1. Message: 1
2. Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 13:49:46 +0100
3. From: rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl>
4. To: cypherpunks@cpunks.org
5. Subject: Re: <unlike-us> news on the alternative social media front
6. Message-ID: <1629103.M5kOg3GNPj@lapuntu>
7. Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
8.  
9. Hi there,
10.  
11. Dnia poniedziałek, 3 listopada 2014 11:24:28 carlo von lynX pisze:
12. > The problem is that interoperability is not solving any real problem.
13.  
14. I disagree. The small number of users and the confusion of which network to
15. use is a real problem, related to the network effect aka Metcalfe's law:
16. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
17.  
18. The same problem exists with truly distributed social networks, like
19. SocialSwarm, MaidSafe, Twister et al. How should a user decide which one they
20. should use?
21.  
22. Let's make that step easier by at least making an attempt at interoperability.
23.  
24. > As if any of those platforms was scalable, functional and sexy enough
25. > to attract a relevant number of people away from the cloud-based systems.
26. > If one of them was so cool, we wouldn't really need the other ones, so
27. > interoperability is unnecessary.
28.  
29. To some extent you're right.
30.  
31. > Interoperability is something you should ask from competing proprietary
32. > systems, but it is irrelevant for free software systems.
33.  
34. I don't agree. These systems already have tens of thousands of users, and
35. getting these users together on a single network is one of the challanges.
36.  
37. > So after eleven years working on free "federated" social web thingies all we
38. > got is some platforms that can talk to each other although they can't scale
39. > to real world relevant numbers or hide their data from government
40. > authorities.
41.  
42. How do you know they can't scale? I see Diaspora scaling pretty well so far.
43. And as far as hiding data from governments is concerned -- sure I'd prefer
44. everybody to jump into RetroShare, but that's not gonna happen. And a
45. decentralized system is much better, privacy-wise, than a centralized one,
46. even if it's not perfect.
47.  
48. > (...)
49. > > >> Most "evil" services we use, just need a decent easy to use functional
50. > > >> alternative.
51. > > >
52. > > > That's the crux, right after getting a common protocol implemented
53. > > > across
54. > > > different federated social networks. Also consider:
55. > > > http://rys.io/en/88
56. >
57. > That document mentions SocialSwarm, with a link to
58. > http://wiki.socialswarm.net/Beyond_the_federation
59. > which I think explains pretty well how federation will never take off.
60.  
61. Fair enough. But it already has hundreds of thousands of users.
62.  
63. For me, the endgame is indeed complete decentralisation and peer-to-peer
64. social networking, a'la SocialSwarm, RetroShare and Twister. None of these are
65. ready yet, though, the way Diaspora or Friendica are ready and usable today.
66.  
67. So I'd rather help people switch to Diaspora or Friendica today rather than
68. have them wait unspecified amount of time fort the Golden Age of Social
69. Networking.
70.  
71. Because once we have them on the free software, decentralised, federated sid,
72. we can write bridges/gateways, and have SocialSwarm connect with userbase on
73. The Federation.
74.  
75. That's not possibble with *any* walled garden.
76.  
77. > Then it says this, as an excuse for dismissing SocialSwarm:
78. > > The problem with FreedomBox and SocialSwarm I see is that they are trying
79. > > to make two hard transitions at once: from centralised to de-centralised,
80. > > and from third-party-hosted to self-hosted. I believe this is a tad too
81. > > an ambitious plan and it should be split into two separate steps.
82. > > However, if we did Step 0 and Step 1 right, they both would have at least
83. > > a part of their work done for them.
84. > And that again is wrong because if you have identified the two or
85. > three crucial problems, trying to fix just one while maintaining
86. > all the mess of the other two problems is years of efforts for
87. > little gain: you and your nerd friends are having their own little
88. > social network, still fully visible to the NSA, while the people
89. > that you would like to spend more time with you have all logical
90. > reasons on their side to stick to Facebook etc.
91.  
92. > ( See the examples at the end of
93. >     http://wiki.socialswarm.net/Beyond_the_federation )
94.  
95. But my girfriend doesn't have to use *my* server, she can choose any of the
96. tens of pods worldwide.
97.  
98. > So now you have interoperability which doesn't solve any of the
99. > three problems:
100. >   - scalability
101. >   - social graph protection
102. >   - end-to-end encryption (the reason why your significant other
103. >       will not be free to talk about you while using your server)
104.  
105. So, this is interesting:
106. https://joindiaspora.com/posts/5069036#b894222043d8013279201a960f0f49a1
107.  
