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So, yeah,
this they are taking on what our
monopolies and our social networks.
I really want to put this in your
view, right?
Yup. And so not
all social networks, but they will get to
that. Yeah.
So the stage is yours, Mike thinktanks.
Hi, there. After some, after
some minor technical difficulties,
I am very happy to be talking to you.
I this is a privilege for me.
My name is Mike.
But most of most people in the
technical communities and hacker
communities called me to shake for some
reason or other.
Let's not get into the reason I
work at the free and open source software
foundation in Poland.
It's a NGO that
that promotes free software and
open source in different contexts and
educational context, in business context
and in any any context.
And I am particularly interested in
anything that has to do with freedom
of speech, with human rights
in the digital era and
in a digital world.
So techno monopolies?
First of all or even before.
Before we get started, I am going to use
some examples that are probably familiar
to most of you, and I will
have to do them fast
so they will be a little bit simplified.
I apologize for that.
But you have been warned.
OK, so techno is the is is the
simple part of the of the of this word.
It's the part that didn't work for a few
minutes right now.
But what are our monopolies?
I think that, you know, monopolies are
quite wrong.
We all know what a monopoly is, right?
That's that's basically the more or less
that the definition you have either the
only supplier of a product or service
on a given market or there are some high
barriers of entry to the market
or there is no good substitutes for
a given product in the service.
Let's go through that.
That's obvious, right?
For example, you know, when there's
only one supplier of a product or
service, that's a monopoly full stop.
Well, in the 90s in Poland, we had only
one supplier, only one
telephone company. It was called
telecommunication postcard, and it was
obviously a monopoly.
That's no longer the case thanks to
anti-monopoly laws, and I know that this
was also the case in many other
countries and in many other markets.
So but what? What are these what our high
barriers of entry, for example, at
high barrier of entry can be
a patent system when
when somebody offers a product or a
service based on some
technology, some somebody else has
to license the technology
from this company or this this person
to be able to also
provide this service or this
this product.
So this is a high barrier of entry,
right? Because because the price
of the base of the patent license
can be can be
very high, for example, right?
What are what
does it mean that there is no good
subsidy of? Let's just think about
Microsoft Office binary per
binary formats five years ago.
Right? There was no good substitute
for Microsoft Office as far as reading
and writing those particular formats
where I was concerned.
Right? Unfortunately, unfortunately,
that was that was the
case. This was the only product that
actually had this functionality.
However, we might look
at this particular product.
So what users got was a
vendor lock in in the box.
They bought software and they were
vendor locked because nobody else could
actually interface
with these with these files.
What is a healthy market for
to on the other side, right?
What's the healthy market?
For example, mobile networks are
mobile and mobile network
operators.
Well, that's a more or less a
a healthy market, right?
Because you can choose.
There are well-established centers.
There's that you can keep contact
with other people, regardless of which
network they use or even in which country
they are right that the prices might
change a little bit, but this is not
prohibiting you from her, from contacting
these are these people within this
particular service so you can freely and
independently select both
the provider and the device without
worrying whether or not you will keep
contact with the people that are using
this particular provider are using this
particular kind of device.
This is exactly, for example, this is
exactly why Dollar Mobile could
enter the market, right?
Because there were standards they could
just drop their
devices on the on the market.
And, you know, the service providers
didn't really care, but couldn't stop it
in any way.
OK. Another example also
obvious.
Well, that's email, right?
Also well-established standards so
anybody can write a
email server or anybody can run
an email server. Right now, everybody
knows how.
Well, everybody can check how to
do that and write their own
or set up their own server.
And again, it's possible to keep contact
regardless whether I'm using my own
email server or my hackerspaces email
server and somebody else here uses, for
example, Gmail or whatever mail
server, right? This is irrelevant.
I can select both the user agent
and the service provider,
and I can I can be
more or less sure that I would be able to
keep contact with anybody using this
particular kind of service, regardless of
the provider and the user agent they
are.
Yes, they are using now
a little bit of history where
web designers hold,
you know, grab something.
Yeah. Do we have any
web designers here? What web
developers here ends up?
Yeah. Do you remember this beautiful
logo?
You know, embrace, extend explorer and
websites created for a particular
browser, you know, 2006 try to make
a try to make a website that works
in different browsers.
Good luck with that.
So there were barriers to selecting your
browser freely. Right?
There were barriers for users.
The user could not select a browser
freely because most websites were written
for Internet Explorer, right?
There were barriers for websites creators
because they had, you know, standards
they could read and see, Oh, so I should
write this website in this particular
way. Oh, but that doesn't work for this
particular browser, and this is the most
used browser, so I should write for that
about how to write for that.
There are no standards, and there
were barriers of entry for
far browser creators, for browser
developers, right?
