4 ms·

People always talk about the “network effects” of Facebook or Twitter - but what about the network effect of the Web itself? How has that failed so spectacularl

People always talk about the “network effects” of Facebook or Twitter - but what about the network effect of the Web itself? How has that failed so spectacularly? For a while it seemed like we took the route of competing standards that defined the network (RSS, Atom, WebSub, REST) but there seems to be no taste for any of the new connecting protocols (Webmentions, ActivityPub) that could enhance the Web’s connective tissue. Whereas community on the Web used to be a favorite hobbyist PHPBB forum or mailing list - it’s now just a business. (Are you on Instagram or TikTok?)

krapp 7y ago
>Whereas community on the Web used to be a favorite hobbyist PHPBB forum or mailing list - it’s now just a business. (Are you on Instagram or TikTok?) I think you're mixing up the medium and the message here a bit. There's still plenty of "community" on third-party platforms. Just because the hobbyists are on Reddit now rather than someone's PHPBB instance running on a shared host doesn't mean the nature of the community being hosted has become fundamentally more commercial.
- kickscondor 7y ago
  I appreciate you responding - I think my comment must have been too garbled - I'm not just trying to demonize business for some arbitrary anti-capitalist reason or something. What I am questioning is the nature of the network - not to get caught up in nostalgia, but at least the Web used to be comprised of an infinite variety of communities. However, generally speaking, no one will join your custom forum or community in 2019 because it's not contained in one of these networks. They've become both the hosting and the discovery engines. They are self-contained networks. I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks. I can pull up some reasons people cite (ease of use, mobile apps, network effects) but at the same time, it feels like the sentiment of the masses acknowledges that these networks are shitty.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    > I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks. A bunch of shittier smaller isolated networks sounds exactly like what we transitioned away from, you yourself bringing up phpbb. Are you asking why people don't want to register for yet another silo'd community every time they want to talk about a different subject? Or why people may want to talk about their cycling hobby here and there but aren't so fanatical about it that they want to register for bikeforums.com nor mingle with the zealots that post there? Just sounds like you're romanticizing something that wasn't all that great for most people. A lot of those types of forums still exist, btw. Probably even more than ever. I run one. My forum fills a niche that doesn't translate well to a place like reddit (longform collaborative writing). These communities are still here for the people looking for them, but it's no mystery to me why they have limited appeal. Frankly, the modern web has enabled more people to participate that aren't as nerdy or fanatic about a niche nor willing to jump through hoops like joining a new forum with its own rules and nobody they know irl. Not everything is going to shit, there are simply always trade-offs.
    - kickscondor 7y ago
      Yeah, I'm really not doing a great job here. By 'network' I mean that the Web is the network. I'm not romanticizing needing separate accounts for every topic. I'm not sure how to isolate the part that I am romanticizing from the part that I'm not. :D I mean let's say we forked the Web before social media and simply had unified accounts for the variety of small sites we participated in. That seems like progress to me.
      - krapp 7y ago
        > mean let's say we forked the Web before social media and simply had unified accounts for the variety of small sites we participated in. That seems like progress to me. That wouldn't stop the network effect of social media, or centralization. Facebook, Twitter, etc. would still be built and people would still congregate to them, just using whatever their "unified accounts" were. And remember, Google tried unifying accounts with G+, albeit just within their network. One day everyone on Youtube found their G+ comments merged with their Youtube comments because Google decided Youtube was just the video-sharing part of G+, and a lot of real names and data were exposed, because the two platforms were designed around completely different social paradigms. The obvious questions with something like a unified account is who controls them and defines the standard, and how do you make the rest of the web comply with using them? All of the potential problems of centralization are still there, anywhere you have an attempt at a common standard.
buboard 7y ago
The web collectively failed to provide a single authentication token. Unlike mobile phones, where the phone numbers are not controlled by one entity, in the web some companies jumped in and grabbed them all. It's still sad to see that despite multiple protocols, despite open source browser, despite distributed trustless databases, we need to sign up to each service with our email or with FB connect. For anything in that space to catch on though, it will have to provide a benefit to the webmater. Facebook provided visibility and extensive distribution, that's why so many media chose to move their content in there
- kickscondor 7y ago
  Interesting points - like the comparison to mobile phone numbers. You’d think that an open account system could provide even more visibility - because you’re not just posting on a closed network. I think if Facebook was just an account system or just a discovery mechanism, then it could be amazing. It just sucks that every network tries to do it all - and in a closed way.
  - buboard 7y ago
    Firefox should bundle something like metamask in the browser. Not only you will have a trustless identification mechanism for multiple identities, but users will also use it for micropayments. I think a lot of the privacy and mob mentality issues stem from the fact that current systems don't support multiple disconnected, pseudonymous identities, which we had ~15 years ago. We should make it easy for laypeople to have that again. I don't know if decentralizing the web is worth the effort since it's less efficient. We need however to steal back identity from those identity barons.
    - repolfx 7y ago
      Firefox tried decentralised identity via the Persona protocol. It failed to gain market traction and Mozilla canned the project. Email is already the decentralised identity protocol.
      - 7y ago
mdorazio 7y ago
Turns out there's a lot more money in walled gardens than there is in services that are easily accessed by common protocols. Thus there's a perverse incentive at play from the perspective of end users.
- kickscondor 7y ago
  I see - because you "own" the people in the garden.

