Ask HN: Which sites should be in the public domain and public owned?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25798151

by ZguideZ • 6 years ago

5 7 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Ask HN: Which sites should be in the public domain and administrated by a trusted public body as well as publicly owned?

Personally, I would go with wikipedia, craigslist, twitter, internet archive, and a public search algorithm. What else should be added?

bjornsing• 6 years ago

All of them. ;)

necovek• 6 years ago

What's a public search algorithm?

Or put another way, why twitter and not a "public short message platform"?

Your comment is likely targeting public "utilities" on the web. Of the ones you mention, I only think search and archive are "the utilities of the web": wikipedia gets close, but it's a summarised version of the archive.

ZguideZ• 6 years ago

I said twitter because it already hosts things like @whitehouse and @potus - so in a certain sense it is already fulfilling the function - but any public short message platform would suffice if they held those types of accounts

WheelsAtLarge• 6 years ago

I don't know if they should be public domain but there should be an open source project similar to every mega site product that is out there, twitter, Facebook, google, so on...

Basically it should be a product that is over seen by a group of diverse individuals with different needs. All these mega sites have the goal of making as much profit, as fast as possible which is causing a lot of chaos in society.

throwaway158497• 6 years ago

No user generated content should be behind a paywall

probinso• 6 years ago

Social network sites should be federated.

Information monopolies should be federated.

Academic research should be public

bruce511• 6 years ago

> Personally, I would go with wikipedia, craigslist, twitter, internet archive, and a public search algorithm.

Well none of these should be public domain, since were created, and are run by, existing organizations. Going down the route of "if you become successful, you'll get "nationalized" and placed in the public domain" seems to be, well, not likely to get much support.

Of course nothing stops you creating a project, placing it in the public domain, and then driving the project, getting funding, attracting an audience, becoming a meaningful social good. (See SQLite as an example of this approach.)

But turning over existing, valuable, successful projects to a "Trusted Public Body" (whatever that is? trusted by whom? which public? .org debacle anyone?) is simply a good way to kill successful projects.

And that's before we get to impossible questions like "who decides what gets moved to public domain?" - the Greek government? Silicon Value investors? my mom?

Ask HN: Which sites should be in the public domain and public owned?

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