5 ms·

You say decentralized services never work, and then give an example of the most successful one: email. I don't know why you are assuming that everyone will hav

by mej10 14y ago

You say decentralized services never work, and then give an example of the most successful one: email. I don't know why you are assuming that everyone will have to run their own. Also, it seems very cynical/naive to think that just because such systems aren't currently working/won't currently work with given social structures, that this will always be the case. Do you disagree?

wdewind 14y ago
Email essentially IS centralized at DNS. Any decentralized social network has to solve the lookup problem: how do I find people. None really do this in a way that's going to make it fundamentally different than what we have now. I can't help feeling that the natural outcome of decentralized social networking is that people eventually start hosting them for mom and dad, then a few friends, then start companies, then we are back to facebook. Someone, somewhere is going to have to have a database of names mapped to servers. Centralization is, in an abstract way, present in so many of our social structures, that yes, I disagree that within a capitalist economic structure (one which is optimized for sharing of services rather than individualism, ie: non-technical users simply wont do this unless the work is done for them, like facebook did) it would be next to impossible for something like this to work. People quite simply don't want to deal with this shit, and centralization brings efficiency and management amongst many other things.
- jackalope 14y ago
  Email is a decentralized service and the task of discovery is solved with DNS. If you have an address, jackalope@example.com, you can find out where to send the message if it is explicitly set (MX record) or not (A record). I don't see why you can't do the same with a decentralized social network.
  - wdewind 14y ago
    And who runs the DNS servers?
    - marshray 14y ago
      The most popular ones are run by IANA, ICANN, and Verisign. But nothing stops most of us in the free world from choosing an alternative root system. Other than the support cost of a minor config change in our OS or application software.
  - Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
    Or mymail@[127.0.0.1]
- wmf 14y ago
  Email essentially IS centralized at DNS. The difference between DNS and Facebook/Twitter is that DNS is regulated so that bad guys have to go through some kind of due process to shut down your domain. It's not perfect, but it's better than what else we've got.
  - unixnoob 14y ago
    AKAIK it is still possible with most popular email servers to send and recive using only IP addresses (e.g. by placing the address in brackets). DNS is really only optional for email, at least functionally. But I think a lot of people assume there can be no email without domain names.
  - wdewind 14y ago
    So why not regulate facebook and twitter instead of make another service that will essentially turn into DNS, which we already have?
    - wmf 14y ago
      Facebook and Twitter were funded under the assumption that they would be unregulated monopolies, so regulating them amounts to stealing from their investors. Instead of another service that will essentially turn into DNS, I would propose just using DNS for naming. So if you're Tyler Durden you register tyler.durden.name and put an A record pointing to your DiSo server. Now you can switch providers while retaining your identity by just changing the A record.
- grovecai 14y ago
  Exactly, no matter how decentralized is the infrastructure, there always has a centralized node, such as BitTorrent tracker.
  - nine_k 14y ago
    BitTorrent is capable of being decentralized from day one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_tracker#Trackerless_torrents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_tracker#Trackerless_...
    - grovecai 14y ago
      Why it wasn't be?
    - Zash 14y ago
      The original BitTorrent client was the first to offer decentralized [...] Is not the same as "from day one"
repsilat 14y ago
Not only is email a successful decentralised system, it's the logical infrastructure for a decentralised social network. In Facebook terms, your "feed" is just an inbox with a smart filter and nice presentation, and your "wall" is just a mailing list to which all of your friends are subscribed.
- macrael 14y ago
  This is so profoundly true. It's all just feeds. RSS could have been implemented as mailing lists, too. Maybe we should use mailing lists to build the next big decentralized social network instead of this infrastructure.
  - Zash 14y ago
    Wait, wasn't RSS invented to replace mailing lists (aka news letters)? But yeah, making a facebook/twitter-style social network app that uses plain email as transport would be really cool.
    - repsilat 14y ago
      > Wait, wasn't RSS invented to replace mailing lists (aka news letters)? Probably. On the server-side RSS is nicer in some respects - you're not sending out mail to old, disused inboxes, you don't have to manage subscriptions or worry about being blocked as spam etc. One thing that I think might make email better is if people got used to the idea of "email apps". The idea that my inbox might collate stories from a given source into a scannable digest (like RSS might give me) seems like a strange departure from the traditional idea of what an email client or service is "meant to do" - present discrete, unmodified messages in the most transparent way possible. For a social network it's clear that you'd need something like that, though - you'd need clever filters on your feed, thumbnails on images, possible integration with image-sharing services etc etc. Using email and mailing lists gives you a big head-start, but if you can't build on top of it then it can't take off like a dedicated protocol can.
      - Zash 14y ago
haroldp 14y ago
Exactly right. Very few people want the hassle of running their own email server. It happens I am the kind of person that likes running his own email server. I run my mail server in such a way that it is appealing to many of my friends to host their email accounts with me. Many other people find their accounts with gmail, or their ISP or their business. These are ALL examples of the success of our decentralized email system. Individuals, small businesses, and large business can all enter the market, offer advantageous features, compete on price, etc. Facebook is the opposite of this. I have no option to build my own site for facebook style networking. I have no option to subscribe to Google's implementation of a general social networking protocol.

