[HN Gopher] Scuttlebutt - A decentralized secure gossip platform
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       Scuttlebutt - A decentralized secure gossip platform
        
       Author : dgellow
       Score  : 304 points
       Date   : 2021-01-10 11:59 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (scuttlebutt.nz)
 (TXT) w3m dump (scuttlebutt.nz)
        
       | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
       | Is use of Javascript a requirement.
        
       | grey_earthling wrote:
       | IMO scuttlebutt's mood can be summed up by
       | https://coolguy.website/the-future-will-be-technical/
        
       | gdsdfe wrote:
       | Haven't tried it yet but can someone clarify whether it's
       | possible to discover sub-communities or you have to be explicitly
       | 'invited' to those ?
        
       | stunt wrote:
       | "Tending and pruning are not a stranger's duty, it is through
       | near moderation and free listening that we improve our
       | surroundings" https://scuttlebutt.nz/docs/principles/
       | 
       | What does "near moderation" mean?
        
         | tao_oat wrote:
         | I believe it means handling moderation yourself rather than
         | relying on platform providers to do it for you. You have to
         | choose your peers that you receive content from carefully
         | rather than rely on platform moderators to filter content.
        
           | bitwize wrote:
           | I get it. Remember killfiles on USENET?
           | 
           | About the only thing considered universally intolerable and
           | subject to administrative removal, at least on USENET's alt.*
           | hierarchy, was spam. But spammers could spam faster than
           | cancellers could cancel, so it eventually overwhelmed the
           | platform.
        
             | grey_earthling wrote:
             | Scuttlebutt inverts this idea of cancelling -- as a new
             | user you're just shouting into the void until you persuade
             | someone to follow you.
             | 
             | Essentially, each user is just writing their own diary. If
             | you follow someone, your client periodically asks around
             | for a copy of that person's diary.
             | 
             | No-one's gonna ask for the spammers' diaries.
        
               | l33tman wrote:
               | But then you could just subscribe to some peoples RSS
               | feeds (or .plans for the archaic people ;). At some point
               | you want to "listen" to a group/forum where you don't
               | have personal control over every member and as soon as a
               | spammer joins you'd get their spam.. how does this work
               | in scuttlebutt, or maybe this is not a use-case it tries
               | to supply, is it just a twitter-clone? (I don't know
               | anything about it...)
               | 
               | I guess you could design a group so at first only a few
               | get hit with junk from a new member and as long as nobody
               | stop listening, others would eventually accept the new
               | member as well.
               | 
               | Just thinking on this use case as USENET was discussed
               | elsewhere here as an analogy, maybe it's not relevant at
               | all.
        
             | perlpimp wrote:
             | on a tangent, alt.sysadmin.recovery was a great place.
        
             | toyg wrote:
             | Spam was not why I stopped using USENET, I expect the same
             | techniques that worked to clean-up email would have worked
             | with that if we'd hung around a bit longer. It's just that
             | the overall maintenance required too much work (and legal
             | risk) by ISPs and clients alike, in terms of disk space,
             | synchronisation, integrity checks, backups, etc etc.
        
             | konjin wrote:
             | Proof of work makes this expensive.
        
           | tachyonbeam wrote:
           | I can see the appeal. I imagine this means that if none of my
           | friends follow conspiracy theory content, I won't see any of
           | that, and if one of them did, I could presumably block the
           | conspiracy theory content feeds while still following my
           | friends.
           | 
           | The downside may be that, presumably, this puts everyone into
           | a bubble even more than Facebook did? At least there is no
           | algorithmic meddling or centralized content control.
        
             | remexre wrote:
             | On the other hand, having to take conscious action to
             | enforce the bubble (rather than needing to take action to
             | pop it) might be beneficial / lead to less of a bubble.
        
         | black_puppydog wrote:
         | The idea is that moderation will be based on who you trust.
         | 
         | First and foremost, that is yourself, i.e. you can moderate
         | your own timeline by choosing who to follow or block. Since
         | this happens on your device, there's nobody who can interfere
         | with this.
         | 
         | Further, it also means that you can trust your peers when you
         | want. One default behaviour is that if you do NOT follow a feed
         | A, and feeds B and C, who you do follow, each block A, your
         | client will not _by default_ replicate A 's messages and thus
         | you won't see them. Of course, if you unfollow B and C, or if
         | you choose to explicitly follow A, then you'd see their content
         | again. That's what I would understand by "close moderation"
         | anyhow.
        
           | andai wrote:
           | Censorship by osmosis?
        
             | black_puppydog wrote:
             | If you follow people you don't trust to understand these
             | mechanisms, and wield them accordingly, then maybe. But IF
             | you understand how this works, the client will never
             | prevent you from reading something you would want. And it's
             | hard-if-not-impossible to prevent the client from fetching
             | a specific feed. So in that sense, no, not censorship.
             | 
             | It is good practice on SSB though to make a comment on why
             | you block a feed. There are many reasons, from NSFW content
             | to actual harassment to simply spammyness being an issue
             | when you replicate the entire feed onto a mobile device.
             | 
             | Of course, that practice is not enforced by technical
             | means. But it is still quite common. And in that case you
             | actually get a notification.
        
             | grey_earthling wrote:
             | Depends what you mean by "censorship".
             | 
             | It's free listening -- you have the right to choose whom
             | you listen to.
        
       | kitotik wrote:
       | One of the cool features of SSB is making actual P2P a first-
       | class feature. It works just as well on an isolated private adhoc
       | network as it does over the web.
       | 
       | I wish more dencentralized/federated services operated this way.
        
         | vlmutolo wrote:
         | Matrix is making p2p a first-class feature, and how they're
         | doing it is pretty simple. They're just embedding a
         | "homeserver" right onto the user device alongside the client.
         | 
         | With the new fast homeserver efforts, like Dendrite and
         | Conduit, this suddenly becomes feasible.
        
           | jlkuester7 wrote:
           | Just as a reference for anyone else like me who was not
           | familiar with this effort:
           | https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix
        
       | VectorLock wrote:
       | I always thought this would be really fun to run over ham radio.
        
       | iuguy wrote:
       | This really isn't a good space for most of the people here on HN.
       | SSB is very much a work in progress. When I first started trying
       | to use the Patchwork client, lots of SSB Pubs were down. It took
       | 3 days to get to a point where I could see people.
       | 
       | While censorship isn't directly possible, it's not really in the
       | kind of state suitable for lots of people currently departing
       | existing social networks and looking for something new.
       | 
       | I'm not saying there isn't potential. Even for the average HN
       | user it's possibly ready to try but not yet ready for mainstream
       | use.
        
       | dash2 wrote:
       | It's kind of funny to think that decentralised apps, built by
       | idealistic Silicon Valley hackers, now have a potential core
       | audience among extreme MAGA types.
        
