[HN Gopher] Mozilla goes incubator with 'Fix The Internet' start...
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Mozilla goes incubator with 'Fix The Internet' startup early-stage
investments
Author : cpeterso
Score : 216 points
Date : 2020-05-15 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| kylek wrote:
| I think the conversation needs to change a bit. People just don't
| care in the current state. I've been toying with the idea of
| calling all this (seo/ads/blogspam/content marketing and the
| auto-twitter-bot-ira-shill-to-cause-controversy-and-mass-media-
| parroting-it-feedback-loop) "internet pollution" in order to get
| average joes to think about it differently.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Can someone please sue Apple for anti-trust violations on the
| grounds that forcing me to copy and paste all my fucking links
| instead of setting a default browser on iOS is a direct attack on
| health competition in the web browser space?!
|
| The fact that this issue has gone unresolved for this many years
| is completely unacceptable.
| seemslegit wrote:
| Like everything that Mozilla did for the last decade or so this
| is far more likely to produce false choices than actual
| alternatives.
| saadalem wrote:
| Here are some thoughts from Walter Isaacson
| https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/internet-broken-starting-from... :
|
| My big idea is that we have to fix the internet. After forty
| years, it has begun to corrode, both itself and us. It is still a
| marvelous and miraculous invention, but now there are bugs in the
| foundation, bats in the belfry, and trolls in the basement.
|
| I do not mean this to be one of those technophobic rants dissing
| the Internet for rewiring our brains to give us the twitchy
| attention span of Donald Trump on Twitter or pontificating about
| how we have to log off and smell the flowers. Those qualms about
| new technologies have existed ever since Plato fretted that the
| technology of writing would threaten memorization and oratory. I
| love the internet and all of its digital offshoots. What I bemoan
| is its decline.
|
| There is a bug in its original design that at first seemed like a
| feature but has gradually, and now rapidly, been exploited by
| hackers and trolls and malevolent actors: its packets are encoded
| with the address of their destination but not of their authentic
| origin. With a circuit-switched network, you can track or trace
| back the origins of the information, but that's not true with the
| packet-switched design of the internet.
|
| Compounding this was the architecture that Tim Berners-Lee and
| the inventors of the early browsers created for the World Wide
| Web. It brilliantly allowed the whole of the earth's computers to
| be webbed together and navigated through hyperlinks. But the
| links were one-way. You knew where the links took you. But if you
| had a webpage or piece of content, you didn't exactly know who
| was linking to you or coming to use your content.
|
| All of that enshrined the potential for anonymity. You could make
| comments anonymously. Go to a webpage anonymously. Consume
| content anonymously. With a little effort, send email
| anonymously. And if you figured out a way to get into someone's
| servers or databases, you could do it anonymously.
|
| For years, the benefits of anonymity on the Net outweighed its
| drawbacks. People felt more free to express themselves, which was
| especially valuable if they were dissidents or hiding a personal
| secret. This was celebrated in the famous 1993 New Yorker
| cartoon, "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
|
| Now the problem is nobody can tell if you're a troll. Or a
| hacker. Or a bot. Or a Macedonian teenager publishing a story
| that the Pope has endorsed Trump.
|
| This has poisoned civil discourse, enabled hacking, permitted
| cyberbullying, and made email a risk. Its inherent lack of
| security has allowed Russian actors to screw with our democratic
| process.
|
| The lack of secure identification and authentication inherent in
| the internet's genetic code has also prevented easy transactions,
| thwarted financial inclusion, destroyed the business models of
| content creators, unleashed deluges of spam, and forced us to use
| passwords and two-factor authentication schemes that would have
| baffled Houdini.
|
| The trillions being spent and the IQ points of computer science
| talent being allocated to tackle security issues makes it a drag,
| rather than a spur, to productivity in some sectors.
|
| In Plato's Republic, we learn the tale of the Ring of Gyges. Put
| it on, and you're invisible and anonymous. The question that
| Plato asks is whether those who put on the ring will be civil and
| moral. He thinks not. The Internet has proven him correct.
|
| The Web is no longer a place of community, no longer an agora.
| Every day more sites are eliminating comments sections.
|
| If we could start from scratch, here's what I think we would do:
|
| Create a system that enables content producers to negotiate with
| aggregators and search engines to get a royalty whenever their
| content is used, like ASCAP has negotiated for public
| performances and radio airings of its members' works.
