Many if not most people at this point are paying for one or two always-connected internet connections, in the form of a home connected ISP and a mobile phone. How about everyone runs a small server on their home network and/or cell phone and hosts their profile and personal data, newsfeed contributions etc. from that source.
Maybe am being naive about intrinsic difficulties here, but it seems like the only way to solve this issue is to move away from any reliance on central servers, so no one entity (whether for-profit, non-profit or governmental), controls all the data, and just create a fully P2P network along the lines of the telephone system + some modern web tech. Pretty sure all the pieces to put this together exist already - it’s just a question of whose interest it is in to build that has both motivation and ability.
The dream long ago was that everyone would have their own private webpage sorta like you’re suggesting. It existed for awhile with places like Angelfire and Geocities. But once social media really started to take off and we got Myspace and then Facebook those old personal websites just died.
I figure the majority of people who use Facebook just don’t care what it is doing with/to them, likewise, the type of people who do care are not likely to use a secure analog in great enough numbers to support such a product. What tees me off about Facebook is that although I am not a user, I still have my privacy invaded because I communicate with others who do use FB and end up the big data bank anyway. That’s bullshit, Poindexter’s TIA wet dream come true.
True. My friend was thinking he would host one for his family, friends and neighbourhood. I think his hope would be that every community would have at least one computery inclined person willing to host. However, this assumes:
The cost of hosting scales reasonably with an increase in users.
The reliability of self-hosting is reasonable.
I don’t have answers to these questions, but I’m sure other people are thinking about this.
At least in the US, getting the kind of home internet connection you’d need to support self-hosted content (symmetrical up/down, dedicated IP addresses, etc.) would require additional expenses, and broadband is already stupidly expensive for most people. Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and most other residential broadband providers are all actively hostile to the idea of individuals running personal hosting services on non-business-class plans.
I also brought this up in a different thread about Facebook alternatives, but I don’t think it’s wise to ask people to take on the responsibility of managing network security for a device that’s actually supposed to be open to the outside world when there’s already a huge problem with those same people not being able to properly administer the multitude of devices in their homes that aren’t explicitly designed to be accessed by the entire Internet.
True, and even in making money, there’s ethical lines that can be crossed that will drive away customers.
But realistically speaking, most of have two completely different metrics which we use for judging behaviour: one for commercial entities (and those acting for one), and one for those we perceive as voluntary.
A non-profit labours under the fairly strong disadvantage of being classed in the second.
The first question that comes to mind is: which government? US? What about other countries that would use it? Or should it be put under UN control? An impossible problem to solve.
Right - and before that it was direct-dial bbs’s, (not to mention how email got sent in non-realtime batch deliveries, possibly a reference to how something like this could work). What I’m imagining here is more like an RSS feed, where there is some standardized container - akin to the facebook frame, and it gets fed with the latest content from your pool of contacts.
Lots of ways it could be shaped. So many lessons to be learned from the what worked about FB et al, (ubiquitous, low technical barrier, rich content/multi-media support, (people love their cat vids)). Most of the would-be rival systems, Ello, Diaspora and the bunch - are still either oriented toward some type of monetization, or they require hosting on a central server. Or they’re so geekily specific in their function that most people won’t find them useful. Civilizations communication structure is too important to be inside of any kind of economic feedback loop - if so it will always be distorted toward some parties angle.
Brings to mind a sentiment expressed by Carver Mead (who created VLSI that made all this stuff possible) - paraphrasing ‘you never invent the next tech with the current tech, you use the previous generation to create the next generation of technology’.
Would this level of service be necessary to support the average FB users content submissions though? The key difference I think is that most of these assumptions gear towards a relatively static (in time) type of monolithically designed web-page, that gets updated every so often, and the whole thing gets loaded at each request more-or-less. A “status update” type info feed thingy wouldn’t need as much infrastructure, and doensn’t necessarily have the same requirements of real-time synchrony and demand oriented criticality, could work similar to sms - you get the updates when you get them. Haven’t run any numbers on it - but I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t require broadband speeds for a “reasonably sized” pool of connections. If it was mobile based the up/down symmetry wouldn’t be an issue, and if every member of the system dedicated a few GB on their phones you could have a batch-forward content pool.
Agree that the security questions are pretty tricky with a scheme like this - it would need a seriously thought through layer of separation from other private on-network systems. One way or the other though it seems that we’re moving rapidly toward using the bi-directional capabilities of our personal network connections, via the “cloud” and so-called iot devices, might as well connect things to our friends if we’re connecting to a bunch of corps.
Have had good success running an externally reachable system using OwnCloud/LibreCloud - and a regular home Comcast account. It’s like having your own Dropbox and Spotify based off a box living on top of the refrigerator.
Every time I try to get a small business person/entrepreneur to get a web page, they tell me they already have a FB page for their business and that’s enough, because everybody is on FB.
They’re not wrong, but it’s the idea that they don’t have pay for a site, get a domain name, decide on a theme and color scheme, provide pictures and content - they just do in-the-moment social media without any geeky nerdy stuff. The wish to avoid any geeky nerdy stuff they’d have to pay attention to is why their IoT is so insecure and why they wouldn’t want to host a server.
@audaxaxon , I don’t believe you’re naive about tech difficulties as much as naive about the majority of FB users, who aren’t ever going to leave the platform voluntarily.
Diaspora seems to me to be the one furthest along towards being a possible replacement to fB.
I agree with most of the criticisms (a little confusing for the non-tech crowd, not the prettiest interface, not enough social glue (participants) yet, etc.)
Most of these criticisms can be easily overcome tho… additionally, the infrastructure is coming along as well. “Yousers” (I mean you!) can help by providing programming resources, donations and by joining and inviting friends and family. It’s going to take bleeding-edgers fleeing fB and inviting friends and family to join them before fB implodes and is sold at discount to Justin Timberlake.
Sure some of the vernacular at Diaspora may seem strange (aspect? pod?) and joining requires that you locate a reliable pod and admin team (podmins!) you trust, but much is similar to tech you use today (@ mentions and ‘#’ hashtags). It’s not all that strange!
