[aphextron]

>Even if these things were dead simple, I cannot see any of my non-technical friends using products like these. It is simply prohibitively complicated compared to dropbox - that "just works". I even recall a comment on here when Dropbox launched saying something like "why not configure an FTP server to do this". This is that FTP server.

This is the problem with every attempt at decentralized, federated social media as well IMO. To be sure, the privacy concerns of a centralized service will never really go away. But the benefits of centralization on the web are massive from a UX standpoint. This seems like a solvable problem. It seems to me like it shouldn't be too hard for a company to be verifiably private in their handling of your data.

[ethanwillis]

The only way you will get verifiability of handling of private data is for homomorphic encryption to finally have an efficient open implementation.