         | gfodor wrote:
         | I think a lot of the dweb people first got interested in this
         | area because they were on BBSes and so on sharing stuff like
         | the anarchist's cookbook at risk of getting a visit by the FBI
         | and used to think information wanted to be free.
         | 
         | Now they're adults, and have kept their interest in dweb
         | technologies, but have come to see "dangerous speech" as a huge
         | problem, and are waking up to the realization that their
         | technical interests and goals would enable these kinds of
         | things. And they're not happy about it, or at the very least
         | are experiencing cognitive dissonance. But that was always the
         | case, and for many, they were the unsavory people in their
         | youth that the older folks were saying were participating in
         | dangerous rhetoric and ought to be silenced or investigated,
         | just like they are saying now about people who are saying
         | things adjacent to things which are illegal.
         | 
         | At the very least we should seek consistency. If you support
         | decentralized technology for speech, you should be happy with
         | the net benefits and net harms. The alternative is the status
         | quo. Arguably the spirit of the internet was not to have what
         | we have now.
        
           | cameldrv wrote:
           | I agree that the BBS tradition of G-files plays into this,
           | but those were very different times. The people downloading
           | this sort of stuff were almost exclusively kids who got a
           | thrill out of possessing forbidden knowledge, but aside from
           | setting off a smoke bomb at an abandoned quarry or something,
           | nothing ever came of it. The near mainstream culture of
           | prepping and guns and conspiracy is far different than it was
           | back then.
           | 
           | I still think that there is a positive place for DWeb
           | technologies, but that place is specifically to enable more
           | truly free speech. A lot of what got us into this mess is
           | that speech on social media is not truly free. The only
           | speech that is allowed/promoted on those platforms is that
           | which appeals to base instincts, because it is that speech
           | that drives revenue for the platforms. What we're allowed to
           | say, and have heard, should not depend on what is most
           | profitable for a few companies.
        
             | gfodor wrote:
             | The problem with your first point is that however true it
             | may be, it doesn't provide a good mental framework for
             | creating values that are universally applicable. The
             | lessons of fearing an FBI visit for just sharing text files
             | was correct: being free to speak and not fear oppression
             | due to not what you say but what it _implies_ is what
             | freedom of speech is. It's quite uncontroversial to say
             | that people who explicitly advocate specific violence are
             | breaking the just laws around that and should be
             | suppressed. The controversy is around what speech adjacent
             | to that is not just permissible, but if it's just to jump
             | to conclusions about a person's motives or intentions and
             | act on them in the absence of illegal speech.
        
           | konjin wrote:
           | You will find that the people who were on the unsavoury bbs
           | are the people who are against censorship today.
           | 
           | Out of the half dozen people I know from that period in my
           | life (2000-2006) not one has had a kind thing to say about
           | facebook, google or twitter since 2010. Those firms are the
           | lame dinosaur stuck in a tar pit that we made fun of
           | Microsoft for being in the 00s.
           | 
           | It's the people who called us nerds and made high school hell
           | for us that somehow ended up in hr at tech co and are now
           | setting policy there.
        
             | gfodor wrote:
             | That may be a more valid perspective, but I don't think
             | these are homogeneous groups. I will say it's been
             | surprising and disappointing to see people who have been
             | railing against tech company centralized power for years,
             | it turns out their big issue is more when that power is not
             | directed in a direction they like.
        
               | konjin wrote:
               | > I will say it's been surprising and disappointing to
               | see people who have been railing against tech company
               | centralized power for years, it turns out their big issue
               | is more when that power is not directed in a direction
               | they like.
               | 
               | What else can you do?
               | 
               | Saying that tech co is wrong today is as much career
               | suicide as saying that the US deserved 9/11 was in 2002.
               | I even had one guy tell me he is going full
               | accelerationist on his main twitter because the http
               | based internet is a dead end and the more unusable it
               | becomes the sooner we will get something better.
        
           | electriclove wrote:
           | I agree with your first paragraph but not the rest. We still
           | feel information should be free and decentralized technology
           | is the future.
        
             | gfodor wrote:
             | I'm not saying all dweb people feel this way, I'm in the
             | other camp myself. I'm saying part of the dynamic going on
             | includes a subset of people who forgot that these aren't
             | some global good, they will create both good and harm, like
             | anything else.
        
           | newacct583 wrote:
           | You're making a false equivalence.[1] The "dweb" people were
           | indeed merely anarchic and irresponsible. The deeper,
           | conspiracy-minded parts of the MAGA community are verifiably
           | dangerous. They said for weeks that a storm is coming, that
           | they were going to take washington, that congress had to be
           | stopped, that the vice president should be executed, etc...
           | 
           | And then on Wednesday they made the attempt.
           | 
           | Comments like yours are predicated on this idea that speech
           | itself can only ever be merely "irresponsible". But... the
           | world isn't like that. If you spend years making "jokes"
           | about insurrection, you eventually find someone attacking
           | congress.
           | 
           | [1] Edit to answer the question below: you are falsely
           | equating harmless anarchic geeks of the 80's and 90's with
           | violent terrorists. It's not appropriate to manage these
           | communities using the same tools.
        
             | gfodor wrote:
             | I have no idea what equivalence you're accusing me of, you
             | seem to have made up a whole story about what I am saying
             | that isn't there.
             | 
             | Edit: OK, I'm not making that equivalence. My use of the
             | word "adjacent" was deliberate and intentional. That's the
             | point of this whole debate.
        
             | IanDrake wrote:
             | I think this is overplayed at this point. You must concede
             | one of only two possibilities.
             | 
             | 1) The capitol building has all along been an easy soft
             | target that could have been infiltrated by a small
             | contingent of terrorist.
             | 
             | 2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to
             | happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they
             | tried.
             | 
             | Neither option is a good look for our country.
             | 
             | Now compound that with using this event as a popular excuse
             | to restrict free speech, when the correct reaction should
             | be to improve security at the capitol for any enemy.
             | 
             | If you think this goes away becuse big tech takes even
             | moderate voices down, you don't understand what's going on.
        
               | skinkestek wrote:
               | Other explanation:
               | 
               | Republicans have mostly posted online, rallied with Trump
               | etc while BLM and friends has been torching cities,
               | looting etc.
               | 
               | Basically the police weren't expecting anything near this
               | from this crowd and it took them by surprise.
               | 
               | Disgusting anyways.
        
               | vmh1928 wrote:
               | The white supremacists and other violent right wing
               | groups (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, etc.,) had been
               | planning for a while. In plain view of anyone paying
               | attention. There was plenty of warning. So, the fact that
               | no preparation beyond the waist high barriers was done is
               | surprising, no?
               | https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-
               | planned-f...
               | 
               | https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/trump
               | -ri...
        
               | IanDrake wrote:
               | Yes, it was clear security was needed. But this wasn't
               | any of those groups.
        
