
Dissident.ai - NetOpWibby
https://www.dissident.ai
======
edent
Yet another landing page that doesn't actually tell me what the company does!

I get a "home for my digital belongings" \- so this is a DropBox clone?

"A new way to explore, filter and research content inside Social Media." \-
oh, sorry, it's TweetDeck?

"Discover hidden gems, explore music films, books and art" \- nope, my bad,
it's a curated archive.org?

There's some vague screenshots. But nothing meaningful. I suppose I should be
grateful that there's not a full screen video with a ukulele playing...

More of my ranting at [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/yes-but-what-does-
your-star...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/11/yes-but-what-does-your-startup-
do/)

(I especially like the irony of saying they don't like tracking, but the only
sign-up options are Google or Facebook.)

~~~
ofosos
Yep, no email signup and Google Analytics. Funky.

------
outsidetheparty
It took quite a bit of digging but I think I've finally figured out what the
heck this thing actually _is_.

* Desktop is a web-based file manager that ties into a bunch of proprietary cloud storage systems

* Dashboard is some sort of cross-network social media reader

* Library is a catalog of public-domain content, for some reason

What any of this has to do with the high-minded visioneering slogans and
impenetrable marketing text I have no idea.

Of the three, only Dashboard sounds like it might have any value at all;
unfortunately the very first thing it does on signup is:

(if you sign in via facebook) demand access to "your public profile, photos,
videos, likes and email address".

(if you sign in via google) demand total access to Google Drive and to "View
and manage your YouTube activity, including posting public comments".

(if you try to sign in via email) this appears to be impossible; there's a
"forgotten password" link but no apparent way to actually create a new
account.

This doesn't sit very well with the whole "respectful of your time, attention
and personal data" thing.

~~~
outsidetheparty
I should follow up to say: I do recognize that if the service wants to be able
to display content from your facebook feed or youtube channel, certainly it
needs to ask for access to that content. I don't object to that; I object to
it asking for far more access than it needs, before you're even able to see
the product you're granting access to, after making such a big deal about
"putting the user back in control" of their data.

I went ahead and sucked it up and signed up via facebook. (There's a "free
invitation code" on Dissident's facebook page, if you're curious.) It's... eh.
For facebook content it only has the ability to show "Pages", not people -- I
believe this is a facebook-imposed limitation, but it makes Dashboard fairly
useless for that site at least. You can import RSS feeds and read them inside
this app, which works reasonably well. There are dozen or so other services
that can be imported as sources (mostly the usual suspects: youtube, vimeo,
medium, flickr, etc). In all cases that I tried, the app asks to be granted
maximal permission, whether that's reasonable or not. That's about it. The UI
feels a little old-school -- it's all nested folders and tiny type -- but
isn't terrible.

I dunno. Maybe if I hadn't been so turned off by the awful marketing copy I'd
be feeling more charitable about the app itself -- it looks like a not-
terrible feed reader, I suppose -- but as it stands I don't see anything here
that seems worth paying money for, and I don't see anything that has
_anything_ to do with the manifestos and sloganeering.

~~~
ASalazarMX
> I object to it asking for far more access than it needs, before you're even
> able to see the product you're granting access to.

If after trying it, you don't like it and revoke its access, it's fine. The
most meaningful data was probably siphoned already.

~~~
outsidetheparty
> The most meaningful data was probably siphoned already

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly the part I object to.

------
PirateBay
Looks like they're bundling MAME[[1] that's under GPL, but I can't find the
sources anywhere. Seems to include the games too, which defiantly isn't legal.

