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Aral Balkan has a blog post about taking small steps to end surveillance capitalism. In particular he focuses on the need for federated services. He points out that the move to re-decentralize the WWW is difficult and needs to start at the beginning, using a comparison of Apple's original computers to their latest generation of tablets as an illustration.
Five years ago, when I decided to devote myself to tackling the problem of surveillance capitalism, it was clear what we needed: convenient and beautiful ethical everyday things that provide seamless experiences1 on fully free-as-in-freedom stacks.
This is as true today as it was then and it will remain so. The only way to compete with unethical products built by organisations that have control over hardware + software + services is to create ethical organisations that have control over hardware + software + services and thus have at least the possibility to craft competitive experiences. We remove our eyes from this goal at our peril.
Related: Tim Berners-Lee Launches Inrupt, Aims to Create a Decentralized Web
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday December 10 2018, @05:58PM (28 children)
people tend to centralize.
They need something to blame, outside themselves, when things go wrong.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by urza9814 on Monday December 10 2018, @06:17PM (2 children)
Both very true...but I think a bigger issue is that this is simply the nature of living in a capitalist system.
Amazon.com I believe went over a decade before it ever turned a profit. They had many, many years of paid employees to keep improving their service and paid advertising to grow their market without ever needing to pay for a dime of that themselves. People just gave them money -- on a promise that the company would eventually become profitable through advertising and surveillance. You can't really do that with a decentralized system. So all you get is small hobbyist projects eternally trying to catch up to the major players.
Investment drives centralization just as much as consumer demand. It's all one big feedback cycle. Investment dollars bring advertisements which drives consumer demand, bringing new users which bring more investment dollars until either the market is captured or the company fails. With decentralized systems, there's not really any way to get that cycle started. We need a new one. Something more than "work on it in your free time"; something which lets increasing numbers of developers pay their rent as the project grows. Crowdfunding is an option...but not really a great one so far...
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday December 10 2018, @06:28PM (1 child)
Basically people need to become and stay more self motivated, and not wait for everything to be spoon fed. Abundance is spoiling us, making us bored, lazy and complacent, quick to believe anything flashed on the screen.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by urza9814 on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:49PM
Yes and no...
First of all, I don't think abundance is necessarily the reason. We've always had the scam artists and snake oil salesmen, they just change their clothes every few generations. (Reminds me of something I posted last week... https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=28818&page=1&cid=767835#commentwrap) [soylentnews.org]
You'll sometimes hear people saying "If you want something right, you have to do it yourself." There's a certain truth to that...but at the same time, not everyone can be an expert in every field. If I just had to grow all of my own food, I probably wouldn't have much time for software development. Or my food would really suck. Probably both. So I would say, if you want it done right, you've gotta do it yourself...and if you want it done good enough, you've gotta know who's doing it.
If we want all the benefits of modern civilization, we've gotta trust and rely on each other at some point. I think the issue is more that society is structured to distrust or conceal the experts in their fields of expertise. The guys building the bridge notice a problem, but management decides it's cheaper to take the risk. The guys writing the software catch a bug, but management decides a fix would cause them to miss the deployment date so they go ahead anyway. The problem is that instead of trusting the local blacksmith, we're now trusting some MBA who doesn't know a damn thing about blacksmithing. They don't see or feel or know what's going to happen, they only know how it's going to impact their spreadsheet. Our entire society is designed around the principle that the individual worker doesn't matter, all that matters is the company and their policies. Turns out that isn't true, but you'll still hear managers running up and down halls screaming that they "need more bodies on this project", as though a brain or even a pulse isn't strictly necessary to get the work done.
We need to learn to identify experts, and more specifically to separate the MBA from the expert he's kidnapped so that he can appear to be one too. We need to give a shit about quality again instead of just buying the cheapest crap we can find on ebay. And yes, we do probably need to do some things for ourselves when we can. I occasionally do tech support for some small local organizations, and the biggest challenge isn't getting what they want done, it's trying to figure out what they actually want in the first place. Nobody thinks about "How should this work" -- they either want MAGIC! that just automatically gives the right answer with zero input; or they want someone who can just tell them to buy something that will make their lives easier without first discussing what they do all day and what their actual challenges are.
There's also a good bit of the old "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". There's two reason for that. The first is that IBM was generally considered reasonably competent. Maybe not the best, but definitely functional. But the second reason (which is the important one for this discussion) is that it gives you someone to sue. Which is a pretty crappy solution, but that's the one our society has settled on. Same way our healthcare costs skyrocket because we don't give a damn about preventative medicine, our IT costs skyrocket because we'd rather buy first and sue later rather than just making sure the damn thing works in the first place! Because people fall for the flashy sales brochure promising everything and nothing at the same time. Just as they always have...
As for technology...I'm not sure if computers help or hurt. We get great concepts like the web of trust...but instead we end up using friggin' Yelp. And computers and software are heavily focused on this idea of abstraction, where you more or less just assume that the other program is always going to do what you tell it to do. Just like we often assume companies will do what they promise to do. So that might not be very helpful. And if I buy a car, I can pop the hood and look around and get some idea of how well it's built; but when I buy software it's all locked away behind IP law and I can't see a damn thing...so it's harder to know if it's any good before you buy anyway. At least until we demand that changes...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @06:29PM (24 children)
damn liberals and their elitist surveillance profiteering!