|
| Embed a simple digital wallet and currency for quick and easy
| small payments for songs, blogs, articles, and whatever other
| digital content is for sale.
|
| Encode emails with an authenticated return or originating
| address.
|
| Enforce critical properties and security at the lowest levels of
| the system possible, such as in the hardware or in the
| programming language, instead of leaving it to programmers to
| incorporate security into every line of code they write.
|
| Build chips and machines that update the notion of an internet
| packet. For those who want, their packets could be encoded or
| tagged with metadata that describe what they contain and give the
| rules for how it can be used.
|
| Most internet engineers think that these reforms are possible,
| from Vint Cerf, the original TCP/IP coauthor, to Milo Medin of
| Google, to Howard Shrobe, the director of cybersecurity at MIT.
| "We don't need to live in cyber hell," Shrobe has argued.
|
| Implementing them is less a matter of technology than of cost and
| social will. Some people, understandably, will resist any
| diminution of anonymity, which they sometimes label privacy.
|
| So the best approach, I think, would be to try to create a
| voluntary system, for those who want to use it, to have verified
| identification and authentication.
|
| People would not be forced to use such a system. If they wanted
| to communicate and surf anonymously, they could. But those of us
| who choose, at times, not to be anonymous and not to deal with
| people who are anonymous should have that right as well. That's
| the way it works in the real world.
|
| The benefits would be many: Easy and secure ways to deal with
| your finances and medical records. Small payment systems that
| could reward valued content rather than the current incentive to
| concentrate on clickbait for advertising. Less hacking, spamming,
| cyberbullying, trolling, and the spewing of anonymous hate. And
| the possibility of a more civil discourse.
| gonational wrote:
| Real talk, Mozilla; would you be interested in funding a privacy-
| oriented fork of Firefox with all the unnecessary extras (Pocket,
| etc.) stripped out?
|
| I'm thinking something just like Firefox, except unencumbered by
| Google or other corporate affiliations, etc.
|
| I think this would be the best first step towards any kind of
| "fixing the Internet".
| [deleted]
| whycombagator wrote:
| > unnecessary extras (Pocket, etc.)
|
| Pocket is very necessary for some FF users (myself included).
| gonational wrote:
| That's what add-ons are for.
| mmayo wrote:
| I'm not really speaking for "Mozilla" because what does that
| even mean? But as one of the folks doing this summer program
| for Mozilla, I can say 100% we'd be excited to see a good
| application around this. There's a bunch of great browsers out
| there, most based on Chromium, but we're all pretty tied up
| with search as the only way to fund. Brave's made a step away
| from that, which is cool. I'd love to see more attempts at
| browsers with different funding models. If you have an idea and
| at least, say, the beginnings of a small team who could
| execute, we're available to provide feedback before you submit
| an application. thx!
| dublinben wrote:
| If you're serious about this, you may want to contribute to the
| GNU IceCat project.
| ta17711771 wrote:
| I'd be more interested in a fork with site isolation per
| process, no X11 exploits on Linux, etc.
|
| We need a new Gecko - perhaps a fork of something else with all
| the resources Gecko gets put into it.
| kbrosnan wrote:
| You are describing the Fission project [1]. You can enable it
| in nightly builds. It does break some things, crash a bit
| more often etc.
|
| [1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Project_Fission
| ta17711771 wrote:
| Better many, many years late than never, I suppose.
|
| Good resource!
| bzb3 wrote:
| Then how would they fund completely unrelated things like
| these?
| gkoberger wrote:
| It's tough.
|
| People at Mozilla care so much about privacy, to the point that
| (when I worked there 2010-2012), they refused to do "services"
| the same way Google did (aka a login and a central server). So
| as a result, Chrome "just worked" and Firefox was completely
| unusable.
|
| The people at Mozilla really care about privacy. But they also
| have to build something people can actually use. That means
| finding a balance between privacy and usability.
|
| To you it's "fixing the Internet", but to most normal people
| it's "removing features." Like, can you imagine explaining to
| the average user why they can't just type a search into the
| address bar and get Google results?
|
| (More specifically, though, what would you strip? Pocket is
| owned by Mozilla and is just a fancy bookmark manager, but
| sure. Google is just a default search; data isn't being sent to
| them. Outside of those, what would you remove?)
