Interview James

25 Nov 2019

Expert

James works as a browser design for a new and innovative software company focused on privacy and new web business models. He feels that security around where you are with whom you’re connected on the web is generally not well understood by most users but there are also new opportunities for designing around data control.

Key findings

• There is currently a lot more narrative around taking control and the protection your data but many users aren’t likely to necessarily sacrifice convenience
• There is an opportunity to reinvent what is going on with URLs and the address bar and what it means - nobody really has nailed it down
• P2P adoption requires thinking about how do you make it interesting to your friends. Put these common occurrences together for them, that maybe this makes it safer - just turn this on and get rid of all the ads. You need to present a very clear and very direct solution to a problem they have
• From the dev side the value proposition of P2P is huge with speed and privacy but with speed you need to incentivise more and more people to share to make it faster

Interview notes

• Timing is right to be looking at new modes of privacy and control with the web
• People are becoming more and more aware problems with privacy and last few years of giving in to way things were
• Lot more narrative taking control and protection your data
• His company was a little bit ahead of privacy focus and having a solution for something - it started when it wasn’t really on anyone’s minds
• Privacy concerns are now mainstream with how Twitter and Facebook have targeted people with ads and with the EU’s GDPR.
• It is going to take a bit more time to change things as users have to see the immediate value with things
• Rewards and points system just want to see how that is helpful for them
• What are the incentives for people
• Users don’t really understand their flows
• Users aware of URL and .com and what it is, but would say majority don’t pay attention
• Users know how to get to the starting point, for instance through Google search or typing in a domain, but after that they don’t navigate through the URL
• The importance of the URL is getting to where you need to go but after that it diminishes in usefulness
• A URL is an address, it’s your business card, it’s kind of like a phone number - the more people realise that they can rely on the technology then they stop remember ing the phone number
• Search is the starting point and for the average user unless they go to a domain they go to Google
• Early browsers set early expectations around padlock and what it meant and what it means to be secured
• There was a lot of safe browsing UI work done in older browsers
• They have done testing on how to understand the security
• People copy other browsers and have similar functionality
• Not really putting attention on the bar and think the lock represents encryption but that does’t necessarily mean privacy and the site is safe or not tracking you
• There is an opportunity to reinvent that and what it means - nobody really has nailed it down
• Chrome is trying to push away from URL could be pretty bad - easy to spoof the info
• The base URL is important to understand that you are at the proper address
• There is no authentic web controller - everyone is left to their own devices
• p2p in a browser means the files are coming from other users - if want to access other content
• Immediately think BitTorrent - old p2p sharing tools like Limewire
• As consumer of the web just want things to work - want to get to information quickly and don’t care where you got it
• Want to know its safe to use
• Appeals more to him as a developer and saving on costs and distributing costs and making it more cheaper
• If wasn’t fortunate to live in a fairly free country would be more aware of it and would be bigger value prop don’t want the country firewall and being shut down
• Don’t live in China or Saudi so don’t know how it is
• Been to countries where VPNs are illegal and US sites are blocked and see with p2p feel that underground feeling that could get information couldn’t get any other way
• Speed is a value prop and now privacy as equal to speed but people may still prefer convenience
• Putting up walls might cause inconveniences
• If I had to get someone else interested I would see the advantages of distributed and would just expect to work
• If there was a plugin or something 1-2 steps, the more basic the more likely you are to get people on
• How do you make ad blocking interesting to your friends? That sort of thing without going on and on about it. Put these common occurrences together for them (car site and FB starts giving car ads to you). Maybe this makes it safer - just turn this on and get rid of all the ads - very clear and very direct solution
• Use cases for lot of people can relate to - pain points at an event devices around and crappy connection - Open Garden and Apple has multi peer connection APIs
• Its just accessing information privately
• As long as get the info then they probably don’t care where or how it is getting to them
• Special cases where looking at piece of information or site looks sketch or this article does’t seem accurate
• Beaker can fork a website and self host a blog and peers connect and access the data - bypass the web infrastructures of servers and dot coms
• Maybe IPFS can create a content validator or allow people to write TLDRs of articles - plugin that could essentially community layer on the internet possibly rewrite the article as a summary and can others do the same - instead of replacing the web it would be adding a new layer of vetted content
• Validating authenticity
• There’s a narrative now how fake news makes it rounds and there’s no way to solve that
• Go here install the plugin and run this thing - but most people won’t care
• From the dev side the value is huge
• Need enough devices to seed on the network then the value is huge - savings on CDN cost
• Chicken egg problem - need enough casual users and getting value out of it
• Rewards as a growth thing is great, could possibly tip hosts or something - the more you use it or the more on the network you get rewards
• Can contact again in the future