The challenges that I see: - Making it easy for any user to get up and running. - De-authenticating old devices. - Making it available from any mobile device.

Ideally, the end solution would be dead simple. Download the Windows app, run it, put your credit card in if you need a URL registered, and it does everything, including daily backups to a folder on your disk.

https://msol.io/blog/tech/dirt-cheap-client-encrypted-online...

This is not a damn cloud ! This a remote computer you can access over the internet. Can we stop with this use of marketing lingo please ?

"server"

"Host" is generally less ambiguous, referring to a specific thing given the context of the discussion. It's a pronoun for machines (kinda).

The purpose of the original coinage of the word "cloud" was to obfuscate that you really meant "someone else's computer". It gives a nice warm, fuzzy decentralised impression - clouds are natural and ubiquitous! No one owns them! If it's in "the cloud" (note the definite article) then it's safe in the very fabric of the network, right?

Nope. It's in Larry and Sergey's basement. Not decentralised at all. Just somewhere else.

The proper term is "server", "datacenter", or "network", depending on what you're actually trying not to say.

What percentage of users do you think would be affected by such cases? If it's something over 0.001%, it's a huge problem for a social network.

Sites like Coinbase and Github exist because they re-centralize distributed systems — users don't trust themselves to host their own data securely.

Alternately, if this isn't a problem, why don't users simply host all their own infrastructure for existing tech problems today ?

I'm sure someone capable of living in the Mojave Desert is capable of hosting their own infrastructure - is this network simply for those people, or is it also for journalists, trans people, and HR professionals?

Very few people have considered whether or not they should attempt to back up their Facebook account. Same's true for Flickr, Twitter, and Gmail.

I'm probably in the minority being so irresponsible with my own backups, but I'm not alone.

Google and Facebook have a lot on the line with regard to user trust of their reliability. Also, they can't monetize data that they've lost.

I'd rather have my own backup copieS and take my own responsibilities. The scenario you evoke here would not happen if you had proper backup strategy, two is one and one is none.

Compare that to their experience at home with personal gear. Many like the convenience and reliability of Facebook over their own technical skills or efforts. You'd have to convince those people... a shitload of people... that they should start handling IT on their own. Also note that there's many good, smart, interesting, and so on people that simply don't do tech. Anyone filtering non-technical or procrastinating people in a service will be throwing out lots of folks whose company they might otherwise enjoy.

So, these kinds of issues are worth exploring when trying to build a better social network.

Same with backups, lose your data to drive failure or theft once and suddenly having a backup strategy becomes a priority.

But as long as they have not been bitten once they don't care enough to actually do something proactive.

It seems like the system would work just as well for people who decide to turn their system off when they go to work, or are on a sailboat. Of course it's not convenient in the same way that always-on social networks are, but that seems to be specifically not the point of SSB.

None of these things are a concern on traditional social networks. They have to be solved before the world has any chance of moving to a decentralized network.

I say no. Most of them don't have to be solved first.

Feel free to convince me that 3 days of downtime on my personal messaging account cannot have my personal account is a problem.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2010/feb/11/face...

These are people who typed "Facebook Login" into a Google search, clicked the first result without reading, and got confused. Now tell these same users that Comcast blocked their social network or that they can't log in on their phone because their home Internet connection is down.

If you want a social network filled with just people like you and me, look at App.net or GNU Social for inspiration. If you want average users to sign in, these issues absolutely do have to be solved.

The early web (when I entered and before) wasn't for everyone. And thats OK for me. Actually I think it is a good way to start.

It got where it went by doing the opposite of what you're suggesting. The walled garden for smart elites were mostly working on OSI from what old timers tell me. The TCP/IP, SMTP, etc involved lots of hackers trying to avoid doing too much work. Much like the users you prefer to filter. Then, it just went from there getting bigger and bigger due to low barrier of entry. Tons of economic benefits and business models followed. Now we're talking to each other on it.

If you're internet connection goes down, power goes out, you get DDoS'D this would hinder your ability to use any third party online service anyways. The data cap and ISP restrictive terms of service are a different problem that would be challenged and fixed given internet subscriber would go the p2p self host way. The commercial ISP situation is a terrible mess right now. If you got hacked unplug from network, boot from recovery, restore from backup, you're back online in less time than it takes to recover a hacked facebook account.

You say decentralized but it seems to me you meant distributed here.

One data center * 24 backup generators * 3 MW each = 72 MW per data center. Four of those = 288 MW > 1/4GW.

Google has more than three data centers.

Assuming that they're doubling energy consumption every year they'd have reached 8GW in 2016. That's 8W per user if we assume 1 billion users. Energy usage of a Raspberry is not insignificant relative to even this.

Doing things at scale is vastly more efficient. And only a subset of Google services can be relegated to a Raspberry. Even if you host your own mails, are you ready to ditch the Google search index and Youtube?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/09/technology/google-details-...

And you just use it for yourself? well, ok... but at that point you could also use a fully decent system.