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > they refused to do "services" the same way Google did
|
| What services?
|
| > More specifically, though, what would you strip?
|
| Telemetry and the normandy/shield backdoor first of all. Then
| remove the google analytics from the about:addons page (or at
| least let adblockers work on it). Then let adblockers work on
| the mozilla pages. Then disable things like pings, beacons,
| etc by default and integrate more tor browser patches.
|
| Firefox right now is the browser that calls back the most htt
| ps://twitter.com/jonathansampson/status/11658588961766604...
|
| As for Pocket, Mozilla promised ages ago to make the server
| foss, still no luck with it.
| gonational wrote:
| This is an underrated comment.
| bhauer wrote:
| > _...they refused to do "services" the same way Google did
| (aka a login and a central server). So as a result, Chrome
| "just worked" and Firefox was completely unusable._
|
| I think Mozilla found the perfect solution to services. They
| provide a service and open source the implementation [1].
| This gives a "just works" option (which is still probably
| setting a pretty high privacy bar because it's Mozilla) and a
| fully self-hosted ultra-private option for those who want to
| go the extra mile.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mozilla-services/
| pythux wrote:
| > Google is just a default search; data isn't being sent to
| them.
|
| You mean, apart from everything typed in the URL bar by
| default?
| snazz wrote:
| This would benefit the couple of people who use that fork of
| Firefox, but would have no effect on every other Internet user.
| It's impossible for Mozilla to fund anything "unencumbered by
| Google or other corporate affiliations" when so much of their
| money comes from Google.
| kybernetikos wrote:
| The irony of posting this link, when for me the site doesn't even
| work because techcrunch.com redirects via guce.advertising.com
| which doesn't dns resolve.
|
| It's annoying, but it's not too bad, because after having looked
| at their deceptive, user-hostile (and in my opinion illegal in
| the EU) practices, I'm pretty resigned to never going to another
| oath/guce site again.
|
| It's sites like techcrunch and their siblings that are breaking
| the internet.
| kristopolous wrote:
| I missed this... Is there still an opportunity, anyone know?
| lightninglu10 wrote:
| hey @kristopolous! yes we are JUST starting our new summer
| program. Applications are due June 5th.
|
| https://builders.mozilla.community/
|
| LMK if you have any questions!
| astlouis44 wrote:
| Hey, so our startup is building the future of games and
| interactive applications in the browser using WebAssembly.
| Definitely going to apply!
| kristopolous wrote:
| Great! thanks.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I thought Mozilla was already on financial life support itself.
| How do they have money for this?
| hu3 wrote:
| Don't they get half a billion per year from Google?
| [deleted]
| noads wrote:
| This seems somewhat myopic. I get that the culture of the valley
| is very entrepreneurial and the solution to every problem seems
| to be another free market competitor, but even if you buy into
| that ethos completely you have to see how this will fail.
|
| The tech giants are now trillion dollar companies. Soon to be
| multi-trillion dollar companies. They have all the data, because
| they own all the platforms. They have bent the very protocols the
| internet is built on to their needs. They can see good ideas or
| dangerous competitors coming before the competitors themselves
| even realize what they're onto. There is little to no innovation
| left at these tech giants, they simple acquire and shut down
| anything that might turn into a real problem for them.
|
| You cannot startup your way out of this quagmire. We need massive
| government intervention and a breakup of the tech giants, with
| strong new antitrust rules around future acquisitions. We simply
| cannot grow or innovate our way out of problems until that
| happens.
|
| Showing your carbon footprint of Amazon purchases is cute and
| will give you a ton of stuff to virtue signal about at the right
| cocktail parties, but ultimately it's completely meaningless.
| You're not changing the internet, you're not changing Amazon with
| token projects like this.
| Stoner wrote:
| Hey everyone, my team is in Mozilla's "fix-the-internet" MVP Lab
| right now.
|
| We're working on Vngle, a decentralized grassroots news network
| combatting news deserts across America. We're working in Georgia
| now and will be moving to other states soon.
|
| Sign up to stay updated at Vngle.com or follow us on social
| @VngleStories. https://www.instagram.com/VngleStories/
| ckolkey wrote:
| Really trying to be constructive here: consider investing in
| one or two more vowels. The "vn" is...rough.
| sjroot wrote:
| Looks to be a play on the word "Angle" - in the context of
| news, this is the point you're trying to convince your
| readers of. "What's your angle?"
| brobinson wrote:
| I pronounced it in my head as "vungle"...
| tqi wrote:
| Interesting idea - how are stories verified / fact checked?