krapp 7y ago

>Whereas community on the Web used to be a favorite hobbyist PHPBB forum or mailing list - it’s now just a business. (Are you on Instagram or TikTok?) I think you're mixing up the medium and the message here a bit. There's still plenty of "community" on third-party platforms. Just because the hobbyists are on Reddit now rather than someone's PHPBB instance running on a shared host doesn't mean the nature of the community being hosted has become fundamentally more commercial.

kickscondor 7y ago
I appreciate you responding - I think my comment must have been too garbled - I'm not just trying to demonize business for some arbitrary anti-capitalist reason or something. What I am questioning is the nature of the network - not to get caught up in nostalgia, but at least the Web used to be comprised of an infinite variety of communities. However, generally speaking, no one will join your custom forum or community in 2019 because it's not contained in one of these networks. They've become both the hosting and the discovery engines. They are self-contained networks. I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks. I can pull up some reasons people cite (ease of use, mobile apps, network effects) but at the same time, it feels like the sentiment of the masses acknowledges that these networks are shitty.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  > I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks. A bunch of shittier smaller isolated networks sounds exactly like what we transitioned away from, you yourself bringing up phpbb. Are you asking why people don't want to register for yet another silo'd community every time they want to talk about a different subject? Or why people may want to talk about their cycling hobby here and there but aren't so fanatical about it that they want to register for bikeforums.com nor mingle with the zealots that post there? Just sounds like you're romanticizing something that wasn't all that great for most people. A lot of those types of forums still exist, btw. Probably even more than ever. I run one. My forum fills a niche that doesn't translate well to a place like reddit (longform collaborative writing). These communities are still here for the people looking for them, but it's no mystery to me why they have limited appeal. Frankly, the modern web has enabled more people to participate that aren't as nerdy or fanatic about a niche nor willing to jump through hoops like joining a new forum with its own rules and nobody they know irl. Not everything is going to shit, there are simply always trade-offs.
  - kickscondor 7y ago
    Yeah, I'm really not doing a great job here. By 'network' I mean that the Web is the network. I'm not romanticizing needing separate accounts for every topic. I'm not sure how to isolate the part that I am romanticizing from the part that I'm not. :D I mean let's say we forked the Web before social media and simply had unified accounts for the variety of small sites we participated in. That seems like progress to me.
    - krapp 7y ago
      > mean let's say we forked the Web before social media and simply had unified accounts for the variety of small sites we participated in. That seems like progress to me. That wouldn't stop the network effect of social media, or centralization. Facebook, Twitter, etc. would still be built and people would still congregate to them, just using whatever their "unified accounts" were. And remember, Google tried unifying accounts with G+, albeit just within their network. One day everyone on Youtube found their G+ comments merged with their Youtube comments because Google decided Youtube was just the video-sharing part of G+, and a lot of real names and data were exposed, because the two platforms were designed around completely different social paradigms. The obvious questions with something like a unified account is who controls them and defines the standard, and how do you make the rest of the web comply with using them? All of the potential problems of centralization are still there, anywhere you have an attempt at a common standard.

buboard 7y ago

The web collectively failed to provide a single authentication token. Unlike mobile phones, where the phone numbers are not controlled by one entity, in the web some companies jumped in and grabbed them all. It's still sad to see that despite multiple protocols, despite open source browser, despite distributed trustless databases, we need to sign up to each service with our email or with FB connect. For anything in that space to catch on though, it will have to provide a benefit to the webmater. Facebook provided visibility and extensive distribution, that's why so many media chose to move their content in there

kickscondor 7y ago
Interesting points - like the comparison to mobile phone numbers. You’d think that an open account system could provide even more visibility - because you’re not just posting on a closed network. I think if Facebook was just an account system or just a discovery mechanism, then it could be amazing. It just sucks that every network tries to do it all - and in a closed way.
- buboard 7y ago
  Firefox should bundle something like metamask in the browser. Not only you will have a trustless identification mechanism for multiple identities, but users will also use it for micropayments. I think a lot of the privacy and mob mentality issues stem from the fact that current systems don't support multiple disconnected, pseudonymous identities, which we had ~15 years ago. We should make it easy for laypeople to have that again. I don't know if decentralizing the web is worth the effort since it's less efficient. We need however to steal back identity from those identity barons.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    Firefox tried decentralised identity via the Persona protocol. It failed to gain market traction and Mozilla canned the project. Email is already the decentralised identity protocol.
    - 7y ago

mdorazio 7y ago

Turns out there's a lot more money in walled gardens than there is in services that are easily accessed by common protocols. Thus there's a perverse incentive at play from the perspective of end users.

kickscondor 7y ago
I see - because you "own" the people in the garden.