by mej10 14y ago

wdewind 14y ago

Email essentially IS centralized at DNS. Any decentralized social network has to solve the lookup problem: how do I find people. None really do this in a way that's going to make it fundamentally different than what we have now. I can't help feeling that the natural outcome of decentralized social networking is that people eventually start hosting them for mom and dad, then a few friends, then start companies, then we are back to facebook. Someone, somewhere is going to have to have a database of names mapped to servers. Centralization is, in an abstract way, present in so many of our social structures, that yes, I disagree that within a capitalist economic structure (one which is optimized for sharing of services rather than individualism, ie: non-technical users simply wont do this unless the work is done for them, like facebook did) it would be next to impossible for something like this to work. People quite simply don't want to deal with this shit, and centralization brings efficiency and management amongst many other things.

jackalope 14y ago
Email is a decentralized service and the task of discovery is solved with DNS. If you have an address, jackalope@example.com, you can find out where to send the message if it is explicitly set (MX record) or not (A record). I don't see why you can't do the same with a decentralized social network.
- wdewind 14y ago
  And who runs the DNS servers?
  - marshray 14y ago
    The most popular ones are run by IANA, ICANN, and Verisign. But nothing stops most of us in the free world from choosing an alternative root system. Other than the support cost of a minor config change in our OS or application software.
- Sami_Lehtinen 14y ago
  Or mymail@[127.0.0.1]
wmf 14y ago
Email essentially IS centralized at DNS. The difference between DNS and Facebook/Twitter is that DNS is regulated so that bad guys have to go through some kind of due process to shut down your domain. It's not perfect, but it's better than what else we've got.
- unixnoob 14y ago
  AKAIK it is still possible with most popular email servers to send and recive using only IP addresses (e.g. by placing the address in brackets). DNS is really only optional for email, at least functionally. But I think a lot of people assume there can be no email without domain names.
- wdewind 14y ago
  So why not regulate facebook and twitter instead of make another service that will essentially turn into DNS, which we already have?
  - wmf 14y ago
    Facebook and Twitter were funded under the assumption that they would be unregulated monopolies, so regulating them amounts to stealing from their investors. Instead of another service that will essentially turn into DNS, I would propose just using DNS for naming. So if you're Tyler Durden you register tyler.durden.name and put an A record pointing to your DiSo server. Now you can switch providers while retaining your identity by just changing the A record.
grovecai 14y ago
Exactly, no matter how decentralized is the infrastructure, there always has a centralized node, such as BitTorrent tracker.
- nine_k 14y ago
  BitTorrent is capable of being decentralized from day one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_tracker#Trackerless_torrents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_tracker#Trackerless_...
  - grovecai 14y ago
    Why it wasn't be?
  - Zash 14y ago
    The original BitTorrent client was the first to offer decentralized [...] Is not the same as "from day one"

repsilat 14y ago

Not only is email a successful decentralised system, it's the logical infrastructure for a decentralised social network. In Facebook terms, your "feed" is just an inbox with a smart filter and nice presentation, and your "wall" is just a mailing list to which all of your friends are subscribed.

macrael 14y ago
This is so profoundly true. It's all just feeds. RSS could have been implemented as mailing lists, too. Maybe we should use mailing lists to build the next big decentralized social network instead of this infrastructure.
- Zash 14y ago
  Wait, wasn't RSS invented to replace mailing lists (aka news letters)? But yeah, making a facebook/twitter-style social network app that uses plain email as transport would be really cool.
  - repsilat 14y ago
    > Wait, wasn't RSS invented to replace mailing lists (aka news letters)? Probably. On the server-side RSS is nicer in some respects - you're not sending out mail to old, disused inboxes, you don't have to manage subscriptions or worry about being blocked as spam etc. One thing that I think might make email better is if people got used to the idea of "email apps". The idea that my inbox might collate stories from a given source into a scannable digest (like RSS might give me) seems like a strange departure from the traditional idea of what an email client or service is "meant to do" - present discrete, unmodified messages in the most transparent way possible. For a social network it's clear that you'd need something like that, though - you'd need clever filters on your feed, thumbnails on images, possible integration with image-sharing services etc etc. Using email and mailing lists gives you a big head-start, but if you can't build on top of it then it can't take off like a dedicated protocol can.
    - Zash 14y ago

haroldp 14y ago

Exactly right. Very few people want the hassle of running their own email server. It happens I am the kind of person that likes running his own email server. I run my mail server in such a way that it is appealing to many of my friends to host their email accounts with me. Many other people find their accounts with gmail, or their ISP or their business. These are ALL examples of the success of our decentralized email system. Individuals, small businesses, and large business can all enter the market, offer advantageous features, compete on price, etc. Facebook is the opposite of this. I have no option to build my own site for facebook style networking. I have no option to subscribe to Google's implementation of a general social networking protocol.