| cameronhowe wrote:
| "Fix the internet" then links your instagram. Seems like you
| are part of the problem?
|
| Edit: Or maybe I have a very different view of what fixing the
| internet means. The peertube content sponsoring currently on
| the frontpage seems much more constructive to me.
| gambler wrote:
| _> Developers in a variety of domains were invited to apply, as
| long as they fit the themes of empowerment, privacy,
| decentralization, community and so on._
|
| Funny. I'm seeing how the Web is being fucked over in exactly
| these areas, and yet I don't see Mozilla doing anything to stop
| it. Quite the opposite, they contribute to it and follow Google's
| lead on most of the issues.
|
| Here is the simplest and incredibly impactful user empowerment
| idea. Assume I have a computer with Firefox and an internet
| connection. Can I open the browser, press "make a web page"
| button and create a page with a stable URL (probably a GUID)
| accessible to other people? Without creating an account some or
| doing some nerdy shit. Nope.
|
| Well, the fact that this basic idea still isn't implemented in
| the age of "cloud computing" tells you everything you need to
| know about whether major player in the market (which Mozilla will
| soon cease to be) want to empower their users.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Who will host the webpage in your scenario?
| jackinloadup wrote:
| peer-to-peer distributed hosting has been maturing.
|
| https://blog.hypercore-protocol.org/posts/announcing-
| hyperdr...
|
| Cloudflare has an ipfs gateway.
| https://blog.cloudflare.com/distributed-web-gateway/
|
| The Brave browser also supports ipfs out of the box.
|
| This is the Web 3.0 movement. The distributed web is on its
| way.
| gambler wrote:
| Really, this is the question I'm being asked on Hacker News?
| Are we at the point where an average user here never heard of
| BitTorrent, Tor and other similar systems? Or is it a way to
| demand for me to post a complete description of the protocol
| that would support the feature above? It doesn't matter what
| the specific protocol is. What matters is that _this is not
| even a goal_ and it should be.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Yes, I am interested in your idea. I agree it is something
| should happen. However, who would host these sites? I don't
| see the solution yet. Maybe you have put more thought into
| it.
|
| Edit: you sound a bit rattled. I didn't mean to instigate.
| notriddle wrote:
| > Are we at the point where an average user here never
| heard of BitTorrent, Tor and other similar systems?
|
| Tor hidden services don't provide permanent storage. It's
| just a routing protocol.
|
| BitTorrent doesn't guarantee storage, either. A popular
| site will remain de facto stable, but the long tail is a
| different story.
|
| Every. Single. Time. This idea comes up, and it always
| fails because the economics just don't work out. Someone
| needs to take care of all those terabytes of data. Routing
| is pretty cheap, and can basically be thought of as solved
| by Tor, I2P, IPFS, BitTorrent, etc. If you're willing to
| keep your PC on 24/7, it's easy, but nobody can expect
| that.
|
| The closest you can get is FreeNet. Kinda. It's better than
| BitTorrent, but still worse than S3, because of course it
| is, it's free.
| abdulmuhaimin wrote:
| Idea is cheap.
|
| edit: Beaker browser is what youre looking for
| lightninglu10 wrote:
| Hey all, Patrick here & one of the mentors for the Mozilla
| Builders "fix-the-internet" incubator
| https://builders.mozilla.community/.
|
| We have 3 different offerings for this Summer. All incubator
| style, meaning you meet weekly or biweekly with mentors and we
| really try to help drive you from point A to point C.
|
| 1. $75k investment in a startup. MUST be serious about wanting to
| build something awesome and put in the hard work it takes to do
| so.
|
| 2. $16k funding in a much earlier stage project (idea stage / MVP
| stage). MUST be serious about commitment it takes to get to
| launch.
|
| 3. OPEN LABS: these are open to the entire community and you have
| access to the mentors. 10 min checkins each week & peer sessions.
| We've had TONS of amazing projects for our Open Labs in the
| Spring and we hope to see TONS more for the Summer.
|
| In terms of MISSION and what we're looking for:
|
| We started this new incubator out of Mozilla in order to work
| with & invest in developers, startups, and technology enthusiasts
| who are building things that will shape the internet and have a
| positive impact without needing to hyper focus on the bottom
| line. We call this our "fix-the-internet" incubator.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| how about supporting the guys from gemini and bring gemini
| support to FF? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23161922
| alexbanks wrote:
| I am not an expert, but 75k seems disproportionate from the
| effort and time the requirements seem to be looking for. For
| the lofty goal of "Fix the internet", 75k seems more like "An
| extra few weeks of runway." What am I missing?
