[HN Gopher] Let's build a decentralized social network together ...
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Let's build a decentralized social network together with Logseq
Author : bribri
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-06-13 06:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (briansunter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (briansunter.com)
| velcrovan wrote:
| There are so many ways to build decentralized social networks.
| It's a 1000% solved problem at this point. They never get
| traction because they always require more learning and work than
| 99% of people are willing or able to fit into their lives. You
| jump through more hoops to reach fewer people.
| rektide wrote:
| This isn't a conventional social network. This is a knowledge-
| graph system, building conventions to link to other knowledge-
| graph systems.
|
| This effort is to enhance an already existing cherished
| information system, to make it more expressive, and to seed
| some very basic interconnectivity which was not possible.
| Logseq is a wonderful digital garden[1], a personal place
| people tend, and I don't think anyone in this space would tell
| you this is a solved problem, that we are done exploring &
| understanding how to do this knowledgebase work, how to digital
| garden.
|
| These personal-knowledgebases are rich & personal platforms.
| But so far, they have largely been alone & isolated. Different
| patches. FedWiki[2] is perhaps the lone counter-example, of an
| interconnected knowledgebase, but it has it's limitations with
| what it is & how it interconnects. Taking another best-of-breed
| product, like Logseq, and layering in some minimal, small
| conventions for how to define interconnect, how to make a
| blogroll: it seems pure & un-objectionable to me.
|
| [1] https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history
|
| [2] http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors
| TuringTest wrote:
| That's right. What the current batch of social networks are
| missing is good tools for knowledge consolidation; there are
| no tools more complex than the single thread intermixed with
| comments.
|
| A knowledge graph would work more as a Wikipedia of personal
| projects and topics of interest, with the possibility to
| build special data visualizations on top of it. For example,
| this could be the perfect medium for building distributed
| discourse aggregators of opinions and rational debates, like
| Kialo[1] and Parlia[2] but without a single company
| controlling the content. Social networks transform these
| debates into confrontations, while a structured knowledge
| tool could create a structured knowledge base from this kind
| of exalted conflicting positions.
|
| [1] https://www.kialo.com/
|
| [2] https://www.parlia.com/
| bribri wrote:
| I love the ability to link to individual blocks for
| discussions in logseq
|
| https://briansunter.com/graph/#/page/62a6cc7b-e921-4890-813
| a...
| bribri wrote:
| Nice! I couldn't have said it better myself. I did use a
| linkbaity title like "Decentralized social network" to get
| people interested. It's more of a simple link ring.
|
| But since profiles are public queryable structured static
| data, you can do a lot more with it in the future.
| pvorb wrote:
| Building a new decentralized social network reminds me of
| building yet another Linux desktop distribution. While you
| might find a niche, you'll never get enough traction to compete
| with the big players, being Android and Windows for desktops
| and Facebook, Twitter and others for social networks.
| bribri wrote:
| I'm also tweeting my logseq graph pages here
| https://twitter.com/Bsunter and curating those tweets in a
| newsletter here, if anyone is interested in following my "feed"
| of my public logseq learning experiments
| https://www.getrevue.co/profile/bsunter/issues/weekly-newsle...
|
| If anyone sets this up definitely contact me on twitter so I can
| add you to my following list.
| dafty4 wrote:
| Cool! Can I easily post self-hosted photos? :)
| bribri wrote:
| Yup its easy to add an image in the logseq editor, and have the
| image included in the bundle where you self host it.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Why not use twtxt? It looks like you're inventing a similar
| protocol here.
| nominusllc wrote:
| Dear HN: Please stop making this comment, or phrase it
| differently. People are allowed to be different and things are
| allowed to exist without being practical.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Please stop making comments asking people not to make
| comments whose intent you can't discern.
|
| Either: The author hasn't heard of twtxt, and might be
| intrigued at the possibility of compatibility, or they have
| heard of it and may have reasons for being different which
| may add to the discussion.
|
| Your comment assumes the worst intent (I never said or
| suggested differences shouldn't be allowed) and deadends good
| discussion.
| synctext wrote:
| All these attempts are not as easy to use as the dominant
| network. Friction-free is very hard. Are the masses going to
| switch purely for privacy preservation?
|
| See our Internet-deployed social network from 13 years ago.
| Without any server and no gatekeepers. Its fully self-
| organising. It lacks polish. You simply can not compete against
| the thousands of engineers which polish the dominant social
| network.
