J Stone Not just rumor, guy who runs it said he is a libertarian which is usually right wing (not always)... my use case is for a federated choice and mewe is not federated.
1) They have a misleading disclaimer at the bottom of the screen telling you they are collecting data on you while you have their web page open and that they own the data. They further state clicking the close button means you agree. First off, no one has a right to begin collecting data without your permission much less claim they own it and mislead you into agreement.
2) It is a subscription service. If I wanted to pay a subscription, I would stay with G+.
Shelenn Ayres I don't expect him to change or anything but for me being endorsed by the father of the web does mean something. By something I mean it doesn't necessarily an endorsement on their political stance but more likely has something to do with them doing the right thing in Tim Berners-Lee's eyes.
Halfey Halphstein Lee is likely endorsing the concept only. But Lee doesn't run it - what matters are the politics of the person who runs it because that will impact how it is run.
Halfey Halphstein I guess my point is not coming across. I have no concern about what Lee said and every concern about what "whats his name" said. MeWe is not my choice for other reasons but I will certainly not promote any service run by alt-right folks. I will consider technical facts without prejudice.
KM Opal96 I hear ya. Suffice it to say, if I walk into a place of business, a virtual world, or visit a website using Fox News or any of the sort, they lose my business and/or association. Its time to draw the lines. The same is true for social media and that is why user privacy controls are so important - to control who has access to your attention to defeat trolling. Data rights are just as important - no one has the right to use your data without your permission to make a profit or distort your message. These things are handled by design in federated solutions but are anti-thetical to centralized solutions run by human beings whose politics will influence the way they manage the service. We are all human - but not all of us believe we all have human rights.
I signed up, but I think all the established content might be in Swedish? I could not find any content on any keywords I tried (linux, AI, offgrid, photography). When I searched gplus I found a bunch of other user profiles but I did not see anyone I recognized and without "adding" them as contacts, I could not see their profile or content. I also could not figure out how to make a photo or profile for myself. But the interface looks slick if I can figure it out. For low data (under 2GB), personal use they plan it to be free. I recall that 2 euros monthly gets you the first tier of extra memory up to 10GB of total content.
Shelenn Ayres Exactly. When you use a service that is owned, you are effectively putting your trust in a King. If the King decides to turn around and sell you out, there's nothing you can do about it - except quit.
That what happened at GoodReads. The owner got free labor from users, thousands of hours of labor, and then turned around and sold out to Amazon. Big paycheck for him; a total screwing for the users.
Shelenn Ayres yes I get you but for me it matters who is saying about what. If it's from a random person even I wouldn't give a damn. I can understand if you feel that way about MeWe though.
💙 Hey you, brilliant one, I agree! faux news, I chuckle...Troll bots? I just learned they are payed in crypto currency. I didn't know! How convenient? Not trusting anymore.
Halfey Halphstein I understand. But he's still a human being. And the owner of MeWe is a libertarian - he's open about it. So if at some point Facebook or someone makes him a big offer, what's to stop him from taking it?
Peter Maranci Exactly. But let's expand the thought to help people see the issue more clearly.
In a centralized solution, it wouldn't matter who was in charge - the fact there is one single authority is the issue for the people posting social media.
All data could be lost on a whim due to shutdown or potentially unjust user bans,
sold to another company who will not necessarily respect the data rights of the people (perfectly legal since the terms of service no longer apply),
modify the people's content claiming shared or total intellectual property that was in fact created by the people,
and a host of other possibilities that are mitigated by a federated model.
Now, if a user WANTS a centralized private social network where they trust the owners or are willing to risk it, that is perfectly fine.
If I wanted a centralized solution, I would have to trust the people that run it. I do not trust anyone with an alt-right view of the world. So that is a deal breaker in itself. Would I have a property presence? If there were users they I wanted to reach. But I would have zero social presence.
For my family, we have made a decision to spend our time in a federated solution.
I want to know there is no single authority that can shut down whatever social network I migrate to.
I want to be able to host my own node, pod, instance, or channel.
I want my data to 100% be my intellectual property that I have saved in a form I can use anywhere I want.
I want the power to control who has access to my data and my time.
I want to be able to modify my UI and content layout.
I want to see drastic improvements in accessibility features.
I want to know the project is 100% open source core (it is ok to have monetized modules) so the code can be sustained and inspected for security purposes.
I want end to end encryption and that includes encryption inside the database(s) in the event someone wants access (legal or illegal) to that data without my permission - at least we attempt to make it as difficult as possible.