Because they had to not only implement
the standards, but also somehow managed
to show the websites written for this
particular browser in a way
that was, let's call it,
usable. Right?
And this happened.
So we got a an
organization that got us back
on track by insisting
to use the standards properly
and and
writing a good product, creating a good
product with users wanted to use
it. And thanks to that, we can
now independently, independently choose
a browser.
So, so some of the web developers
probably remember these old black, dark
times and those are black times
are somewhere in our law
in, for example, like
like. That's right.
But this is this is a very
ironical, you know, picture
most of us do not get the irony yet.
I will get back to the irony in this
picture. Some of you might already
have no idea what that might be
anyway. So health market
is Google search.
Well, is web search a healthy
market? Well, there is a low
barrier of entry.
More or less.
There are several providers already, so
we can choose a provider regardless of
Google's dominance. We have a dominant
player on the market, but we can choose
to use, for example, DuckDuckGo or
anything else.
Right?
So I wouldn't I would say that this is
indeed some an
example of a healthy market.
OK. So if we
have if we have a more healthy market,
we have, for example, mobile network
service providers
we can choose, you know, we can
tier it, we can we can see,
OK, so this is the service, right?
The service is mobile telephony and data
transmission or whatever we call it.
But then we have the provider.
We can select the provider and then we
can select the device completely
independently of
of each other, right?
So I don't know.
T-Mobile Orange doesn't care what kind of
what kind of phone I use.
As long as it's compliant to standard
social networks is, this is how we know.
This is how we see the social
networks market, right?
We have the social networks market and we
can choose from several providers, for
example, Twitter, Facebook and Google.
And we can use a different, let's call
it, user agent right or
the terminal that we used to
to use the service.
For example, Twitter calling for
facebook.com or plus google.com
or whatever. That's the client's mobile
clients that are anointed by those and
by those companies.
But something's wrong with this picture,
and I will get back to that in a minute.
But first of all, let's do
a small Duncan experiment, right?
A small thought experiment.
What would happen?
Like, we all know that
in Europe and in many other places
in the world, we can use the same
power socket, right?
We have a we have an electrical
device.
Also, I would like to welcome all the
people from Great Britain here.
So we have an electrical device and
thanks to the fact that it's basically
standardized, we can just plug it in and
it'll work right without burning, without
crashing, without.
Doing something nasty, hopefully.
But what would happen if a if a large
manufacturer of electrical devices
decided well, it would be
more conducive to my business, it would
be more interesting
for me to provide my own
plugged standard right.
I will make my own plugs.
I will make my own sockets.
Right. And if you want to use my devices,
you will have to have my sockets in your
home, right?
Something's wrong with that.
Wouldn't we agree? I mean, probably
the customers would say, Well, that's
crazy. I will not lie, you know, create
new sockets at my in my home just to
use the devices of this particular,
this particular company.
That's that's crazy.
Media would probably be quite interested
in this, this crazy
idea.
And and probably you
would get probably some
some kind of agency or institution
would get involved and try to make
this particular company adhere to
the standards, right?
They will say, Well, you know, here we
do this our way.
We have the standards that say that there
are like two hundred thirty
volts and you know, you have those two,
those two
points in the plug.
And this this is the way we do that
either play along or
seer. Right.
But the interesting thing is, this is
obvious for us when we were talking about
standard plugs, but this is not obvious
to us when we're talking about electrical
cars.
Oh yeah, like, we're we're
going we're doing a
off topic and off topic right now.
No, we're not. But OK.
So when we're dealing with electrical
cars, every single manufacturer of
electrical cars is, you
know, doing their own sockets,
doing their own electrical
circuits. They're doing their own ways of
of of charging those,
those cars.
This is crazy. And they are actually then
going into deals with cities or countries
or or some local communities are saying,
Listen, we will give you a discount or
we will even somehow support you if
you will support our particular
kind of electrical car
and electrical power socket for cars
on your terrain.
So what we get, even though
we seem to have a market,
right, so this company produces
electrical cost to this company of
electrical cars, this company is trying
to produce electrical cars.
OK, let's play along.
So we seem to think that this is a
market, but what we actually get
are localized monopolies.
Right? You cannot get your electrical car
that is compatible with this particular
companies.
Deal with this particular city and go to
another city and hope to charge that car.
Oh, that's not good.
So getting back on track,
getting back on track, who has a Facebook
account and tie
hentai? Don't lie.
I don't.
OK. And why won't you close it and move
it to move to Jasper on Google Plus?
This is not a hands up question right
then. So because
because we all know, because we all know
the answer, right?
We you know, all my friends are on
Facebook, right?
All my contacts are on Facebook.
And no other providers, no
other provider provides the service
of contacting those people on Facebook.
Oh, wait, this sounds like a monopoly,
doesn't it?
