Post AdAbRLhluxcvB2kAoi by laurel@freespeechextremist.com
(DIR) More posts by laurel@freespeechextremist.com
(DIR) Post #AQk2tdbh9NGqass6a0 by pwuille@x0f.org
2022-12-18T19:53:57Z
2 likes, 5 repeats
So... this seems like a good time to start experimenting with Mastodon.I'm very skeptical about the chances of getting enough network effect to bootstrap a new social media site in general, and even more for distributed/decentralized/non-commercial ones.Still, recent events on Twitter make me believe there is a chance, and I'd like to help make that happen.
(DIR) Post #AQk6kE3pA2v2ZdnR4K by pete@mastodon.petertodd.org
2022-12-18T20:49:41Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@pwuille I think the big problem we're going to see is that Mastodon has much worse protections against spam than Twitter does. That's not a problem yet. But it will be in the future. And dealing with it could destroy the ability of small instances like mine to federate with others.If email didn't have big companies like Google pouring money into anti-spam, it'd probably be dead already.Bitcoin can fix this by making spam costly. But the people behind Mastodon hate crypto currencies.
(DIR) Post #AQkDCeP9PL9Y6yi11U by silverpill@mitra.social
2022-12-18T22:01:53.223111Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille Luckily, Mastodon is not the only software that supports ActivityPub protocol. Other developers could be more open-minded.>making spam costlyAre you thinking about hashcash? Or payments?
(DIR) Post #AQkFOXDQA8l3CL16vI by pete@mastodon.petertodd.org
2022-12-18T22:26:36Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@silverpill @pwuille Both. Though payments don't necessarily mean paying someone in particular: you can also sacrifice BTC to make a cryptographic identity expensive to obtain.This is probably better than hash cash as it's easier to determine the value of the payment/sacrifice.
(DIR) Post #AQkRe79A3HmUQlDgZM by silverpill@mitra.social
2022-12-19T00:40:36.246727Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille Here's how this can be implemented:- Require actor objects to have identity proof that cryptographically links bitcoin address to actor ID. The mechanism of identity proofs is described in FEP-c390 (this proposal relies on DIDs, but bitcoin address can be represented as did:pkh identifier).- Also require actor objects to contain a proof of burn. For example, it can be an ID of transaction that burns BTC.- When the server receives activity from some actor for the first time, it should verify the proof of burn (for example, by connecting to a bitcoin node, looking up the transaction, and checking the sender address and the burnt amount). If the proof is correct, the server accepts activity. Otherwise it rejects activity and adds actor to a blacklist (temporarily or permanently).The only problem I see here is that transaction lookup can be expensive.
(DIR) Post #AQkUY1PokQcGmQnU5w by pete@mastodon.petertodd.org
2022-12-19T01:16:24Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@silverpill @pwuille “transaction lookup can be expensive” just provide a merkle path from the confirmed tx to the block header.
(DIR) Post #AQme1FuPEEjc232TuS by ademan@shitposter.club
2022-12-20T02:11:58.262763Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Welcome! I’d contend it’s got the best chance of any decentralized alternative. It’s lasted a long time, to boot!
(DIR) Post #AQmeCUZF4Ix0gFUvBo by ademan@shitposter.club
2022-12-20T02:14:00.053872Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
What about just a timelocked output like joinmarket uses for its fidelity bonds?
(DIR) Post #AQmeEH2oJlxlJoB5Y8 by m0th@husk.site
2022-12-20T02:09:18.402879Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ademan @pwuille > Still, recent events on Twitter make me believe there is a chance…You’ll get further if you form opinions based on the object your judging and not reactively to unrelated objects. i.e. What Twitter does is unrelated to Fedi.
(DIR) Post #AQmeM8Cv3cPqEBeXQ0 by m0th@husk.site
2022-12-20T02:10:43.590053Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@ademan @pwuille you’re**
(DIR) Post #AQmf18KFWSguT2dHlI by Hyolobrika@gleasonator.com
2022-12-20T02:23:08.427142Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille @silverpill @pete @pwuille I don't think people are going to be willing to pay to post. I won't, for one.
(DIR) Post #AQnCgR4a1S64yHbbrk by pete@mastodon.petertodd.org
2022-12-20T08:40:21Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@ademan @silverpill @pwuille Thet could work too.
(DIR) Post #AQnVit80aBrtgw5mFc by silverpill@mitra.social
2022-12-20T12:13:16.959385Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Hyolobrika @pwuille @pete It's a one-time payment, and you will be able to re-use your identity key on other servers (if you manage multiple accounts, or during migration). Can be done anonymously.I think it's not bad.The alternatives are shared blocklists (leads to centralization - see email) and web-of-trust (complicated, probably doesn't scale).
