News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The “smolnet”, build for friends and friends of friends. Parent comment

Re:The “smolnet”, build for friends and friends of friends by dasil003 on Monday June 12, 2023 @01:46PM (#36297803)
> I also think it comes down to the values of the creators of any platform. At what point are they going to sell out and why. That really irks me now. Like everything is in the service of wealth creation as opposed to real value. I think the only way to mitigate that is structure the project and team in a way to support it.

This is the crux of why we can't have nice things, and I've been thinking a lot about it. There are so many dynamics that trend towards corporate consolidation and ultimately the alienating effects of modern technology. The money to be made combined with rapid global scalability and network lock-in effects, mean that it's an uphill fight the whole way.

The bright spot is that so many technologists are disgusted with the direction tech has taken, and we have the know-how and agency to build alternatives. In order to address the selling out problem, I think we need to establish some standardized and well understood commitments to shepherding projects, products and companies that have some real teeth while not requiring a vow of poverty to maintain.

The other key piece is finding the right hooks to get normals using these products and not just defaulting to the big tech alternatives due to friction. This is the hardest part by far, but I feel there is enough general frustration with big tech that will be possible to harness in some way. The key will be some kind of killer app that appeals to enough people to gain critical mass.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The “smolnet”, build for friends and friends of friends by vincnetas on Monday June 12, 2023 @02:14PM (#36298313)
And one more thing to think of, how to make this new good product resistant to EEE (embrace, extend, extinguish). Because you want to make it open, this means it's open to multi billion corporations who can throw lots of $$$ and build a nicer client really fast. And from there, well we know how it goes.
[ Parent | on HN ]