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robmao

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[dead] 9 months ago

The combination of user ownership (decentralization), quantified quality relationships (Social Tokens), and simplicity (AI Agents) fundamentally shifts the incentive structure. We move from an environment designed to extract attention to one designed to build verifiable, lasting social capital. The new social contract is clear: You are the owner of your digital home, and your true value is measured not by how many strangers click your ads, but by the quality of the relationships you invest in.

[dead] 12 months ago

Short form video feed waste our time by design.

Great point — I actually agree with your long-term view. Autonomous AI agents acting as “full pilots” is a compelling direction, especially for clearly defined tasks. But I’d add that HUDs and copilots aren’t mutually exclusive — they often coexist, just like in real aviation.

In fact, the HUD metaphor comes directly from the cockpit: it enhances situational awareness while the pilot (human or AI) focuses on action and decision-making. HUDs serve a different role — not replacing pilots, but grounding them with continuous, low-friction perception.

I really appreciated this post. It goes much deeper than most critiques of cloud platforms, and I respect that the author didn’t just complain — he actually tried self-hosting, experienced its ups and downs, and came to an honest conclusion: self-hosting isn't the future.

I agree.

But I also believe that doesn’t mean we stop here. The real issue isn’t about where the server is — it’s about who owns the identity and the data, and whether we have a shared protocol layer to make true user agency possible.

In case it's useful to others thinking along similar lines, I wrote a response piece called “The future is not self-hosted, but self-sovereign” https://www.robertmao.com/blog/en/the-future-is-not-self-hos...

It builds on the same dilemma but goes further into decentralized identity (DID), protocol-level ownership, and why self-sovereign systems might be the real way forward — beyond both cloud and self-hosting.

Would love to hear what others here think about protocol vs platform thinking.