OK we’re all sick of the lying behind warm smiles when it comes to tech companies telling us; “your data is important to us” – doesn’t that big fat one make you feel ill. Or this Silly-con Valley beauty: “we care about your data.” Yea – a little too much in my opinion – mining and selling it amongst a myriad of other dystopian and awful practices. So what’s my idea (that I’m sure is not new but just an adaptation of things that have been around for donkey’s years)
When I say clean-up – I don’t just mean make it safer – but in terms of joiners!
I’ve run tin-pot (not through want of trying for something better) social networking sites for years – in fact my first social network was fusion101.com I designed in 1998 as a means for Christians – that few and far between and now almost species to connect and perhaps even propagate (no not to “make the world more open and connected“). Though primarily aimed at Christian singles – I allowed married people to state they were there for “just friendship” in their profile who were only looking meet friends for chatting about Christian stuff – and for a while it worked – rather too well the server would crash every years or so with the joining crush. But then my anyone can join approach became confusing and I began to get complaints as inevitably a few married bad actors decided they would be smart and try to connect with ladies for more than friendship.
Was fusion101.com designed in 1998 the world’s first social network (now singles only)? Hmm probably not – but one of the first
So over night my social network (we didn’t use that term then) became singles only and I endeavoured to create a separate true social network – budiz.com (now on hold – the idea here was for social networkers to take back control from Facebook and other social networking sites who did not (despite all the cries otherwise) have the best interest of their users at heart – and earn money from sales of products that people they invite to join buy on Amazon etc) tried many times since with some great sites) was first then 101christiansocialnetwork.com – still running and doing nicely.
So what’s the big (old) social networking idea? Local Device ‘Nodes’
OK – here it is: all techies out there with access to investment listen up – this is what we want (NEED!). WE WANT OUR DATA STORED ON OUR DEVICES and served out to the community (so it appears exactly like Facebook does now except the data is not stored on their data-centres) – not too much of an ask with 5G and super-sized memory on todays devices. All that’s required is the personal crypto style ‘personal social wallet” running on my machine – so that my social page and data is a node on the network and all our devices are acting as mini servers – a simple mobile app download is all that’s needed easily within possibility now.
And what about censorship?
I suggest the new services DO censor – properly – ie only swearing – explicit imagery or content unsuitable for minors and adults! – something Facebook and the rest claim to do but really do a terrible job at given their massive man-power though they have improved since they started. If there is a place where people have ideas – make it visible to each group and reside only on that groups devices so you have to opt in or out of that viewpoint – groups as they already are but the data and posts on that group limited to that groups personal devices. That way censorship of ideas is not needed – but do not – I mean DO NOT EVER pay people to trawl through and remove what they think is a bad idea – or according to some ‘socialist’ CEO or leftist populated (ie all of Silicon Valley’s) companies ‘guidelines’.
So what is this ‘new’ idea in summary..
It’s an app where your data – anything YOU enter – images – texts on a message board or chat is stored on YOUR device – even though it is inserted amongst other people’s data when viewing – so you can pull the plug any time you want and the data is not left on some backup system somewhere forever. So it runs a bit like the old bit torrents but the the viruses OR sharing of other folks data on your machine – no it must be yours only on your device and nowhere else. In other words – every home has it’s own ‘box’ – a data-centre in it’s front room – in this case a reverting to the old days is actually the progressive option – remember moving forward isn’t always better – especially if you are progressing towards a cliff edge.
The power is taken out of the data-centres and put back into homes
The cloud aspect of this idea will simply be where all the data comes together and is viewed – ie only the ‘HTML’ rendering is centralised – the rest – the millions of mini data-store/bases are on each device. And sure – if the encryption is good perhaps the data can be shared on everyone in the network’s box. I have no doubt this has already been worked on – or even done, or there is a well-known site out there doing it successfully (I haven’t heard of it). Now that’s what I want – and NO not ZOOM where once again the data all gets hived of in some Chinese data-center for browsing by nefarious actors or governments later. This is hardly the new anonymous ‘crypto white paper’ but I think a group of techies with a great brand (no – don’t call it Duck-Duck Go – too long to type for starters) could make a challenge to the evil data miners busy connecting us to all the wrong people 🙂
I love God, Christ, The Bible. art, painting, playing music, improvising music, guitar (first instrument), drumming (not very good at it:), and anything musical or art related. Quick note – my articles are usually spun off in minutes so forgive any errors – hopefully you get the essence of the article and I’ll pick up mistakes later. If you want to write of 101ChristianMagazine and inspire and edify Christians with articles on faith, general news, hobbies or anything that interests you email me at: epgb101@gmail.com:)
