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Comment by danielpatrick | Hacker News Reader

As a matter of fact, this is what Sir Berners Lee is working on right now at MIT.

https://solid.mit.edu/

The issue is not storing the data, just like "email" doesn't store data. It's just a protocol and a data format. This makes it interoperable across whichever industry player wants to spring up and compete for your service.

Ex:

Don't like gmail? Go to ProtonMail. And you don't lose the ability to interact with people who do use Gmail.

Don't like Facebook? Go to Ello. But now you've lost your entire network.

The decentralized web will be built on data formats and protocols that allow you to take your data with you and force companies to compete with the quality of their service, not the size of their network.

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But half the point of a social network isn't the ability to communicate, but rather the history you've built there. Likewise, half the value of email isn't the ability to send a message to anyone, but the history of emails you have. Sure email isn't a data storage method, but in reality? Yeah, email is a data storage method. That's why Gmail gives me 25GB for free. Not because that's the size of my inbox, but because that's the size of every email I've ever gotten.

If I move from Gmail to Outlook, I can still email my friends but I can't go back and search our old conversations unless I export everything from Gmail to Outlook. If I switch from Facebook to Instagram, I can still message my friends but I can't see all of the pictures I posted on Facebook unless I export the pictures from Facebook to Instagram, but even then there are a lot of features of Facebook that I can't export data from because they just don't exist on Instagram.

History creates lock-in, and history is really hard to move around.

Gmail supports the imap and pop3 protocols, which allow all history to be trivially imported somewhere else.

That's the importance of open protocols.

History is crazy easy to move; any difficulty we have moving history is intentionally caused by the companies with a vested interest in keeping you from moving that history.

History should be decentralized too, then.

Who remembers RSS feeds? I miss those days. We should have some superior spin on that but for social networks.

Imagine Facebook, but your history/data were your own property. A friend would find you on Facebook, or Ello, or AnythingAnyWhereBook ... add your feed, and done. Then it is up to the Social Networks to make a superior product for you to enjoy your friends data and interaction.

Right now it's about the monopolisation of our data.

Zuckerberg. If you're reading. Your current model is bullshit.

>Who remembers RSS feeds? I miss those days. We should have some superior spin on that but for social networks.

I think a big missed opportunity for Google on social was the failure to cultivate Google Reader into an open social network (it already had social features), and build each aspect of it on an RSS/OPML-like structure.

What do you miss about RSS feeds? They're still there... It's very rare that I come across a blog that doesn't have one, even now...

You're right, of course. It's possible I'm still pining for my perfectly set-up Google Reader account which I cannot quite replicate. That still hurts! RSS felt ubiquitous (to me) back then.

Anyway, to the point, try using RSS with facebook in the above context.

I hate being locked in - hence I gave up on FB. It's trash to me until it solves this issue.

> Anyway, to the point, try using RSS with facebook in the above context.

For me they're different things. RSS is for things that I want available until I get around to reading them or until I manually mark them as read, this is precisely what I don't want out of facebook.

I suspect parent was talking about the distributed nature of it. Subscribe to whoever you want, allow anyone to subscribe to you.

My RSSing calmed down, it's just the XKCD feed now. But it still works perfectly.

Intruigingly given how many RSS feeds are out there from WordPress blogs, about the only way I found to get news on WordPress releases is via their RSS feed.

I don't see what would make basic facebook history hard to move around. Facebook of course already offers a "Download a copy of your Facebook data" function. Future-facebook could import it, or the most fundamental/basic parts of it, probably -- the problem is not the data itself, but the connections in it to other users, it's not that valuable without it. I suspect there isn't much interest from users in things-trying-to-be-facebook of importing the data.

I think it's the ability to communicate that's harder to move around, and why there's such facebook lockin. Your social network and ability to communicate with them in a public/group fashion.

>I suspect there isn't much interest from users in things-trying-to-be-facebook of importing the data.

And the legalities of that.

FB did a major legal smackdown on someone trying to do that.

Do you have a link to the history here? Would love to hear about it.

Curious for a link to that. Facebook lets you download your own data. But if you upload that data somewhere else, they're going to sue someone?

> History creates lock-in, and history is really hard to move around.

It doesn't need to be. For example, I moved my email between IMAP servers multiple times simply by dragging & dropping a swath of messages in Outlook. That Outlook (of all programs!) is the only tool that I know of that makes this easy is not a problem with the decentralized nature of email but simply with mediocre client implementations.

> That Outlook (of all programs!) is the only tool that I know of that makes this easy

Not sure what you mean.

