The web collectively failed to provide a single authentication token. Unlike mobile phones, where the phone numbers are not controlled by one entity, in the web some companies jumped in and grabbed them all. It's still sad to see that despite multiple protocols, despite open source browser, despite distributed trustless databases, we need to sign up to each service with our email or with FB connect.

For anything in that space to catch on though, it will have to provide a benefit to the webmater. Facebook provided visibility and extensive distribution, that's why so many media chose to move their content in there

Interesting points - like the comparison to mobile phone numbers. You’d think that an open account system could provide even more visibility - because you’re not just posting on a closed network.

I think if Facebook was just an account system or just a discovery mechanism, then it could be amazing. It just sucks that every network tries to do it all - and in a closed way.

Firefox should bundle something like metamask in the browser. Not only you will have a trustless identification mechanism for multiple identities, but users will also use it for micropayments.

I think a lot of the privacy and mob mentality issues stem from the fact that current systems don't support multiple disconnected, pseudonymous identities, which we had ~15 years ago. We should make it easy for laypeople to have that again.

I don't know if decentralizing the web is worth the effort since it's less efficient. We need however to steal back identity from those identity barons.

Firefox tried decentralised identity via the Persona protocol. It failed to gain market traction and Mozilla canned the project.

Email is already the decentralised identity protocol.

i think it isn't and that s why i think we need Persona, but without the email-account requirement. Plus mozilla canned the project too early and without ever really trying to push for it, as if they didnt want adoption.

I think such a system is needed, we need to teach people that they are in control of their identity and that it is independent of facebook. Kind of like how mobile apps do it with numbers.

> multiple disconnected, pseudonymous identities

Oh I’m with you.

>Whereas community on the Web used to be a favorite hobbyist PHPBB forum or mailing list - it’s now just a business. (Are you on Instagram or TikTok?)

I think you're mixing up the medium and the message here a bit. There's still plenty of "community" on third-party platforms. Just because the hobbyists are on Reddit now rather than someone's PHPBB instance running on a shared host doesn't mean the nature of the community being hosted has become fundamentally more commercial.

I appreciate you responding - I think my comment must have been too garbled - I'm not just trying to demonize business for some arbitrary anti-capitalist reason or something. What I am questioning is the nature of the network - not to get caught up in nostalgia, but at least the Web used to be comprised of an infinite variety of communities. However, generally speaking, no one will join your custom forum or community in 2019 because it's not contained in one of these networks. They've become both the hosting and the discovery engines. They are self-contained networks. I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks.

I can pull up some reasons people cite (ease of use, mobile apps, network effects) but at the same time, it feels like the sentiment of the masses acknowledges that these networks are shitty.

>not to get caught up in nostalgia, but at least the Web used to be comprised of an infinite variety of communities.

But there are more, and more varied, communities on the Web now than there ever have been... the Web has grown, not shrunk, over the years.

Also, even on the "old" web, most people tended to gravitate towards a few sites.

>I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks.

I think for reasons similar to why a country can have a sprawling network of highways and roads connecting lots of cities and small towns, each with its own unique culture and history, but most people will still tend to gravitate towards a few large cities.

Social media sites did a better job of providing the features that people who weren't interested in web development actually wanted, and they're designed to host millions or billions of people, as opposed to smaller forums. In other words, the infrastructure was better.

Most people care more about convenience and functionality than they do the openness of a network, or even where it's hosted. Most people just want a curated network of friends to talk to, share things with and a place to publish content. And whatever negatives the silos might bring, they do make the "networking" part of a social network ridiculously easy. Add network effects to that and I think it's easy to see why they won.

>it feels like the sentiment of the masses acknowledges that these networks are shitty.

People leave these networks for other, similar networks that serve the same needs, or different niche needs, but those needs are still currently better served by centralized networks. They're not rejecting the model itself, just specific implementations.

Sure - I can see why social media took hold - but that's the perspective we've been trapped in for the last decade. You can easily shake yourself free and see that these networks are just one way of arranging things (like you say - like a "city" or like tenant housing) and that they are, quite simply, shitty. :)

I mean where do we go from here? I think if you view social media positively, then you just continue down the current road - another new app icon, another dot-com, another account, some new video gimmick to go along with it - but I wonder if it's possible to shift the perspective back to the Web as the network - and protocols as the connecting tissue. I wish I could easily follow what my sisters or parents or friends are doing - but they are all on separate shitty closed networks now.

> I'm trying to sort out how we went from a giant, flexible network to a bunch of shittier smaller, isolated networks.

A bunch of shittier smaller isolated networks sounds exactly like what we transitioned away from, you yourself bringing up phpbb. Are you asking why people don't want to register for yet another silo'd community every time they want to talk about a different subject? Or why people may want to talk about their cycling hobby here and there but aren't so fanatical about it that they want to register for bikeforums.com nor mingle with the zealots that post there?

Just sounds like you're romanticizing something that wasn't all that great for most people. A lot of those types of forums still exist, btw. Probably even more than ever. I run one. My forum fills a niche that doesn't translate well to a place like reddit (longform collaborative writing). These communities are still here for the people looking for them, but it's no mystery to me why they have limited appeal.

Frankly, the modern web has enabled more people to participate that aren't as nerdy or fanatic about a niche nor willing to jump through hoops like joining a new forum with its own rules and nobody they know irl. Not everything is going to shit, there are simply always trade-offs.

Yeah, I'm really not doing a great job here. By 'network' I mean that the Web is the network. I'm not romanticizing needing separate accounts for every topic. I'm not sure how to isolate the part that I am romanticizing from the part that I'm not. :D

I mean let's say we forked the Web before social media and simply had unified accounts for the variety of small sites we participated in. That seems like progress to me.

> mean let's say we forked the Web before social media and simply had unified accounts for the variety of small sites we participated in. That seems like progress to me.

That wouldn't stop the network effect of social media, or centralization. Facebook, Twitter, etc. would still be built and people would still congregate to them, just using whatever their "unified accounts" were.

And remember, Google tried unifying accounts with G+, albeit just within their network. One day everyone on Youtube found their G+ comments merged with their Youtube comments because Google decided Youtube was just the video-sharing part of G+, and a lot of real names and data were exposed, because the two platforms were designed around completely different social paradigms. The obvious questions with something like a unified account is who controls them and defines the standard, and how do you make the rest of the web comply with using them?

All of the potential problems of centralization are still there, anywhere you have an attempt at a common standard.

Sure, it’s fine if these networks exist - I understand that people like Twitter and identify with it, even if I can’t fathom it. It’s just that they all close themselves off to interoperating with the Web.

I’m not trying to make a strict decentralization argument either - it’s just this draconian closedness to the larger network. (At least we’ve been able to hang on to email - imagine if we had separate email networks!) RSS and REST were great advances - and then our good open protocols stopped or something. Thank you for reading and responding, though.

Turns out there's a lot more money in walled gardens than there is in services that are easily accessed by common protocols. Thus there's a perverse incentive at play from the perspective of end users.

I see - because you "own" the people in the garden.