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You state that one of the purposes of this platform is to allow you the freedom to be wrong, but if people can save something before 6 months, how would you pre

You state that one of the purposes of this platform is to allow you the freedom to be wrong, but if people can save something before 6 months, how would you prevent someone from saving an embarrassing comment for future use against you? Or are you the only one capable of saving your own comments?

a_t48 8y ago
There’s always the ‘analog hole’. Someone can take a screenshot. Probably won’t unless you are egregious about something. What this should prevent is someone going back in time and digging through your stuff for something embarrassing, if they weren’t associated with you before.
rolleiflex 8y ago
They can definitely save yours - and if you’re someone whose comments should be saved, be pseudonymous. What they can’t do is they can’t go back 14 years of history like they can on Twitter, after the fact, and find something out of context there. Pseudonymity and ephemerality are the two sides of the same coin. One doesn’t protect without the other.
- inequity 8y ago
  Have you considered the inequities that such a retention policy introduces into HOW history can be used? The entrepreneurial (and governments) will archive everything to serve the wealthy (including governments), who will be able to use history to their ends. Those without resources will live in an eternal present, except where history is used against them. To sell this kind of retention policy as a user-protecting feature is (in my view) at best naive, and at worst, disingenuous. This model increases the economic cost of mining history, but in doing so, entrenches existing wealth and power structures. Thanks to the ever-decreasing cost-per-bit of storage, the internet is forever. The only hope for redemption lies in this permanence affecting everyone equally; otherwise we're doomed to (continue to) live in a world where only the wealthy and politically connected have read and write access to history.
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    There is an argument to be made there, but you're off on the difficulty of storing data. Reddit, even with its 250M+ users, generates only 8.5Gb per month of data. A $100 Western Digital hard drive could hold the entirety of Reddit's comment history. In other words, if you want to collect data, you can do it just as well if you're just a random guy on the street just as well as any government can. Aether can't prevent anyone from collecting data, just like Snapchat also cannot. But what it can do is that it can reduce the availability of historic data as much as possible, so the data is at least not accidentally collected. > ... but in doing so, entrenches existing wealth and power structures. What entrenches existing wealth and power structures is wealth and power. That's why it's valuable to have wealth and power. In other words, you could prefix that sentence with almost anything, and you'd still be right.
the_clarence 8y ago
The 6 month thing is a storage problem where every node needs to store the app’s content. The privacy thing is free marketing that came out of that constraint. This is really a good marketing move tbh. Everybody wants privacy and nobody understands what it technically means.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  The way I see it, it has some privacy. No node after the first hop will have any way to get ip information of the poster, or even know how many hops they are away from the poster.

a_t48 8y ago

There’s always the ‘analog hole’. Someone can take a screenshot. Probably won’t unless you are egregious about something. What this should prevent is someone going back in time and digging through your stuff for something embarrassing, if they weren’t associated with you before.

rolleiflex 8y ago

They can definitely save yours - and if you’re someone whose comments should be saved, be pseudonymous. What they can’t do is they can’t go back 14 years of history like they can on Twitter, after the fact, and find something out of context there. Pseudonymity and ephemerality are the two sides of the same coin. One doesn’t protect without the other.

inequity 8y ago
Have you considered the inequities that such a retention policy introduces into HOW history can be used? The entrepreneurial (and governments) will archive everything to serve the wealthy (including governments), who will be able to use history to their ends. Those without resources will live in an eternal present, except where history is used against them. To sell this kind of retention policy as a user-protecting feature is (in my view) at best naive, and at worst, disingenuous. This model increases the economic cost of mining history, but in doing so, entrenches existing wealth and power structures. Thanks to the ever-decreasing cost-per-bit of storage, the internet is forever. The only hope for redemption lies in this permanence affecting everyone equally; otherwise we're doomed to (continue to) live in a world where only the wealthy and politically connected have read and write access to history.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  There is an argument to be made there, but you're off on the difficulty of storing data. Reddit, even with its 250M+ users, generates only 8.5Gb per month of data. A $100 Western Digital hard drive could hold the entirety of Reddit's comment history. In other words, if you want to collect data, you can do it just as well if you're just a random guy on the street just as well as any government can. Aether can't prevent anyone from collecting data, just like Snapchat also cannot. But what it can do is that it can reduce the availability of historic data as much as possible, so the data is at least not accidentally collected. > ... but in doing so, entrenches existing wealth and power structures. What entrenches existing wealth and power structures is wealth and power. That's why it's valuable to have wealth and power. In other words, you could prefix that sentence with almost anything, and you'd still be right.

the_clarence 8y ago

The 6 month thing is a storage problem where every node needs to store the app’s content. The privacy thing is free marketing that came out of that constraint. This is really a good marketing move tbh. Everybody wants privacy and nobody understands what it technically means.

brokenmachine 8y ago
The way I see it, it has some privacy. No node after the first hop will have any way to get ip information of the poster, or even know how many hops they are away from the poster.