There are more criteria but the above are the major issues. It matters who runs it, it matters how it is run, and it matters what deterrents the technology provides to prevent corruption - because we are all faulty humans who are easily corrupted by greed or by circumstance.
Shelenn Ayres So I assume it doesn't matter if G+ is closing or not because it seems to me G+ doesn't fit your criteria.
That said, based on what you wrote up there the safest route is to host your own pod or write the system from scratch while implementing federation to connect to other pods. For me even with decentralized system I still have my own concern about it. If the pod is hosted by someone else I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) there's still a risk of getting kicked out from the network if the pod owner doesn't like me, or the owner could one day decide to shut it down just because they don't feel like maintaining the pod anymore without giving enough time for the users to rescue their data. The latter has happened to me when I was on one Friendica instance.
Halfey Halphstein My criteria developed because of the way G+ and prior centralized social systems work.
They have all reached a point where they make a command decision what to do with our data and our history and our timelines and our home pages and our accounts and so on without regard to the mutual terms of service and data rights management.
They do it because they can afford the lawyers and the average user cannot fight them.
They do it out of a corrupt view of the world and their greed. G+ and most of Google would never have made Google billions without its people - the product IS the people not the technology. It is our behavior and usage they sell along with our content we share.
I am actually pro-business but I am anti-corruption. I respect the rights of creators. Corrupt business practices involve hiding behind a terms of service written to allow them to take what they want when they want.
Social media is not the same as renting virtual space, renting a game, renting a movie, etc. Those are tangible things that can be marketed and sold because those services are being provided or are created by the com[any selling access.
Social media content belongs to the users not the service provider. The software used in most cases is based on open source and does not belong to the companies using it.
The only legitimate business case as a provider is to offer service access via subscription OR offer service access free, then offer premium aspects like offer micropurchases for enhanced service access, offer writing or creation services, or offer marketing and exposure services.
Under no circumstances should a user's intellectual property be commandeered by any service provider unless explicitly agreed to in the terms of service.
For centralized services, lucrative purchase offers to centralized service owners are often taken by those with rapid user base growth - in many cases by selling intellectual property they do not own. Buyout offers are often taken by those with failed deployments but a user base that can be catered to in other ways. In both cases, it is the users who often lose their intellectual property.
It all comes down to taking a risk to trust the service provider with access to your intellectual property. Saying they will never sell your data is moot when they sell the company nullifying the terms you agreed to.
In a federated solution, these risks are mitigated and in some cases eliminated by design. It removes incentives to be corrupt.
Shelenn Ayres Yes I do agree in decentralized network there is little or nothing to gain from screwing up with users but I think there are still other ways for it to get fucked up.
Halfey Halphstein Nothing is perfect. But just because an alternative has flaws, doesn't mean that the problems of the original are bearable.
A centralized system not only CAN sell out its users, it WILL sell them out. That has been demonstrated over and over again. Even the most well-intentioned company or owner will either end up corrupted, or be bought out by a corrupt entity.
Even a federated system is not ideal. The owners and operators of individual pods are still effectively despots. Unless someone works out a democratic system for pod control and administration, that is - one with teeth in it.
Shelenn Ayres I OTOH have little to lose so I'll keep looking around. Doesn't matter much for me if it's centralized/proprietary or decentralized/open-source. I will still keep my presence in MeWe anyway in the same way I do with facebog and twitter.
Peter Maranci I like the thought of some form of system control that is distributed - it could even be a work hour based block chain system with a user bill of rights and periodic human council review. But that requires a form of democracy already in great danger world wide. So I have to think that is not realistic in the short term - humans still need to evolve.
However, the ability to host yourself in s federated system always remains so even if you were say banned from an instance, you could host your own and be back in the federated social web without anyone having the authority to keep you out. In a centralized system - that is not even possible.
That said, the social web has and will continue to have its share of bad players attempting to corrupt human nature. But, when society shuns these behaviors as not acceptable, eventually it goes back into the shadows as the community polices itself.
J Stone 💙G+ also has the coo-coo alt right-wing crowd and trolls galore and bots. What did we do? Well, we.... strengthened our crowd and our blockety-block🚫 finger and made a decent place for ourselves.
Shelenn Ayres I guess what is confusing me here is the MeWe motto. I'm not even going to look at idka. At this point I'm trying to figure out where I can meet my familiars in a comfortable, casual, safer way without exhausting myself culling out the deplorables, ya know?