| lightninglu10 wrote:
| Hey Alex, the $75k is just a start! We're funding projects
| who are just starting out / getting off the ground.
|
| Imagine you have a big vision to build something that betters
| the internet and you have only your life savings. Or you've
| been working on something for a while but haven't been able
| to put full effort into it.
|
| This $75k is to kickstart teams & projects in "fixing the
| internet".
| alexbanks wrote:
| Are there groups that have A.) A team assembled, B.) A
| product that's far enough along to have C.) Users, who 75
| grand makes a meaningful impact? Is the expectation that
| those teams maintain other jobs while working with the
| incubator?
|
| ^ Probably a more succinct way to ask my question. I hope
| it's clear that I'm not trying to negatively paint the
| program, it's clearly more than most companies are doing to
| fix the internet. 75k is just the lowest amount of money
| I've seen with respect to incubators/funding (but again, I
| am not an expert).
| lightninglu10 wrote:
| This is our first time running this Summer Incubator
| ($75k iteration), BUT we are in the middle of our Spring
| MVP Program. These teams each got around $8-10k.
|
| We have some really good projects from this much smaller
| program, including https://chrome.google.com/webstore/det
| ail/neutral/oagdejngkg... (Firefox extension releasing
| this week), https://ameelio.org/, and more!
|
| So we're not entirely sure whether $75k is the right
| amount or not, BUT we do know that with $10k, we've had
| some really impressive projects.
| somishere wrote:
| Neutral looks cool. Look forward to trying it out once
| it's released (tho permissions on the chrome version seem
| a bit ominous, plus their website is broken!)
| [deleted]
| jka wrote:
| Hi Patrick! At the risk of this comment appearing as if it
| might derail conversation -- this really is not my intent (the
| iniatiative sounds great; I'm unable to find the details I'm
| looking for on the site) -- are these Mozilla programs open to
| participants/startups based outside the U.S.? Thanks!
| lightninglu10 wrote:
| yes! we already have teams from Asia, Africa, and Europe
| participating in Spring.
| jka wrote:
| Great to hear, thank you!
| cousin_it wrote:
| Here's my "fix the internet" idea: build a search engine that
| is itself ad-free, and searches over only the ad-free segment
| of the web. More options: allow users to exclude sites with
| ads, sites with ecommerce, sites with tracking, or simply allow
| users to build and share lists of sites to exclude. Rationale:
| the unmonetized or under-monetized web was awesome, a lot of it
| still exists under the radar now, and it would be good to reify
| it as a tangible thing. Bonus 1: competitors probably won't
| copy your features. Bonus 2: spam won't be a big problem, as
| most of it contains ads.
| pwdisswordfish2 wrote:
| https://wiby.me
| cousin_it wrote:
| Very cool! Though it seems more like a hand-picked
| directory than a search engine with a crawler, as it
| doesn't find quite a few good noncommercial pages that I
| know exist.
| burkaman wrote:
| Looks like pages have to be submitted here to be
| included: https://wiby.me/submit/
| armyofbots wrote:
| I think humans are better at building such a thing if the
| aim is not gobbling up the entire web but only light
| websites that aren't commercial. I think that would be
| hard or impossible to automate. It definitely has an
| early 90's vibe in terms of results. Not terribly useful
| be but interesting nonetheless.
| tylerchilds wrote:
| 1. cool.
|
| 2. the purple for the links makes me think i've already
| clicked and seen everything
| mlacks wrote:
| this is such a therapeutic way to internet surf. No
| distractions - just content. thank you so much
| xrd wrote:
| I am learning Svelte, so I typed that in:
|
| https://wiby.me/?q=svelte
|
| Two links came back:
|
| "Facts on Farts" "NiceJewishMom.com"
|
| Not a good first impression.
| armyofbots wrote:
| thank you for posting this, I've spent the last hour
| pressing surprise me
| myu701 wrote:
| Added to my FF search. wonderful.
| chris_f wrote:
| I launched a new search engine a few months ago and have been
| looking at several alternative ways to fund it, but none of
| them seem to be a viable path.
|
| The best balance of privacy and user experience seems to be
| display ads related to search term context that don't do any
| tracking (like billboards in the real world). But even that
| isn't an easy proposition and will need a custom network
| built to generate those type of ads.
