News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook by Bizarro on Thursday April 19, 2018 @10:55PM (#16881844)
How that should work in practice is still being worked out--in the halls of tech companies and legislatures all over the world.

You finally got to the crux of your argument after contorting around a bad analogy. Only tech companies and legislatures should be figuring out what services we should have.

Let me tell you something. That position is the complete opposite of what Hacker News is all about.

Re:Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook by Terr_ on Friday April 20, 2018 @01:23AM (#16882334)
You know, I'm pretty sure when they said "legislatures" they were implying the imperfect-but-normal ongoing political process. The one which stretches across dozens of different countries and with some influence by the billions of non-legislator citizens.

Instead you seem to be a hurry to travel down a road that sometimes ends with the word "Statist" getting thrown around as an epithet against heretical outsiders.

> [Disparagingly:] Only tech companies and legislatures should be figuring out what services we should have.

Let's apply the same logic to non-digital goods and services: Do you believe it is fundamentally wrong for a government -- even with significant public support -- to interfere with one anonymous man's Galtian quest to sell radium toothpaste by mail?

Re:Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook by Bizarro on Friday April 20, 2018 @08:52AM (#16884320)
Let's apply the same logic to non-digital goods and services: Do you believe it is fundamentally wrong for a government -- even with significant public support -- to interfere with one anonymous man's Galtian quest to sell radium toothpaste by mail?

Amazing...even after I point out his janky biology analogy, you go ahead and try one yourself. You people can't help but to double down.

Re:Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook by 18pfsmt on Friday April 20, 2018 @11:57AM (#16885851)
Some people are interested in designing systems where no central authority can control anything, while others are more interested in determining which entity should have control over everything.
Re:Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook by Terr_ on Friday April 20, 2018 @02:54PM (#16887514)
> You people

Yeah, that's what I suspected, we're done here.

Re:Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook by strypey on Saturday April 28, 2018 @11:46AM (#16948169)
> Do you believe it is fundamentally wrong for a government -- even with significant public support -- to interfere with one anonymous man's Galtian quest to sell radium toothpaste by mail?

Government? Maybe. Private corporations exploiting the hell out of a natural monopoly? Hell no. Genuinely democratic government (which implies opt-in, or at least the ability to opt-out) sure. That's what standards bodies are for.

Unlike some here, I can see value in user protection laws like the GDPR, for the same reason I see the value in governments creating heavy disincentives for kidnapping or murder. Such laws can, if necessary, be enforced on groups running instances of federated social network software. We saw what happened when the US Congress tried to regulate a major centralized provider; a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTv0MZBCQCs