> Asking ever day users to create a site (buy a DNS and all that) and create a FOAF file and host it is kind of ridiculous.
This is literally what the article on Two-Bit History says in its conclusion as to why FOAF failed; I'm not quite sure why you're describing it as "a bit unintelligent" when it's, you know, saying exactly what you are?
> what if we continue using these giants for hosting our data (with all the amazing benefits that that brings) but we urge them to provide us with ways to control the way they show us this data.
That's a great idea in theory, but in practice, how do you propose to do that? Facebook and Twitter don't want to let you change the algorithm that generates your main feed; they don't want to give you ways to control how they show you that data. The API Twitter provides to third-party clients is heavily restricted (and has been very deliberately made worse over the years), and the API that Facebook offers for those purposes is even worse. Neither system wants to let you control your social graph. The kind of access you're describing is access that is difficult to monetize -- unless they charge for that access directly, in which case it's just as dead in the water in practice as "just embed this FOAF XML block on your personal web page" is.
> There's nothing inherently wrong with the social media giants if they prove to us they can show us different views of the graph without getting in the way.
I think from a purely technical standpoint, you're probably right, but we don't live in a world where "purely technical standpoint" wins the day. This is not their business model. This will never be their business model.
Mastodon and other decentralized networks have their problems, but given the choice between "improve Mastodon" and "convince Facebook to open access," only one of them sounds feasible to me.
This is literally what the article on Two-Bit History says in its conclusion as to why FOAF failed; I'm not quite sure why you're describing it as "a bit unintelligent" when it's, you know, saying exactly what you are?
> what if we continue using these giants for hosting our data (with all the amazing benefits that that brings) but we urge them to provide us with ways to control the way they show us this data.
That's a great idea in theory, but in practice, how do you propose to do that? Facebook and Twitter don't want to let you change the algorithm that generates your main feed; they don't want to give you ways to control how they show you that data. The API Twitter provides to third-party clients is heavily restricted (and has been very deliberately made worse over the years), and the API that Facebook offers for those purposes is even worse. Neither system wants to let you control your social graph. The kind of access you're describing is access that is difficult to monetize -- unless they charge for that access directly, in which case it's just as dead in the water in practice as "just embed this FOAF XML block on your personal web page" is.
> There's nothing inherently wrong with the social media giants if they prove to us they can show us different views of the graph without getting in the way.
I think from a purely technical standpoint, you're probably right, but we don't live in a world where "purely technical standpoint" wins the day. This is not their business model. This will never be their business model.
Mastodon and other decentralized networks have their problems, but given the choice between "improve Mastodon" and "convince Facebook to open access," only one of them sounds feasible to me.