5 ms·

Doctorow is correct here: interoperability is necessary, from a social perspective. Governments should mandate it.

cryptonector 4y ago
Imposing interoperability has other costs than switching costs: mainly the opportunity cost of stifled innovation. All costs must be taken into account. Cost of opportunity is immeasurable. This is not an easy task.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Wouldn't imposing interoperability be the opposite of stifling innovation? It's forcing companies to allow others to innovate as well, as they'll actually have a chance of breaking into the market of the dominant player. If Twitter can (and will) act without interoperability, they can shutdown anyone who tries to interop, stifling innovation in the space at large, while if they are forced to allow interoperability, other players can also enter the market.
  - cryptonector 4y ago
    It depends! For example, IPv4 did inhibit some innovation (think CNLP, OSI, IPv6, etc.), and TCP did too (probably), each at their respective layers, but TCP/IP produced a great deal of innovation at layers above, and that's easily worth the opportunity cost of missed innovation at the the network and transport layers. But now suppose we standardized on Java or Ada or something for app dev. That would not be good, and the opportunity cost of inhibited language development would be awful. Standardization in APIs is worse even, if you disallow extensions, but is less nasty if you do allow extensions. So, yeah, "it depends" is the best I can do for an answer. Sometimes it's possible to reduce the opportunity cost of innovation inhibition by standardizing in mature technology spaces, but sometimes a sector that appears mature is ripe for disruption, so it can be really hard to predict. And we cannot know what we've lost for quite some time after the standard is imposed. So on the whole I'm disinclined to have standardization forced on the market.
- AnimalMuppet 4y ago
  Well, it may stifle innovation in the protocol, while encouraging innovation in the implementation and/or use. In my book, that's a net win. Why? There's less room for innovation in the protocol. Take TCP, for instance. Could it be improved? Probably. But how much gain are you going to get by innovating there? On the other hand, how much was enabled, on both ends of the wire, by everything standardizing on TCP? Far, far more than we could ever get by a "better TCP".
  - jatone 4y ago
    TCP is a bad example; since its actively being supplanted by quic simply because TCP is such a inefficient protocol.
    - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
      TCP dates from 1974, QUIC from 2012. I don't think a new transport protocol after 38 years invalidates my point - that there is less room (not none) for innovation in the protocol than there is for innovation in the things that use the protocol.
      - cryptonector 4y ago
        TCP is a bad example because it has become so hard to replace. SCTP failed to replace TCP for various reasons, such as too many middleboxes filtering ULPs that aren't TCP or UDP, or SCTP being far to rich and complex, or just inertia. But TCP has had a ton of problems, and while there has been a ton of research into those problems and the solution spaces for them, adopting even hacky solutions into TCP has been difficult. As a result, TCP has gotten complex and bloated over the years without at the same time solving all the problems that a new protocol could solve. On the plus side, in spite of inhibiting innovation at the transport layer, TCP enabled innovation at the application layer by making the application layer possible at all.
      - jatone 4y ago
        didn't say it invalidated your point just that it was a bad example. just because something has inertia doesn't mean its good or even okay. it just means it timed the market correctly. you could have used UDP for example which being as old as TCP has spawned many new protocols on top of it (including quic) and in its own right has been the backbone of many applications.
- Gollapalli 4y ago
  Perhaps. But all the core protocols of the web were done using government money and standardized as a public good. I don't see why social media protocols should not have some base level standard of interoperability, given their importance in society. I don't begrudge FB and Twitter their success. But I think that, as with the previous generations of captains of industry, it is time that the winners take into account the public good. Something like the living web standard for social media would be nice.
manesioz 4y ago
Or at the very least, not criminalize competitive compatibility attempts.
carapace 4y ago
Yeah. I went in swinging with a chip on my shoulder but I couldn't find fault with the article. Solid as heck for the internet. (IMO) The one major problem I see with all this is mass adoption: it feels like most folks just don't care, and most of the folks who do care wind up using the "bad stuff" anyway (mostly out of convenience, but also due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).) Even the right-to-repair and "comcom" mandates rest on popular support, eh? To me that seems like the "800 lb gorilla": how do you get the average user to care about this stuff?
- sbazerque 4y ago
  The Internet became mainstream because folks could use modems and phone landlines (circuit switching technology, that the new TCP/IP end-to-end packet switching stack would eventually replace) to get online. The path for mass adoption of the new, p2p and interoperable technologies is the same: make them work on web browsers (using the browser as a full peer, not a client). It is the ubiquitous VM: JavaScript, WASM, IndexedDB, WebRTC+WebSockets, all the pieces are there. The building blocks for a representation / data model are all in the air as well: CRDTs, Merkle-ized structures, content-based addressing, etc. I'm a believer.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > it feels like most folks just don't care, and most of the folks who do care wind up using the "bad stuff" anyway (mostly out of convenience, but also due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) They do care, but most of us lack the understanding and vocabulary to change. All these things can be overcome. FOMO, worship of convenience, lock-in, or fear of being different. Never give in to bullying by weak-minded naysayers and defeatists who shout "resistance is useless", or demean others by presuming to know "what they want" or saying that "ordinary people are too stupid..." etcetera. These are the vestiges of the 20th century hacker that we must shake-off as a culture. These are mild obstacles in the end. People can be educated. Please help spread the word about Digital Vegan [1] which is an attempt to make a case for "healthier technology". Spread the word about Humane Tech [2] and the harms inflicted by incumbent monopolies As an ordinary citizen. speak your mind and remain true to the values of what you think technology can be, not the pale imitation offered by so-called "Big Tech". I personally refuse to use any big-tech products and I use what influence I have to convince others to drop them too. Interop will not happen by legislation alone, it also requires awareness, dissent and self-determination. People must be reminded that it is their right to be masters of the technology necessary for modern life, not slaves to it. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net [2] https://www.humanetech.com/ https://www.humanetech.com/
Barrin92 4y ago
the means advocated for here seem kind of strange though. He correctly points out that the biggest advantage social media incumbents have is their users data and network effects. His "comcom" methodology consisting of "reverse engineering, scraping, bots, and other improvisational techniques", is not exactly something I want near my personal information because unlikely the old days you're not reverse engineering hardware schematics, you'd be scraping people's private information.
- nine_k 4y ago
  It's fine to scrape your private information under your own control. Many people have the problem that their life's information is sitting in a proprietary silo, without a nice way to extract it. (Truth be told, Google does offer the "takeaway" thing, kudos. FB apparently does not.)
  - bryan_w 4y ago
    1) FB does have a takeout product 2) Scraping your data for your use might be fine, but what about the private data of friends and family that you have access to? Do you want grandma to be able to scrape all your posts/pictures/etc just because she wanted to take the "What kind of harry Potter broomstick are you?" Quiz?
    - nine_k 4y ago
      For (2): Whatever you've one made available, is available. You lose control once you make it available. You can ask nicely not to do certain things with what you divulge, but you cannot enforce it. So yes, as long as grandma has access to my pictures, it's fair use for her to collect them. Republishing them to a wider circle than originally posted is a different matter. This is the reason I only post online such things which I can repeat under oath, or see posted on the busiest crossing.
  - Crespyl 4y ago
    > FB apparently does not At least as of a few years ago (~2015/2016) they did; when I deleted my own FB account I found an option that allowed me to download a zip archive of my photos and posts. No idea if they still support that now, or where they've hidden the option if so.
sofixa 4y ago
That's one of the things the upcoming Digital Markets Act is trying to tackle.

