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Comment by cyphar | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem with creating a free software social service is that you can't just apply the old method that GNU has used historically: Just mirror the interface and you're done.

That method works fine for many different tools. But with social apps you need to be able to federate, which means you need to have a proprietary vendor who wants to help, which isn't going to happen.

I'm hoping Matrix will provide the bridging required to be able to send notifications from Diaspora to Twitter (for example). I will always be a hack though. :/

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I think there's also a whole lot of other issues. The technical part is one thing, but people's feelings are a lot harder to deal with.

We, hackers, think that everything is so sexy with P2P, federation and decentralization in general, but I don't think 'normal' people share that sentiment.

People love brands, they're surrounded by them, and they feel loyalty towards them. If there's no company behind something, it just won't feel right. You won't feel that push towards a thing. The reason why people use Snapchat isn't just because it's a good tool, it's also because it's cool.

I just don't see how something like GNU Social will ever become cool, if there isn't some timely and powerful brand to push it.

Good points...tech is no longer enough...we have to have a brand as well as an attraction point; that is, some "place" where people think "the party" is happening (alternatively not a party but for example, where stuff or news happens). I think I've come to the point where - right now - we don;t need everyone to adopt decentralized platforms like gnu social...But, i do feel if there is at least a non-trivial percentage of users who can choose to not be limited to interaction by way of silos, then i think that's a pretty good start. And who knows, maybe in the future, when there is enough to attract the casual users (as well as the tech is easier to setup and use), more folks will slip over to something decentralized, though still be able to interact with the/their communities.

Yes, I totally agree with this. We need to improve the tech, to the point of it being accessible and as good as the mainstream offerings.

The thing is also that we don't have any clear incentives to use P2P-services right now, because the silos aren't posing any clear threats to us as individuals. If we see something like a major data breach, or something like a "Snowden for social networks" that change the way we relate to these behemoths, we might just see users getting ready to give them up.

GNU Social is the seventh level of usability hell.

Proprietary services don't even federate with each other so why hold free software products to a higher standard? The problem isn't that they can't (often the free tools can federate with each other, which is more than the proprietary tools can do.) It's that, as you mentioned, they copy something existing and notable, so practically by definition they are already too late to be the popular thing everybody uses.

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