Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Saturday, 27-Apr-2024 19:23:05 JST jonny (good kind)

   A #p2p future for the web is the radical idea that its bad to put all data in a single place owned by 3 companies and rented by a few hundred. The internet wasnt a mistake, the cloud was a mistake. Platforms were a mistake. A mistake where its not only possible but routine for "everyone's health data" to get stolen. https://infosec.exchange/@patrickcmiller/112341111375581551

   I need to share my health data with like 3 people that arent me. Why on earth is that data in the same pile as literally everyone else's.

   • Embed this notice
     jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Saturday, 27-Apr-2024 19:22:58 JST jonny (good kind)

     in reply to

     • Gavin Chait;

     @GavinChait the learning curve for p2p systems is not intrinsically any steeper than cloud systems, in fact there is a potential for it to be much simpler since much less needs to be concentrated in a single system. With generalized p2p the distinction between generalist and specialist data is actually much much easier - there doesn't need to be a specialist database or platform for each type of data.

     neither wikipedia nor openstreetmap are p2p systems, and that is one of the reasons why they as platforms need to maintain paid staff to maintain data integrity.

     there aren't any such systems, and there are good reasons for that having to do with the history of the platformatization of the web. the things that come closest are private bittorrent trackers which maintain excellent quality archives with next to zero budget in highly adversarial conditions.

     here: https://jon-e.net/infrastructure/

   • Embed this notice
     Gavin Chait; (gavinchait@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 27-Apr-2024 19:23:00 JST Gavin Chait;

     in reply to

     @jonny I get the principle, & it may work for relatively mainstream data (sort of like OpenStreetMap labelling) but a _lot_ more challenging for specialist / niche data where the learning curve is steep & the result interesting only to a handful of specialists.

     I'm not sure what good potentials would be, other than the obvious Wikipedia & OpenStreetMap, & they still need paid staff to build software & maintain data integrity, even if you took away hosting costs.

     What is your ideal example?

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Saturday, 27-Apr-2024 19:23:01 JST jonny (good kind)

     in reply to

     • Gavin Chait;

     @GavinChait
     What if hosting costs were a one-time investment in on-site server infrastructure that is a seed node that other seed nodes can replicate and rehost so there is no single system to keep the lights on in the first place, and curation labor was not the responsibility of a single central research group but a participatory process by everyone who uses the data? What if there was no platform at all?

   • Embed this notice
     Gavin Chait; (gavinchait@wandering.shop)'s status on Saturday, 27-Apr-2024 19:23:03 JST Gavin Chait;

     in reply to

     @jonny my 2 cents based on my experience with my https://openlocal.uk data research project... Only a small number of research specialisms permit grant funding for longitudinal data research. The costs aren't just hosting, but mostly curation. So the work isn't done or is precarious, or is forced to be semicommercial to keep the lights on.

   • Embed this notice
     jonny (good kind) (jonny@neuromatch.social)'s status on Saturday, 27-Apr-2024 19:23:04 JST jonny (good kind)

     in reply to

     Ive said it a million times before: in research, if open data mandates mean that all data needs to exist on some cloud server, we are in for a catastrophe of the highest order where cloud providers will be in a position to siphon off however much public funding they want - the "free open data" programs are bait. The corollary is the continual rise and sudden collapse of archives who miss one grant cycle or cant keep up with the infinitely expanding cloud bills.

     Its not just a disaster for private data, but public data and the whole of the web. If researchers want their disciplines to continue to exist, to contribute to a healthy information ecosystem, and to realize the promise of the web for science, they should be investing in and demanding p2p infrastructure.