5 ms·

This idea suffers from the same problem federation does. It's harder to move a whole ecosystem. Makes it harder to innovate. Leads to centralized platforms outp

by blfr 6y ago

This idea suffers from the same problem federation does. It's harder to move a whole ecosystem. Makes it harder to innovate. Leads to centralized platforms outperforming these BYOC/federated/open options. Basically how Reddit replaced Usenet with upvotes and basic spam filtering. There's more on this from 'moxie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj3YFprqAr8 https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/

lifeisstillgood 6y ago
tl;dr >>> So while it’s nice that I’m able to host my own email, that’s also the reason why my email isn’t end-to-end encrypted, and probably never will be. By contrast, WhatsApp was able to introduce end-to-end encryption to over a billion users with a single software update.
drjgk45839 6y ago
>...Reddit replaced Usenet... According to Wikipedia, Reddit was created the same year Usenet service was discontinued by AOL. Reddit "replaced" Usenet in the same sense that cell phones "replaced" telegrams.
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  AOL's only contribution to Usenet was to fill it with people who didn't understand Usenet, all at once, almost completely eradicating the existing community. They discontinued the service when Usenet was no longer a selling point, because they had destroyed it.
- Aeolun 6y ago
  Reddit also has tons of unofficial clients that interact with it. It’s not quite the same since you still don’t own the data, bit it comes close.
rapnie 6y ago
> This idea suffers from the same problem federation does. Yes, this is a problem you also see with the Fediverse (based on W3C ActivityPub). You get innovators and laggers, and the latter when they are popular can hold the former back (you see this with Mastodon, which as early adopter created their own client API's, but are now lagging to implement the Client-to-Server part of the AP specification). At the same time standardization of federated protocols can also be an advantage in that it allows many different projects and applications [0] to be developed and mature independently. Innovation can come from unexpected corners here (heads up to openEngiadina with ERIS [1], DREAM [2] and Spritely [3] project). [0] https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-fo... [1] https://gitlab.com/openengiadina/eris/-/blob/main/doc/eris.adoc https://gitlab.com/openengiadina/eris/-/blob/main/doc/eris.a... [2] https://dream.public.cat/ https://dream.public.cat/ [3] https://spritelyproject.org https://spritelyproject.org
- grishka 6y ago
  The C2S part of ActivityPub isn't for everyone, and it's okay. It basically moves too much logic to the client. It prevents any semblance of a good UX because you have everything — posts you would display in the feed, interactions with your content, etc — in the same inbox. You have to connect to many different domains to render something to the user, and you also have to have a sophisticated caching system on the client. Also good luck loading those full-size images over an EDGE connection. There are 2 kinds of ActivityPub servers. - The "dumb" one, that does minimal processing and simply stores JSON objects. Someone POSTs an activity to its inbox, the server does minimal required verification, stores it, and the client then queries it with GET. And does the reverse for the outbox. That's it. That's where c2s would work fine. - The "smart" one, that treats s2s ActivityPub like an API, comes with a built-in web interface, and stores everything in a way which makes sense for its particular presentation. That's the kind I'm making (Smithereen, it's on the list you linked, btw), and that's what Mastodon is. Implementing c2s in this kind of server is a major pain in the ass, and I won't. You'd have to throw away all your careful optimizations, synthesize ActivityPub objects out of things that never were ActivityPub objects in the first place, do horribly inefficient things to merge notifications and feed and other conceptually unrelated stuff from several different database tables just for the client to split them back apart... Doesn't make much sense. A domain-specific API is the only way to make a client for this kind of server.
dredmorbius 6y ago
There can be considerable use-value to ecosystems which don't move as a whole, or do so with deliberation and in a component-wise manner. As with, say, LaTeX, or Unix/Linux.
cyberlab 6y ago
> Reddit replaced Usenet Many things replaced Usenet. Usenet is more of a protocol (that uses NNTP) than a social media platform. If you're any way a systems thinker, you would know that protocols are more resilient than services.
- blfr 6y ago
  NNTP is basically dead, maybe abused* for piracy in some corner of the Internet, while Reddit ate half of the web that Facebook didn't eat. * To be clear, I'm rather ok with piracy. NNTP is just really poorly suited for it.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  “ If you're any way a systems thinker, you would know that protocols are more resilient than services.” This is not just a terrible saying, it’s also completely wrong. All things are not equal, so a crappy protocol may or may not be more resilient than a service. “Systems thinking” is not code for “Lazy thinking.”
- hollerith 6y ago
  When making the point that protocols are more resilient than services, consider including an example of a protocol that has at least .0001 as many users as Reddit does.
  - texasbigdata 6y ago
    It's also not the _same_ users, which may not matter but probably does.
nickez 6y ago
Can you imagine a world where you could only use a specific phone model with a specific operator? or where you could only send text messages to people that is on the same network? If we can regulate phones we should be able to regulate social networks.
- lultimouomo 6y ago
  When the iPhone originally came out in the US it was locked together with a 2 year contract with AT&T.
  - karatinversion 6y ago
    (Deleted my identical but less detailed comment) Then again, this was never the case in the EU, where bundling handsets with a GSM subscription was banned. But yes, we don’t have to imagine - and the change certainly didn’t come out of the goodness of the carrier’s hearts!
    - progval 6y ago
      > this was never the case in the EU, where bundling handsets with a GSM subscription was banned. It is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock#European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock#European_Union Last time I was looking for a phone (~8 years ago), in France, I had to check which ones were simlocked.
      - Too 6y ago
        Usually you had he option at least. Either fork up full price for unlocked phone, or take the subsidized monthly rental of phone with a locked SIM. And while the second option does lock you into one operator for 12-24 months you still had the choice of which operator to tie yourself to, I don't think I ever saw a phone model only available on single provider. Finally no matter which operator you chose you can still call people from other operators, even if they initially tried very hard to make this less pleasurable by allowing free texts and minutes within the operator.
platz 6y ago
> Leads to centralized platforms outperforming these BYOC/federated/open options. Basically how Reddit replaced Usenet with upvotes and basic spam filtering. That is a nice insight.