               | flippinburgers wrote:
               | I dont see reason for people to downvote you: I find it
               | exceptionally hard to believe that the capital building
               | does not have a proper response to a small group of
               | people trying to storm the building.
               | 
               | Here is my theory: the "coup" was such an utter non-
               | threat that those in charge did not want to give an ounce
               | of evidence regarding how they could respond in order to
               | prevent legitimately threatening bad actors from
               | understanding the possibilities.
               | 
               | The side effect of being able to move towards more
               | restricted speech is just icing on the cake.
        
               | woah wrote:
               | After seeing thousands of soldiers with machine guns in
               | full military gear with armored vehicles protecting the
               | Capital from Black Lives Matter, your statement sounds
               | ridiculous.
        
               | IanDrake wrote:
               | Perhaps a history of burning and looting might have had
               | some influence in that difference.
               | 
               | Sometimes I wonder, and serious question here, when the
               | reporter on TV stands in front of a burning building and
               | exclaims the protest is mostly peaceful, do you see the
               | building in background on fire?
               | 
               | I mean, I see the capitol building being broken into and
               | think "that needs to stop, bring in the military if
               | necessary".
        
               | watwut wrote:
               | Right wing millitias and groups have history of violence
               | last years in USA. They also talked about their plans
               | openly. It is not like the bombs they brought to capitol
               | were shock this January. It was not first bomb plan.
               | 
               | Also, in videos you see organized trained equipped men in
               | uniforms. That is absolutely something agencies are
               | expected to follow.
        
               | newacct583 wrote:
               | > Here is my theory: the "coup" was such an utter non-
               | threat that those in charge did not want to give an ounce
               | of evidence regarding how they could respond in order to
               | prevent legitimately threatening bad actors from
               | understanding the possibilities.
               | 
               | Six people died! How is that an "utter non-threat"? The
               | mental revisionism is out of control. How is it that
               | people are so unwilling to condemn the most obvious kind
               | of political violence imaginable?
        
               | gfodor wrote:
               | You can condemn it, be fearful of it, and be specific
               | with regards to the threat it presents. It presents
               | threats. I assume the specific threat the poster was
               | refuting (which I won't throw my 2c on here) is that it
               | posed a threat to materializing a new government in the
               | United States, which is typically the top of mind threat
               | when talking about coups. So citing the number of deaths
               | is neither here nor there in assessing the validity that
               | it was a legitimate threat to creating a new government
               | and ending the previous one.
        
               | IanDrake wrote:
               | I hadn't thought of that, yet I see the sense in the
               | thought.
               | 
               | However, I don't think providing adequate police presence
               | for a planned protest would have been showing your hand.
        
               | eyeball wrote:
               | "2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this
               | to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like
               | they tried."
               | 
               | seems likely that the trumpers gave that order so their
               | mob could get in
        
               | newacct583 wrote:
               | > big tech takes even moderate voices down
               | 
               | Can you cite some "moderate voices" that have been taken
               | down by big tech? They're all still up as far as I can
               | see. Trump incited an attack on congress. He got banned.
               | Parler deliberately cultivated an extreme community of
               | violent rhetoric (they really did, have you looked at
               | that site?). They got banned. Who else? Seems like only
               | people reasonably identifiable as extremists are
               | affected.
               | 
               | I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability
               | to rationalize violence. The President directed an attack
               | on Congress last Wednesday to prevent his opponent's
               | certification. And... what people really want to talk
               | about is Parler losing their hosting?
               | 
               | (Edit to note that you refused to answer the question and
               | jumped off on a WHATABOUTBLM?! tangent instead. In fact,
               | contra your hyperbole, no moderate right wing voices have
               | been censored or silenced.)
        
               | IanDrake wrote:
               | "Trump incited an attack on congress."
               | 
               | Evidence of Trump telling people to storm the capitol?
               | 
               | "I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability
               | to rationalize violence"
               | 
               | We'll, I'm right of center and I condemn it. Just like
               | I'm sure there is a history of you condemning this entire
               | year of BML and Antifa burning and looting cities across
               | the US.
               | 
               | I remember what Como said on CNN. "who said protests need
               | to be peaceful". Of course CNN is the bastion of right
               | wing extremists... Oh wait....
               | 
               | We have to condemn all political violence.
        
               | Causality1 wrote:
               | If you spend a whole year burning and looting a city and
               | the city is still there you weren't very good at it.
        
               | IanDrake wrote:
               | I haven't tried, I make things, not destroy other
               | people's things.
        
               | Causality1 wrote:
               | Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a double standard
               | at work. I recall every news outlet spending bottles of
               | ink explaining how massive BLM protests somehow weren't
               | spreading covid but now the capitol protests are. However
               | I think there's a fundamental difference between breaking
               | into a Target and looting it and attacking the capitol of
               | the United States. Of particular concern are all of the
               | side details. The detail that a threat assessment was not
               | done for this protest despite knowing about it weeks in
               | advance. The fact the police responded less strongly to
               | this attack than they did to a protest by disabled
               | veterans in wheelchairs and later took selfies with the
               | attackers. The fact that insurgents carrying blue lives
               | matter flags beat a police officer to death with a fire
               | extinguisher. The detail that the person speaking to this
               | crowd just a few hours earlier was the president of the
               | United States.
        
               | pii wrote:
               | These can both be true
        
               | IanDrake wrote:
               | Really? Can a weak man lose an arm wrestling match to a
               | stronger opponent and truly say "I let you win?"
               | 
               | Either the authorities were capable of repulsing an
               | hundred unarmed civilians or they were not.
               | 
               | I'm unclear how both can be true, but I'm open to ideas.
        
               | dougmwne wrote:
               | I worked on Capitol Hill for years. The Capitol is not a
               | soft target. Its security measures are taken very
               | seriously. Multiple agencies are responsible for its
               | protection. Multiple strategies are in play from
               | intelligence ops to deadly force. These agencies handle
               | crowd control for dozens of very large protests every
               | year. They are world experts in preventing violence,
               | terrorism, and rioting. The Capitol is the very center of
               | our government and the most powerful symbol of democracy
               | in the world.
               | 
               | Some things went very wrong. It should not have been
               | possible for a loosely organized mob to breach the
               | perimeter, let alone get inside. There must have been
               | some complicity or even permission. On the other hand,
               | some things went exactly as they should have. Lawmakers
               | were rapidly taken to safety. No VIPs were injured.
               | Bloodshed was kept to a minimum through careful
               | deescalation.
               | 
               | Overall I think we came to within inches of a major
               | tragedy. It was avoided through a mix of competence and
               | incompetence. We were lucky and we should consider
               | ourselves warned.
        
         | shp0ngle wrote:
         | Gab (the basically Nazi version of Twitter) is the biggest
         | Mastodon instance, for example.
        
