6 ms·

> Who cares about what’s better for the user? All of these apps chose technology that was available to them when they started building. So the focus could be t

by jeswin 6y ago

> Who cares about what’s better for the user? All of these apps chose technology that was available to them when they started building. So the focus could be to enable building modern usecases on decentralized data platforms. If one of them becomes the next FaceBook, personal ownership could become a baseline expectation for similar apps. Once data is owned by users, apps become a layer on top of data which can be substituted as needed. Edit: simplified.

lozenge 6y ago
Decentralization has its own issues - spam filtering, lack of moderation (people often do actually want it), anonymity.
- jeswin 6y ago
  Sure. But there are good examples of decentralization making spam difficult or impossible. One such is Secure ScuttleButt (SSB). You sync with friends and their friends (and their friends maybe, based on configuration). Now people aren't generally friends with spammers so you don't see their feeds. And if they are, a sufficient number of your friends would be blocking them - once a person is blocked by a certain number of people, stop syncing with them. I am not convinced that SSB is a solution for all types of apps, but for Social Networks it works darn well. Oh, and zero ads too because you'd never sync with ad networks.
  - amelius 6y ago
    Great idea. Perhaps we could apply it in different areas as well, such as consumer reviews?
  - aflag 6y ago
    I don't know. Facebook can spot fake profiles because of the centralisation, not sure how that'd be avoided in that system. Also, if users are really anonymous, the system will end up turning into a cesspool of disgusting and illegal stuff. At least that was the fate of all peer to peer social networks I'm aware of.
    - curryst 6y ago
      That would be handled client-side, like email. You could build in a standard set of rules, and then have some kind of ML process profiles you manually mark as spam. Just have it filter profiles in API requests through the fake profile detector. > At least that was the fate of all peer to peer social networks I'm aware of. That doesn't seem true of Mastodon. The few servers I've been on were fairly tame. I think the worst I saw was someone posted a sexualized anime-style image, but there wasn't any nudity. I didn't immediately spot anything weird on Diaspora either, but I only spent like 45 minutes on there. > Also, if users are really anonymous, the system will end up turning into a cesspool of disgusting and illegal stuff. Anonymity can be okay, but only in the presence of heavy moderation. HN is basically anonymous if you want it to be, but it stays on target because of the moderation. You can see it on Reddit too. AskHistorians is a wonderful place to be; the subreddits without even basic moderation do indeed turn into cesspools. Federation has historically made this difficult because you can only moderate your own instance, which is often a minority of the content you consume. There are potential solutions for that, though. You could allow users to "flag" posts, and add those flags to the data you federate. Then, like the fake profile system, you could filter them based on user parameters. I.e. hide posts that have at least 1 "racism" flag. If necessary to prevent brigades, you could also filter the flags that you accept based on the user that flagged the post. Maybe weight them based on similarities in accounts you follow.
      - aflag 6y ago
        I have to admit I haven't look into p2p social networks in years. The ones I've tried in early 2000s (such as freenet) had really dodgy users. Perhaps a lot was learned since then. Anyway, I agree with you that what really prevents people from using the system for nastiness is moderation and not necessarily identity. However, the problem is not only fringe and extremist beliefs, but actually becoming a platform for actual crime, through sharing of photos and videos of abuse. That's what worries me the most about p2p social networks and the reason I'm generally not ok with storing other people's data in my computer, even if encrypted.
    - lilactown 6y ago
      A lot of facebook's value prop for users is in what you're saying - not as a social media company, but as a centralized identity provider for the social graph. Perhaps a decentralized solution could still use a centralized identity provider to help with things like spam & impersonation/fake profiles and prove who they are, while still allowing users to own the information _about_ themselves. The problem here is incentives; there's not much money in being a dumb identity resolver unless you're harvesting everyones data AFAICT, so I sort of doubt a private consumer solution will emerge in the near future.
beagle3 6y ago
I think it’s a naïve position. Mail was decentralized. Now it’s mostly federated among 4-5 big providers. Historically, people value low cost and convenience over any other feature. Unless there is some GDPR like directive requiring decentralization and self hosting, it will likely stay centralized and become even more so.
- wolco 6y ago
  There are so many more email providers being used worldwide. Who are the 4 or 5 big providers everyone is using? gmail, yahoo, hotmail, fastmail and protonmail? Don't forget outlook and zoho Many people still use aol or their email given by ips or work email domain. Worldwide yandex.mail is popular. Colleges still give email addresses. People like myself run their own Vanity domains are popular. Mail is still decentralized and news of its death have been greatly exaggerated
  - beagle3 6y ago
    Google, Fastmail, Microsoft(Outlook/Office365/Hotmail/Live) already cover something like 90% of one side of emails, and 50% of both sides (that is, 50% of emails originate AND terminate among these three, and 90% originate OR terminate among them). I haven't seen any recent stats, but in 2017, 50% of emails already originated or terminated with Google, one provider. The significance of "originate OR terminate" is that the provider has the ability to meddle or outright ban, either going out or going in. > work email domain. > Vanity domains are popular. > Colleges still give email addresses. Most universities, workplaces and vanity domains are running within the Google+Fastmail+Microsoft sphere, regardless of the domain name. Every university I've worked with in the last 10 years (e.g. NYU) was using a G-Suite or Microsoft hosted solution, as was every single workplace. > People like myself run their own There is a very long tail for the last 1%, but likely 99% of the users are served by 10 companies worldwide. I call that federated, not distributed. I used to run my own server as well, for ~15 years. Until one day, google stopped delivering it to gmail or g-suite addresses (sent it to spam). There was no one to talk to to figure out why. Which turned out to be ~70% of email I sent -- despite having SPF, DKIM, DMARC and everything else properly set up. Eventually, I switched to fastmail hosting because I have better things to do with my time than figure out why Google is blacklisting me. It's federated, not distributed, and we're all at the mercy of the big few.

