5 ms·

These kinds of ideas always get traction here on HN or similar places (slashdot), but I think that ship has long sailed. People, by and large, seem to be totall

by dvt 6y ago

These kinds of ideas always get traction here on HN or similar places (slashdot), but I think that ship has long sailed. People, by and large, seem to be totally okay with storing data in the cloud -- from Dropbox, to Google Docs, to InVision. All things considered, data breaches are rare, and if they do happen, they're usually to be blamed on configuration blunders, not the services at large. Other than a few highly-specialized niches (InfoSec, government, military), the de-facto reality is that online-first collaboration pros seem to outweigh the cons.

gobengo 6y ago
> People, by and large, seem to be totally okay with storing data in the cloud It's simply not true, or if it is, it's only because of what you're choosing to looking at to build your view of how it 'seems'. https://mydata.org/ https://mydata.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula... https://ethereum.org/en/ https://ethereum.org/en/ https://solid.mit.edu/ https://solid.mit.edu/ Meeting every week: https://identity.foundation/working-groups/secure-data-storage.html https://identity.foundation/working-groups/secure-data-stora... > All things considered, data breaches are rare, and if they do happen, they're usually to be blamed on configuration blunders, not the services at large. Did you work at Google? Do you know about PRISM? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#C... Can't tell if you're intentionally or accidentally misleading.
- dvt 6y ago
  > Can't tell if you're intentionally or accidentally misleading. All I'm doing is looking at the market cap of companies like Facebook and Dropbox. I mean, hell, Facebook literally sold personal data and sure, you occasionally see "boycott FB" movements, but they're all bark and no bite.
  - adkadskhj 6y ago
    This is sort of like saying people are okay with cancer because they buy certain plastics in mass. The reality is people are ignorant of what is good for them in a ton of applications, including this one. Only a handful really grasp the context of what is happening with their data and most importantly how their data could affect them. People routinely do things against their own interest. It's up to the other people that care about this issue to make competing products that don't harm. There's simply no way to get everyone to really care about an issue with nuance and/or niche knowledge.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      I don't think you're giving people enough credit. It's not exactly a mystery at this point that Facebook/IG make their money by selling access to your information to advertisers. People really just don't care which doesn't make them ignorant and doesn't mean they're wrong to not care. We're the privacy obsessed weirdos. I've been in conversations where people talk about products they "discovered" through IG ads. The mindset where we're the only ones that really understand what's going on and everyone else are just sheeple -- sheeple I tell you is gross. This issue really isn't all that nuanced. That's just the lie we tell ourselves because we don't want to admit that we're the nutters being like "they're watching you scroll through Facebook and they're gonna use that to lower your credit score. THE ALGORITHMS!!" I'm proud to be part of this weird club but let's not use it as an oppertunity to shit on our outgroup.
      - southerntofu 6y ago
        We may be interested in the deep details/debates the general public has no knowledge about. However i can assure you many people care about their privacy. They're not all ignorant, but they're usually powerless. Wanna keep in touch with friends? Gotta use facebook. Wanna watch cool videos? Gotta use Youtube. etc. But there's a very strong movement of non-tech persons for privacy, decentralization and free software/culture. In France, it's best exemplified by the Framasoft association which started from a network of teachers : https://framasoft.org/en/ https://framasoft.org/en/
        6y ago
bachmeier 6y ago
From a business perspective, it doesn't really matter. There's still a large market of people that do care about it. Look at the explosive growth of Obsidian in large part because it's a local-first solution. In addition, there's a difference between using those services and being "totally okay" with it. If you like Evernote, then sure, you'll be using the cloud. If you had a way to use Evernote without storing your data in someone else's cloud, a lot of people would be happy. Even non-technical people talk all the time about not trusting services because of data issues. Many will not use a new service because they're worried about their data if the service stops. It's a really big issue for businesses.
eternalban 6y ago
People have no clue as to how computers and networks work. In fact, you may have even interviewed people for software jobs who don't have a solid grasp on these matters. This is good news, as far as system architecture is concerned, as the opinion that matters is principally concerned with utility, convenience, usability, etc. Secondly, the ship may have sailed, but interestingly these ships apparently are generational. There used to be a ship called AOL. /g (There is a reason every ideological effort for authoritarian control heads straight for the school house and youth camps. The reason is the said 'ship' that sails, on schedule, every ~20 years.)
- eternalban 6y ago
  To be constructive here, if you care about these matters and have technical know-how, invest in the future and mentor the younger generation on how to build decentralized systems. Give them knowledge, blue prints, and tools. They'll crack the generational social code on their end.
  - southerntofu 6y ago
    YES! Though why teach only the young? ;)
RedShift1 6y ago
People use the cloud because they are being forced through the software user interfaces. Working with local files takes increasingly more steps compared to cloud based solutions. So I wouldn't exactly say that people are ok with it, it feels more like they choice is being made for them.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  If web pages could be more easily given access to a directory on your filesystem, Google Docs could more easily show you you files in your Documents folder.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    'Access to shared data' for proprietary, untrusted "apps" is an anti-pattern that even iOS and Android are now getting away from. If a JavaScript app needs to access some sort of complex directory structure, that can happen within current API's by locally "uploading" and "downloading" a standard archive format, e.g. a .ZIP file.
  - southerntofu 6y ago
    Running code from untrusted sources (Javascript/WASM in the browser) is an anti-pattern. It causes all sorts of problems and vulnerabilities.
  - diffeomorphism 6y ago
    If web pages had a harder time getting their fingers on online data, that would give the same outcome.
pdimitar 6y ago
You seem to underestimate the pressure from the market. At one point the younger generation does not even remember there was a local-first software. Sadly the relentless efforts of the corporations are paying off. That doesn't mean people are okay with it. It means their choice is made for them.
- mvzvm 6y ago
  I disagree. I think HN is rabid about privacy and "owning your data", but by and large, most people just don't care.
  - codemac 6y ago
    Most that I talk to do - but it's similar to how they care about the national debt. There's nothing they can do, they have no realistic expertise or control, and they vote with what - dollars once every phone purchase?
    - mvzvm 6y ago
      I think this is a good analogy, because the national debt is not a good measure of anything. People bring it up at all the wrong times, and takes grandstanding postures around it. Just like this, eh?
      - astrange 6y ago
        At least there might be a reason to care about privacy, but there actually isn't a reason to care about the national debt. There's no evidence the model of it being debt means anything - it certainly isn't household debt when it's in a currency you can just print more of. And even under the model where printing money causes inflation, we're in a negative interest rate regime meaning printing money would cause /deflation/.
    - deathanatos 6y ago
      > and they vote with what - dollars More and more, I am seeing many companies that realize they can do both: take the user's money and feed them ads. After all, that's more profitable than just taking their money. As examples, T-mo, Verizon, my local gas station, various airlines all both take my money and give me ads. Some are even known to sell my data. So, can I actually vote with my wallet?
hemloc_io 6y ago
I think you're mostly right. However I would've said the same thing about Telegram/Signal/Defi and other decentralized/privacy first technology not too long ago. I think there's a reasonable case for the idea that as the conversation around censorship and data ownership evolves, we'll see a restructuring of the market toward some level of personal data ownership. We're probably far from that today though.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
franklampard 6y ago
> pros seem to outweigh the cons. Exactly
oblib 6y ago
>>All things considered, data breaches are rare Data breaches are not the only consideration. There's not many things more important to a business than their data and putting that entirely in a 3rd party's hands at a remote location only is very risky and could be catastrophic. It's one thing to send a copy of a blueprint of a product design to China to have it manufactured and quite another to send them your only copy of it.