KM Opal96 I get that. How each of us interprets a motto is not what really matters though. However it is interpreted by admins is what impacts users. The federated social web is where you can meet your familiars in the manner you desire. You have full control over privacy and data. I've found far fewer alt-right there than at G+ where many are free to do what they want with Google's blessing.
Using Friendica, I have an option to peruse local community public posts or global community public posts. What's the difference? Local shows posts by users of my local node. Global shows posts from all federated social web users (mastadon, GNUsocial, diaspora, hubzilla, and other Friendica nodes) from what I have seen so far.
You decide what you show to whom. If it is public, it can be shared on the web to others without issue. Here is a look at the global community (you will notice a lot off major media accounts are already there like NPR, Mashable, etc). If you are logged into one of the network types, you also see ways to comment share like dislike and so on:
Idka replied to my inquiries for help, but their reply did not solve my problem. I cannot open my profile to upload a photo or edit a summary. I imagine it could be fixed but I don't plan to bother.
New comments on this blog are moderated. If you do not have a Google identity, you are welcome to post anonymously. Your comments will appear here after they have been reviewed. Comments with vulgarity will be rejected.
I know nothing about that.
ReplyDeleteNo.
MeWe looks REAL GOOD and Pluspora seems alright. Beware of any others that pop up.
Basic is €2 euro a month which includes 20gb of storage. Freemium is free with 2gb storage.
ReplyDeleteHas the right feature list (MeWe doesn’t). Anyone know who their investors are?
ReplyDelete📌
ReplyDeleteKM Opal96
ReplyDeleteI've heard that Mewe has the a right wing crowd.
?
#mark
ReplyDeleteJ Stone Not just rumor, guy who runs it said he is a libertarian which is usually right wing (not always)... my use case is for a federated choice and mewe is not federated.
ReplyDeleteI'm not advocating for MeWe but I'd like you to know that MeWe is backed by Tim Berners-Lee himself.
ReplyDeleteTwo issues with IDKA right off the bat.
ReplyDelete1) They have a misleading disclaimer at the bottom of the screen telling you they are collecting data on you while you have their web page open and that they own the data. They further state clicking the close button means you agree. First off, no one has a right to begin collecting data without your permission much less claim they own it and mislead you into agreement.
2) It is a subscription service. If I wanted to pay a subscription, I would stay with G+.
Halfey Halphstein That doesn't change what the guy who runs it said tonight publicly.
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres I don't expect him to change or anything but for me being endorsed by the father of the web does mean something. By something I mean it doesn't necessarily an endorsement on their political stance but more likely has something to do with them doing the right thing in Tim Berners-Lee's eyes.
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein Lee is likely endorsing the concept only. But Lee doesn't run it - what matters are the politics of the person who runs it because that will impact how it is run.
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres Whether it's concept only or more than that I'll leave it to you to judge but you might want to read what he said about it https://www.macobserver.com/news/the-father-of-the-web-is-backing-a-private-social-network/
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres With due respect Right is wrong and Left is right and the one's in the middle made a mistake, just that once, and never again,I HOPE.
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein I guess my point is not coming across. I have no concern about what Lee said and every concern about what "whats his name" said. MeWe is not my choice for other reasons but I will certainly not promote any service run by alt-right folks. I will consider technical facts without prejudice.
ReplyDeleteKM Opal96 I hear ya. Suffice it to say, if I walk into a place of business, a virtual world, or visit a website using Fox News or any of the sort, they lose my business and/or association. Its time to draw the lines. The same is true for social media and that is why user privacy controls are so important - to control who has access to your attention to defeat trolling. Data rights are just as important - no one has the right to use your data without your permission to make a profit or distort your message. These things are handled by design in federated solutions but are anti-thetical to centralized solutions run by human beings whose politics will influence the way they manage the service. We are all human - but not all of us believe we all have human rights.
ReplyDeleteI signed up, but I think all the established content might be in Swedish? I could not find any content on any keywords I tried (linux, AI, offgrid, photography). When I searched gplus I found a bunch of other user profiles but I did not see anyone I recognized and without "adding" them as contacts, I could not see their profile or content. I also could not figure out how to make a photo or profile for myself. But the interface looks slick if I can figure it out. For low data (under 2GB), personal use they plan it to be free. I recall that 2 euros monthly gets you the first tier of extra memory up to 10GB of total content.