(DIR) Post #AQngmHfctHx0AkdeIS by Hyolobrika@gleasonator.com
2022-12-20T14:17:34.669122Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille @silverpill @pete @pwuille So, per account, not per post. That doesn't sound so bad. How much do you reckon is needed?Also, if users are spending money anyway, why not let that money go somewhere useful, like to the upkeep of servers?
(DIR) Post #AQnxbSvsNPtH8WfNXk by silverpill@mitra.social
2022-12-20T17:25:43.577350Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Hyolobrika @pwuille @pete In the beginning payment amount can be negligible... But I think eventually we'll see specialized spam bots that can send hundreds of messages per second. Such bot can reach a lot of people even if instance admins react quickly and block it. That creates a strong incentive for spammers, so perhaps per-account payment is a bad idea after all. We can use per-post/per-connection PoW to rate-limit the spammers, in addition to proof-of-burn.Another option is to make people pay for each connection (when you interact with someone for the first time; not per-post), so spammers will need to pay you. If you have a mutual interaction with someone, the payment cancels out. This sounds cool, but I think it may hurt the network.>Also, if users are spending money anyway, why not let that money go somewhere useful, like to the upkeep of servers?Who will distribute the collected funds? What if you made a payment to yourself? When the money is burned, there's nothing to worry about.
(DIR) Post #AQo1dDV17yK1fQC52G by Hyolobrika@gleasonator.com
2022-12-20T18:11:14.972044Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille @silverpill @pete @pwuille >Who will distribute the collected funds?I was thinking each admin could collect the funds from their users. So it would just be a payment to the instance.>What if you made a payment to yourself?Yeah. That's a fair point. Maybe there could be a burn associated with starting federation from a new domain as well.
(DIR) Post #AQo69iB8zsqxtveH2G by silverpill@mitra.social
2022-12-20T19:01:23.000048Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@Hyolobrika @pwuille @pete Proof-of-payment-to-admin is difficult to verify because there's no concept of admin in ActivityPub. Also instance admin could be a spammer too. That's what I would do if I were one - buy a domain and start sending automated messages until everyone blocks me. Domain works like a proof of burn already
(DIR) Post #AR1J0dJzVn92gnGcs4 by lucash_dev@bitcoinhackers.org
2022-12-27T03:57:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille Ultimately I think most of these alternatives (Mastodon, Nostr etc) don’t really solve the important problems, and only work better in some respects because of the tiny scale, while not offering anything near the level of discoverability of the centralized platforms.
(DIR) Post #AR4bIe1c12nmjVHwie by midnightmagic@x0f.org
2022-12-28T18:06:14Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille Ehh, if it weren't for Google there's have likely been a cleaner solution quite some time ago. :-( Progress halted after the corpos snapped up everyone and FLOSS progress was destroyed.
(DIR) Post #AR4ePfp02BtCC7QrdQ by pete@mastodon.petertodd.org
2022-12-28T18:41:10Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@midnightmagic @pwuille What kind of cleaner solution? Spam prevention with email's design is fundamentally hard. Hashcash would have likely failed due to botnets and Asics; Bitcoin Lightning didn't exist until very recently.
(DIR) Post #ARDTWuFjQdEeGbFLv6 by midnightmagic@x0f.org
2023-01-02T00:51:35Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete @pwuille An old-school anti-spam mechanism which is ~100% effective is to ensure that literally every contact one makes has a separate contact email others can make use of. Automatically-negotiated contact exchange to give people something similar in functionality seems possible, esp. since everyone uses mobile devices anyway.
(DIR) Post #ARDTeUvTTbtK2AOKEi by midnightmagic@x0f.org
2023-01-02T00:52:57Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@pete But, unfortunately, it looks like most of the people who would be motivated to make such a thing have essentially been all hired and stripped out from any remotely-related FLOSS project. Almost none of the floss projects I know from 15-20 years ago has survived.
(DIR) Post #AdAVlXkmERiobyOaEi by p@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T12:57:47.016813Z
3 likes, 1 repeats
@pwuille > getting enough network effect to bootstrap a new social media siteThe best part is that you don't have to care about that. There are people here, you can talk to them. It doesn't cost anything but juice to run the machines, so it's less tenuous than a commercial endeavor where it doesn't just have to break even but it has to capture enough of the market that the investors think it's worth their time.> recent events on Twitter"Recent" as in the last decade of events at Twitter, I think, but your mileage may have varied. We really should send Elon a thank-you note for sending so many people this way; there were so many new servers springing up that @fedilist started flooding the timeline.twitter_sux.png
(DIR) Post #AdAVuRolfau2oCVZ5s by Zerglingman@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T12:59:23.589398Z
2 likes, 2 repeats
@p @fedilist @pwuille >The best part is that you don't have to care about that. There are people here, you can talk to them.This continues to be a wildly incomprehensible premise to most of the people I meet here.
