[p2p-research] faroo p2p search + facebook quitters

Sun Jun 13 16:36:53 CEST 2010

Thanks Michel, a few comments:

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 4:03 AM, Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi sepp, I wonder if you could look into this:
>
> (I would also appreciate your comments on danah boyd's critique of facebook quitters ... see http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2010/05/23/quitting-facebook-is-pointless-challenging-them-to-do-better-is-not.html )
>
> Michel
>
>
> Bernard Lunn
> May 27th, 2010 at 9:18 am
>
> Disclosure: I represent FAROO and we are using p2p to solve both privacy & search scalability
>
> This is the big conflict: we need community powered personalization to filter information but we also need privacy. It is possible that p2p, where no data is stored/controlled centrally and is encrypted on the wire, is the only way to do this.
>
> FAROO has been working on this for many years and have now proved that it is possible: our p2p search network has 1.7 million peers with search latency below 1 second.
>
> You mentioned two questions around p2p. These are things we have been thinking about for a long time.
>
> “I am all in favor of people building what they believe to be alternatives to Facebook. I even invested in Diaspora because I’m curious what will come of that system. But I don’t believe that Diaspora is a Facebook killer. I do believe that there is a potential for Diaspora to do something interesting that will play a different role in the ecosystem and I look forward to seeing what they develop. I’m also curious about the future of peer-to-peer systems in light of the move towards the cloud, but I’m not convinced that decentralization is a panacea to all of our contemporary woes. Realistically, I don’t think that most users around the globe will find a peer-to-peer solution worth the hassle. The cost/benefit analysis isn’t in their favor. ”
>
> The download hurdle is a common reservation. It has not proved a hurdle when the payoff is big enough – think Skype and Spotify. And more recently the iPhone and Android app stores have totally changed the mindset around downloading software. The key issue I think is what you mention – “hassle”. It is a hassle free experience on iPhone but people have found the experience less than hassle-free on the PC. That is why Diaspora may find the technical challenges harder than they think. Making p2p totally scalable, reliable and hassle free is not simple.
>

This all boils down to the way the application is made. In the case of
skype, the control of sharing is automatic. I assume it is the same in
spotify. If control of sharing is automatic, I believe many people
will find cost/benefit in their favor (as they have with skype).
Indeed it is not simple to do this. But, in the end, if p2p is to
become part of our computing infrastructure, it will be a necessary
investment.

We have a chance now to think about how to make this very open and
accessible. It is my opinion that as the power and quantity of mobile
devices increase, the development platforms will begin to make this
more and more possible. I've looked at android and iphone SDK, and so
far they really have nothing like this (I personally would not bother
developing anything for iphone. I now see it in the same light as
microsoft. Far too closed and proprietary).

On a technical level, I think we have one piece of the underlying
puzzle with http://flows.panarchy.com in terms of a way for devices
and programs to discover how to talk with one another.

What is missing is a system to manage what is shared per device, and
what shared resources that in turn gives each device access to. This
then becomes a framework for how applications operate. They are
developed from the beginning for interoperability, and distributed
operation.

> “I’m also patently afraid that a system like Diaspora will be quickly leveraged for child pornography and other more problematic uses that tend to emerge when there isn’t a centralized control system.”
>
> In Diaspora each user places their profile on their own server, so they will held responsible anyway. If people would like to store illegal things on a server they can do it all the time, they don’t need Diaspora for this. FAROO only indexes information that is already publicly available. If something is bad, you can remove the original page, than it will disappear from the p2p system, automatically.
>

I have heard this worry, and what many people do not realize is that
this could be happening now with systems such as skype, etc. In shared
systems, individuals simply cannot be responsible for how the many are
using those resources that they share. It is also possible to restrict
your sharing to trust networks. This will decrease the resources
available, but come closer to ensuring that you know who participants
are. (This is only a worry when you are pooling resources for data
storage and passing.)

> Recently Google offered https encrypted search for more privacy:
>
> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/search-more-securely-with-encrypted.html
>
> While Google’s https search eliminates wiretapping by intermediate parties, but they still collect log files.
>
> HTTPS does not protect against a leak of those log files by technical problems, human error, later changes of terms of services, criminal data theft, legal challenges, or silent cooperation with interested authorities.
>
> Google still collects personal data, but offers privacy by policy (which can be changed or challenged). The same is true of Facebook clearly!
>
> FAROO in turn does not collect personal data at all, and offers privacy by architectural design (attention data for ranking are anonymized /search queries stay encrypted all the time, because the index is encrypted itself / there is no central data repository which could be wiretapped).
>
>

http://www.faroo.com/english/download/download.html  FAROO is
interesting. It only runs on windows right now. Are they developing
this openly? That could be a way to get contribution towards Mac and
Linux versions...

Here is development history: http://www.faroo.com/english/download/history.html

Anyone know more about the development of FAROO?

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