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What if each user had a personal data store, either running on a server they pay for, or one that they host themselves, at home? All their blog posts, comments,
by gagege 13y ago
What if each user had a personal data store, either running on a server they pay for, or one that they host themselves, at home? All their blog posts, comments, pictures, videos, location history, and everything else, is owned by them. They just give sites permission to access (create, read, update, delete) their data.
I'd love something like that, as a user. As a developer, it may make some things harder or slower. I'd totally be willing to pay that price though, if it meant never having to be responsible for thousands of user's data again. The user becomes responsible for their own data.
- stanleydrew 13y agoThis is essentially what Google and Facebook, and to some extent even Apple, are attempting to become: giant stores of user data that you auth against. Also check out Mozilla's BrowserID if you're interested specifically in the auth piece.
- gagege 13y agoYep, exactly. That's where I got the idea. I feel like, if someone's going hold all of a user's data in one place, and be their online identity, in a sense, it should be the user.
- TylerE 13y agoReally? Users are clueless. Always have been, always will be. Give control to the user and it'll end up sitting on a Windows shared drive on open wifi because that's "easy".
- gagege 13y agoPeople learned, over time, that they have to lock their doors and keep their wallet safe. How is this different? Just make the learning curve as shallow as possible.
- bradbatt 13y agoIt comes down to educating users in a way they understand. Part of the problem is that they simply do not grasp the risks or the issues involved. The problems are either too technical or confusing or they may simply not even know that the issue exists. When wireless routers first came out almost none of them defaulted to having security. Unless you were fairly technical minded, you simply left the defaults in place. Not because you were clueless, but because you trusted that the manufacturer must know what they are doing...and you certainly don't. Now they all come with security enabled, plus, users have been educated as to why they should use it. They don't need to know how it works-just why it is important and what it means to them. Same thing goes for enabling HTTPS on websites, adding two-factor auth to your email, having unique passwords on different sites, etc. Part of the responsibility of users' cluelessness falls on us. We need to find better ways to communicate to the average user, who has a minimal understanding of technology, in a way that is meaningful to them.
- zevyoura 13y agoI like the self-hosted approach, but it's vulnerable to power and internet outages, which make it more or less a non-starter if you really need access to it everywhere. If it's not self-hosted it seems like it will naturally gravitate towards the same issues that existing services face.
- gagege 13y agoTrue, which is why I think it might open up a nice new revenue channel for VPS hosts. Pay a company a monthly fee and they host your personal API. Also, it's encrypted, so they can't get to it. Someone else mentioned user stupidity. Why should we let that dictate what we do? Just work really hard to make it easy for them to keep it secure. Give them less options, and so forth.
- tombrossman 13y agoIn a similar vein is the 'Publish on your own own site, syndicate elsewhere' idea behind the IndieWeb movement. http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE http://indiewebcamp.com/POSSE This is done to avoid silos and vendor lock-in, but effectively very similar to your suggestion.
- pauljohncleary 13y agothis exists as a new protocol for app developers to build on, see: https://tent.io https://tent.io