by blfr 6y ago

lifeisstillgood 6y ago

tl;dr >>> So while it’s nice that I’m able to host my own email, that’s also the reason why my email isn’t end-to-end encrypted, and probably never will be. By contrast, WhatsApp was able to introduce end-to-end encryption to over a billion users with a single software update.

drjgk45839 6y ago

>...Reddit replaced Usenet... According to Wikipedia, Reddit was created the same year Usenet service was discontinued by AOL. Reddit "replaced" Usenet in the same sense that cell phones "replaced" telegrams.

wizzwizz4 6y ago
AOL's only contribution to Usenet was to fill it with people who didn't understand Usenet, all at once, almost completely eradicating the existing community. They discontinued the service when Usenet was no longer a selling point, because they had destroyed it.
Aeolun 6y ago
Reddit also has tons of unofficial clients that interact with it. It’s not quite the same since you still don’t own the data, bit it comes close.

rapnie 6y ago

> This idea suffers from the same problem federation does. Yes, this is a problem you also see with the Fediverse (based on W3C ActivityPub). You get innovators and laggers, and the latter when they are popular can hold the former back (you see this with Mastodon, which as early adopter created their own client API's, but are now lagging to implement the Client-to-Server part of the AP specification). At the same time standardization of federated protocols can also be an advantage in that it allows many different projects and applications [0] to be developed and mature independently. Innovation can come from unexpected corners here (heads up to openEngiadina with ERIS [1], DREAM [2] and Spritely [3] project). [0] https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-for-activitypub-apps https://git.feneas.org/feneas/fediverse/-/wikis/watchlist-fo... [1] https://gitlab.com/openengiadina/eris/-/blob/main/doc/eris.adoc https://gitlab.com/openengiadina/eris/-/blob/main/doc/eris.a... [2] https://dream.public.cat/ https://dream.public.cat/ [3] https://spritelyproject.org https://spritelyproject.org