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres Exactly. When you use a service that is owned, you are effectively putting your trust in a King. If the King decides to turn around and sell you out, there's nothing you can do about it - except quit.
ReplyDeleteThat what happened at GoodReads. The owner got free labor from users, thousands of hours of labor, and then turned around and sold out to Amazon. Big paycheck for him; a total screwing for the users.
Shelenn Ayres yes I get you but for me it matters who is saying about what. If it's from a random person even I wouldn't give a damn. I can understand if you feel that way about MeWe though.
ReplyDelete💙 Hey you, brilliant one, I agree! faux news, I chuckle...Troll bots? I just learned they are payed in crypto currency. I didn't know! How convenient?
ReplyDeleteNot trusting anymore.
Halfey Halphstein this is not a random person - it's the guy that runs MeWe (product director)
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres I'm talking about Tim Berners-Lee. He said something about it so I thought it's something to consider.
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein I understand. But he's still a human being. And the owner of MeWe is a libertarian - he's open about it. So if at some point Facebook or someone makes him a big offer, what's to stop him from taking it?
ReplyDeleteSeriously, what's to stop him?
Peter Maranci Exactly. But let's expand the thought to help people see the issue more clearly.
ReplyDeleteIn a centralized solution, it wouldn't matter who was in charge - the fact there is one single authority is the issue for the people posting social media.
All data could be lost on a whim due to shutdown or potentially unjust user bans,
sold to another company who will not necessarily respect the data rights of the people (perfectly legal since the terms of service no longer apply),
modify the people's content claiming shared or total intellectual property that was in fact created by the people,
and a host of other possibilities that are mitigated by a federated model.
Now, if a user WANTS a centralized private social network where they trust the owners or are willing to risk it, that is perfectly fine.
If I wanted a centralized solution, I would have to trust the people that run it. I do not trust anyone with an alt-right view of the world. So that is a deal breaker in itself. Would I have a property presence? If there were users they I wanted to reach. But I would have zero social presence.
For my family, we have made a decision to spend our time in a federated solution.
I want to know there is no single authority that can shut down whatever social network I migrate to.
I want to be able to host my own node, pod, instance, or channel.
I want my data to 100% be my intellectual property that I have saved in a form I can use anywhere I want.
I want the power to control who has access to my data and my time.
I want to be able to modify my UI and content layout.
I want to see drastic improvements in accessibility features.
I want to know the project is 100% open source core (it is ok to have monetized modules) so the code can be sustained and inspected for security purposes.
I want end to end encryption and that includes encryption inside the database(s) in the event someone wants access (legal or illegal) to that data without my permission - at least we attempt to make it as difficult as possible.
There are more criteria but the above are the major issues. It matters who runs it, it matters how it is run, and it matters what deterrents the technology provides to prevent corruption - because we are all faulty humans who are easily corrupted by greed or by circumstance.
Shelenn Ayres Does that mean you're not open to any centralized, closed-source social media?
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein Not for my personal social presence online. Google had that and showed themselves untrustworthy - no more.
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres So I assume it doesn't matter if G+ is closing or not because it seems to me G+ doesn't fit your criteria.
ReplyDeleteThat said, based on what you wrote up there the safest route is to host your own pod or write the system from scratch while implementing federation to connect to other pods. For me even with decentralized system I still have my own concern about it. If the pod is hosted by someone else I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) there's still a risk of getting kicked out from the network if the pod owner doesn't like me, or the owner could one day decide to shut it down just because they don't feel like maintaining the pod anymore without giving enough time for the users to rescue their data. The latter has happened to me when I was on one Friendica instance.
Halfey Halphstein My criteria developed because of the way G+ and prior centralized social systems work.
ReplyDeleteThey have all reached a point where they make a command decision what to do with our data and our history and our timelines and our home pages and our accounts and so on without regard to the mutual terms of service and data rights management.
They do it because they can afford the lawyers and the average user cannot fight them.
They do it out of a corrupt view of the world and their greed. G+ and most of Google would never have made Google billions without its people - the product IS the people not the technology. It is our behavior and usage they sell along with our content we share.
I am actually pro-business but I am anti-corruption. I respect the rights of creators. Corrupt business practices involve hiding behind a terms of service written to allow them to take what they want when they want.
Social media is not the same as renting virtual space, renting a game, renting a movie, etc. Those are tangible things that can be marketed and sold because those services are being provided or are created by the com[any selling access.
