
There was a post on here a few days ago about just such a distributed system. Diaspora, and it's under development by some current college students looking for crowdsourced funding: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321651 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321651
- rmundo 16y ago
  Thanks for the heads up, I missed that one.
jm4 16y ago
You could probably build that pretty easily on Opera Unite.
BerislavLopac 16y ago
I'm actually working on something like that, with one important difference: no personal data on a server, period. No servers at all. :)
cookiecaper 16y ago
I have a comment further down mentioning the horrendous mess that a P2P architecture would present. It would work for techies like us, but it wouldn't work for the segment that is making Facebook so transcendently popular. MySpace was a "teen" thing, others before it, too, but Facebook is mainstream; my grandma has a profile, my parents have profiles, and such is true of many. Also mainstream is turning off your computer when you're not using it. Almost every non-techie I know is really interested in having their computer turned off. They don't really care about waiting for it to come back up. Telling them that their profile is only accessible while their computer is on is an instant killer. And what if their internet goes out? They're down for that time too. For people with spotty or wireless connections, saying "your profile will only work when your connection works, like 30% of the time", is not going to be too encouraging. What if a user's hard drive dies? Do you really expect people like my 86-year-old grandmother to make backups of her social network profile frequently enough for it to be meaningful? Or what if a user just gets a new computer? Are they going to understand how to transfer the profile? Making users download and run a P2P server 24/7 slows down the computer, increases personal connection bandwidth usage commensurate with one's popularity, and creates a big opening for scammers. I know Facebook would be much less enjoyable if I had to sit around and wait for the dial-up AOL connections of the old people I know to upload their photos. Or even home broadband connections; in the US, those are usually capped at 60-70kbps upload, which is pretty slow. How easy would it be to create a page that looks like your network's page and say "We've updated our client! This is a special update that we can't auto-update for these smart-sounding technical reasons, so please download and install it." People would do this immediately because social networks are a major part of their web usage; for some, the only reason they use computer. And your network would be poisoned and the users' profile disabled just that easily. I just don't see how a P2P social network would gain mainstream appeal. What are your solutions to these problems?
- nkassis 16y ago
  I don't think anyone is suggesting self hosting of profiles, just to go from one provider to many providers. That would involve interoperability. The advantages of this are many, no service could just query one host and get all profiles that cross their path. A user would explicitly give pandora or Microsoft access to their profile by providing something like their email or some similar identifying string that could be tied back to the host of the profile.

by rmundo 16y ago

ivenkys 16y ago

"What I'd like is distributed p2p linking. No personal data on a server that isn't yours." - This is exactly right. do, Currently my personal photos,emails etc. all run from a server hosted in my closet and when i need to share stuff i send a link by email. A distributed p2p linking will make things so much more easier.

swernli 16y ago

There was a post on here a few days ago about just such a distributed system. Diaspora, and it's under development by some current college students looking for crowdsourced funding: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321651 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1321651

rmundo 16y ago
Thanks for the heads up, I missed that one.

jm4 16y ago

You could probably build that pretty easily on Opera Unite.

BerislavLopac 16y ago

I'm actually working on something like that, with one important difference: no personal data on a server, period. No servers at all. :)

cookiecaper 16y ago

I have a comment further down mentioning the horrendous mess that a P2P architecture would present. It would work for techies like us, but it wouldn't work for the segment that is making Facebook so transcendently popular. MySpace was a "teen" thing, others before it, too, but Facebook is mainstream; my grandma has a profile, my parents have profiles, and such is true of many. Also mainstream is turning off your computer when you're not using it. Almost every non-techie I know is really interested in having their computer turned off. They don't really care about waiting for it to come back up. Telling them that their profile is only accessible while their computer is on is an instant killer. And what if their internet goes out? They're down for that time too. For people with spotty or wireless connections, saying "your profile will only work when your connection works, like 30% of the time", is not going to be too encouraging. What if a user's hard drive dies? Do you really expect people like my 86-year-old grandmother to make backups of her social network profile frequently enough for it to be meaningful? Or what if a user just gets a new computer? Are they going to understand how to transfer the profile? Making users download and run a P2P server 24/7 slows down the computer, increases personal connection bandwidth usage commensurate with one's popularity, and creates a big opening for scammers. I know Facebook would be much less enjoyable if I had to sit around and wait for the dial-up AOL connections of the old people I know to upload their photos. Or even home broadband connections; in the US, those are usually capped at 60-70kbps upload, which is pretty slow. How easy would it be to create a page that looks like your network's page and say "We've updated our client! This is a special update that we can't auto-update for these smart-sounding technical reasons, so please download and install it." People would do this immediately because social networks are a major part of their web usage; for some, the only reason they use computer. And your network would be poisoned and the users' profile disabled just that easily. I just don't see how a P2P social network would gain mainstream appeal. What are your solutions to these problems?

nkassis 16y ago
I don't think anyone is suggesting self hosting of profiles, just to go from one provider to many providers. That would involve interoperability. The advantages of this are many, no service could just query one host and get all profiles that cross their path. A user would explicitly give pandora or Microsoft access to their profile by providing something like their email or some similar identifying string that could be tied back to the host of the profile.