I like ArchiveBox, but in my experience, it kept on running into issues saving pages, and stopped functioning after it worked the first few times. I really wish there was a more streamlined application that did a similar thing somewhere out there.
I’ve been looking at Linkwarden’s page archiving solution, but it crashes whenever I try importing any large number of links, so that’s a bust too.
Just like how the moment their videotape rental history was exposed, that was when privacy became an absolute must in the case of video rental services.
I mean, there are definitely people in the government working on it, but those often require much more substantial reforms and systemic changes before the changes could functionally work. (i.e. banning data brokers would kill off most free services, or banning targeted ads would kill most ad-funded news networks)
If you haven’t already, I recommend using the EFF’s Action Center to let your representatives know about specific changes you would and would not want made to our laws to protect privacy, free speech, and digital innovation, according to what they’ve found to be the most pressing issues at the moment.
I’m not a big expert on database technology, but I am aware of there being at least a few database systems (“In-Memory”) that use the RAM of the computer for transient storage, and since RAM doesn’t use files as a concept in the same way, the data stored there isn’t exactly inside a “file,” so to speak.
That said, they are absolutely dwarfed by the majority of databases, which use some kind of file as a means to store the database, or the contents within it.
Obviously, that’s not to say using files is bad in any way, but the possibilities for how database software could have developed, had we not used files as a core computing concept during their inception, are now closed off. We simply don’t know what databases could have looked like, because of “lock-in.”
That’s what some databases are. Most databases you’ll see today still inevitably store the whole contents of the DB within a file with its own format, metadata, file extension, etc, or store the contents of the database within a file tree.
The notion of “lock in” being used here doesn’t necessarily mean that alternatives don’t or can’t exist, but that comparatively, investment into development, and usage, of those systems, is drastically lower.
Think of how many modern computing systems involve filesystems as a core component of their operation, from databases, to video games, to the structure of URLs, which are essentially usually just ways to access a file tree. Now think of how many systems are in use that don’t utilize files as a concept.
The very notion of files as an idea is so locked-in, that we can rarely fathom, let alone construct a system that doesn’t utilize them as a part of its function.
Regardless, the files example specifically wasn’t exactly meant to be a direct commentary on the state of microblogging platforms, or of all technology, but more an example for analogy purposes than anything else.
What social media platforms don’t have some kind of character limit?
What platforms don’t use a feed?
What platforms don’t use a like button?
What platforms don’t have some kind of hashtags?
All of these things are locked-in, not necessarily technologically, but socially.
Would more people from Reddit have switched to Lemmy if it didn’t have upvotes and downvotes? Are there any benefits or tradeoffs to including or not including the Save button on Lemmy, and other social media sites? We don’t really know, because it’s substantially less explored as a concept.
The very notion of federated communities on Lemmy being instance-specific, instead of, say, instances all collectively downloading and redistributing any posts to a specific keyword acting as a sort of global community not specific to any one instance, is another instance of lock-in, adapted from the fediverse’s general design around instance-specific hosting and connection.
In the world of social media, alternative platforms, such as Minus exist, that explore unique design decisions not available on other platforms, like limited total post counts, vague timestamps, and a lack of likes, but compared to all the other sites in the social media landscape, it’s a drop in the bucket.
The broader point I was trying to make was just that the very way microblogging developed as a core part of social media’s design means that any shift away from it likely won’t actually gain traction with a mainstream audience, because of the social side of the lock-in.
short form content with just a few sentences per post sucks.
I 100% agree with this sentiment.
Jaron Lanier has a great book called You Are Not A Gadget, where he talks about the way we design and interact with systems, and he has some thoughts I think reflect this sentiment very well:
“When [people] design an internet service that is edited by a vast anonymous crowd, they are suggesting that a random crowd of humans is an organism with a legitimate point of view.” (This is in reference to Wikis like Wikipedia)
“Different media designs stimulate different potentials in human nature.”
He talks about how when a system becomes popular enough, it can “lock in” a design, when others build upon it as standard. Such as how the very concept of a “file” is one we created, and nearly every system now uses it. Non-file based computing is a highly unexplored design space.
And the key part, which I think is relevant to Mastodon, the fediverse, and social media more broadly, is this quote:
“A design that share’s Twitter’s feature of providing ambient continuous contact between people could perhaps drop Twitter’s adoration of fragments.”
Fragments, of course, meaning the limited, microblogging style of communication the platform allows for. I’ve seen some Mastodon instances that help with this, by not imposing character limits anywhere near where most instances would, opting for tens of thousands of characters long. But of course, there is still a limit. Another design feature by Twitter that is now locked in.