|
| A lot of people say they will pay for a search engine, but it
| is such a small niche that I believe the cost would be
| prohibitively expensive, and the search engine would probably
| still be subpar to Google in many respect. Would you pay
| $10/month, what about $29? Those are most likely where the
| monthly fees would have to be for this type of product.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| I would love a search engine that had a -ecommerce option.
| Sometimes I want to buy shocks for a f150, sometimes I want
| to see how to replace it. What i don't want is to wade
| through all the ecom sites.
| chrsm wrote:
| I used to work for an ad network (BSA, Carbon Ads, etc)
| that does not intrusively track and believes in the
| effectiveness of quality one-ad-per-page. Try contacting
| @toddo on twitter or email me (in profile) and I'll forward
| it over.
|
| Anyhow, I'd love to see something like this. I've switched
| to DDG but often have to reach for Google if I can't find
| relevant results.
| duxup wrote:
| Is there enough content where searching just the ad-free
| segment is ... worth it?
|
| What happens if you're a top result on the add free segment
| and you start incurring some level of costs? Do you drop off
| if you add an ad?
|
| Granted I really like the idea, I'd love to see it tried, but
| I wonder what all the unintended consequences would be /
| skeptical of the value of segregating "ad-free" vs. "has an
| ad of any sort" vs. the sites that really are a mess.
| eloisius wrote:
| The add-free segment of the internet does indeed sound like
| a niche market. I wonder if quality of results could be
| drastically improved by just penalizing domains that
| contain a lot of referral links and ads. I remember the
| days when it felt like you could learn anything by
| searching the web a bit until you found some suitable
| content to read. Now it's like sifting through reams of
| affiliate spam that I have to at least skim before I can
| tell that it's low quality garbage.
| [deleted]
| Max_aaa wrote:
| How would the project sustain itself? (Hardware and hosting
| costs)
| ShamelessC wrote:
| I'd honestly appreciate this enough to pay a subscription
| for it if there was a policy that meant the subscription
| fee was explicitly to avoid needing revenue from shady
| business.
|
| I believe fastmail is like that.
| pwdisswordfish2 wrote:
| Begging and government grants, like Wikipedia?
| pkaye wrote:
| So why doesn't Mozilla go for government grants instead
| of getting money promoting Google Search?
| jameslk wrote:
| Sounds interesting. Any more detail on what Mozilla sees broken
| about the internet and what a company would be doing to fix it?
| Your link gives some example types of companies but doesn't
| really define the mission. "Positive impact" is completely
| subjective. I have ideas about what this is all about but would
| like to see it defined by Mozilla better.
| lightninglu10 wrote:
| Here's some more details on this:
| https://builders.mozilla.community/who-we-fund.html
|
| This is certainly not limiting and we know that there are
| more categories and just this, but it's a start.
| jameslk wrote:
| Thanks! That's a lot more specific and helpful
| throwaway914892 wrote:
| Where does the revenue come from if the focus isn't on making
| money? 75k may be a start, but it will only last a couple
| months at max.
|
| The better the ideas to fix the internet, the less they will
| generate revenue. So that's kind of a catch-22. It often takes
| years to build an idea, and tens of millions $.
| karlicoss wrote:
| I don't need money and not interested in founding a startup, but
| I've been working on fixing the internet at least for myself, in
| particular, browser history. Have a working app & extension.
| Anyone wants to take my idea?
| https://github.com/karlicoss/promnesia
| lightninglu10 wrote:
| This is really cool!
| detaro wrote:
| previous post by mozilla employees:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23182232
| reggieband wrote:
| This is completely tangental but I think it is wrong to see the
| internet as needing another feature in order to be complete. I
| think we really need a ground up re-think of data.
|
| I remember diligently cataloging my movie preferences in
| LoveFilm, a UK Netflix competitor (when Netflix was a movie-by-
| mail company). I think I rated thousands of movies. I did the
| same in Netflix, certainly hundreds of films before they changed
| their rating scheme to thumbs up and "preference rating". Yet I
| have no access to this data.
|
| We often talk about how much companies know about us. Google
| knows what search terms I search for. Facebook knows what content
| I slow down on while scrolling my feed. Youtube knows what videos
| I watch. My cell phone company probably knows the location of my
| cell every minute of the day. And outside of the horrible
| interfaces they have been regulated to provide me access to that
| data ... it is almost completely opaque to me.