Imposing interoperability has other costs than switching costs: mainly the opportunity cost of stifled innovation. All costs must be taken into account. Cost of opportunity is immeasurable. This is not an easy task.

capableweb 4y ago
Wouldn't imposing interoperability be the opposite of stifling innovation? It's forcing companies to allow others to innovate as well, as they'll actually have a chance of breaking into the market of the dominant player. If Twitter can (and will) act without interoperability, they can shutdown anyone who tries to interop, stifling innovation in the space at large, while if they are forced to allow interoperability, other players can also enter the market.
- cryptonector 4y ago
  It depends! For example, IPv4 did inhibit some innovation (think CNLP, OSI, IPv6, etc.), and TCP did too (probably), each at their respective layers, but TCP/IP produced a great deal of innovation at layers above, and that's easily worth the opportunity cost of missed innovation at the the network and transport layers. But now suppose we standardized on Java or Ada or something for app dev. That would not be good, and the opportunity cost of inhibited language development would be awful. Standardization in APIs is worse even, if you disallow extensions, but is less nasty if you do allow extensions. So, yeah, "it depends" is the best I can do for an answer. Sometimes it's possible to reduce the opportunity cost of innovation inhibition by standardizing in mature technology spaces, but sometimes a sector that appears mature is ripe for disruption, so it can be really hard to predict. And we cannot know what we've lost for quite some time after the standard is imposed. So on the whole I'm disinclined to have standardization forced on the market.
AnimalMuppet 4y ago
Well, it may stifle innovation in the protocol, while encouraging innovation in the implementation and/or use. In my book, that's a net win. Why? There's less room for innovation in the protocol. Take TCP, for instance. Could it be improved? Probably. But how much gain are you going to get by innovating there? On the other hand, how much was enabled, on both ends of the wire, by everything standardizing on TCP? Far, far more than we could ever get by a "better TCP".
- jatone 4y ago
  TCP is a bad example; since its actively being supplanted by quic simply because TCP is such a inefficient protocol.
  - AnimalMuppet 4y ago
    TCP dates from 1974, QUIC from 2012. I don't think a new transport protocol after 38 years invalidates my point - that there is less room (not none) for innovation in the protocol than there is for innovation in the things that use the protocol.
    - cryptonector 4y ago
      TCP is a bad example because it has become so hard to replace. SCTP failed to replace TCP for various reasons, such as too many middleboxes filtering ULPs that aren't TCP or UDP, or SCTP being far to rich and complex, or just inertia. But TCP has had a ton of problems, and while there has been a ton of research into those problems and the solution spaces for them, adopting even hacky solutions into TCP has been difficult. As a result, TCP has gotten complex and bloated over the years without at the same time solving all the problems that a new protocol could solve. On the plus side, in spite of inhibiting innovation at the transport layer, TCP enabled innovation at the application layer by making the application layer possible at all.
    - jatone 4y ago
      didn't say it invalidated your point just that it was a bad example. just because something has inertia doesn't mean its good or even okay. it just means it timed the market correctly. you could have used UDP for example which being as old as TCP has spawned many new protocols on top of it (including quic) and in its own right has been the backbone of many applications.
Gollapalli 4y ago
Perhaps. But all the core protocols of the web were done using government money and standardized as a public good. I don't see why social media protocols should not have some base level standard of interoperability, given their importance in society. I don't begrudge FB and Twitter their success. But I think that, as with the previous generations of captains of industry, it is time that the winners take into account the public good. Something like the living web standard for social media would be nice.