           | andai wrote:
           | Why'd this guy get downvoted? Are either of these assertions
           | incorrect?
        
             | notassigned wrote:
             | Twitter is the nazi version of twitter, gab is the freedom
             | version.
        
             | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
             | It's asserted upthread that gab isn't part of the wider
             | network anymore, so that's objectively untrue, and "Nazi
             | Twitter" is subjective, but a reasonable person could
             | question it.
        
             | olah_1 wrote:
             | "Nazi" is a racial slur for a white person that doesn't
             | hate themselves or their ancestors.
        
               | shrimpx wrote:
               | "Nazi" is literally short for NAtionalsoZIalistische
               | Deutsche Arbeiterpartei.
        
               | radus wrote:
               | I can't believe I have to say this, but no, that is not
               | what "nazi" means.
        
         | toyg wrote:
         | In some ways we've come full circle: SV was enabled by defence
         | types, I bet a lot of the early work in advanced electronics
         | and decentralized communications was carried out by "square"
         | types who used "socialist" as an insult. There are still plenty
         | of traditionalist right-wingers in STEM.
        
         | loopback_device wrote:
         | Scuttlebutt wasn't built by "Silicon Valley hackers", but
         | people from New Zealand, Sweden etc.
         | 
         | Unrelated to who builds it, decentralized or self-hosted
         | platforms have been the go-to place for lots of extremist
         | groups, even before MAGA, so not sure what this comment is
         | supposed to bring to light?
        
           | woah wrote:
           | A lot of Silicon Valley hackers worked on it
        
             | jhardy54 wrote:
             | Who? I can't think of a single core contributor who lives
             | in California.
             | 
             | The vast majority don't even live in the US. I think I'm
             | the closest to SV and I'm in Portland.
        
         | mhd wrote:
         | Kind of funny? The US branch of libertarianism ain't exactly
         | left wing.
        
           | shrimpx wrote:
           | Tech libertarianism (not just US) has always leaned right,
           | toward anarcho-capitalism.
        
         | loceng wrote:
         | The goal of decentralization isn't to give a voice to people
         | inciting violence, however that is a consequence of such
         | systems when you share technology with everyone - though we
         | shouldn't fear this, we do need to actively and proactively
         | counter it at a higher layer, educating people and helping them
         | heal their closed heart and mind.
         | 
         | The goal of decentralization is to take power away from
         | companies who govern poorly or in a way we don't agree with, so
         | our data and network is mobile, so we can "vote" by leaving
         | their platform - and not buy their products or services or give
         | them our attention to monetize with ads. And then once this
         | fluid system exists with a hierarchy of good, good hearted,
         | well meaning governors - we must then focus on educating and
         | healing the population - where we won't reach them easily in
         | the digital world due to self-perpetuating filter bubbles,
         | anyone who tries to reason with them are ignored or simply
         | ban/blocked to reenforce their echo chamber.
        
           | neogodless wrote:
           | You mention educating and healing twice. Could you elaborate
           | on who "we" is, and also, _how_ we can go from where we are
           | to a place where education and healing is taking place? What
           | are the steps we should take?
        
             | loceng wrote:
             | I'm writing a slowly book on this, so there's a lot to
             | share to answer such a question; I'm also slowly planning
             | out a network of health-wellness differentiated online
             | platforms to provide practical tools for people to develop
             | their self-awareness, to gain and maintain their health.
             | 
             | We is everyone who is conscious enough and on the path of
             | good (practice of non-violence to other and self, whether
             | specifically acknowledged or not) or of healing, those who
             | are more self-aware than not, who have developed their
             | critical thinking more and less indoctrinated. There's of
             | course a huge spectrum of where people are in this
             | evolution or growth stage. Part of the challenge is
             | rallying good hearted people, rallying, organizing and
             | directing them and resources in the most efficient way
             | possible.
             | 
             | The book will be a story of my healing journey including
             | the incompetence I've encountered throughout our health
             | systems, along with sharing my proposed solutions,
             | explaining my own project plans to try to solve for those
             | problems by providing practical tools to people. I will
             | also be explaining a protocol I'm developing to help guide
             | people to develop their self-awareness, to gain and
             | maintain health, including everything from food
             | sensitivities, fasting, yoga, acupuncture, entheogens like
             | Ayahuasca, MDMA-assisted therapy, inner child regression
             | therapy, stem cell treatments/regenerative medicine, etc.
             | 
             | In short, it's all about organizing and directing resources
             | efficiently, while eliminating the waste. There are deep
             | flaws to the health systems: indoctrination, a lack of
             | multidisciplinary approach, industrial complexes who've
             | influenced the knowledge and current practices, and more.
             | The how of getting to a place where education and healing
             | is taking place is - every possible way, any entrance point
             | to direct people onto the path that they're willing to open
             | the door to. For many people they only begin to care about
             | their health after an impetus occurs. The reality is most
             | people on average aren't very awake, conscious yet, and so
             | indoctrination is easy - and then those indoctrinated are
             | "sheep" following the status quo - and so what has to
             | happen is the culture needs to shift, so then by default
             | you're following a path that's healthy and supporting
             | critical thinking and self-awareness development - which
             | will lead to gaining and maintaining health - individually,
             | community wide and globally.
        
           | tyfon wrote:
           | Inciting violence is illegal in most countries, you can still
           | prosecute people who participate in such actions with a
           | decentralised system.
           | 
           | You might not be able to remove their speech but it would
           | still have consequences (again in most countries).
           | 
           | This could even be worse for people who engage in such
           | activities since you can't remove your words in hindsight!
           | I've seen a lot of back-pedalling and removing of tweets from
           | people.
        
             | loceng wrote:
             | If you can find out who they are then certainly they could
             | be prosecuted, it's one reason I feel or think that in the
             | future I mostly only want to engage on platforms -
             | decentralized or not - that have an identity verification
             | for the accounts so any bad or unacceptable behaviour can
             | be addressed.
             | 
             | I still juggle in my head as to what kinds of behaviour
             | would be acceptable or not - things like racism, calls for
             | violence would be obvious and go through a review and
             | moderation protocol and start with temporary suspensions (a
             | time out in the corner), and after X offences, then a block
             | or limiting of function until some other remedy is met.
             | Where I wonder how much of a caring hand to impose when
             | necessary are things surrounding say bullying or perhaps
             | someone being non-critical or arguably abusive by simply
             | saying "you're stupid" or other name calling. Arguably I'd
             | want people on the platforms I engage on to be trying to
             | improve themselves, to grow, to improve their emotional
             | regulation and manage that impulse or energy that leads
             | them to calling someone stupid instead into developing a
             | deeper understanding - responding instead of reacting; or
             | realizing engaging with certain people is futile, and to
             | put their energy and passion more into the physical world
             | instead of their keyboard. I wonder how many people are
             | ready for such an environment, for that level of a safe
             | space.
        