|
| Re-thinking data isn't the kind of thing a startup can do. I
| think we need to find legal mechanisms to really force companies
| to make data available to the originators of that data. IMO, that
| is the only way we salvage the Internet.
| na85 wrote:
| >Re-thinking data isn't the kind of thing a startup can do. I
| think we need to find legal mechanisms to really force
| companies to make data available to the originators of that
| data. IMO, that is the only way we salvage the Internet.
|
| You are completely correct, but unfortunately it's not fun and
| quite frustrating to work with government, and you're competing
| with lobbyists that Facebook and Google have a financial
| interest in supporting.
|
| It's a lot easier and more glamorous to just throw some
| JavaScript at the low-hanging fruit.
| hartator wrote:
| I thought Mozilla was a non-profit fundation?
| jameslk wrote:
| I'd assume this is offered by Mozilla's corporate side
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
| est31 wrote:
| There is Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation. The
| foundation owns the corporation.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| Mitchel is now the CEO of Mozilla Corp
| (https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2020/04/08/mitchell-baker-
| name...)
| est31 wrote:
| Thanks for pointing it out. Seems she's also still
| foundation chair so the two can't be differentiated by
| their leadership. I've edited my comment to remove the
| mentions.
| pwdisswordfish2 wrote:
| The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising. In the
| beginning there were rules. No commercial use. When that was
| lifted we started the descent into where things are now. It began
| with a lawyer posting an ad about immigration services to Usenet.
| It has come a long way since then. All the while, the web browser
| has supported always advertising, making it easier and easier to
| consume ads, buy and sell via the web.
|
| People in the 1990's who wanted "e-commerce" got their wish.
| Certain companies and individuals have become wealthy beyond
| imagination. Companies are hording cash. However it is not an
| equal playing field.
|
| Governments have heretofore been unwilling to regulate. Some,
| those who are proifiting from the status quo, might say this is
| starting to change. Even if this is true, the change is very
| slow. In Mozilla Corporation's domicile, there has been no
| significant change.
|
| Mozilla is funded indirectly by advertising. Their funding comes
| from Google. Google's funding comes from advertisers.
| searchableguy wrote:
| Google and Facebook benefitted the most from GDPR and grew in
| size, fyi.
|
| Google helped write GDPR.
|
| I am tired of hearing this troupe of putting more and more
| regulations to stop shit from breaking when exactly this caused
| monopolies in many traditional sectors that haven't been
| changed since like forever because the red tape to do anything
| requires a team of expensive lawyers.
|
| If you are for more regulation, please at least come up with a
| way to regulate that seems practical.
| austincheney wrote:
| That, historically speaking, is not enough. People will find a
| away to screw up advertising, whether intentionally or not, so
| long as there is revenue to earn. Perhaps things have gotten
| better but when I used to dig into that code for work some
| years ago it was near negligent incompetent.
|
| If you are going to recommend regulation the only thing that
| works, as exemplified by every other profession, is
| credentials: licensing and certification. There would be less
| bad software in the world if there were less bad software
| developers employed writing software and everybody else held to
| a minimum ethical standard.
|
| Right now, at least before COVID, there was no motivation to
| write good software. Many developers, at least web developers
| whether front or back end, only goal was employability which
| often meant tooling to a tech stack and trying not to write
| original software.
|
| Edit: I anticipate this will be downvoted extensively, because
| regulating minimal developer competence is always heavily down
| voted. It's curious though that people claim there is a problem
| they want fixed only until they realize the fix applies
| directly to them, at which point the problem is no longer worth
| the effort.
| nine_k wrote:
| If anything, this is one measure directly at odds with
| democratizing the Web.
|
| You wrote a brilliant app but lack a license? No audience for
| you.
|
| Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building code
| as a house with 50 years of expected use requires, this is
| death to all but exceptionally well-funded innovation.
| austincheney wrote:
| Software is bigger than just the web. You can be your own
| lawyer or your own medical doctor without a license, but
| it's generally a bad idea. Even lawyers know better than
| that and hire other lawyers to represent them.
|
| > Also, if you have to produce an MVP to the same building
| code as a house with 50 years of expected use requires
|
| That is not an MVP.