Seriously, that is one stupid statement and even if you were going for funny/witty it falls flat. The answer is convenience, nothing more.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday December 10 2018, @06:37PM (17 children)
The answer is convenience...
And dat too! The convenience of passing blame... It's all part of the same show. You don't have to get all stressed out over it. "Liberals" and "conservatives" have nothing to do with the prices of rice here.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:02PM (16 children)
No one uses facebook because it is convenient to pass blame. That is not a part of the decision making process when anyone signs up.
Are you confusing people blaming FB for privacy violations with motivation to use their service??
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday December 10 2018, @08:29PM (15 children)
Yes, there are some people that choose a closed source program over open source precisely to have somebody to blame when support is insufficient. Can't say if it's true for Facebook, but it does help Microsoft's sales figures.
Submissive people look for (central) leaders for many reasons. Passing blame is one of them, even if it is mostly subconscious.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:59PM (10 children)
kekekekekek
your view of reality is warped
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:30AM (8 children)
How is it warped? He (assuming this is a he, here...) has a very solid point.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @05:25PM (7 children)
Choosing a vendor because they have enterprise support is not the same thing as choosing them so you can pass the blame. That concept flies a tiny bit with an OS vendor but not at all with FB. All i was saying is people are not using a centralized soci media service so they can blame anyone, that is zero % of the rationale.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:05PM (6 children)
Jeezus! It's psych 101. People look for authority figures so they can become blobs and let somebody else take the fall. Are you so willfully blind to basics?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:12PM (5 children)
Take that libertarian trash somewhere else.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:36PM (2 children)
Pfft!
Oh! sorry, did I do that?
C'mon man. Try to cough up something better than that
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:03PM (1 child)
Ditto Sir, Edge Lord Sir!
Permission to speak freely sir? Thank you sir. Your fedora is tipped at a weird angle sir!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:10PM
Much better, gracias...
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:41PM (1 child)
That isn't libertarian trash. It's fairly well-known and well-demonstrated that people usually prefer to act in this manner. I have not a clue why but suspect it's something to do with the energetic path of least resistance, i.e., this uses the least energy so our bodies favor it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @09:22PM
Humans group together and form power hierarchies. I'll agree with that.
While "let me be a blob and let someone else do all the work and take all the blame" may be true for a small minority of humans it is by no means the average. That line of negative thinking towards humanity leads to tyranny and class structures.
"People WANT me to be a dictator and therefore I can do whatever I want! GOD WILLS IT!"
Azuma you present a much more sane version with "suspect it's something to do with the energetic path of least resistance". In a communal structure people take on various roles. You are correct, it is about efficiency.
Fustakirich is not correct, it is not all about humans debasing themselves so they can be lazy couch potatoes. It is a little bit of a nit-picky distinction on my part but I feel it is very important.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @12:37AM
Eh, no worse than yours, or any other of the 7.5 billion's.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @02:33PM
Only in corporate environments. Private people usually just blame "the computer" if something doesn't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:04PM (2 children)
Let ua bring this back to your post that started this:
You walked this back a little but it is still a very minor aspect of anything. Choosing a service for support is not the same as choosing one to blame. That is an edgy comment for when you want to sound insightful at a party.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:00PM (1 child)
Bla bla bla, if this is a party, where's my beer??
Please, enough of your silly games, just read and at least make a feeble effort to comprehend what was written to avoid needless repetition. Fundamentals are important.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @08:05PM
You complain a lot with very little substance. Back to your Olivye.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @07:29AM (5 children)
Have a read of cognitive dissonance. It's very well established in the literature
Simply put, most people have a far higher opinion of themselves than they really deserve
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @05:30PM (4 children)
Ok back up that claim, what is your reasoning to support the claim that people use FB because they could blame them for, what exactly?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @05:51PM (3 children)
It's easy enough to set up your own blog at your own website, but were you to do that you'd have to accept the blame for fucking it up.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:38PM (1 child)
I think this whole argument is just two sides of the same coin. I still maintain people are making their choices out of convenience, not the more negative aspect of being able to blame the service if things go wrong; but you could say that blaming the service IS the convenience.
I think you are conflating the idea that people look for blame when things go wrong with the motivating principle that gets them to set things up in the first place. When electing politicians we aren't looking for someone we can easily blame, but when things go wrong we definitely start looking for the easy targets.
All I am saying is that people are NOT choosing to use centralized social media so they can blame them, people choose those services because they are conveniently easy to access and often have their friends and family with them. That was the original argument, not some exercise in cognitive dissonance. Which btw please go look it up, it was a little more detailed than I thought it was and you definitely used it wrong.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:47PM
Now is the time for Salty Spice to sell boiled peanuts on the street corner.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 11 2018, @06:46PM
PS: you run scripts to check for replies? last I checked SN doesn't notify you of AC replies.