by jeswin 6y ago

lozenge 6y ago

Decentralization has its own issues - spam filtering, lack of moderation (people often do actually want it), anonymity.

jeswin 6y ago
Sure. But there are good examples of decentralization making spam difficult or impossible. One such is Secure ScuttleButt (SSB). You sync with friends and their friends (and their friends maybe, based on configuration). Now people aren't generally friends with spammers so you don't see their feeds. And if they are, a sufficient number of your friends would be blocking them - once a person is blocked by a certain number of people, stop syncing with them. I am not convinced that SSB is a solution for all types of apps, but for Social Networks it works darn well. Oh, and zero ads too because you'd never sync with ad networks.
- amelius 6y ago
  Great idea. Perhaps we could apply it in different areas as well, such as consumer reviews?
- aflag 6y ago
  I don't know. Facebook can spot fake profiles because of the centralisation, not sure how that'd be avoided in that system. Also, if users are really anonymous, the system will end up turning into a cesspool of disgusting and illegal stuff. At least that was the fate of all peer to peer social networks I'm aware of.
  - curryst 6y ago
    That would be handled client-side, like email. You could build in a standard set of rules, and then have some kind of ML process profiles you manually mark as spam. Just have it filter profiles in API requests through the fake profile detector. > At least that was the fate of all peer to peer social networks I'm aware of. That doesn't seem true of Mastodon. The few servers I've been on were fairly tame. I think the worst I saw was someone posted a sexualized anime-style image, but there wasn't any nudity. I didn't immediately spot anything weird on Diaspora either, but I only spent like 45 minutes on there. > Also, if users are really anonymous, the system will end up turning into a cesspool of disgusting and illegal stuff. Anonymity can be okay, but only in the presence of heavy moderation. HN is basically anonymous if you want it to be, but it stays on target because of the moderation. You can see it on Reddit too. AskHistorians is a wonderful place to be; the subreddits without even basic moderation do indeed turn into cesspools. Federation has historically made this difficult because you can only moderate your own instance, which is often a minority of the content you consume. There are potential solutions for that, though. You could allow users to "flag" posts, and add those flags to the data you federate. Then, like the fake profile system, you could filter them based on user parameters. I.e. hide posts that have at least 1 "racism" flag. If necessary to prevent brigades, you could also filter the flags that you accept based on the user that flagged the post. Maybe weight them based on similarities in accounts you follow.
    - aflag 6y ago
      I have to admit I haven't look into p2p social networks in years. The ones I've tried in early 2000s (such as freenet) had really dodgy users. Perhaps a lot was learned since then. Anyway, I agree with you that what really prevents people from using the system for nastiness is moderation and not necessarily identity. However, the problem is not only fringe and extremist beliefs, but actually becoming a platform for actual crime, through sharing of photos and videos of abuse. That's what worries me the most about p2p social networks and the reason I'm generally not ok with storing other people's data in my computer, even if encrypted.
  - lilactown 6y ago
    A lot of facebook's value prop for users is in what you're saying - not as a social media company, but as a centralized identity provider for the social graph. Perhaps a decentralized solution could still use a centralized identity provider to help with things like spam & impersonation/fake profiles and prove who they are, while still allowing users to own the information _about_ themselves. The problem here is incentives; there's not much money in being a dumb identity resolver unless you're harvesting everyones data AFAICT, so I sort of doubt a private consumer solution will emerge in the near future.

beagle3 6y ago

I think it’s a naïve position. Mail was decentralized. Now it’s mostly federated among 4-5 big providers. Historically, people value low cost and convenience over any other feature. Unless there is some GDPR like directive requiring decentralization and self hosting, it will likely stay centralized and become even more so.

wolco 6y ago
There are so many more email providers being used worldwide. Who are the 4 or 5 big providers everyone is using? gmail, yahoo, hotmail, fastmail and protonmail? Don't forget outlook and zoho Many people still use aol or their email given by ips or work email domain. Worldwide yandex.mail is popular. Colleges still give email addresses. People like myself run their own Vanity domains are popular. Mail is still decentralized and news of its death have been greatly exaggerated
- beagle3 6y ago
  Google, Fastmail, Microsoft(Outlook/Office365/Hotmail/Live) already cover something like 90% of one side of emails, and 50% of both sides (that is, 50% of emails originate AND terminate among these three, and 90% originate OR terminate among them). I haven't seen any recent stats, but in 2017, 50% of emails already originated or terminated with Google, one provider. The significance of "originate OR terminate" is that the provider has the ability to meddle or outright ban, either going out or going in. > work email domain. > Vanity domains are popular. > Colleges still give email addresses. Most universities, workplaces and vanity domains are running within the Google+Fastmail+Microsoft sphere, regardless of the domain name. Every university I've worked with in the last 10 years (e.g. NYU) was using a G-Suite or Microsoft hosted solution, as was every single workplace. > People like myself run their own There is a very long tail for the last 1%, but likely 99% of the users are served by 10 companies worldwide. I call that federated, not distributed. I used to run my own server as well, for ~15 years. Until one day, google stopped delivering it to gmail or g-suite addresses (sent it to spam). There was no one to talk to to figure out why. Which turned out to be ~70% of email I sent -- despite having SPF, DKIM, DMARC and everything else properly set up. Eventually, I switched to fastmail hosting because I have better things to do with my time than figure out why Google is blacklisting me. It's federated, not distributed, and we're all at the mercy of the big few.