grishka 6y ago
The C2S part of ActivityPub isn't for everyone, and it's okay. It basically moves too much logic to the client. It prevents any semblance of a good UX because you have everything — posts you would display in the feed, interactions with your content, etc — in the same inbox. You have to connect to many different domains to render something to the user, and you also have to have a sophisticated caching system on the client. Also good luck loading those full-size images over an EDGE connection. There are 2 kinds of ActivityPub servers. - The "dumb" one, that does minimal processing and simply stores JSON objects. Someone POSTs an activity to its inbox, the server does minimal required verification, stores it, and the client then queries it with GET. And does the reverse for the outbox. That's it. That's where c2s would work fine. - The "smart" one, that treats s2s ActivityPub like an API, comes with a built-in web interface, and stores everything in a way which makes sense for its particular presentation. That's the kind I'm making (Smithereen, it's on the list you linked, btw), and that's what Mastodon is. Implementing c2s in this kind of server is a major pain in the ass, and I won't. You'd have to throw away all your careful optimizations, synthesize ActivityPub objects out of things that never were ActivityPub objects in the first place, do horribly inefficient things to merge notifications and feed and other conceptually unrelated stuff from several different database tables just for the client to split them back apart... Doesn't make much sense. A domain-specific API is the only way to make a client for this kind of server.

dredmorbius 6y ago

There can be considerable use-value to ecosystems which don't move as a whole, or do so with deliberation and in a component-wise manner. As with, say, LaTeX, or Unix/Linux.

cyberlab 6y ago

> Reddit replaced Usenet Many things replaced Usenet. Usenet is more of a protocol (that uses NNTP) than a social media platform. If you're any way a systems thinker, you would know that protocols are more resilient than services.

blfr 6y ago
NNTP is basically dead, maybe abused* for piracy in some corner of the Internet, while Reddit ate half of the web that Facebook didn't eat. * To be clear, I'm rather ok with piracy. NNTP is just really poorly suited for it.
imwillofficial 6y ago
“ If you're any way a systems thinker, you would know that protocols are more resilient than services.” This is not just a terrible saying, it’s also completely wrong. All things are not equal, so a crappy protocol may or may not be more resilient than a service. “Systems thinking” is not code for “Lazy thinking.”
hollerith 6y ago
When making the point that protocols are more resilient than services, consider including an example of a protocol that has at least .0001 as many users as Reddit does.
- texasbigdata 6y ago
  It's also not the _same_ users, which may not matter but probably does.

nickez 6y ago

Can you imagine a world where you could only use a specific phone model with a specific operator? or where you could only send text messages to people that is on the same network? If we can regulate phones we should be able to regulate social networks.

lultimouomo 6y ago
When the iPhone originally came out in the US it was locked together with a 2 year contract with AT&T.
- karatinversion 6y ago
  (Deleted my identical but less detailed comment) Then again, this was never the case in the EU, where bundling handsets with a GSM subscription was banned. But yes, we don’t have to imagine - and the change certainly didn’t come out of the goodness of the carrier’s hearts!
  - progval 6y ago
    > this was never the case in the EU, where bundling handsets with a GSM subscription was banned. It is not: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock#European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIM_lock#European_Union Last time I was looking for a phone (~8 years ago), in France, I had to check which ones were simlocked.
    - Too 6y ago
      Usually you had he option at least. Either fork up full price for unlocked phone, or take the subsidized monthly rental of phone with a locked SIM. And while the second option does lock you into one operator for 12-24 months you still had the choice of which operator to tie yourself to, I don't think I ever saw a phone model only available on single provider. Finally no matter which operator you chose you can still call people from other operators, even if they initially tried very hard to make this less pleasurable by allowing free texts and minutes within the operator.

platz 6y ago

> Leads to centralized platforms outperforming these BYOC/federated/open options. Basically how Reddit replaced Usenet with upvotes and basic spam filtering. That is a nice insight.