[gwenzek]

Totally agree with you. I think a successful decentralized network should come with pre-configured Raspberry Pi that would act as a web server hosting the user pictures, contacts… And maybe a bit of friends data for backup.

[ashark]

1) What happens when it breaks? If you plug in a new one, will it auto-restore? Where from? 2) Updates. How do they happen, who does them? What about when they go wrong? What about 5 years in when there are three models of the device (or way, way more if it's not proprietary) and an update goes out that bricks one?

Difficulty: the answers to the above must leave you with a product easy to use and reliable enough to compete with doing approximately zero work to use and maintain a Facebook account. Plus it needs to offer at least as many features.

I've for some time wanted a kind of private swarm-storage product (probably using IPFS, I guess, for lack of alternatives) that lets you plug in a new node at a friend/relative's house with a few TB of storage, put in the credentials (keys, bootstrap node[s]) for the swarm, and has it intelligently back up some amount of content from the network such that everything has at least X copies (3, say) while making all the rest available (that's where IPFS helps) on request, with some interface for adding content to the swarm from any node. The above problems have kept me from attempting even this task. A social network would be even harder.

[ineptech]

s/Raspberry Pi/EC2 instance/

A world where it's common for people to run their own server opens up exciting possibilities (just as a world where everyone carries a computer in their pocket has), but I don't think actual physical servers is going to get us there.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Though I guess the important point is that the technology shouldn't care--if you want, you can put your own hardware in your basement, or host it with some local cooperative, or with amazon, whatever you prefer.