Social media content belongs to the users not the service provider. The software used in most cases is based on open source and does not belong to the companies using it.
The only legitimate business case as a provider is to offer service access via subscription OR offer service access free, then offer premium aspects like offer micropurchases for enhanced service access, offer writing or creation services, or offer marketing and exposure services.
Under no circumstances should a user's intellectual property be commandeered by any service provider unless explicitly agreed to in the terms of service.
For centralized services, lucrative purchase offers to centralized service owners are often taken by those with rapid user base growth - in many cases by selling intellectual property they do not own. Buyout offers are often taken by those with failed deployments but a user base that can be catered to in other ways. In both cases, it is the users who often lose their intellectual property.
It all comes down to taking a risk to trust the service provider with access to your intellectual property. Saying they will never sell your data is moot when they sell the company nullifying the terms you agreed to.
In a federated solution, these risks are mitigated and in some cases eliminated by design. It removes incentives to be corrupt.
Shelenn Ayres Yes I do agree in decentralized network there is little or nothing to gain from screwing up with users but I think there are still other ways for it to get fucked up.
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein and yes, this is why I use the word mitigated. The only way to eliminate that risk is to self host.
ReplyDeleteHalfey Halphstein Nothing is perfect. But just because an alternative has flaws, doesn't mean that the problems of the original are bearable.
ReplyDeleteA centralized system not only CAN sell out its users, it WILL sell them out. That has been demonstrated over and over again. Even the most well-intentioned company or owner will either end up corrupted, or be bought out by a corrupt entity.
Even a federated system is not ideal. The owners and operators of individual pods are still effectively despots. Unless someone works out a democratic system for pod control and administration, that is - one with teeth in it.
Shelenn Ayres I OTOH have little to lose so I'll keep looking around. Doesn't matter much for me if it's centralized/proprietary or decentralized/open-source. I will still keep my presence in MeWe anyway in the same way I do with facebog and twitter.
ReplyDeletePeter Maranci I like the thought of some form of system control that is distributed - it could even be a work hour based block chain system with a user bill of rights and periodic human council review. But that requires a form of democracy already in great danger world wide. So I have to think that is not realistic in the short term - humans still need to evolve.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the ability to host yourself in s federated system always remains so even if you were say banned from an instance, you could host your own and be back in the federated social web without anyone having the authority to keep you out. In a centralized system - that is not even possible.
That said, the social web has and will continue to have its share of bad players attempting to corrupt human nature. But, when society shuns these behaviors as not acceptable, eventually it goes back into the shadows as the community polices itself.
Shelenn Ayres you might want you watch the video on this page:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.scuttlebutt.nz
scuttlebutt.nz - Introduction · GitBook
Eric Bright ty, I did read about that already.
ReplyDeleteJ Stone 💙G+ also has the coo-coo alt right-wing crowd and trolls galore and bots. What did we do? Well, we.... strengthened our crowd and our blockety-block🚫 finger and made a decent place for ourselves.
ReplyDeleteKM Opal96 The problem arises when the owners and/or admins are alt-right.
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres I guess what is confusing me here is the MeWe motto.
ReplyDeleteI'm not even going to look at idka. At this point I'm trying to figure out where I can meet my familiars in a comfortable, casual, safer way without exhausting myself culling out the deplorables, ya know?
KM Opal96 I get that. How each of us interprets a motto is not what really matters though. However it is interpreted by admins is what impacts users. The federated social web is where you can meet your familiars in the manner you desire. You have full control over privacy and data. I've found far fewer alt-right there than at G+ where many are free to do what they want with Google's blessing.
ReplyDeleteUsing Friendica, I have an option to peruse local community public posts or global community public posts. What's the difference? Local shows posts by users of my local node. Global shows posts from all federated social web users (mastadon, GNUsocial, diaspora, hubzilla, and other Friendica nodes) from what I have seen so far.
You decide what you show to whom. If it is public, it can be shared on the web to others without issue. Here is a look at the global community (you will notice a lot off major media accounts are already there like NPR, Mashable, etc). If you are logged into one of the network types, you also see ways to comment share like dislike and so on:
social.isurf.ca - iSurf Social (community)
Idka replied to my inquiries for help, but their reply did not solve my problem. I cannot open my profile to upload a photo or edit a summary. I imagine it could be fixed but I don't plan to bother.
ReplyDeleteShelenn Ayres Now that's quite interesting!
ReplyDeleteI bookmarked and will go back to it. Something else to consider. Thanks so much!