[1][https://blog.dissident.ai/weve-just-added-tons-of-
emulated-a...](https://blog.dissident.ai/weve-just-added-tons-of-emulated-
arcade-games-in-library/)

~~~
bpicolo
This games are via archive.org, it's not unlicensed in that regard I should
think?

[https://archive.org/details/internetarcade](https://archive.org/details/internetarcade)

------
bronks
Hello, Thanks for all the feedback. I am one of the founders of Dissident and
happy to answer any questions.

We became frustrated that many storage don't allow us to fully enjoy our
content (I can't listen to my FLAC music on my Google Drive, even if I have
1To of storage there, I can't read my epubs on dropbox,...) so we decided to
create our own desktop and use the most popular web viewers. We added the
ability to do cross search and also move files from one service to another.
For some services that allow it like Put.io we even convert torrents into
files.

The idea is to have the same interface and features, no matter if you are on
Box, Hubic or your Owncloud server. You can pin important folders and we let
you know when they have been updated. We allow cross service search and cloud
to cloud between storage, one of our most popular feature. We also added the
ability to browse Slack, Facebook, Instagram, Smugmug or Pocket as a “file
system”.

We decided to create Dashboard to browse social media (without the noise) and
every Friday we work on Library to offer a free access to public domain
content.

We want to create a nice environment to access our content. We don’t want to
do advertising so we decided to provide the product for a subscription.

Few remarks: We have changed our website copy to be less “marketing” We are
bringing back our email login (we agree with everything that was said here, it
will be available shortly)

Regarding oAuth permission, we have always focus on effortless sign up (you
login and boom you have everything setup) and, of course, we don’t store/sell
any user data. But we understand what was said here.

We are looking to ask for less permission for login even if means ask more
permission later for specific services (youtube, google drive)

We are still a work in progress and would love to have more feedback on the
product. Here is an invite code: DISSIDENT_HNEWS

------
ericjang
"Take back control of your content and unlock your sources of inspiration for
just 5€/ Month."

Sounds like a tagline for a "Silicon Valley" episode.

------
CodinM
I hope this project crashes and burns, honestly. "Regain your life" by giving
literally all your data to us, for 5€/month.

------
kodablah
Confused about this. How are you making money? Why do I need a central server?
Is part of your unique (presumably commercial) offering that we can't run
servers ourselves? It appears quite closed with regards to tech details (e.g.
how you are fetching things for people). I am probably not going to sign up
with this limited information, sorry.

------
andreyk
So... it gives UI access to a bunch services all in one place? Quite
underwhelning given the name.

------
sweden
"Reclaim access to your own content..." by putting it on this closed
centralized proprietary server?

No.

~~~
swasheck
... that requires a sign up with either Google or Facebook. PERFECT!

~~~
bronks
[https://twitter.com/wearedissident/status/982257661935693824](https://twitter.com/wearedissident/status/982257661935693824)

------
crsv
A more product appropriate name might have been AggregatingTheStatusQuo.ai.

I see no pathway to becoming a dissident here.

------
jstandard
This is a very ambitious project.

Aggregators like this can't control their own destiny until they become their
own content platform. While navigating the long road to become a platform,
they're at the mercy of changing API policies and rate limits of the different
content platforms.

Instagram can decide at anytime to shut off access or remove an endpoint which
will greatly reduce the user's experience.

It's also tough to build a unified AI to engage with so many different types
of content. Most people will be familiar with the the UIs of the respective
platforms which are already tuned toward content consumption. I do grant those
UIs may not have the user's best interests in mind as they focus on hitting
engagement and retention KPIs.

It is an interesting one though, almost an "adblock for over-optimized UIs".

They may be able to find something that works for a niche group of creatives
if they can manage the challenges above.

~~~
mcfrankline
> This is a very ambitious project.

I’m quite certain the word you’re looking for “Ambiguous”. The entire landing
page was confusion personified, with loads of promises and assembly-language-
like marketing that only a few exceptional people with limitless amount of
time will dedicate themselves to be trapped by

------
herogreen
There are probably good ideas but I really do not like the the name. To me
this is neither dissident nor AI related.

------
startupdiscuss
I have a feeling that if this product is going to become successful, it will
find some as-yet-unthought-of use case which will take off with some subset.

If that is right (and who knows), then you would be better off giving it a
generic name "Allinonespot.ai" or "Aggregate.ai".

Calling it dissident is okay, except that now I think the use case is somehow
making some kind of statement against something. And that is confusing. Why am
I dissenting? Am I dissenting against HBO? I like HBO. I have nothing against
Game of Thrones or Silicon Valley. What am I taking control of?

------
f2n
"Tech is the center of our modern lives. But it's broken."

on a page that doesn't properly render without running Javascript from 2
third-party services. There are also multiple third party javascript includes
explicitly for surveillance/metrics. I agree that the system is broken but I
don't trust these clowns to help

------
rawrmaan
This is beautiful and I love the nostalgic UI design, but I really don't see
any reason to use it.

------
shanana
"it's time to take back control" they say. by asking users to give
dissident.ai access to Facebook for "your public profile, photos, videos,
likes and email address" and to Google for "View and manage your YouTube
activity, including posting public comments" it seems the only ones taking
back control are dissident.ai. another company helping Facebook and Google to
rule the world and control us.

------
rajeshpant
What pissed me off is when you try to login using your google account, it asks
permissions to access and manage files in your Google Drive.

------
NetOpWibby
I forgot to add that I received am email with this info from the creators of
Jolicloud. Seemed like more of the same thing but I wanted to see HN’s take on
it (the lack of email signup was a red flag for me).