And this is exactly the same thing we had
here.
I cannot charge my car here, right?
I have to charge my car here because this
is the deal I get with this particular
manufacturer. So I would say
that this is more or less
the same thing because Facebook is the
only provider of the service of keeping
in touch with people that use Facebook.
Obviously, you can find other ways of
connecting with those people, just
as you can find other ways of getting
from point A to point B instead of
electrical car.
Right? But if you want to use an
electrical car in this city, in that
city, you're not going to do that.
If you want to use your, for example,
Twitter account to connect to Facebook
users. This is not going to go
to work. So why are we seeing this?
Remember the slide?
The slide was like five minutes ago.
Hope you remember it.
So when
we think about social networks, we think
about this, this kind of this kind of
thing, right? When we have, we can tag
the provider, we can select the user
agent only we can
because there are actually vertically
integrated monopolies in
the in the service of contacting
you with Facebook users, there is only
one provider. Yes.
Was that right?
And there is only one user agent or
there are several user agents, but there
are all anointed and accepted
by a particular company.
Right. You cannot have a Twitter client
using Facebook.
Well, it's it's absurd, but for some
reason it's not absurd for us to
expect that.
I don't know. Panasonic Electrical Device
will work with a power socket made by
some other company.
Right. So way this is
yeah, this is accepted and that not.
But let's go.
Let's go. Let's go further.
The point here is that we cannot
we cannot freely choose, you
know, every single element
of, you know, in this market, this is not
a single market. Those are three
different markets.
Those are three different monopolies.
Who has more than one account was
an account on Facebook and Twitter or
Google and Twitter, etc.
Why?
Why do you have several different power
sockets at home?
I'm not. I'm not trolling.
I'm, you know, I'm trying to make a
point, which also
sometimes is actually troubling.
So
this is also the case, right?
We have other services.
We seem to have a single
Jordan. Well, I don't know cloud
drive market only we don't.
We cannot easily
switch providers.
We would have to download everything from
Provider A and move to Provider B
on either their formats.
I might not exactly be.
For example, metadata formats might not
exactly be fully compatible, and
you can only use this client with this
particular provider.
And also internally
instant messaging, right?
This is the same situation.
We have Skype. We have a message
we had MSN, but now it's
Skynet, right?
Skype dot net.
We kind of have
an next MVP, which is nice, right?
Only we are.
We are slowly getting a problem with
that because Google has announced
some time ago that, yeah, maybe we
should move into Hangouts and like, you
know, close the server to server
service. Oh, by the way, Facebook
chat actually uses SMB.
You probably know that right on the
backend, but they just don't let other
servers connect to their servers.
And, for example, they don't they won't
let.
Also hackerspace Java server
talk to Facebook server.
Right? It's not their business
strategy. So this is this is
the vertical integration, right?
And this last thing, the gi-toc,
the Google thing is the most interesting,
I would say, because it shows,
yeah, another thing.
It shows the network effect, right?
Obviously, you would say, Oh,
but it's more convenient that way.
Google is such such a nice interface
and you know, and everybody uses Google.
So why shouldn't I use Google?
I can make my decisions for myself,
right? I can make my decisions
for myself. Unfortunately, this this
little thing called the network effect,
which is pretty simple.
The more people use it, give them
communications platform, the more people
will start using it right or the more
people use it, the more people use.
It would sound silly.
But this, though this is obvious,
right? The more people use the telephone,
you know, started to use telephone, the
more people wanted to use the telephone
service, right? Because of that, to stay
in touch with with those people, this is
the same.
That keeps you in Facebook,
right?
Are all our friends are there.
But it gets a little bit.
It's get it gets a little bit hairy at
some point because when you have a
critical mass of users, it's harder to
stay outside.
Right? Because you get all my
friends are there. Maybe I should join.
Is that only maybe I can
go out, or maybe I can, because all my
friends are here? No, no.
It's it's sometimes it's like, Oh, maybe
I should join.
Do we have any person here that had to
join Facebook or Twitter Google because
it was somehow required
by their school or university
or other?
Thank you. There's one place to the three
for more. Yes, thank you.
See, this is how it works.
Some of you maybe didn't want to join,
but they had you, but you had to join
because other people join, and we thought
it was obvious to make a group on
Facebook or whatever, right?
But that also means that the more power
that means more power to the entity
controlling the platform, because to join
Facebook, you had to accept Facebook's
terms of service.
So suddenly, somehow
accepting Facebook terms of service
was a requirement for you to get your
education. I don't get that.
Do we see a problem here?
Right?
There's something, something something's
fishy with this,
with this image.
And now we're getting back to the irony.
Who is this Google Chrome
down behind on site?
Who uses Google Chrome as their main
browser?
OK, who doesn't use any other browser
rather?