It works as easy with Mutt. Open IMAP folder, select all, save to [other IMAP folder or local folder, as you wish].

Works reliable even with very large folders, you just have to wait a bit longer until it's finished.

Practically every email program can move email easily. It is somewhat trivial.

Recently we moved all our company mail with IMAPsync. Automated commandline tool. Awesome.

Thunderbird can also do this.

> history is really hard to move around

Is it? I think there's a way to get around that, if the protocol defines standards for verbs.

Of course, it's difficult and can grow wild, yet very much possible.

That's Sir Tim(othy). The "Sir" attaches to the given name, not the surname.

I've never quite figured out how sirs work. I know Knights were addressed with sirs and the Queen had something to do with it, but how does it work in a multicultural UK?

Knighthood is a life award. You are given the rank of Knight Commander of an appropriate order or made a Knight Bachelor (no particular order; lower precedence when it comes to deciding who walks in front of whom). The knighthood dies with the knight. Again, the "Sir" attaches to the given name ("first" name, even if that comes last or somewhere in the middle, or is a compound name in itself). In general, the "Sir" is only used for address or casual reference; you'd use the post-nominal letters in a more formal written setting.

Debretts is probably the place to find this out.

Here's the rules for putting the letters after names: https://www.debretts.com/expertise/forms-of-address/letters-...

The Joint Forms of address gives you some clues about the order of words before the name: https://www.debretts.com/expertise/forms-of-address/joint-fo...

Note that most people don't know about this stuff, and don't really care about it.

I've never understood why people (particularly outside UK) care about some "sirs" at all. "Mr. Tim Berners-Lee" sounds just fine to me.

Why use a title at all if you're going to use the wrong one?

He's still a mister. It's whether you buy in to "this is a male adult" vs. "I must respect this person's title because HM The Queen bestowed it on them".

Mr Berners-Lee surely won't feel offended because the person addressing him isn't a [UK] royalist?

Calling him Berners-Lee sounds like you would rather not use titles at all, which seems like a defensible position. Calling him Mr Berners-Lee sounds like you're going out of your way to deliberately use the wrong title, which just seems rude.

All adult males in the UK that you don't know the first name of but do know the surname of are called "Mr $Surname" as a social norm. Adjusting that designation because the Queen says so is very common too, but maintaining the status quo is just being apathetic towards the Queens edicts.

Most of her subjects do not complain. Some of them think we should have done away with such notions of reigning over other people already.

FWIW outside celebrity circles it is often considered quite gauche to insist on such pompous titles.

If you insist I'd be happy with calling him Professor Berners-Lee (even assuming he doesn't still have an active official professorship). If you want to talk about proper titles then is Sir Berners-Lee also rude when it should, by the right of HM EIIR be "Professor Sir Berners-Lee" [when spoken]?

If you're worried about recognition I think Mr Berners-Lee is not lacking in that department and was already party to the Queens inner circle as a holder of the Order of Merit which appears to be a far greater royal honour than a "mere" KBE. He has my utmost respect, if you doubted it.

That's not the case though, just as, more obviously, 'Mrs' isn't limited in meaning to 'this is a female adult'.

Increasingly and to the point of arguable totality, such titles are bestowed by popularity, committee, and HM Government. Damned shame, since it would mean more what it should were it not given to celebrity riff-raff for 'services to sport'.

I digress. You say it's fine as a non-'UK royalist' to use an improper title; I say I bet most of the world doesn't use even Mr, and I'd do my utmost to pay proper respect to local custom and any honours.

Does local custom work both ways? I think most Americans would consider "Mister" perfectly courteous.

I'm not sure what you mean by working both ways, I'm saying as the speaker one respects the subject's title, even if not 'recognised' natively.

For example, I'm not Catholic, but I would of course refer to Pope Francis; not 'Mr Francis', or anything involving his birth (as opposed to regnal) name.

I think the norm is the current surroundings, not wherever the subject is from. Dr. Smith is Smith-sensei in Japan. The New York Times is known for its use of courtesy titles, and it calls knights "Mr.".

Pope is a high office, and Francis is his chosen name. It would be rude of you to call him by his birth name; it would be rude of him to insist you call him "Your Holiness", although you probably should if you're visiting the Vatican.

Do you similarly never refer to people as Doctor, Reverend, Minister, or Coach so-and-so? It's part of his name. If Sir Tim didn't want to be knighted, I feel confident he wouldn't have been. You'll note that his wikipedia page calls him Sir Tim, and I feel confident he could change it if he so chose.