           | camdenlock wrote:
           | > educating people and helping them heal their closed heart
           | and mind
           | 
           | > we must then focus on educating and healing the population
           | 
           | Do you not see how wrong this sounds? Who gets to create this
           | "healing" education curriculum which will "open hearts and
           | minds"?
        
             | loceng wrote:
             | You're making an assumption - you're assuming my statement
             | means there's force involved, which what I said doesn't
             | insinuate that. You can educate society by putting ads on
             | TV, as one example - which I am arguably against ads
             | because of their shallow, cheap, manipulative aspect of
             | them - but it's the status quo and perhaps an acceptable
             | bridge to use. And indeed, who determines the curriculum
             | will be the individual that wants to follow it. It has in
             | fact been historically bad when a government body states
             | something health wise as fact - such as the "Food Pyramids"
             | of what your daily diet should consist of, which still is
             | heavily influenced by food industrial complexes.
             | 
             | Another assumption you've made is there would be a singular
             | curriculum, which I never argued for either. Learning and
             | healing will be decentralized and fluid to some degree, the
             | effort must be in providing the resources for people to
             | access the healing and education, while skillfully
             | directing people through the nuances and also providing
             | whatever tools they may need to succeed at the practices
             | they will benefit from taking on, and access to diagnostics
             | that can give insight and help guide someone to help them
             | orient through problem solving.
             | 
             | We're all at different points on our path, of our
             | understanding, some further along in one area than another
             | and then you can learn from them - or teach them something
             | they're less familiar if they're interested in that moment
             | of interaction with you or what you've put out in the
             | world. In fact you want a huge amount of diversity - people
             | who explain things differently, people who have different
             | personalities - we need the diversity to be attractive to
             | diverse people. There does need to be a core protocol that
             | gets developed, evolves, and should be referenced and a
             | research methodology followed for conflicts that may
             | appear, where disagreement occurs say of one practitioner
             | calling bullshit on some claim someone else is making. One
             | of my previous family physicians, middle aged man - not
             | very healthy himself, was skeptical and didn't believe stem
             | cell treatments I had - the healing that had already
             | occurred - he was skeptical, didn't believe that it
             | actually helped and that any benefit I may be experience
             | wouldn't last; stem cell treatments 100% work for
             | regenerating/healing many tissues of the body if the doctor
             | knows what they're doing, however this is an example of a
             | disconnect between current knowledge (stem cells have been
             | being used for treatment for 25-30 years now) vs.
             | mainstream understanding; this also points to a broken,
             | stagnant system of how most doctors aren't knowledgable in
             | the latest (not talking about within the last year of
             | knowledge but it seems to take decades in some cases for
             | the knowledge to propagate to the front line).
             | 
             | One of my goals is to create a system where community
             | thrives, community which means relationship building and
             | learning through communicating, and a system where the
             | brightest stars are able to shine so more people are
             | attracted to what they have to share - and hopefully learn
             | from it - and then those students become teachers and so
             | the process continues.
             | 
             | I can see how someone can easily interpret what I said,
             | fear being invoked that this "must educate" people could be
             | akin to the CCP's "re-education camps" - however no, I'm
             | solely talking about voluntary participation - but there
             | are ways to lead people towards healing practices, ways to
             | incentivizes it, ways to make it more available, more
             | accessible.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | VectorLock wrote:
         | Remove "decentralized" and you largely described Twitter's
         | trajectory.
        
         | vmh1928 wrote:
         | In Germany the government used census data tabulated on IBM
         | punchcard equipment to find who to round up. Later, during the
         | liquidation phase of the effort each camp had punch card
         | equipment to help with maintaining the inventory of slave labor
         | skills. That's what the number on the arm was for - the primary
         | key. Copies of punched cards were sent to the central
         | administrative HQ of the camp organization for additional
         | processing and were used to identify specific skilled people
         | who needed to be moved to other camps. Authoritarians rely on
         | the stupid for the grunt work but they're not stupid themselves
         | and can exploit technology to achieve their goals.
        
           | AndrewUnmuted wrote:
           | Given their past, I found it just a little rich, that IBM so
           | publicly decried the recent "insurrection." [0]
           | 
           | [0]
           | https://twitter.com/ArvindKrishna/status/1346932293991079936
        
             | spockz wrote:
             | Well the IBM of today has little to do with the IBM of 80
             | years ago. Just like the Germany of today has little to do
             | with what happened 80 years ago and people living now are
             | not and should not be held responsible for the misdeeds of
             | previous generations.
        
               | AndrewUnmuted wrote:
               | > people living now are not and should not be held
               | responsible for the misdeeds of previous generations.
               | 
               | I'm sure we could all agree on this point.
               | 
               | However, the aspects of IBM that led to their assisting
               | the Third Reich are still very much alive at IBM today.
               | It remains in the form of their core business model of
               | assisting the world's most powerful regimes in automating
               | oppression, autocracy, and authoritarianism at a global
               | scale.
        
               | spockz wrote:
               | Okay fair point. But sadly that holds for most companies.
               | There are remarkably few of them that do not sell or
               | provide support on FOSS to big governments that in turn
               | do all kinds of nasty things. How can we change this, if
               | at all? Isn't it part of capitalism?
        
           | dash2 wrote:
           | How is this relevant to my point or the article?
        
             | vmh1928 wrote:
             | it was in response to the comment about decentralized apps
             | built by idealistic silicon valley types being used by MAGA
             | types. The point being that it might be funny to him but
             | authoritarians do have a track record of exploiting
             | technology.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ImprobableTruth wrote:
         | I think it's actually rather sad. I think there is a good
         | chance that these in my opinion very important technologies
         | will get a bad reputation because of this.
        
           | hobofan wrote:
           | You mean like the bad reputation that has been established
           | for ages that decentralized technologies are "only good for"
           | piracy, CP, etc.?
        
             | andai wrote:
             | Same with encryption, no? Also, you forgot to mention
             | terrorism.
        
               | hobofan wrote:
               | Of course this is highly subject, but I think that the
               | view of the general public is generally favorable towards
               | encryption (as it also provides privacy), and
               | governments/law enforcement agencies have again more
               | recently tried to paint it in a bad light. I think the
               | jury is still out whether that is successful, and the
               | public will adapt that opinion too.
        
         | weavie wrote:
         | I know very little about Scuttlebutt, but supposing, say an ex-
         | president decided to start using it. Would it be able to handle
         | the level of traffic this might generate?
         | 
         | I realise it's decentralised, but would that, for example, at
         | some point require every one who were to get on Scuttlebutt to
         | download on 80gb file in order to get started?
        
         | exo762 wrote:
         | Segregation is what you get when you permanently remove people
         | from platforms. Sounds almost like a truism.
        