by dvt 6y ago

gobengo 6y ago

> People, by and large, seem to be totally okay with storing data in the cloud It's simply not true, or if it is, it's only because of what you're choosing to looking at to build your view of how it 'seems'. https://mydata.org/ https://mydata.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula... https://ethereum.org/en/ https://ethereum.org/en/ https://solid.mit.edu/ https://solid.mit.edu/ Meeting every week: https://identity.foundation/working-groups/secure-data-storage.html https://identity.foundation/working-groups/secure-data-stora... > All things considered, data breaches are rare, and if they do happen, they're usually to be blamed on configuration blunders, not the services at large. Did you work at Google? Do you know about PRISM? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#Companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#C... Can't tell if you're intentionally or accidentally misleading.

dvt 6y ago
> Can't tell if you're intentionally or accidentally misleading. All I'm doing is looking at the market cap of companies like Facebook and Dropbox. I mean, hell, Facebook literally sold personal data and sure, you occasionally see "boycott FB" movements, but they're all bark and no bite.
- adkadskhj 6y ago
  This is sort of like saying people are okay with cancer because they buy certain plastics in mass. The reality is people are ignorant of what is good for them in a ton of applications, including this one. Only a handful really grasp the context of what is happening with their data and most importantly how their data could affect them. People routinely do things against their own interest. It's up to the other people that care about this issue to make competing products that don't harm. There's simply no way to get everyone to really care about an issue with nuance and/or niche knowledge.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    I don't think you're giving people enough credit. It's not exactly a mystery at this point that Facebook/IG make their money by selling access to your information to advertisers. People really just don't care which doesn't make them ignorant and doesn't mean they're wrong to not care. We're the privacy obsessed weirdos. I've been in conversations where people talk about products they "discovered" through IG ads. The mindset where we're the only ones that really understand what's going on and everyone else are just sheeple -- sheeple I tell you is gross. This issue really isn't all that nuanced. That's just the lie we tell ourselves because we don't want to admit that we're the nutters being like "they're watching you scroll through Facebook and they're gonna use that to lower your credit score. THE ALGORITHMS!!" I'm proud to be part of this weird club but let's not use it as an oppertunity to shit on our outgroup.
    - southerntofu 6y ago
      We may be interested in the deep details/debates the general public has no knowledge about. However i can assure you many people care about their privacy. They're not all ignorant, but they're usually powerless. Wanna keep in touch with friends? Gotta use facebook. Wanna watch cool videos? Gotta use Youtube. etc. But there's a very strong movement of non-tech persons for privacy, decentralization and free software/culture. In France, it's best exemplified by the Framasoft association which started from a network of teachers : https://framasoft.org/en/ https://framasoft.org/en/
      - 6y ago