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221015322_A_Gossip-...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| So twtxt is a text protocol for sharing social media posts
| which can be shared by hosting a plaintext file. I bring it
| up because it's extremely close to what the author proposed.
| TuringTest wrote:
| It doesn't look that close; the model of interaction seems
| to be completely different. twtxt is a command line tool
| with flat files and no obvious way of linking content, and
| logseq is an outliner with hierarchical files and
| bidirectional links created with wiki-like syntax.
|
| Someone without advanced knowledge of the command line
| would not know how to start using twtxt, while using logseq
| is as simple as any plain text editor.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Twtxt is more of a sharing standard that can be
| statically hosted rather than a command line tool:
| Yarn.social, for instance, is a web app that uses Twtxt
| format for social microblogging.
| rektide wrote:
| What do you see about twtxt that seems similar to you?
|
| Logseq doesn't have "posts" as such, nor is there a
| protocol here for sharing. There's nothing graph related in
| twtxt. It also doesn't integrate with the personal
| knowledgebase people are already using. I'm not sure why
| twtxt would come to mind as similar.
| bribri wrote:
| Definitely some good ideas in here and similar ideas of just
| hosting flat data on the internet with a spec.
|
| https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html
|
| Since everything is just data, if you wanted to write a logseq
| query to transform and export your graph in this format to be
| compatible with their CLI, you could (especially with the new
| graph as api tools)
|
| This is the most similar project I've seen to what I'm thinking
| https://anagora.org/agora-editor
| cm42 wrote:
| I've been playing with Logseq for something similar - using the
| Zotero integration to share research notes (and sometimes blog).
| The attributes and queries are super clever, too.
|
| I'm not sure it'll ever replace Facebook/Twitter/et al, but it is
| nice to have a semi-private network of people who can have grown-
| up discussions, or express thoughts deeper, or with more nuance,
| than 100-some characters.
|
| There were only a few Facebook groups that I ever got any value
| out of, which were mostly small professional groups that banned
| political bickering. My mental health has definitely improved by
| going back to old-school forums, and I've noticed a lot of others
| doing the same over the past year or so - especially with Lemmy,
| which is maybe even a bit easier to set up.
| bribri wrote:
| Another thing I like a about logseq is you can link and refer
| to individual sentences, which makes discussion easier.
|
| So it's good for the POSSE philosophy, in which you're writing
| about it on your site and sharing/commenting it on social
| media.
|
| https://briansunter.com/graph/#/page/62a6cc7b-e921-4890-813a...
| jerojero wrote:
| I think we need to see more implementations of the already
| existing federated protocols. We need that _one_ app that will
| truly explode and bring the fediverse to the masses. Mastodon is
| okay but it 's just a microblogging platform; it's not really too
| innovative.
| qabqabaca wrote:
| Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/
| Xeoncross wrote:
| I would agree, but encryption (let alone end-to-end) is totally
| absent from specs like https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/. The
| word isn't even mentioned once.
|
| I don't just want federation, I want to know that
| my/friend/family's information (or at least private messages)
| is private because I know they won't "self host".
| nominusllc wrote:
| Maybe the solution, instead, is to create a simple browser
| plugin that accepts ciphertext and keys and decrypts blobs of
| text. It's ugly, but you could render it in place with some
| creative tagging of the blobs.
|
| 1. define a schema for the blob. recipient pubkey, signature,
| hash, etc
|
| 2. define a delineator or symbol of some sort to encapsulate
| the serialized blob so our plugin recognizes it
|
| 3. parse blob into readable text for the user
|
| 4. provide interface to manage/create keys/messages and load
| the blob to the clipboard for users to paste into whatever.
|
| voila. please hold your applause, I'm going to need one of
| you to MVP this by the end of the week.
| system16 wrote:
| I feel like Mastodon's standout feature is also its biggest
| drawback when it comes to adoption. The vast majority of end-
| users don't understand or care to understand the need for
| different instances or which fediverse they should join, nor do
| they have interest in setting up their own.
| WJW wrote:
| If the future popularity of the fediverse depends on a killer
| app instead of the various benefits of federation then it's
| doomed. As soon as such a killer app appears, a non-federated
| competitor could copy the idea and out-compete the fediverse
| version because it is not hamstrung by having to stick to the
| (inherently slow-moving) fediverse standards.
|
| A similar thing happened to IRC, which _still_ lacks heavily
| used features that other chat apps like discord and slack have
| had for years and years. Simlarly, end-to-end encryption for
| emails is unlikely to ever become a thing despite the privacy
| advantages.
| georgyo wrote:
| IRC is an interesting example to use here.
|
| IRC isn't and never was federated. It is a centralized chat
| protocol where you connect to isolated networks.
|
| Similarly Matrix is making massively huge gains in the chat
| space and is federated. It's not taking over slack or discord
| yet, but is gaining features and ground.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Mastodon is okay but it's just a microblogging platform
|
| Why would we a social network to be anything other than a
| microblogging platform? In case it lacks some conveniences you
| would like it to have, why not just add them as optional
| features?