       | tyfon wrote:
       | I see this is append only[1], so my biggest question is really if
       | you are following someone that posts illegal content like child
       | porn, is it stuck on your profile forever or can you somehow
       | remove it?
       | 
       | [1] https://ssbc.github.io/ssb-db/
        
         | nanomonkey wrote:
         | Blob storage (images and other binary media) is stored in your
         | file-system utilizing it's content addressable hash as a
         | filename. You can delete these at any time. The append only log
         | is for json messages, which will make reference to the hashes
         | of the blobs through markdown.
         | 
         | So, the message referencing the illegal content can't be
         | removed without removing the user's whole ledger, but the
         | content can be removed at any time.
        
           | tyfon wrote:
           | Ah, but that's good enough.
           | 
           | The system is interesting I was just afraid of people having
           | the ability to "brick" your account so to speak by sending
           | illegal stuff to it.
           | 
           | If I can effectively delete the other user (ledger)
           | completely from my system that would also be good :)
        
       | toxik wrote:
       | I got the app Manyverse, now what?
        
         | hjacobs wrote:
         | You need to connect with others. I think Manyverse is best used
         | with SSB rooms where you can find others (to connect/follow),
         | see https://github.com/staltz/ssb-room/blob/master/FAQ.md
         | 
         | Alternative is a Pub, but joining a Pub is not so great with
         | Manyverse as it will download a lot of content to your mobile
         | phone.
        
       | adkadskhj wrote:
       | I absolutely love the simplicity of Scuttlebutt, but the APIs and
       | (dev)user extensibility are anything but, imo. I hope for
       | continued work there.
       | 
       | As an example, i wanted to write an application on top of SSB. I
       | found it difficult to determine _how_ to achieve this though.
       | Conceptually the appendlog is stupid simple, but SSB still has
       | meaningful complexity in the secure handshake implementation.
       | While they do have libs, it mostly seemed JavaScript (NodeJS) was
       | the only meaningfully complete lib to use (where as i am on
       | Rust). I also found it difficult to determine what the network
       | would accept. If i write an app and start pushing blobs onto the
       | network, will they reject it because they're not of the same
       | type? What if my data is too big? Am i abusing the net?
       | 
       | I also had difficulty conceptualizing how to write app data in
       | SSB. It felt like i needed to abandon SQL or common application
       | interfaces for data. Having to reinvent wheels in the application
       | code because SSB-data is mostly _(i think?)_ a JSON blob store
       | felt bad.
       | 
       | Shared identities also proved to be a bit of a blocker. Since the
       | app i was writing wanted multiple devices to author data the
       | notion of a device identity came up, and at the time that didn't
       | seem well _(or at all)_ supported. I didn 't want to invent my
       | own mechanism that would later seem invalid to the community.
       | 
       | For now i decided to hold off and implement my own SSB friendly
       | data storage mechanism. Since i know the data layer of SSB is
       | simple, and SSB folks have proven it can handle Git fine (they
       | distribute their source in SSB iirc). I imagine my own data later
       | will plug into SSB without issue.
       | 
       | These aren't critiques of SSB exactly, just highlighting some
       | areas _(for anyone interested)_ where SSB is currently weak in my
       | mind. I love SSB. Even if i end up using an entirely different
       | p2p tech stack than SSB, it has changed my way of thinking on
       | this. What SSB does right is everything that i dislike about
       | IPFS. SSB is small, simple tooling. It feels like Git. Not some
       | huge complex network of IPFS nodes, but 2 people, 3 people. It
       | can work over P2P, email, floppy disk. It can be more, but it
       | also can be less. And that 's something more projects could
       | adopt.
        
         | pmayrgundter wrote:
         | Thanks for the analysis. Have you checked out Matrix? I'm
         | looking for a p2p network layer and am most attracted to it so
         | far but haven't used any of them yet
        
           | adkadskhj wrote:
           | I've been debating Matrix too! Though, i've not looked into
           | it. My hope was to make (as i mentioned) a Git-like layer for
           | my data that was in the way i wanted _(wheels reinvented
           | hah)_ , which would work over SSH/Email/etc, and then plug it
           | into a mature P2P setup. Matrix is definitely on the list of
           | P2P impls i want to look into.
           | 
           | Though so far i've never heard of anyone actually using
           | Matrix for a generic P2P backend. I'm curious what you've
           | found on Matrix for this use case?
        
             | pmayrgundter wrote:
             | Just been poking around the site really, and I dig their
             | vision. This in particular is inspiring and exactly what
             | I've been hoping for too for a long time:
             | 
             | https://matrix.org/blog/2017/04/04/opening-up-cyberspace-
             | wit...
        
         | nanomonkey wrote:
         | I agree that the nodejs implementation makes contributing and
         | using the libraries difficult. There are rust libraries being
         | worked on and incorporated into the project as we speak, so if
         | you feel like contributing, now might be a good time to look
         | back into the project.
         | 
         | Alternatively, if you're interested in a replicated datatype
         | that was written specifically for Rust, which is more compact
         | than JSON, I'd suggest looking at RON:
         | 
         | http://replicated.cc/ https://github.com/gritzko/ron
        
         | jhardy54 wrote:
         | I've wanted to write a longer blog post about this, but after a
         | few years of working on SSB I appreciate you highlighting these
         | pain points. I think everyone in the SSB maintainer community
         | feels the same way.
         | 
         | My hot take: Scuttlebutt should be something that you can
         | implement yourself in an afternoon. I've done this a few times,
         | using Python, Node.js, and Deno, but I've only implemented the
         | message type. (Not Multiserver, MuxRPC, Secret-Handshake, Box-
         | Strean, Private-Box, or any of the other protocols that are
         | associated with SSB.)
         | 
         | > It feels like Git.
         | 
         | You got it. You could express an SSB chain with Git and a pre-
         | commit hook (to verify messages), but using Git as your
         | database is even harder than learning the toy database that SSB
         | uses.
         | 
         | Various links:
         | 
         | - My SSB data expressed as a Git repository (outdated):
         | https://github.com/christianbundy/ssb-git-data
         | 
         | - My speedrun SSB implementation with SQLite, using HTTP for
         | replication: https://github.com/christianbundy/http-ssb
        
       | dgellow wrote:
       | It's also available on mobile: https://www.manyver.se/
        
       | type0 wrote:
       | Last time I looked it was half baked and not easy to use, has it
       | changed in recent years or months and can it be considered
       | practical in a way that let's say Matrix is?
        
         | cel wrote:
         | Some updates:
         | 
         | Oasis is a new frontend (alternative to the Patchwork desktop
         | app): https://github.com/fraction/oasis/
         | 
         | Manyverse continues development, including working on low-level
         | database improvements, and gossip "rooms":
         | https://www.manyver.se/blog/2021-01-update
         | 
         | Planetary (iOS app) approaches public launch:
         | https://planetary.social/
         | https://viewer.scuttlebot.io/%25kXEXGmyNyo%2BuKkcySMwghVKpvR...
        