bachmeier 6y ago

From a business perspective, it doesn't really matter. There's still a large market of people that do care about it. Look at the explosive growth of Obsidian in large part because it's a local-first solution. In addition, there's a difference between using those services and being "totally okay" with it. If you like Evernote, then sure, you'll be using the cloud. If you had a way to use Evernote without storing your data in someone else's cloud, a lot of people would be happy. Even non-technical people talk all the time about not trusting services because of data issues. Many will not use a new service because they're worried about their data if the service stops. It's a really big issue for businesses.

eternalban 6y ago

People have no clue as to how computers and networks work. In fact, you may have even interviewed people for software jobs who don't have a solid grasp on these matters. This is good news, as far as system architecture is concerned, as the opinion that matters is principally concerned with utility, convenience, usability, etc. Secondly, the ship may have sailed, but interestingly these ships apparently are generational. There used to be a ship called AOL. /g (There is a reason every ideological effort for authoritarian control heads straight for the school house and youth camps. The reason is the said 'ship' that sails, on schedule, every ~20 years.)

eternalban 6y ago
To be constructive here, if you care about these matters and have technical know-how, invest in the future and mentor the younger generation on how to build decentralized systems. Give them knowledge, blue prints, and tools. They'll crack the generational social code on their end.
- southerntofu 6y ago
  YES! Though why teach only the young? ;)

RedShift1 6y ago

People use the cloud because they are being forced through the software user interfaces. Working with local files takes increasingly more steps compared to cloud based solutions. So I wouldn't exactly say that people are ok with it, it feels more like they choice is being made for them.

jay_kyburz 6y ago
If web pages could be more easily given access to a directory on your filesystem, Google Docs could more easily show you you files in your Documents folder.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  'Access to shared data' for proprietary, untrusted "apps" is an anti-pattern that even iOS and Android are now getting away from. If a JavaScript app needs to access some sort of complex directory structure, that can happen within current API's by locally "uploading" and "downloading" a standard archive format, e.g. a .ZIP file.
- southerntofu 6y ago
  Running code from untrusted sources (Javascript/WASM in the browser) is an anti-pattern. It causes all sorts of problems and vulnerabilities.
- diffeomorphism 6y ago
  If web pages had a harder time getting their fingers on online data, that would give the same outcome.

pdimitar 6y ago

You seem to underestimate the pressure from the market. At one point the younger generation does not even remember there was a local-first software. Sadly the relentless efforts of the corporations are paying off. That doesn't mean people are okay with it. It means their choice is made for them.

mvzvm 6y ago
I disagree. I think HN is rabid about privacy and "owning your data", but by and large, most people just don't care.
- codemac 6y ago
  Most that I talk to do - but it's similar to how they care about the national debt. There's nothing they can do, they have no realistic expertise or control, and they vote with what - dollars once every phone purchase?
  - mvzvm 6y ago
    I think this is a good analogy, because the national debt is not a good measure of anything. People bring it up at all the wrong times, and takes grandstanding postures around it. Just like this, eh?
    - astrange 6y ago
      At least there might be a reason to care about privacy, but there actually isn't a reason to care about the national debt. There's no evidence the model of it being debt means anything - it certainly isn't household debt when it's in a currency you can just print more of. And even under the model where printing money causes inflation, we're in a negative interest rate regime meaning printing money would cause /deflation/.
  - deathanatos 6y ago
    > and they vote with what - dollars More and more, I am seeing many companies that realize they can do both: take the user's money and feed them ads. After all, that's more profitable than just taking their money. As examples, T-mo, Verizon, my local gas station, various airlines all both take my money and give me ads. Some are even known to sell my data. So, can I actually vote with my wallet?

hemloc_io 6y ago

I think you're mostly right. However I would've said the same thing about Telegram/Signal/Defi and other decentralized/privacy first technology not too long ago. I think there's a reasonable case for the idea that as the conversation around censorship and data ownership evolves, we'll see a restructuring of the market toward some level of personal data ownership. We're probably far from that today though.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

franklampard 6y ago

> pros seem to outweigh the cons. Exactly

oblib 6y ago

>>All things considered, data breaches are rare Data breaches are not the only consideration. There's not many things more important to a business than their data and putting that entirely in a 3rd party's hands at a remote location only is very risky and could be catastrophic. It's one thing to send a copy of a blueprint of a product design to China to have it manufactured and quite another to send them your only copy of it.