Rosenzweig: The federation fallacy

Posted Mar 5, 2019 17:02 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
In reply to: Rosenzweig: The federation fallacy by osma
Parent article: Rosenzweig: The federation fallacy

On the other hand, the social costs of running your own infrastructure are based on how the system works. There may not currently be a system that avoids those costs, but if the monetary costs are minimal, it's worth trying to design a federated system to minimize the social costs, since people would be able to run it if you succeed.

the internet versus the price of ink by the barrel

Posted Mar 5, 2019 20:17 UTC (Tue) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (4 responses)

indeed, platforms and fields of dreams (to reference a theme from my college networking textbook). The problem I've been harping on is that with the ToS 'conspiracy' most people aren't able to run anything characterizable as a 'server' on their common lowest-cost-tier internet service (with a clear conscience of not knowingly violating the contractual terms of service they 'voluntarily' agreed to when choosing to do business with one of their many wonderful capitalistic choices of ISP, har har)

the internet versus the price of ink by the barrel

Posted Mar 5, 2019 21:04 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (3 responses)

True, but the federated system might be no more or less of a server than a web browser pointed at gmail is (when your gmail account receives a message, traffic goes to your browser), or an IoT light switch (user interaction initiated over the internet causes a device that was doing nothing to do something). There are various clever tricks for forming a session between two endpoints that are both clients for ToS purposes, and I don't see any reason these couldn't be used for federated messaging.

You might end up with a system where some participants do session negotiation work in addition to transmitting messages that involve them, but that doesn't have to matter from a user perspective.

the internet versus the price of ink by the barrel

Posted Mar 6, 2019 1:53 UTC (Wed) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (2 responses)

all correct(*), but the larger problem I see lies in the fact that if you want to be a home server software developer with traditional financial security earned via your tradecraft, you don't want to sell/ship any kind of product that makes you legally liable for inducing others to violate legitimate business contracts they had entered into voluntarily. And more importantly, and bank financing you, or investors legally doing due diligence, may have similar misgivings. Thus impacting the overall state of the art/industry

Which just means that I think there would be a world of difference in the state of the art (today, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years from now...) if the FCC had specified that server prohibition ToS is a functionally and legally equivalent form of the net neutrality violation of blocking based on application, service, or device type. I suspect most in this audience can see the functional equivalence (in the case of people who choose to read and obey that extremely small fraction of the very wordy contractual terms of service). However most of the general public may not understand that. Generational effects may change that however.

(*) it does matter _a little_ for the user perspective, in a sense. The hope might be that it matters so little for long enough that other factors eventually obviate it and make it a moot point.

the internet versus the price of ink by the barrel

Posted Mar 6, 2019 5:56 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

> Which just means that I think there would be a world of difference in the state of the art (today, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, 5 years from now...) if the FCC had specified that server prohibition ToS is a functionally and legally equivalent form of the net neutrality violation of blocking based on application, service, or device type.
Yes. As we know the US is the only country on Earth and FCC is The Supreme Authority that forces everybody to bend their knee before the Inviolable Omnipotent FCC Rules.

Other countries have many ISPs that can't care less about running home servers. Situation is not different at all there - the reason why home servers are not used is not a legal regulation or a contractual claus, it's the inefficiency and cost of doing it.

the internet versus the price of ink by the barrel

Posted Mar 7, 2019 16:57 UTC (Thu) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

Yes. As we know the US is the only country on Earth and FCC is The Supreme Authority that forces everybody to bend their knee before the Inviolable Omnipotent FCC Rules.

You are wrong, there is this country called China. They had this thing in the news in and around Tienanmen Square three decades ago. You might try looking it up on google. But the answer you get might depend on whether you are in china. It's a big picture. An issue of importance worthy of more respect than you are giving it. But, trolls gonna troll.

Seriously though- to any Chinese children or adults reading this- Do not listen to my advice, it may be harmful for your health. More or less harm than the daily air pollution you face, I couldn't say with certainty, and wouldn't hazard a guess. And certainly wouldn't hazard taking the word of my local newspaper's journalists on the matter. Not that the wiser among us blindly take the word of our local journalists on this side of the pond either.