Post 9krdibDGYBbMusIBSy by ajroach42@retro.social
(DIR) More posts by ajroach42@retro.social
(DIR) Post #9krXeRlb87XWjgzI4e by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T04:03:24Z
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I am trying to imagine social media in a world without the internet as it exists today. One option that occurs to me, assymetric cryotography as a substitution for user accounts and as a method for following.The network is just a giant stream of encrypted posts, all signed with private keys. You have the public keys of the people you follow. Those posts get decrypted and displayed, the rest are discarded.The UI does all the heavy lifting.
(DIR) Post #9krXeSetoVm9VCrSGu by forAll52@deadinsi.de
2019-07-15T04:17:18Z
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@ajroach42 How would you know who to follow if you can't see their posts?
(DIR) Post #9krXeTXqWDjCFcZKuu by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T04:23:34Z
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@forAll52I thought about this, and I can think of several options. 1) a public post option, in which their public key is included in the distribution (not trustworthy, but easy) 2) a public post option in which the post is in plaintext, but their is an included signature (maybe the has of the post signed with their private key?) 3) friends of friends. Think Follow Friday meets a key signing party.
(DIR) Post #9krdibDGYBbMusIBSy by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T04:07:52Z
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This makes identity verification trivial, and impersonation difficult, even if the transfer mechanism is just a folder full of markdown files with some yaml front matter. Your "client" would build the markdown files in to whatever format you prefer (emails, blog posts, Twitter stream) and then let you browse with whatever tool you prefer. Static site generation as social media.
(DIR) Post #9krdibeYuhR6HX3z0q by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T04:10:23Z
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So where is the flaw/why doesn't this already exist/can y'all help me write a spec this week?
(DIR) Post #9krdicVjizyEwRwRtY by alexbuzzbee@fosstodon.org
2019-07-15T04:19:44Z
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@ajroach42 This sound feasible, but one question is how do you get the posts to people? My first guess would be either the Usenet/ActivityPub approach of many servers copying each others’ content or the RSS approach of fetching posts from the source (but then you’ve basically just reinvented RSS).The biggest problem is pubkey distribution and trust of distributors to not censor, I think.
(DIR) Post #9krdicjusHJTeQZlzs by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T04:27:39Z
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@alexbuzzbeeSneakernet + rsync Beaker/dat
(DIR) Post #9krdiczVwHn2QnsEJE by alexbuzzbee@fosstodon.org
2019-07-15T04:32:36Z
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@ajroach42 After quickly looking up DAT, I think that’s an excellent solution. All you need now is a name-to-key binding solution that 1) doesn’t suck 2) is convenient 3) doesn’t make faking it easy, and to make a nice UI for social networking over DAT.
(DIR) Post #9krdidCd9WHX5U0hkm by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T04:37:35Z
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@alexbuzzbeeDat does some cryptographic identify verification out of the box, and there is an okay social thing that has been hacked together on top of dat. I don't use it much becuase it's all JavaScript and electron.
(DIR) Post #9krdidOKS1dhflU2zI by alexbuzzbee@fosstodon.org
2019-07-15T04:39:11Z
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@ajroach42 Then build a client that’s not written in JS, I suppose. Maybe prototype one in CLI form, just to get a handle on the protocols?
(DIR) Post #9krdidhpHXEeeEbcNU by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T04:44:50Z
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@alexbuzzbeeIt's not just the client. The servers are node. I'd love to see a reference implementation in a less resource heavy language, but I don't have time to write it.
(DIR) Post #9krdidxmKDznRi4MF6 by alexbuzzbee@fosstodon.org
2019-07-15T04:46:07Z
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@ajroach42 I’d love to see this implemented in Rust or Go or Python or something, but I don’t have the time either. I’ve already got three personal projects and like half a dozen work projects...
(DIR) Post #9krdieAXYmCi5I2Y8O by meff@niu.moe
2019-07-15T05:33:50Z
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@alexbuzzbee @ajroach42 this is what Secure Scuttlebutt is all about
(DIR) Post #9ksSRZhK1g6KxLzSQy by ajroach42@retro.social
2019-07-15T15:02:14Z
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@meff @alexbuzzbee Sorta, yeah. SSB does a bunch of other stuff though. I don't want the other stuff.
(DIR) Post #9kv9wwmoOu4bVtkL5M by meff@niu.moe
2019-07-16T22:19:00Z
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@ajroach42 @alexbuzzbee sorry for the late reply; I actually had this idea myself and have working code for a CRDT. I have some notes on a Gossip protocol I was implementing from a paper I found, that I was planning to host the CRDT on top of. Gun.js is another good example of