| pwdisswordfish2 wrote:
| Regulation is a _start_. In the short history of the
| commercial internet, we have seen that any notion of "self-
| regulation" is a joke. The reason some of these particularly
| acute problems in your industry exist is because there is
| _zero_ regulation. It is also why the industry is so
| profitable, and why those profits can be channeled to a
| select few particpants without much resistance. The conflict
| of interest that stands in the way of changing the status quo
| is insurmountable without having at least some rules. History
| so far has shown there is no practical way to restrain this
| type of activity without some legal basis. No amounts of
| money from advertising and investors are going to solve these
| problems.
|
| No one wants regulation but without it, a few large companies
| are going to be the ones making the "rules". The future of
| the internet's design will be crafted to fuel their continued
| survival. I have been watching this happen since the birth of
| the web. It is easier to see when you do not work in the
| industry.
|
| Imagine if advertising did not subsidise your work and you
| had to sell your software. How much would people pay? Yes,
| there would be motivation to write original, quality
| software. But this is a terrifying idea to today's software
| "engineers". The hell with good software, they want to get
| paid. Advertisers can make that happen.
|
| If someone really believes the internet and advertising are
| like chocolate and peanut butter -- they go great together --
| just look at what has happened to "news", a profession that,
| like today's "tech" industry, relies on advertising to
| survive. Every day people come to HN to complain about the
| ridiculous headlines, bias, sensationalism, etc. We are
| losing serious journalism. We are also losing serious
| software. From where I sit, we are losing a lot. Whatever we
| are gaining seems like a poor tradeoff.
| [deleted]
| naasking wrote:
| > The internet could be "fixed" by regulating advertising.
|
| Regulation always requires coordination, which is simply not
| possible at internet scale. Facebook and Twitter can't even
| regulate the content on their own platforms, and you're talking
| about regulation at an even larger scale against strong
| interests with large financial reserves.
|
| What's needed is a secure/private by default browser sandbox so
| these interests have no say in how their content is consumed.
| Take a look the extremes Gemini has gone to _ensure_ privacy
| [1]. Some of those can be relaxed without compromising privacy
| much, but a serious effort along those lines is what 's
| actually needed.
|
| [1] https://gemini.circumlunar.space/
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Facebook and Twitter can't even regulate the content on
| their own platforms,
|
| How are we supposed to know this given that they don't have
| an actual incentive to do so? Look at the allegedly
| "unworkable" enforcement of hate-speech legislation in say,
| Germany. What did Facebook do when they were faced with 4%
| global revenue fines? Hire some moderators and it appears to
| work reasonbaly well.
|
| Same goes for advertising. Get out the hammer and I bet it
| wouldn't take long until those companies suddenly discover
| how creative they can be in cleaning their act up.
| pwdisswordfish2 wrote:
| HTTP printf "GET
| /gemini/gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/ HTTP/1.1\r\nHost:
| portal.mozz.us\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n"|socat -
| ssl:portal.mozz.us:443
|
| Gemini printf "/servers\r\n"|socat -
| gemini.circumlunar.space:1965
|
| However, he seems to have his server configured such that the
| full URL is required. printf
| "gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/servers/\r\n"|socat -
| ssl:gemini.circumlunar.space:1965
|
| Other gemini servers on the list do not have that
| restriction.
| jononor wrote:
| We are somehow able to regulate consumer goods (health and
| safety standards for example), which also is a global
| operation involving hundreds of thousands of actors.
| kgwxd wrote:
| I think if browsers didn't allow JS calls to other domains
| without a user prompt it would solve almost all the woes
| ads/trackers bring. I'm willing to give up whatever
| optimizations the current silent behavior allows. I'm sure
| Google would do everything to stop that from ever being
| standard though.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| What would stop people using a CNAME record to point
| ads.example.com to a third party ad server? I don't think
| there would be a way to use cookies to track people across
| different sites, but the ad servers could still use ip
| addresses and browser fingerprinting to check if its the same
| user.
| zem wrote:
| this is unfortunately relatively easy to work around. if you
| want ad revenue you agree to host a third party's script on
| your own site, with a cron job to pull updates. then you
| collect tracking data, send it to your own backend, and
| upload it from there to google/facebook/whoever.
| pwdisswordfish2 wrote:
| Let us imagine that there are options to disable or exclude
| these "features", i.e., silent behaviours.
|
| Here is a question for you. Would you prefer that these
| options be
|
| a. only run-time (hopefully not set to defaults that suit
| advertising and tracking),
|
| b. only compile-time (imagining further that these browsers
| could be compiled with less resources and in less time), or
|
| c. both.
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(page generated 2020-05-15 23:00 UTC)