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Comment on Ask HN: Do you regret using Social Networking apps?

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I regret that we don't have sufficiently strong operating systems. I don't know what I could have done differently over the past 40 years to have changed that, I doubt there is anything. This is, in my estimation, the root cause of much of the grief we now suffer with the Internet in general.

Because we can't run our own servers without substantial risks, almost everyone is forced into the walled gardens where network effects make it feasible to economically run the servers, and the administrative staff to keep them running, and somewhat secure. This provides the honeypot that then draws in advertisement and all the ills that go with it, as we're not the customers, we're the product.

I would hope that we can collectively get our security act together, which will as a byproduct make it easy for everyone to run their own servers without risk. But that's always been 20 years off, like fusion power. Everyone seems to think that Linux is good enough, which it isn't, but here we are. 8(

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