[Freedombox-discuss] "What's a Distributed Social Network?" -- the comic

[Matt Willsher]

On 25 February 2011 13:00, stephen white <steve at adam.com.au> wrote:
> On 25/02/2011, at 10:21 PM, Matt Willsher wrote:
>> 'Everyone' hasn't been using email for decades and the the email model
>> has problems which centralised systems can solve
>
> Centralised systems aren't required to solve many of the problems with email. The inertia of so many email installations is too much to overcome, but that merely means the new system needs to have those fixes not that the entire model needs to be changed.

There is little movement in improving the current protocols and what
techniques are available are not being adopted. S/MIME has been around
for a long time but is not widely adopted yet it solves a number of
privacy and authenticity problems.  Domain keys and other techniques
have very slow to gain adoption.

>> You mean it allows the reader to draw their own conclusions by
>> presenting an unbiased view? Heaven forbid!
>
> The problem with "fair and balanced" is when it has 50/50 weighting for issues that are really 90/10. Email has the weight of history and it is on the 90 side of the argument.

In your opinion. I disagree with your assessment with respect to
email. I don't think we should be pushing biased points of view. Let
the user be empowered to decide. Give them as much evidence as
possible from both sides. Don't play the same game that that those
with a vested interest in centralisation are playing. I believe we
should present honest, balanced arguments and not be drawn into a
battle of agendas. People do see through dishonestly and bias and the
FBs target audience may find bias to be particularly unpalatable.

> Facebook is the one proposing the centralised model, they're the ones with the privacy issues, and their design is the one that is questionable - and there's absolutely no problem whatsoever with pointing that out.
>
> Anyway that was my comment on the comic, and there's room in the world for multiple presentations from multiple perspectives.

Absolutely and through these discussions hopefully we can come to a
suitable middle ground that will suit the goals best.