manesioz 4y ago

Or at the very least, not criminalize competitive compatibility attempts.

carapace 4y ago

Yeah. I went in swinging with a chip on my shoulder but I couldn't find fault with the article. Solid as heck for the internet. (IMO) The one major problem I see with all this is mass adoption: it feels like most folks just don't care, and most of the folks who do care wind up using the "bad stuff" anyway (mostly out of convenience, but also due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).) Even the right-to-repair and "comcom" mandates rest on popular support, eh? To me that seems like the "800 lb gorilla": how do you get the average user to care about this stuff?

sbazerque 4y ago
The Internet became mainstream because folks could use modems and phone landlines (circuit switching technology, that the new TCP/IP end-to-end packet switching stack would eventually replace) to get online. The path for mass adoption of the new, p2p and interoperable technologies is the same: make them work on web browsers (using the browser as a full peer, not a client). It is the ubiquitous VM: JavaScript, WASM, IndexedDB, WebRTC+WebSockets, all the pieces are there. The building blocks for a representation / data model are all in the air as well: CRDTs, Merkle-ized structures, content-based addressing, etc. I'm a believer.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> it feels like most folks just don't care, and most of the folks who do care wind up using the "bad stuff" anyway (mostly out of convenience, but also due to FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) They do care, but most of us lack the understanding and vocabulary to change. All these things can be overcome. FOMO, worship of convenience, lock-in, or fear of being different. Never give in to bullying by weak-minded naysayers and defeatists who shout "resistance is useless", or demean others by presuming to know "what they want" or saying that "ordinary people are too stupid..." etcetera. These are the vestiges of the 20th century hacker that we must shake-off as a culture. These are mild obstacles in the end. People can be educated. Please help spread the word about Digital Vegan [1] which is an attempt to make a case for "healthier technology". Spread the word about Humane Tech [2] and the harms inflicted by incumbent monopolies As an ordinary citizen. speak your mind and remain true to the values of what you think technology can be, not the pale imitation offered by so-called "Big Tech". I personally refuse to use any big-tech products and I use what influence I have to convince others to drop them too. Interop will not happen by legislation alone, it also requires awareness, dissent and self-determination. People must be reminded that it is their right to be masters of the technology necessary for modern life, not slaves to it. [1] https://digitalvegan.net https://digitalvegan.net [2] https://www.humanetech.com/ https://www.humanetech.com/

Barrin92 4y ago

the means advocated for here seem kind of strange though. He correctly points out that the biggest advantage social media incumbents have is their users data and network effects. His "comcom" methodology consisting of "reverse engineering, scraping, bots, and other improvisational techniques", is not exactly something I want near my personal information because unlikely the old days you're not reverse engineering hardware schematics, you'd be scraping people's private information.

nine_k 4y ago
It's fine to scrape your private information under your own control. Many people have the problem that their life's information is sitting in a proprietary silo, without a nice way to extract it. (Truth be told, Google does offer the "takeaway" thing, kudos. FB apparently does not.)
- bryan_w 4y ago
  1) FB does have a takeout product 2) Scraping your data for your use might be fine, but what about the private data of friends and family that you have access to? Do you want grandma to be able to scrape all your posts/pictures/etc just because she wanted to take the "What kind of harry Potter broomstick are you?" Quiz?
  - nine_k 4y ago
    For (2): Whatever you've one made available, is available. You lose control once you make it available. You can ask nicely not to do certain things with what you divulge, but you cannot enforce it. So yes, as long as grandma has access to my pictures, it's fair use for her to collect them. Republishing them to a wider circle than originally posted is a different matter. This is the reason I only post online such things which I can repeat under oath, or see posted on the busiest crossing.
- Crespyl 4y ago
  > FB apparently does not At least as of a few years ago (~2015/2016) they did; when I deleted my own FB account I found an option that allowed me to download a zip archive of my photos and posts. No idea if they still support that now, or where they've hidden the option if so.

sofixa 4y ago

That's one of the things the upcoming Digital Markets Act is trying to tackle.