(DIR) Post #AdAWnmgZmjzTSM3yAS by p@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:09:23.633659Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@Zerglingman @fedilist @pwuille It takes like a year for people to figure this out, like even with tech people the mental model is "achieve viral" and "engagement numbers" and "if this platform does not show progress in the KPIs and start lowering their user acquisition cost then it won't survive".Also Merry Christmas.
(DIR) Post #AdAWv9aL2nXgVLewOO by Zerglingman@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:10:43.545310Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@p @pwuille @fedilist Merry Christmas! Christ is Lord!I literally just want the people I used to chat with elsewhere to join, so I can chat with them again. ;_;They can bring their friends too if they want.
(DIR) Post #AdAXE363ONhPsoVIu0 by p@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:14:08.438114Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@Zerglingman @fedilist @pwuille > I literally just want the people I used to chat with elsewhere to join, so I can chat with them again. ;_;Yeah, signing up is a hump at the moment, people seem to expect a bigger process than "just type in a name". (Anyway, you know my plan for that.)
(DIR) Post #AdAXUI4RUFkgxQUjhI by Zerglingman@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:17:04.554241Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@p @pwuille @fedilist I like your plan for that but I honestly don't think it's going to help reach anyone who isn't already somewhere on this side of the internet. I can't get them to do something as simple as "plug in a username and password and tick create account" even with an offer of "you can use a client that supports this AND all your other stuff that is currently separated". They give all manner of excuses and then some; their problem is simply laziness, and a fundamental misunderstanding of network effect. Revolver can basically alleviate one thing they complain about, and that was never their issue to begin with.
(DIR) Post #AdAYO6dVBffTi7VaiG by p@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:27:09.795308Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@Zerglingman @fedilist @pwuille Reasonable. I think there's no solution for people that expect to have to invest more to even get started: there's a lot of stuff where the barrier to entry is way lower than the perceived barrier to entry and it's difficult to communicate that.
(DIR) Post #AdAYk7eQ5wSfEFR69Y by Zerglingman@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:31:08.528883Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@p @pwuille @fedilist I've definitely met some cases like that, but that's more... They refuse to listen to you. To believe you. And yeah, that's a hopeless case. Maybe they'll listen to someone else and you'll see them again. Many such cases wrt Christianity.So it's not necessarily that they are overestimating the barrier but that they refuse to adjust that estimate that's the key.Thing is, I find that sort are already rare enough; most of them will happily adjust their estimate to something reasonably accurate and then still complain that it's too much because it's still higher than megacorp offering 9001 (even when it isn't). In this case it's an excuse for apathy. They just don't care that they're living in a fundamentally fucked world, as a slave.
(DIR) Post #AdAaQxJaV1z3ZvgF6m by laurel@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:50:05.296538Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@p @Zerglingman @fedilist @pwuille Merry Christmas friends.>perceived barrier to entryBut is it really about perceived barrier to entry? People want some things and they gravitate towards the platform that provides those things to them. The vast majority of people this side of the fedi would place quality of conversation and ownership of your identity to the top of their list.The people that prefer to use shitter might want to:-ride the dopamine train all day-be allowed to pile up on others without others being able to pile up on them-have algorithimic feeds to maximize the above-just watch the digital equivalent of TV. I mean TVrace didn't go extinct, it's just 20 centimeters away from the screen rather than 3 meters.
(DIR) Post #AdAajb3xSMMA4DG5Eu by Zerglingman@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T13:53:27.433073Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@laurel @pwuille @fedilist @p >People want some things and they gravitate towards the platform that provides those things to them.It is morally abhorrent to put anything in the line of "having the most people on it" at the top of this list. It is morally abhorrent to put it anywhere on that list. Sure some people might like their e-gladiatorium or whatever other things that people use communication tools for, but that one thing makes them no better than a beast, fundamentally unfit for society, because it, necessarily, is the one thing that stagnates and refuses any sort of improvement.blob
(DIR) Post #AdAbRLhluxcvB2kAoi by laurel@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T14:01:21.860040Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@Zerglingman @fedilist @p @pwuille >It is morally abhorrent to put anything in the line of "having the most people on it"It is very vulgar and cattle like indeed.
(DIR) Post #AdBOU1cTwjrvVSAuzA by p@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T23:10:53.645495Z
3 likes, 0 repeats
@Zerglingman @fedilist @pwuille > an excuse for apathy.Decisions, apparently without regard to the importance of the decision, consume a fixed amount of blood glucose in the brain. People avoid expending energy when the benefit of the task is unclear, and there's a Catch-22 when the task is "recognize the benefit of the task".
(DIR) Post #AdBPT4kUvUGGsO2GTA by p@freespeechextremist.com
2023-12-25T23:21:55.648584Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@laurel @Zerglingman @fedilist @pwuille > Merry Christmas friends.Heyoooooo, merry Christmas.> The people that prefer to use shitter might want to:This was a depressing and accurate list.