But of course, people are used to that style of social media. It’s what feels normal, inevitable even. Changing it would mean having to reconceptualize social media as a concept, and might be something people aren’t interested in, since they’re too used to the original design. We can’t exactly tell.
As Lanier puts it,
“We don’t really know, because it is an unexplored design space.”
Just because an LLM sounds smart and human-like doesn’t mean it will magically solve climate change after being directly implicated in resource consumption we know from actual scientists, today, will make the problem worse.
They don’t believe it.
They just think their investors will.
It’s mildly effective in the sense that it will decimate click-through rates, but if enough people did it, they would start filtering by IP, and you’d need to change how many ads it clicks on so it looks more human.
It also still gives advertisers your data, since it still has to load the ads on your system to click them, so it’s not as privacy-preserving as a full-on adblocker that outright blocks every advertisement and tracker related network request in the first place.
Better than completely allowing capital to do whatever it wants without even attempting to push back.
As Cory Doctorow put it, “An app is just a web-page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to add an ad-blocker to it.”
The highest usage of ad blockers happens within the age range of 18-24, which categorically includes Gen Z.
The second highest age range is 25-34, and the third highest is 12-17, which is also included in Gen Z.
That said, I would argue that, while knowing how to use a smartphone doesn’t make you tech savvy, knowing how to use an ad blocker doesn’t either. It’s as easy as installing an extension.
I suppose they could, but even cold storage has a cost, and with the scale Discord’s operating at, they definitely have many terabytes of data that comes into the CDN every day, and that cost adds up if you’re storing it permanently.
I also think the vast majority of users would prefer being able to upload much higher resolution images and videos, to being able to see the image they sent with their messages a year ago. I don’t often go back through my messages, but I often find myself compressing or lowering the quality of the things I’m uploading on a regular basis.
They could also do the other common sense thing, which is to, on the client side of things, compress images and videos before sending them.
The thing is, I did have encryption keys set up. The problem was that Element would repeatedly forget the very encryption keys passed by the other user, and would then have to request the keys again. Any historical message history would be permanently encrypted forever, and wouldn’t decrypt with the new view key.
After this happened about 4 times, I stopped using it, because it was impossible to maintain conversations for longer than 1-2 weeks before they’d inevitably be lost, and I’d then have to spend about an hour waiting for Element to receive the new encryption keys from the people I was contacting, even when they were already actively online.
I have no clue what was causing it, but it happened on multiple accounts, on multiple devices, all the time, and there was no conceivable fix. I’m not sure if this is fixed now, but I haven’t had a good reason to go back, especially with other encrypted messaging options out there.
Look, I’m as upset as you are about the enshittification of everything, but this is a bit too far.
There was always legitimate issues with Discord’s storage management, and they at least seem to be taking it seriously now.
I’m not a massive fan of Discord, but this is a bit of an overreaction.
For real.
I emailed them once asking about how they were complying with GDPR regulations if they didn’t allow users a way to delete all their message details, and didn’t even have a procedure for GDPR requests, only their standard, much worse privacy-wise account deletion process. They claimed it was because they had a legitimate interest to keep any messages not individually deleted, so the chats would still look coherent after an account was deleted.
They only delete your message if you delete it individually, so naturally, I was concerned, since you can’t delete messages in a server you were banned from, or left, and Discord provides no way for you to identify old messages in servers you’re not currently in.
They eventually, supposedly, sent my concerns to their data privacy team.
They were then sued for 800,000 euros about a month or two later.
They still don’t allow you to mass delete your message data. They really want to hold onto it for as long as they can.
Matrix is nice, but it’s still very bad UX wise.
I’ve used it on and off for years now, and about 2-4 times a month it loses my chat view encryption keys, and loses me my entire chat history. It also regularly has sync issues between devices signed into the same account, and is relatively slow sometimes to send messages.
Of course, that’s just my anecdotal experience, but I’ve tried many messaging platforms over the years, and while Matrix (and multiple of its clients, primarily Element) is the most feature-complete compared to Discord, it’s nowhere near properly usable long-term for a mass-market audience.
Same here, honestly. I would have thought they’d say something like “hey, we’re going to delete anything 1 year or older starting next month, and reduce that amount slowly down to 6 months with time” just to give people a general warning in case there was anything they were storing through Discord that they wanted to keep.
There’s also just a ton of optimizations they could have done. Are people repeatedly uploading the same file, with the same name and contents? merge them into one CDN link. They’d probably save hundreds of terabytes of data just from reposted memes alone through a hash matching algorithm.
The Open Source Initiative has a giant list of licenses that anyone can use to make their works fully open-source.
Some are just for code, but I’m sure they could be adapted to things like medicine, if needed.
IPFS seems similar to what you’re looking for.
(See: A copy of Wikipedia on IPFS being censorship-resistant, and globally distributed)