You are clearly free to call him whatever you want, but I would advise you to be honest enough to realize that you're projecting your feelings about royalists onto him, and not calling him what he has chosen to be called.

In practice you're right, i call people what they indicate their designation to be. Where I work we've had a person call themselves something like "Grand Wizard-Admiral of the Terran System" - some people like a pompous name.

If a person is an MD, professor, and such then that's totally acceptable. If the designation is "the Queen says you have to call me sir now" I don't really see what business it is of the Queen's or that it's more respectful to recognise a person because "the Queen smiled at them" than recognising their actual work/effort as fellowship of a learned society does.

It's an anachronous system of nepotism; bleurgh. What's not to like./s

Knighthood isn't a royalist issue. Australia has knighthoods bestowed by the prime minister. Unfortunately our PM decided to knight Prince Charles...

A knight of Her Britannic Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second's Order of the British Empire. Yeah, nothing to do with royalty /s.

The could become a republic and everyone would be a knight of the president instead.

Because it's a nice way to recognize some distinguised people, that's why people care about sirs.

Not sure I'm following you -- yes, the Queen knighted him. How does the multicultural part come in? (Women receive the same award but it's called a Damehood and their prefix is Dame.)

If Kazuo Ishiguro is knighted, should he be addressed as Sir Kazuo or Sir Ishiguro? The point being that people of Japanese descent might place their first names after their last names.

This question doesn't seem very relevant to knighthoods. Whatever would be appropriate to call someone as their given name, rather than family name, would go after "Sir". It's not very complicated.

Sir Kazuo. With some exceptions - Japanese people "normalize" their names to English name order of Given Name, Family Name when writing or speaking in English. Some choose not to, usually out of national pride, but it is most common to normalize the name to the target language.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_name#Japanese_names_i...

An example: Sir Ong-Siang.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Song_Ong_Siang

A sidebar issue: all these rules apply to knighthoods from the UK crown only. And under these rules non-Brits may be knighted but do not use the title 'sir'. Thus Bill Gates KBE is not known as Sir Bill.

(edit: Today I learned that Kazuo Ishiguro is British. The statement below is completely wrong. I've managed to get his nationality wrong while enjoying his books for 20 years!)

So in the specific case of Kazuo Ishiguro, the sir does not apply. For Brits with family-first names, see the other answers.

Kazuo Ishiguro is British. He's not called "Sir" because he has an OBE. He needs a GBE or DBE for the "Sir".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_British_Empire

And were he not British, he would not be entitled as such - Gates and Geldof iirc are such examples; sometimes (incorrectly) titled 'Sir' in press.

That's a language issue, not a culture issue. Normally, one uses the name ordering appropriate to the language one is speaking at the moment. Therefore, the question is equivalent to "What is the Japanese translation of 'Sir'"

It's fortunate, then, that it's Sir GivenName, not Sir FirstName.

So does one export their existing network information to these open formats? I don't think the companies who currently hold that information will part with it willingly.

If it catches on, I assume a bunch of services will pop up offering to export you data. All they'll need is your password.

But how would you verify that YourFacebookFriend is YourFacebookFriend on some other service?

This is a solved problem, but not one that would catch on. See: PGP

If my friend can sign a message using the same key on both services - and I already trust that key is them - I can be almost certain it is them. Regardless of the service.

This is one of the first use cases for keybase.io - verifying identities across a few main social sites. (E: For clarification, Keybase makes it easier to find these proofs. It isn't necessary as part of the proofs.)

For example, you can find me on Reddit or Twitter and know it is me. You can also see my website URL and know that I own it - and a bitcoin address where you know I will receive the money. This is because I've verified that I own these accounts using PGP - and I've done the same for HN in my user profile. See: https://keybase.io/nadya

>This is a solved problem, but not one that would catch on. See: PGP

It's only 'solved' if you don't care about usability. PGP quickly becomes a nightmare when you consider the day-to-day things 'normal' computer users will go through (private key stolen, password to private key forgotten, phishing attacks to sign replacement keys for friends, etc).

They already do allow you to export your data, right?

Yes, some of it, but not your actual network information (friends, contacts), at least not in a way that is meaningful outside of those services.

Sort of off topic, but this is exactly what I want in electronic medical records. Being able to take my data and give it to whichever healthcare provider I go to.

The goal is solid, but I wonder how it might prevail. The flexibility to change at any time doesn't seem a priority for most people. Most people search for a satisfactory solution and stay with it until it's no longer bearable, or a competitor many times better appears. The same for most things in one's lifestyle.

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