Aral Balkan
I’ll probably run out of air before folks get this but, hey, one more time for those in the back:
If you’re creating “alternatives to #BigTech” that scale vertically, you’re doing it wrong. You’ll never beat Big Tech at vertical scale. They invented the game. They’ll destroy you at it every time. And say you somehow do manage it… congratulations, you’ve just become *checks notes* Big Tech. *golf claps*
So what do you do?
You limit vertical scale and #design for horizontal scale.
Aral Balkan
What does it mean to design for horizontal scale?
It means limiting the growth of individual instances of a service (e.g., number of accounts, etc.) and investing in ensuring that as many different people and organisations can run their own and that they can all talk to one another and interoperate.
It means keeping the power relationships between instances as level as possible.
Take it to its logical conclusion and you get the #SmallWeb: instances of one.
Aral Balkan
@alex Further to that, we must stay vigilant to ensure new legislation meant to rein in #BigTech does not end up stimying #SmallTech.
Alex🇺🇦
@aral Also I love to see lawmakers scratching their heads on how those new shiny laws intended for FB and co. are applicable to the fediverse, as there is no single responsable ... *wait for it* instance to be responsable.
Aral Balkan
@KarlHeinzHasliP Municipal services could actually host instances of one. In fact, that’s exactly what we prototyped with the City of Ghent a few years ago :) My tech wasn’t ready then and damn conservatives got into power and gutted our budget but it‘s getting there now.
(Instances of one do not have to require technical knowledge to set up or maintain. In fact, that’s basically the problem I’ve dedicated my life to solving at this point, I guess. That’s what Kitten & Domain aim to solve.)
Karl Heinz Häsliprinz
@aral Instances of a municipality seem appropriate. Instances of one require grandmas, disabled folx and kids to host their own, so in oder to not exclude them... Municipal services should include instance hosting.
Aral Balkan
@ainmosni Please do, I look forward to reading it. #SmallTech is basically anarchist tech.
Daniël Franke 🏳️🌈
@KarlHeinzHasliP @aral I've actually been thinking about an anarchist model for tech, based on small communities and mutual aid, considering writing a blog post about it soonish.
Aral Balkan
@kamstrup Fractal scaling (oh how I love these business terms) sounds like horizontal scale but it’s not. It’s still colonial in nature (the goal is not to empower those who make up a locality but to exploit a locality by a centralised entity). When in doubt, look at who’s pushing something and for what purpose. If it‘s business consultants or blockchain startups, then you should already know what they’re about. (Hint: it’s not to build an equitable commons that benefits all of society.)
kamstrup
@aral what about fractal scaling tho. Pls be kind ❤️
Aral Balkan
@ainmosni What makes up small communities? Individuals. How do you model a small community in which individuals retain their sovereignty without modelling individuals with sovereignty first? The reason I start at modelling the individual is because I don’t know how else to design a digital and networked system in which people exist as as people (in other words, with mathematically-inalienable rights that protect the integrity of their personhood).
Daniël Franke 🏳️🌈
@aral @KarlHeinzHasliP It is, but from what I've seen, your focus is on individuals, while I want to do a more small community focus.
Not that I dislike your work, far from it. :)
Aral Balkan
@heapwolf All of those can be solved in various ways. Currently, with pre-alpha code and zero investment, you can set up a small web site that is maintenance free in under a minute with zero technical knowledge for less than €10/month. All of those numbers can be improved in the future with investment from the commons but anything beyond that is premature optimisation at the moment.
Regarding sockets (congrats on shipping, btw): how do you handle offline messages if not without always on nodes?
heapwolf
@aral The number of people who have the money, time, and expertise to run servers prohibits this from ever reaching critical mass. Check out what’s happening recently in P2P, we just shipped https://sockets.sh, that’s step one. This month we’re open sourcing the P2P libraries that make it possible for users to communicate without servers, even if people are offline. No servers == no landlords.
Aral Balkan
@ainmosni But what if it didn’t take technical knowledge to setup or maintain your own place?
I see what you’re proposing as (likely very valuable) stopgaps. But stopgaps that are dependent on the benevolence of their own small gods. The small gods might be kinder than the big gods (or not) but they‘re gods nevertheless. If we’re to look beyond stopgaps, I feel we need to design systems without gods. No matter their girth or character.
Daniël Franke 🏳️🌈
@aral @KarlHeinzHasliP Yeah I know what you mean, but I'm coming from a bit of a different angle. Not everyone can do all the tech stuff, just like not everyone can do any skilled profession. So, instead of every user trying to self host their tech stuff, the more technically inclined can do the tech stuff for their community, while other members take care of other needs. This is how you create small self sufficient communities where people take care of each other via mutual aid.
Aral Balkan
@heapwolf Ah, so nodes also act as relays for the system at large (assuming by storing and forwarding end to end encrypted content-addresses packets? So more nodes = more reliable offline support?
heapwolf
@aral servers are and always will be landlord-tenant oriented, this is antithetical to a free and open internet. I don’t object to commercial ventures but the fundamental stack must be absolutely free and open. No black boxes. No gate keeping. No rent extraction.
We designed a packet relay algorithm that was originally intended for partition tolerance, however its design also makes it suitable for *significant* partitions (hundreds of hours at the moment)
Aral Balkan
@heapwolf For the Small Web, the idea is to use commodity/interoperable VPS. But also hopefully little devices you can just hook up to your home router if you prefer.
heapwolf
@aral also, I think it’s nice to help people set up servers and run websites, but it will always be limited in what people can build. Because cloud costs always scale up with demand.
Aral Balkan
@heapwolf Best of luck with it :)
(What I’m working on takes a much simpler approach. But they’re definitely compatible. And I’d love to see efforts like yours succeed.)
🙌
heapwolf
@aral correct, it’s highly nuanced but we have a huge FAQ on the way that includes a lot of maths and models. Even as a (relatively) small network it works nicely already. My whole team can be offline and we still send chats and files reliably. E2E FTW 🙌
Aral Balkan
@heapwolf Right, actually, sorry, no, scratch that. I thought you were building a community-run thing and I didn’t see any blockchain or venture capital stuff listed on your web site but this changes everything:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/socket-supply-co-announces-3-130000714.html
Had I realised this was a VC-funded “web3” startup, I wouldn’t have wasted my breath.
We’re not working on the same thing at all.
I’m actually quite upset with myself for having let my guard down.
Aral Balkan
@Blort This is why I’m working on Kitten (https://codeberg.org/kitten/app) and Domain (https://codeberg.org/domain/app) :)
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️
@aral
The other part that is neglected, is making it as easy as possible for *everyone* to run their own node.
The tech for people to run their own webserver, and share it with others has been around for decades. Why doesn't everyone do it? Because Facebook et al make it much easier to create an account and use them instead.
There's still a long way to go, but this is why projects like @yunohost are so important. They make it easier to run your own everything.
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