[john___matrix]

This is the same guy who ran that complete shambles of a vapourware project a few years back to build a smartphone right?

This sounds exactly the same in that it's some vanity project under the guise of being indie or privacy focused but all he's really looking for is some more cash.

I'd probably continue to steer well clear.

[pixxel]

Yes steer well clear of this guy. I can’t remember the details as it was long ago but I distinctly remember him being lambasted by the design/dev community.

EDIT: Not to leave HN readers hanging and to back up my comment...

He raised $100,000 on Kickstarter back in 2014 to build a "privacy" focused phone. One month later he took the phone off the table due to "lack of resources". Needless to say the phone never materialised.

https://gigaom.com/2015/01/13/ind-ie-scales-back-focuses-on-...

[rvz]

Even Heartbeat was a stunning failure. I had high hopes for this guy but he had a contradictory exception towards accepting Apple and their stance on 'privacy' at the time.

Both him and his wife are all in on this utopian small-web privacy idea and they detest attending conferences with FAANMG sponsorship. However, his wife recently attended a design conference sponsored by Facebook, Twitter and Google. [0]

He'll probably instantly block you if you brought this up or spin the story.

[0] https://www.framer.com/loupe/2019/

[ivanhoe]

C'mon, Aral Balkan is well known expert and activist, he's not just "some guy". He's been in and around web-standards development for decades, involved in W3C standards' groups, and very vocal pushing for better accessibility, privacy, worker and human rights in IT, etc. You can accuse him of being a lot of things (overzealous for one), but I don't think he's ever been "just for some more cash" type of person.

[pmlnr]

> very vocal

That's a good enough summary.

[pedrogpimenta]

So he failed a project, an idea and a huge one at that with every possibility to fail.

There are so many ways to get money, I fail to see this route as a cash-grabbing attempt.

I, for one, like his ideas and attempts at building something with meaning. Even if he fails at every single project, the ideas are here and that's good, I guess.

At least we're talking about it around something, not just words.

[detaro]

Try to find anything about any project he has done inbetween, somehow all those have disappeared off the internet too. Combine that with him at best ignoring, at worst publicly disparaging any other already existing project doing what he claims to do (over tiny perceived "faults", but at least those projects actually have working stuff), and it would be nice if he stuck to ideas and not even pretended to try anything. (His conference talks are surprisingly well-regarded, so if he gets people to think about this things - good)

[EGreg]

I don’t know much about this guy, but I have seen tons of projects embark on this vision.

  Matrix.org
  Mastodon
  Scuttlebutt
  Solid

We began back in 2011 and have our own version, that lets anyone host their own social network as easily as Wordpress powers blogs. That’s the goal, anyway. Here are the economics:

https://qbix.com/token

Feedback is welcome!

[ISaIF73]

Also

  Urbit

[thinkingemote]

My impression of Aral was that he was a startup founder but in the FOSS / Privacy world. He stood out for that reason. I saw him talk at a very small conference in the UK and he seemed to be genuine and believed what he said.

In other words startup founders evangelise to attract attention to grow fast and to try to get lots of VC funding. FOSS / privacy folks are more humble and quieter so it's very rare to find the loud enthusiasm more common to be found in the valley. Often there is no need to sell the idea and to stoke the hype up when it comes to volunteer organised open source projects. FOSS people tend to be in it for different reasons, in it for the long haul, or in it even if no one is interested.

The risk with any startup founder is that to be "lean" they have to be able to drop their products at a moments notice to try another one. The Small Web idea seems to be an minimum viable product idea and like any idea isn't without value but its possible that it might be more risky to invest time into it compared to a traditional open source idea? (or is it, maybe it will get more interest...)