OK, so there are even people like that.
OK.
Yeah, that's that's the second question.
So but we already
know what happens when people use, you
know, when, when we have a monoculture
of browsers of closed
source, unforeseeable
browsers. We have a Chromium project, but
we don't know what Google will do with
Chrome in a year.
Maybe they will push for their
speedy Y protocol.
Maybe they will break the internet, other
ism in some other interesting ways
like they're trying to do with SMP,
right? Do you see the irony here?
We swapped Internet Explorer browsers
with with the other
kind of the same problem.
So look who's talking OK, who uses
Google's SMP or gi-toc?
Who has any other account?
Hands up. OK, that's that's great.
That's great. Thank God, I'm here and not
somewhere else and
uses it. This is the this is the
important part. This is this is a very
important question because if we all
move to gi-toc, Google will
be able to just say, well, whatever.
I have 99 percent or 90 percent
of users of Jabber or I don't care about
the rest, right?
I can just close it off.
Good luck with that. Embrace, extend,
extinguish. And this is exactly my
point. This is a freedom, ecology and
ecology of freedom.
This is not only our own decision.
If Google does that, I will not join
Google. Right?
But if Google does that, I will suddenly
stop being able to communicate via Skype
with 90 percent of my contacts on
XM.
Right? So that
decision is not only ours to
make right. I didn't make that decision.
Somebody made it for me, and it's not
like, you know, somebody I will show,
like with my finger, right?
But it's just happened somehow.
So
what to do, what to do, what to do?
We have obviously, we have laws.
We have agencies against monopolies.
First thing to do is to start looking at
monopolies as if they were actually
monopolies.
Right. We have some monopolies that we do
not recognize as monopolies.
Maybe we should start doing so and start
thinking about that.
But from the user's perspective,
it's actually easier.
Thank you.
It's actually it's actually not that
hard. You know, you can use Diaspora, who
has the Diaspora account.
Yay. Ray, let's swap our
contacts afterwards
so you can use some other excellent
service which you already do.
Your hackerspace or your local
users group or your whatever company.
You know, most of us companies have email
servers. Most, most hacker spaces
have e-mail servers and some other
servers. Why not that type of diaspora
or some other social network, right?
Just decentralize it.
Be done with it.
Right, right.
I mean, if you can just do that
just from your server, just run your
service.
Just keep your keep your
data.
Keep your data close to you and keep your
friends close to you and not to Mr.
Zuckerberg or or
whoever. It's easier.
And once you do that, you know, the
thought is great.
It feels great.
So thanks.
Thanks a lot.
I hope it wasn't too fast.
I had only 30 minutes and I saw
the cards that I were being shown to me.
I saw that.
So thank you very much.
I hope we can meet at some bar
or some other decentralized, social
or a social network.
And are there any questions?
Yeah, we have five minutes for questions.
Oh my God, five minutes.
So you spoke about social network,
and I have to make this question.
Last time I checked, there were
at least three or four open
source slash reasons
after such a network, which are
not compatible when we challenge the as
far as we know this right?
And they asked for doesn't know how to
talk with an identity guy and you didn't
know who to talk with Gloria and
Luria doesn't know how to talk with
anybody.
Yeah. Do we have?
Do we have any
Diaspora developers are frantically.
Our developers are ours that doesn't have
developers here, et cetera, et cetera.
Do any of you that are does
anybody of those developers are
is
on the on the C three
with three C Federated
Social Web mailing list?
There was a huge thread
about maybe trying to finally
federate between those networks, and I'm
all for that.
That would be great. So if the if the
developers here that I mean, people
want that and this is the only way to to
actually remove them the biggest
impediment for users
so that they can use the the
social the Federated Social Web.
Right. The impediment being
which should I use
and why?
Yes.
Yeah. Apparently, we have to to
start the next
hour. I'll say that we we
have to start setting up for the next
talk.
So I want to just give you the last
question, which was on that microphone
over there.
OK, thank you.
There are institutions who are enforcing
that no one police in other
areas to think it's
realistic that this will happen also
in these areas.
It's a good question.
During a discussion before this talk
a few hours ago,
somebody asked me, Have you heard about
the joint French and German
search engine?
Just Google it?
That was that was an idea of of, you
know, fighting with the monopoly of
of of Google.
And obviously not every single, not every
single thing that such an agency or
institution or whatever can do
will be effective and will be
actually doing something good.
But my point is, I don't know about those
agencies. I don't work there.
I don't even really know the name
of them, but I know they're there.
They are there somewhere.
But maybe we should start thinking about
monopolies as monopolies.
Maybe this is where we were, where we
should start. This is the easiest place,
actually, right? Just switch something in
your head and and accept
the consequences of of.
You know, these
these strange little
blocks here.
Right?
Thank you.