108. RedMatrix supports end-to-end encryption.
109.  
110. > > > Also, please join us at The Federation Assembly at #31C3:
111. > > > https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/wiki/Assembly:The_Federation
112. >
113. > Great! Server federation! Keep promoting bad ideas!
114. > Federation does not solve the problem that SERVERS AREN'T SAFE!
115.  
116. No, they're not. Still, many federating servers controlled by different people
117. is much better than a single, centrally controlled network.
118.  
119. Somewhere there's a video of Bruce Schneier talking about how 10000 different
120. small and medium e-mail providers is so much better a situation, than 10 large
121. ones. That's exactly my point here.
122.  
123. > Servers should not be confided with the social graph of humanity,
124. > not even if we pay 8 euros a month for them - because their
125. > virtual memory is easily automatically reapable by authorities.
126.  
127. It is indeed. But if they have to do it on 10000 different servers, that's a
128. different ball game than when they have to do it on 10 or 100.
129.  
130. > Even if the FSW solved the problem of efficient distribution,
131. > which of course it hasn't even properly addressed, it still
132. > lets the agencies have the entire cake and eat it.
133.  
134. As above.
135.  
136. > How can you guys dare to go to the 31C3 and act as if
137. > Snowden didn't happen?
138.  
139. You know what? At this point let me say from the depth of my heart: fuck you.
140.  
141. Don't you dare lecture me on Snowden and privacy. The fact that I have
142. different take-away from these revelations (e.g. "done now is better than
143. perfect in a decade") doesn't give you the right to be a condescending little
144. prick, smirking with contempt from your high horse of theoretical technical
145. superiority with not much to show for it but a few texts critical of projects
146. that work *here and now*.
147.  
148. Where's the code? Where are the tools? How can I get involved? Can I test
149. anything, apart from your ability to throw tantrums? Please don't tell me
150. that's all you've got in the pipeline since 28C3!
151.  
152. Here are some news for you: FreedomBox is not yet usable. SocialSwarm is not
153. yet usable. I'd love them to be, but they're simply not.
154.  
155. And while you berate others about how they act as if "Snowden didn't happen",
156. these others are getting people off of Facebook at least, today. That's not
157. perfect, but it's a *step*. A step you can either try to build upon, or a step
158. you can try to undermine. Guess which has a higher chance of eventually
159. solving most or all of the problems you mentioned?
160.  
161. Here, have a read:
162. https://medium.com/message/81e5f33a24e1
163.  
164. Especially the "In the end, it’s culture that’s broken" part. Come back when
165. you do.
166.  
167. > It's annoying that the things we said in 2011 on
168. > http://secushare.org/2011-FSW-Scalability-Paranoia
169. > still apply. No progress at all. Had the "federated
170. > social web" crowd understood and invested half the
171. > energy in a P2P/onion-relay/multicast kind of "GNU
172. > Internet" infrastructure, instead of insisting on a
173. > broken model, we would now have a distributed social
174. > network that works AND respects basic civil rights.
175.  
176. Had my grandmother had mustache, she would be my grandfather, as we say in
177. Poland. Cry me a fucking river.
178.  
179. Also, had you spend the time you have spent writing this e-mail on development
180. work, you'd be a few steps closer to your goal. So, there's that.
181.  
182. > Thank you, low-hanging-fruit people, for keeping so many brilliant
183. > developers off the important projects and distracting even public
184. > financing with the undead federation rhethoric.
185.  
186. What, now it's my fault that people that are completely unrelated to me and
187. that make their own decisions are working on project A instead of project B
188. which you tend to prefer? How sad is your world, how filled with bile must you
189. be that your pet project is not my pet project, or Friendica/Diaspora/Red
190. developers' pet project!
191.  
192. Go out, talk, explain, reach out and convince people it's worthwhile to invest
193. their time and effort in your idea. Heck, convince me that's worthwhile and
194. that it will get people off of Facebook sooner than in a decade, and I might
195. start helping you out!
196.  
197. Hint: blaming me for your own problems with communication and having a fit
198. over other people taking different paths than yours is not the perfect
199. strategy for that.
200.  
201. > There's nothing as strong as a bad idea whose time has come.
202. >
203. > Terrible to see we haven't made much progress since I said
204. > that at unlike-us 2012.
205.  
206. Ever thought that might somehow be related to how you go about introducing
207. people to your ideas, maybe?
208.  
209. --
210. Pozdr
211. rysiek