[HN Gopher] FOAF (Friend of a Friend)
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FOAF (Friend of a Friend)
Author : danhon
Score : 48 points
Date : 2020-01-21 21:30 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twobithistory.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (twobithistory.org)
| sktrdie wrote:
| I'm pretty familiar with FOAF, LinkedData, RDF and all of the
| rest of the Semantic Web standards. But saying that all of these
| can replace a system like facebook is a bit unintelligent.
| Facebook brings much more to the table that users need which
| semantic web has never been able to accomplish like near-instant
| response times, UX that even my grandma can use and 99%
| availability... just to name a few.
|
| Asking ever day users to create a site (buy a DNS and all that)
| and create a FOAF file and host it is kind of ridiculous.
|
| Facebook is a centralized monopoly I agree, but a bunch of
| standards isn't going to replace the stuff that Facebook built.
|
| I believe the problem of centralization can be solved by looking
| at the problem differently: what if we continue using these
| giants for hosting our data (with all the amazing benefits that
| that brings) but we urge them to provide us with ways to control
| the way they show us this data. We need better ways to explore
| our "connection graph", not just a static feed of people we know
| and things they post.
|
| For instance I'd like to be able to change the algorithm that
| generates my main feed. I want to grab the "political liberal"
| feed from github (as an open source example) and load it onto
| facebook; then grab the "climate change biased" feed and load
| that and test how that works. I want to change the variables of
| the algorithm, test it for a few days see how that works and
| change it to something else if I see it's only reporting fake
| news.
|
| This to me seems the problems we need to face this decade when it
| comes to social networks; building p2p networks from scratch, or
| using other decentralized standards is cool but isn't inherently
| solving the problem imho. There's nothing inherently wrong with
| the social media giants if they prove to us they can show us
| different views of the graph without getting in the way.
| tasogare wrote:
| > Asking ever day users to create a site (buy a DNS and all
| that) and create a FOAF file and host it is kind of ridiculous.
|
| Plus it doesn't do anything by itself. Someone still need to
| write software that will parse all those files, follow links,
| and present the information in a sensible manner. Somehow the
| SemWeb guys have this magical thoughts that once data are
| online in RDF the web will be revolutionized. Expected it
| doesn't because writing software is the hard part, not
| converting data from a format to another.
|
| Then there is triple stores. The other day I was in front of a
| Sparql endpoint, with no documentation so I couldn't get any
| data from it. And if I got any I would still had to do heavy
| processing to make use of it.
|
| SemWeb is just string programming with IRI to be fancy. Just
| let it die.
| rconti wrote:
| > Did Facebook simply get there first, or did they instead just
| do social networking better than everyone else?
|
| Isn't that kind of obvious? The article kind of answers that
| itself:
|
| > In the beginning, way back in 1996, it was SixDegrees. Last
| year, it was Friendster. Last week, it was Orkut. Next week, it
| could be Flickr.
|
| Friendster, Orkut, Myspace, Google+ (ironically, I had to Google
| the latter, as I couldn't even remember its name). Many social
| networks have come and gone.
|
| That's not to say Facebook hasn't likely done unsavory things to
| perpetuate its dominance. But it was better, in one or many ways,
| than all that came before it, and all that have tried to succeed
| it. Many haven't even tried. Twitter and Instagram don't even
| attempt to replicate your real-life connections. Hell, I can't
| even remember what pseudonym my real-life friends are using on
| these other networks. They're playing a different game.
|
| This is a strength for those networks, in some ways. For those
| who care about what "influencers" say, or in what opinions are
| shouted the loudest by the folks followed by the most loud-
| shouters. If you care about both a footballer's opinion on a
| match as well as what he ate for breakfast; what a Kardashian
| wore as well as what she was paid to say.
|
| In many ways, the various social networks aren't attempting to
| compete, they're attempting to 'win' their own niche.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Note that the social network Hi5 used (still uses? not sure)
| FOAF. So it can live harmoniously with centralized networks, if
| the networks choose to make use of it.
| Zaskoda wrote:
| We should own our friends lists... which we used to call our
| address book.
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