           | olah_1 wrote:
           | Manyverse's work on room servers version 2 will be huge.
           | 
           | The rooms will function a lot more like real life buildings.
           | Some will be private like homes, some will be public like
           | libraries, others will be restricted like a club.
           | 
           | Really cool development!
        
         | jamil7 wrote:
         | It also spun up my laptops fans for minutes when syncing, I
         | don't know if thats still an issue. Cool project though and
         | there are some interesting people involved and contributing.
        
           | pluc wrote:
           | That's like running a blockchain on your laptop - it first
           | has to get the entire (in some cases, relevant) history so
           | that it can act as a peer.
        
           | hjacobs wrote:
           | Yes, the initial syncing and indexing can take a moment. I
           | would recommend joining a single Pub or SSB room [1] to find
           | people and grow your network organically. The large Pubs [2]
           | have a lot of content to download and also follow bots (which
           | you would have to block).
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/staltz/ssb-room/blob/master/FAQ.md [2]
           | https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server/wiki/Pub-Servers
        
         | newscracker wrote:
         | I have similar questions too. It seemed as if it was tied to a
         | single device and transferring information from one to another
         | also seemed cumbersome.
        
           | hobofan wrote:
           | Yes[0]. AFAIK fully transferring an identity from one device
           | to the next should not be a problem. The problem is more that
           | updating the feed from multiple devices would create
           | diverging feeds.
           | 
           | [0]: https://github.com/ssbc/handbook.scuttlebutt.nz/blob/mas
           | ter/...
        
             | grey_earthling wrote:
             | It's common for one person to have multiple
             | feeds/identities, so this is less of a problem than you
             | might expect.
             | 
             | There's no structured way to indicate that 2 feeds are the
             | same person (aka #sameAs), but you can easily link to the
             | other feed and just say "this is also me" (because your
             | audience is a bunch of humans that mostly pass the Turing
             | test).
             | 
             | Because of this, we get the bonus feature that you can
             | easily follow a different set of feeds on different devices
             | -- e.g. perhaps on your phone you want feeds you're less
             | likely to reply to, because you prefer typing on a physical
             | keyboard.
        
         | crossroadsguy wrote:
         | Every time I try it, it reminds me of Matrix. So near, yet so
         | far.
        
       | StavrosK wrote:
       | How do I get started with SSB? I've downloaded Manyverse probably
       | six times now, and then got blocked on "find something to join
       | somewhere, good luck!".
       | 
       | Does anyone have a community? Otherwise I'll make one for HN.
       | 
       | EDIT: Join me:
       | 
       | hnpub.stavros.io:38213:@PJtGRbz9IwtobscVq+i4a8y0zZBc2j220D5jsoyKg
       | aw=.ed25519~OezW1tkZu9dX/x7uhDLL/7m5xUosz68NeoqfDjhnYXQ=
        
         | Groxx wrote:
         | Historically, I got sizable streams of posts by joining a
         | couple pubs. None of which are _offered_ in Manyverse, for good
         | or bad. (definitely un-ideal for first-time users, but it does
         | at least avoid overloading or over-promoting some)
         | 
         | The "get started" docs on the website do walk you through it
         | though, e.g. https://scuttlebutt.nz/get-started/#step-3-get-
         | connected -> this smallish list of pubs:
         | https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server/wiki/Pub-Servers
         | 
         | ---
         | 
         | I did join yours via Manyverse, but tbh I'm surprised that
         | viewing your pub doesn't show member join/leaves, and I haven't
         | seen any posts yet (I've made one). Have you made any? Could it
         | be having problems perhaps?
         | 
         | (edit: and shortly after posting this, now I see some stuff,
         | after around 45m. So my initial minorish-complaint about
         | Manyverse from a year or so ago is still around: it doesn't
         | tell you what it's doing. Patchwork was much better about that,
         | though it kinda looked like constant thrashing.)
        
           | StavrosK wrote:
           | I agree with you, I don't really understand what Manyverse is
           | doing. I see posts, but I don't know if they come from the
           | pub, or from following someone directly, or what. I see four
           | posts that I think are from the pub, but if you don't see
           | them they might not be. I also see someone's stream, and I'm
           | not sure why...
           | 
           | All in all, it's very confusing.
        
             | Groxx wrote:
             | Yep. It's intentionally a bit of a minimal client, to make
             | things more mobile friendly, and... it sorta works out. If
             | you want to see more detail and higher quality, definitely
             | try Patchwork.
             | 
             | For manyverse in particular: if it doesn't show something
             | you think it should, or it says it's indexing, give it a
             | while. Like, a lot of while. After the database got a bit
             | large and something got confused and caused a rebuild, it
             | took over 30 minutes to recover. But it does actually
             | recover.
        
               | StavrosK wrote:
               | Thanks for the info, I'll try Patchwork for now to get a
               | better sense of how it works.
        
       | merricksb wrote:
       | Past related discussions for those curious:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22915460 (2020)
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22909984 (2020)
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20828356 (2019)
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16877603 (2018)
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16273096 (2018)
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14050049 (2017)
       | 
       | And other smaller ones over the years...
       | 
       | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
        
       | that_guy_iain wrote:
       | That landing page needs a text TL;DR; explaination and not just a
       | video explaination.
        
         | black_puppydog wrote:
         | Luckily this is HN and someone wrote one already:
         | 
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25715385
        
         | pluc wrote:
         | Make a goddamn effort
        
           | johnnyfaehell wrote:
           | Make a goddamn effort to figure out why someone's project is
           | worth time investigating? Literally, that landing page has a
           | video and links to articles. I don't want to spend minutes
           | watching an ad. I went to the about page and read the info I
           | should have read next to the video and understood what was
           | what in 10 seconds.
           | 
           | Expecting people to make an effort to find out if a
           | product/project is useful to them is basically asking not to
           | have as many users. Basically, you just wasted your time
           | building the product.
        
             | pluc wrote:
             | If you're relying on Marketing to tell you what's worth
             | your time then you must be one sad sad person.
             | 
             | Read the documentation, if you're here you're pretending to
             | be a technical person. Be a technical person.
        
               | johnnyfaehell wrote:
               | Some of us value our time. And this is not a techincal
               | project it's an end user project. So as an end user I
               | want to know quickly if it's worth my time. Even on a
               | techincal project I want to know a rough overview within
               | a minute or so of reading. Marketing is all about giving
               | people the info they need fast. Marketing is about
               | selling the benefits and telling of the pains it solves.
               | If you're unable to do that for your project, why did you
               | build it?
               | 
               | And I think the person who spends their time reading
               | techincal documentation to decide if a social network is
               | worth using is probably sadder than the person who goes
               | and reads the about page. Not got much else to do?
        
