Friendica – A Decentralized Social Network

As much as most people on HN would like to have these protocols specified ‘correctly’, this feels like a situation where the perfect is the enemy of the good.

In your example, users can be tagged in a photo. That's nice. But let's say that in the future we want to share who's attending what events. Perhaps we can use the same kind of constructs in the protocol for both uses.

Of course, an implementation does not need to support all features from the start.

this is especially problematic because the Patchwork client, while impressive, is not something I enjoy using. I'm just itching to build my own alternative clients, as well as apps that run on the SSB protocol, but I can't unless I force myself to get back into the Node ecosystem.

Another crucial issue, I find, is the inability to have multiple devices linked (by whatever means) to the same user. The impression I get is that the community is split on either fixing that, or adding more tools to deal with community management. I find that worrying because I've had multiple experiences with communities where ~50% was overly focused on 'preserving what is', and none of those experiences ended up in any kind of success.

For the time being I'm still excited about Patchwork, and looking for ways to positively contribute (contrary to this post), but I get too much of a 'sixties imploding commune' vibe to feel comfortable wasting my energy, for now.

EDIT: all this sounds somewhat negative, and my apologies for that. But I got and am really excited about the core proposition of the whole thing and just worry a lot about its viability. I'd really love to hear where I'm wrong, or how I could contribute without having to deal with the community kerfuffles that I am not too interested in. It's like CouchSurfing in reverse.

This is incredibly annoying, I agree, but having run a service for which people type their email addresses, and having seen just how many people can't actually type their own email address properly (currently running at about 5%) I'm not surprised that a service aimed at non-technical people puts in attempted safeguards like this.

And my service is for technical people - I can't imagine what it's like for genuinely open services.

EDIT: I don't think people will be able to abandon email, given it's a replacement for paper mail (banking, official papers, etc). If the big players won't play nice, people will need to get to another provider, simply because the source of email won't be willing/fast enough to jump on [system X].

- Even if it were true that "everyone uses Google/Microsoft/Apple/etc", the ones that don't can still send/receive emails from everyone else. - If one of the of the big providers disappear, the system as a whole will continue to function.

Mostly everyone, but not everyone.

No, it's not the case that "everyone" does that. I don't, and many of my colleagues don't. Perhaps muggles in general don't, and perhaps you're really only talking about such non-technical people, but your hyperbole undermines your argument.

And I'm getting really tired of those big services automatically classing as spam anything that comes from a different domain.

This is a totally different story for Facebook.

Whitelisting nodes is counterproductive to what federation is trying to achieve.

A decentralized network means that if things go sour, the cost of switching is small, similar to an email account. If my mail provider fucks up, I point my domain to another one and I don't even bother.

    "A lot" of people also think the world is flat.

I don't care if you care. That's your decision.

> The same thing happens with loyalty cards at Walgreens.

It's not the same thing at all. With loyalty cards I get the OPTION of being rewarded for allowing a company to track me. So I weigh getting rewarded (positive) against sharing my data (negative), and I make a decision.

With Facebook there is no option, they track everyone regardless.

> As for your "legistators" (sic), that is the faux outrage I'm talking about.

> That's the name of game in politics.

> 1) Something happens. 2) The media tells people they should get outraged about it 3) People get outraged about it 4) Legislation is enacted to appease the outrage 5) Something else happens. 6) People move on to getting outraged about that

Yes, so? Peopple are outraged and legislators act. Isn't that how democracy works? It seems you're only just now discovering this.

Then I swipe my credit card through their machine and give them the exact same credit card number to associate with every purchase I make.

I fully understand that they can track me. I am sending the message that I don't want to be tracked. I am also sending the message that I am willing to pass on their incentives to be tracked, but I am not willing to pass on the convenience of my credit card.

Then I make my credit card company send me a new card every year. So vendors get to track me through less than 50 purchases before I switch.

For businesses that track loyalty by customer name, I will give them the name of a neighbor or other acquaintance. It's astounding how often they are willing to give me back information about that person.

I agree marketing is intended to manipulate your thinking... or "market towards you". I suspect I have a different attitude about marketing than you do.

I don't use facebook, I used for a week in 2007, and thought "this is just a marketing data machine, no thanks".

Further, the innocuous sounding "Connecting the world" mission doesn't equate to "monitor your social interactions and help people convince you to buy things" (amongst other things) in most people's minds.