Re: <nettime> Richard Stallman: Eradicate Facebook!

[morlockelloi@yahoo.com]

It is hard on Android and very hard on iOS to have a handset receive 
unsolicited messages, which is the only way to avoid centralized 
servers, even the rendezvous-only ones. This is by design. Tor is not 
the solution because the number of exit nodes is many orders of 
magnitude lower than the number of popular social operator users, so it 
is effectively centralized.

The solution is not going to be along the lines of some privacy-loving 
entity setting up a privacy-loving servers and distributing 
privacy-loving apps - that's the dead end, as we have seen. It is harder 
- what is needed is ubiquitous serverless p2p connectivity between 
consumer devices. Very hard (if you think getting out decent crypto is 
hard, you haven't seen hard.) But it's the only viable direction which 
is not a total waste of time and a temporary distraction. This is not a 
new concept - it has already been mentioned that public needs to own and 
operate the basic infrastructure.

The main obstacle is that the current dead-end infrastructure acts as a 
perfect honeypot and sinks millions of developer-hours. Maybe the way to 
start dealing with this problem is to tell anyone who designs a new 
server-assisted app to fuck off. The real solution, as usual, is 
ideological, and the technology will follow.

This is a huge amount of work, uphill and against the wind, and there is 
no way around it.



> I think we need distributed social networking, with nodes that act
> like a Facebook on your own device but only interact through a network
> of agnostic relays, Tor style, with zero external authorities. Not even
> "trusted" people running some pods or other overinformed server nodes.
> That's what I'm working on since 2010.
>
> Before that I tried decentralization and federation, but realized that
> it was a dead-end street. I wished everyone had learned that lesson as
> me, instead many still preach decentralization and federation.
> Probably also some lobbyists, since it is the best way to ensure
> that Facebook and Google aren't challenged at all.

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