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This is why you're going to start to see a shift away from centralized cloud applications like Facebook towards more federated models. The federated model is th

by Aqueous 13y ago

This is why you're going to start to see a shift away from centralized cloud applications like Facebook towards more federated models. The federated model is the only workable compromise between the security afforded by completely peer-to-peer solutions and the enormous convenience of completely centralized solutions. That's why every single protocol still in wide use after many years of existence is either a federated protocol or a variation on federation (SMTP, XMPP, IRC, DNS, and to some extent, HTTP). The internet by its nature is a federated system. People will be more inclined to trust institutions with which they associate in real life with their data. I don't mind if my company, of which I am a part owner, houses my social data, and federates with other co-equal organizations to generate a public social graph. I do mind that a company in which I have no stake and over which I have no control houses that same data (i.e. Facebook). I think someone will come along, Diaspora or someone else, and create a viable Facebook competitor that is federated and it will take off for this very reason. It has to be as good as, or better than, Facebook as a platform for it to succeed, but it is not impossible.

TillE 13y ago
Anything that replaces Facebook will have to be significantly better in at least one major way that matters to people, and not just nerds. But that's definitely an achievable goal. In the meantime, I'd really like to see a greater focus on encryption of data. For example, think of the possibilities if we had full PKI support built into the browser, such that private messages could actually be private.
- onan_barbarian 13y ago
  Correct. The "significantly better", for better or worse, is likely to be "allows you to share content with your friends that you aren't really allowed to by law". This is probably the only single thing that a federated network can offer that would appeal to non-geeks, at least at first. One might hope that people might "come for the piracy/porn, stay for the free speech".
  - b1daly 13y ago
    The problem is that Facebook, like the www, succeeds because it is not a private platform, it is mostly public, and it has arrived near ubiquity. This is a feature, not a bug, as they say. It seems to me that encryption is totally incompatible with these two aspects. Unless I'm missing something...
mpyne 13y ago
Plus if the U.S. is not very careful (e.g. by establishing bilateral warrant requirements for some of our allies) I suspect they'll see the E.U. and Asia-Pacific nations starting to develop and adopt federated protocols en masse to workaround the threat of things like FISA.
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  That leaves the option of neutral (or enemy) states creating their own data-haven legal environments. How far you go in trusting those is an open question, but then again, 'ly' was a popular CCTLD there even before the Arab Spring.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Well a .ly pointing to a U.S. datacenter is still going to end badly for those trying to avoid NSA intercept. That's the point of "Federation" by the way. Obviously people could store their data on a machine in a given country, the idea is that federated protocols inherently support that type of arrangement. There's no real way to point something like your Facebook login to be a "Generic Social Media" login to a social network provider of your choice, much like you can point your DNS to your preferred email provider.
jiggy2011 13y ago
I think many people find comfort in the idea of a central authority that they can address with their grievances even if it is mostly futile. I saw a documentary on "cyber bullying" some years back and parents were calling for more oversight, more censorship and more monitoring "people shouldn't just be allowed to say mean things on facebook!". A centralised facebook can at least ban members, block imposters , anonymous troll accounts and cooperate with law enforcement if necessary. Under a federated model this becomes much more difficult, if anyone can run a node on the network then the 4chan nodes can connect to the nodes used by people to share their baby photos.
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  I've always envisioned an encrypted system where only people you've authorized can decrypt things you share, assuming you haven't let your keys leak. Users area defined by a key-pair. But I really hope people get used to the idea that you can't control where information goes once it's in the wild, otherwise the social Internet will be nothing but pain.
skybrian 13y ago
Federation implies certain things can't be done that centralized systems can do. The most obvious is deleting or editing a message after you sent it, which works on a social network but not for email. (In theory, email could support versioning, but not deleting the old version, because once you send a message it doesn't belong to you.) This can make federated systems harder to build and centralized systems harder to keep up with on features. But perhaps some day we'll get there.
seagreen 13y ago
You should check out Tent. It's a very promising protocol for social networking. Their docs are at http://tent.io http://tent.io and you can see an example implementation at http://tent.is http://tent.is.

by Aqueous 13y ago

TillE 13y ago

Anything that replaces Facebook will have to be significantly better in at least one major way that matters to people, and not just nerds. But that's definitely an achievable goal. In the meantime, I'd really like to see a greater focus on encryption of data. For example, think of the possibilities if we had full PKI support built into the browser, such that private messages could actually be private.

onan_barbarian 13y ago
Correct. The "significantly better", for better or worse, is likely to be "allows you to share content with your friends that you aren't really allowed to by law". This is probably the only single thing that a federated network can offer that would appeal to non-geeks, at least at first. One might hope that people might "come for the piracy/porn, stay for the free speech".
- b1daly 13y ago
  The problem is that Facebook, like the www, succeeds because it is not a private platform, it is mostly public, and it has arrived near ubiquity. This is a feature, not a bug, as they say. It seems to me that encryption is totally incompatible with these two aspects. Unless I'm missing something...

mpyne 13y ago

Plus if the U.S. is not very careful (e.g. by establishing bilateral warrant requirements for some of our allies) I suspect they'll see the E.U. and Asia-Pacific nations starting to develop and adopt federated protocols en masse to workaround the threat of things like FISA.

dredmorbius 13y ago
That leaves the option of neutral (or enemy) states creating their own data-haven legal environments. How far you go in trusting those is an open question, but then again, 'ly' was a popular CCTLD there even before the Arab Spring.
- mpyne 13y ago
  Well a .ly pointing to a U.S. datacenter is still going to end badly for those trying to avoid NSA intercept. That's the point of "Federation" by the way. Obviously people could store their data on a machine in a given country, the idea is that federated protocols inherently support that type of arrangement. There's no real way to point something like your Facebook login to be a "Generic Social Media" login to a social network provider of your choice, much like you can point your DNS to your preferred email provider.

jiggy2011 13y ago

I think many people find comfort in the idea of a central authority that they can address with their grievances even if it is mostly futile. I saw a documentary on "cyber bullying" some years back and parents were calling for more oversight, more censorship and more monitoring "people shouldn't just be allowed to say mean things on facebook!". A centralised facebook can at least ban members, block imposters , anonymous troll accounts and cooperate with law enforcement if necessary. Under a federated model this becomes much more difficult, if anyone can run a node on the network then the 4chan nodes can connect to the nodes used by people to share their baby photos.

andrewflnr 13y ago
I've always envisioned an encrypted system where only people you've authorized can decrypt things you share, assuming you haven't let your keys leak. Users area defined by a key-pair. But I really hope people get used to the idea that you can't control where information goes once it's in the wild, otherwise the social Internet will be nothing but pain.

skybrian 13y ago

Federation implies certain things can't be done that centralized systems can do. The most obvious is deleting or editing a message after you sent it, which works on a social network but not for email. (In theory, email could support versioning, but not deleting the old version, because once you send a message it doesn't belong to you.) This can make federated systems harder to build and centralized systems harder to keep up with on features. But perhaps some day we'll get there.

seagreen 13y ago

You should check out Tent. It's a very promising protocol for social networking. Their docs are at http://tent.io http://tent.io and you can see an example implementation at http://tent.is http://tent.is.