Hi there, Dnia poniedziałek, 3 listopada 2014 11:24:28 carlo von lynX pisze:

The problem is that interoperability is not solving any real problem.

I disagree. The small number of users and the confusion of which network to use is a real problem, related to the network effect aka Metcalfe's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law The same problem exists with truly distributed social networks, like SocialSwarm, MaidSafe, Twister et al. How should a user decide which one they should use? Let's make that step easier by at least making an attempt at interoperability.

As if any of those platforms was scalable, functional and sexy enough to attract a relevant number of people away from the cloud-based systems. If one of them was so cool, we wouldn't really need the other ones, so interoperability is unnecessary.

To some extent you're right.

Interoperability is something you should ask from competing proprietary systems, but it is irrelevant for free software systems.

I don't agree. These systems already have tens of thousands of users, and getting these users together on a single network is one of the challanges.

So after eleven years working on free "federated" social web thingies all we got is some platforms that can talk to each other although they can't scale to real world relevant numbers or hide their data from government authorities.

How do you know they can't scale? I see Diaspora scaling pretty well so far. And as far as hiding data from governments is concerned -- sure I'd prefer everybody to jump into RetroShare, but that's not gonna happen. And a decentralized system is much better, privacy-wise, than a centralized one, even if it's not perfect.

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Most "evil" services we use, just need a decent easy to use functional alternative.

That's the crux, right after getting a common protocol implemented across different federated social networks. Also consider: http://rys.io/en/88

That document mentions SocialSwarm, with a link to http://wiki.socialswarm.net/Beyond_the_federation which I think explains pretty well how federation will never take off.

Fair enough. But it already has hundreds of thousands of users. For me, the endgame is indeed complete decentralisation and peer-to-peer social networking, a'la SocialSwarm, RetroShare and Twister. None of these are ready yet, though, the way Diaspora or Friendica are ready and usable today. So I'd rather help people switch to Diaspora or Friendica today rather than have them wait unspecified amount of time fort the Golden Age of Social Networking. Because once we have them on the free software, decentralised, federated sid, we can write bridges/gateways, and have SocialSwarm connect with userbase on The Federation. That's not possibble with *any* walled garden.

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The problem with FreedomBox and SocialSwarm I see is that they are trying to make two hard transitions at once: from centralised to de-centralised, and from third-party-hosted to self-hosted. I believe this is a tad too an ambitious plan and it should be split into two separate steps. However, if we did Step 0 and Step 1 right, they both would have at least a part of their work done for them. And that again is wrong because if you have identified the two or

Then it says this, as an excuse for dismissing SocialSwarm: three crucial problems, trying to fix just one while maintaining all the mess of the other two problems is years of efforts for little gain: you and your nerd friends are having their own little social network, still fully visible to the NSA, while the people that you would like to spend more time with you have all logical reasons on their side to stick to Facebook etc.

( See the examples at the end of http://wiki.socialswarm.net/Beyond_the_federation )

But my girfriend doesn't have to use *my* server, she can choose any of the tens of pods worldwide.

So now you have interoperability which doesn't solve any of the three problems: - scalability - social graph protection - end-to-end encryption (the reason why your significant other will not be free to talk about you while using your server)

So, this is interesting: https://joindiaspora.com/posts/5069036#b894222043d8013279201a960f0f49a1 RedMatrix supports end-to-end encryption.

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Also, please join us at The Federation Assembly at #31C3: https://events.ccc.de/congress/2014/wiki/Assembly:The_Federation

Great! Server federation! Keep promoting bad ideas! Federation does not solve the problem that SERVERS AREN'T SAFE!

No, they're not. Still, many federating servers controlled by different people is much better than a single, centrally controlled network. Somewhere there's a video of Bruce Schneier talking about how 10000 different small and medium e-mail providers is so much better a situation, than 10 large ones. That's exactly my point here.

Servers should not be confided with the social graph of humanity, not even if we pay 8 euros a month for them - because their virtual memory is easily automatically reapable by authorities.

It is indeed. But if they have to do it on 10000 different servers, that's a different ball game than when they have to do it on 10 or 100.

Even if the FSW solved the problem of efficient distribution, which of course it hasn't even properly addressed, it still lets the agencies have the entire cake and eat it.

As above.

How can you guys dare to go to the 31C3 and act as if Snowden didn't happen?

You know what? At this point let me say from the depth of my heart: fuck you. Don't you dare lecture me on Snowden and privacy. The fact that I have different take-away from these revelations (e.g. "done now is better than perfect in a decade") doesn't give you the right to be a condescending little prick, smirking with contempt from your high horse of theoretical technical superiority with not much to show for it but a few texts critical of projects that work *here and now*. Where's the code? Where are the tools? How can I get involved? Can I test anything, apart from your ability to throw tantrums? Please don't tell me that's all you've got in the pipeline since 28C3! Here are some news for you: FreedomBox is not yet usable. SocialSwarm is not yet usable. I'd love them to be, but they're simply not. And while you berate others about how they act as if "Snowden didn't happen", these others are getting people off of Facebook at least, today. That's not perfect, but it's a *step*. A step you can either try to build upon, or a step you can try to undermine. Guess which has a higher chance of eventually solving most or all of the problems you mentioned? Here, have a read: https://medium.com/message/81e5f33a24e1 Especially the "In the end, it’s culture that’s broken" part. Come back when you do.

It's annoying that the things we said in 2011 on http://secushare.org/2011-FSW-Scalability-Paranoia still apply. No progress at all. Had the "federated social web" crowd understood and invested half the energy in a P2P/onion-relay/multicast kind of "GNU Internet" infrastructure, instead of insisting on a broken model, we would now have a distributed social network that works AND respects basic civil rights.

Had my grandmother had mustache, she would be my grandfather, as we say in Poland. Cry me a fucking river. Also, had you spend the time you have spent writing this e-mail on development work, you'd be a few steps closer to your goal. So, there's that.

Thank you, low-hanging-fruit people, for keeping so many brilliant developers off the important projects and distracting even public financing with the undead federation rhethoric.

What, now it's my fault that people that are completely unrelated to me and that make their own decisions are working on project A instead of project B which you tend to prefer? How sad is your world, how filled with bile must you be that your pet project is not my pet project, or Friendica/Diaspora/Red developers' pet project! Go out, talk, explain, reach out and convince people it's worthwhile to invest their time and effort in your idea. Heck, convince me that's worthwhile and that it will get people off of Facebook sooner than in a decade, and I might start helping you out! Hint: blaming me for your own problems with communication and having a fit over other people taking different paths than yours is not the perfect strategy for that.

There's nothing as strong as a bad idea whose time has come.

Terrible to see we haven't made much progress since I said that at unlike-us 2012.

Ever thought that might somehow be related to how you go about introducing people to your ideas, maybe? -- Pozdr rysiek