       | joshuakelly wrote:
       | SSB is such a wonderful idea. There's no global timeline -- just
       | archipelagos. It assumes that network heterogeny is the default,
       | and is transmission layer agnostic. Breakages will occur. Maybe
       | you're living on a catamaran in the South Pacific and you only
       | have connectivity once a month -- SSB will work even then.
       | 
       | Your own timeline is a sigchain -- a sequenced list of signed
       | messages. You replicate the content in your network (2 hops
       | away). Bridges between communities can be built or burned. Many
       | islands can exist without needing to erase the others from even
       | existing -- mutual separation is possible. Consensus is not
       | necessary.
       | 
       | Is global network culture still possible? If it is, in the midst
       | of the national internets we now live inside of, I suspect it
       | will look something like this. A little different from what we
       | were promised, but maybe a little better too.
        
         | lgierth wrote:
         | Founder actually lives on a boat in NZ
        
           | joshuakelly wrote:
           | That's where that reference comes from of course :)
        
             | sytse wrote:
             | And maybe also SSB, which also stands for Single Side Band
             | and is a way to get data over marine radio.
        
         | instakill wrote:
         | Do you have links to expounded, introductory writing? I'd love
         | to look into this type of architecture and play around with
         | other domains.
        
           | joshuakelly wrote:
           | For a look at SSB in particular, I would strong recommend the
           | protocol guide -- it explains the core ideas quite well,
           | which I think are broadly applicable to future networks of
           | this pattern: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-
           | guide/
        
         | Scoundreller wrote:
         | > Is global network culture still possible?
         | 
         | I'm thinking the next constellation of LEO satellites will
         | cover the planet with high-latency (e.g.: 90 minutes) and high-
         | bandwidth connections. If someone can fulfill your request in
         | your footprint, you'll have low-latency bandwidth for a few
         | minutes. Otherwise, someone else in the shell will send it up
         | later once the satellite is in your footprint and get it down
         | to you later once you're back in the footprint.
         | 
         | All you need to do is send a request to someone else in your
         | shell and they'll upload it the next time the satellite passes.
         | 
         | Probably some centralized or decentralized crypto payment to
         | make it all happen. Still need cheaper phased-beam arrays
         | though.
        
       | jwalton wrote:
       | I really like the idea of Scuttlebutt. I think there are a couple
       | of things it needs on top of what it already has;
       | 
       | Right now, your public key is who you are, which I think is a
       | mistake. It's easy to imagine a world where we have a "web of
       | trust" solution here, where you can scan someone's public key
       | from a QR code straight off their phone, and then sign said key
       | so other people who trust you know that the key is legit. Then
       | you could use that key to sign future keys, allowing easy key
       | rotation. It would also be easy to post a message signed with
       | your private key that revokes a key and all messages it has
       | authored/all keys it has signed.
       | 
       | I also think there needs to be multiple transports for posting
       | content - if I want to send a message to my buddy Dan, I should
       | be able to send it directly to him if he's online. If he isn't,
       | though, I should be able to let other users whom we both know
       | grab a copy to pass on to him later, or maybe have a "deaddrop"
       | server or a "pub" where I can stash messages and have them get
       | picked up by someone else later.
       | 
       | It needs a top-notch client, too. Something to compete with
       | Facebook and Twitter.
       | 
       | But it's a very promising start, and it's the way this needs to
       | go if we're ever going to escape the surveillance players in this
       | industry - we need a social network that's truly distributed,
       | based on open standards that anyone can implement.
        
         | Groxx wrote:
         | > _I also think there needs to be multiple transports for
         | posting content - if I want to send a message to my buddy Dan,
         | I should be able to send it directly to him if he 's online. If
         | he isn't, though, I should be able to let other users whom we
         | both know grab a copy to pass on to him later, or maybe have a
         | "deaddrop" server or a "pub" where I can stash messages and
         | have them get picked up by someone else later._
         | 
         | Scuttlebutt is built around enabling this as a (the?) primary
         | feature. It's not just "supported", the entire ecosystem does
         | this by design. It even calls that kind of server "pubs"
         | (they're normal peers, they just auto-follow anyone who asks).
        
       | robertlagrant wrote:
       | I clicked get started and nothing happened. Pretty pictures on
       | the website, though.
        
         | IvanSologub wrote:
         | This is an eternal problem for radical crypto enthusiasts.
        
       | faeyanpiraat wrote:
       | I would rather not download any executables to test this out.
       | 
       | Is this a web app packaged into an app?
       | 
       | Then why not simply allow me to open it in my browser?
        
         | hjacobs wrote:
         | The Oasis SSB client [1] is a webapp which you open in the
         | browser. Oasis (like nearly all SSB clients) is a JavaScript
         | package which you can install via npm.
         | 
         | [1] https://github.com/fraction/oasis
        
         | neartheplain wrote:
         | On the topic of untrusted executables, is there a decent GUI to
         | run arbitrary programs inside the MacOS app sandbox? Last I
         | checked, users still had to fiddle with config files and
         | command-line incantations, but at least it was possible:
         | 
         | https://paolozaino.wordpress.com/2015/08/04/how-to-run-your-...
        
         | kseistrup wrote:
         | There is Feedless [?] https://feedless.social/
         | 
         | However, it has some serious limitations compared to e.g.
         | Oasis. One of them is that it limits messages to 140
         | characters, where all other apps I know of accept up to 8192
         | characters (including metadata).
        
         | arj wrote:
         | There is a browser based demo you can try out at:
         | https://between-two-worlds.dk/.
         | 
         | It's the latest build of https://github.com/arj03/ssb-browser-
         | demo.
         | 
         | If you need an id to follow to get some data, you can try
         | following
         | @6CAxOI3f+LUOVrbAl0IemqiS7ATpQvr9Mdw9LC4+Uv0=.ed25519. You need
         | to manually add either a room or a pub under connections first.
        
         | madushan1000 wrote:
         | It's p2p, no webapps.
        
         | black_puppydog wrote:
         | I think this comment comes closest to the "correct" answer
         | here:
         | 
         | > It's p2p, no webapps.
         | 
         | That is to say, this is not a "service" that you use, so there
         | is no scuttlebutt.com where you just sign up. The software
         | running the replication, and the storage backing it, will be
         | local. Insofar you will always eventually _want_ to run this
         | locally.
         | 
         | Now, _of course_ some fine folks are working around that with
         | modern web tech (see @arj 's sibling comment) but the whole
         | idea of this project is that you will locally control your
         | data.
        
       | umvi wrote:
       | So is this basically like YikYak?
        
         | pantalaimon wrote:
         | not at all - doesn't YikYak rely on a central server?
        
       | sor1nmarkov wrote:
       | @realdonaldtrump can install it on Hilary's mail servers
        
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