| bribri wrote:
| Hey Everyone! Really appreciate this discussion. Here's some
| extra context.
|
| Logseq is an open source notetaking app (similar to Roam) that
| has a feature where you can publish your notes as a static site.
|
| It has some advanced features where you can attach data to pages
| and bullet points (like some basic bio info, like name, site,
| twitter, tags) that you can query.
|
| There are some public graphs out there, but they're hard to find
| and figure out who made them. The main goal is just to create a
| "link ring" where we can find each other.
|
| This spec suggests a standard page on each graph called [[logseq-
| social/profile]]
|
| That way, when you find a public graph, you can go there to find
| out about its author and who they follow. You can download that
| page to your notes, and a simple logseq query makes the bio
| information of each user you save show up on your follower list.
|
| The idea is really simple, just agreeing on a convention for a
| "profile" page on logseq that has some standard tags.
|
| Logseq has a really powerful plugin system that can have a whole
| react app in it, so down the line you could make a UI for
| friending, browsing, etc when more people have public graphs.
|
| Plus, there's now tooling to host your logseq notes as a
| programmatic api. So having some metadata standards opens up some
| interesting possibilities.
|
| https://github.com/logseq/nbb-logseq/tree/main/examples/fly-...
|
| There's lots of other stuff out there like this, but since this
| is just public static data there's hopefully a way to make it
| interoperable with existing solutions. If anyone knows of a good
| existing "bio" or link ring schema, I would be interested in
| taking a look.
|
| I have other fun ideas like hosting graphs on IPFS, or even some
| day having every logseq bullet point block be an immutable record
| on ipfs for use by everyone.
|
| Another example out there is agora, which seems to be somewhat
| compatible with markdown flat files that logseq uses
| https://anagora.org/agora-editor
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Hey Brian! Long time no see old friend!
|
| Love the broad direction, and I'm interested in digging into
| this area myself (decentralized social networks and
| applications). Recently been studying Lens Protocol a bit
| (https://lens.xyz/) which has a social graph system that
| records to the blockchain (Polygon in this case). Check that
| out and let me know what you think of it.
|
| I like the idea of hosting logseq graphs on IPFS. It does seem
| that with other decentralized networks I've looked at, that
| scaling up to Facebook level would not be practical as the size
| of the graph grows. It almost seems like you have to sacrifice
| decentralization for a centralized database. Do you think
| logseq would perform on that scale or would it be limited to
| niche social networks?
|
| Either way, signed up for the newsletter, looking forward to
| following your progress on this! And always down for a chat
| with an old friend!
| bribri wrote:
| Hey Chris! It's definitely an area I'm interested in. The
| super decentralized IPFS blocks is a little bit of a pipe
| dream, but it seems like it could work in theory.
|
| I like logseq because the "primitive" where they
| store/organize the data called a "block" which is pretty well
| thought out. It's just an object with content and a pointer
| to a parent. Seems like you could content hash it and store
| it on ipfs forever. Haven't fully thought out what that would
| look like yet though. It could be developed as a plugin for
| logseq. Seems like it could scale, lots of other problems
| like search though. {:block/uuid #uuid
| "62a8318e-ff36-4f97-9ef5-f19c3f3041bf", :block/left
| {:db/id 67152}, :block/format :markdown,
| :block/content "Users create a bio under a page called
| `[[logseq-social/profile]]`", :db/id 67144,
| :block/path-refs [{:db/id 20}], :block/parent
| {:db/id 67160}, :block/unordered true,
| :block/page {:db/id 20}}
|
| https://github.com/logseq/logseq/blob/d0755ef161eb826e452b92.
| ..
|
| The other dapp "primitive" I'm interested in is dChat. Seems
| like there could be some overlap between blocks and chat
| built on the same primitive.
|
| For now, I'm mostly focused on getting technical users to
| just make their own personal sites since it's really easy
| with logseq and netlify.
|
| I'm not a dapp expert at all (though I do host my traditional
| static site on ipfs https://gateway.pinata.cloud/ipfs/QmRDPhz
| AjBdBovPhhPKt4tanFp...)
|
| Happy to hear from you and I'll definitely look into the lens
| protocol!
| onebot wrote:
| I very much think this is a pragmatic approach. I also truly wish
| for a LinkedIn and Facebook without a single corporate entity
| profiting in the middle (decentralized/web3). However, for this
| to ever truly work, the UX just has to be heads and shoulders
| above this approach, imo.
| bribri wrote:
| Logseq has a super powerful plugin system that can have whole
| react apps in it.
|
| Once people get set up with public profiles, a plugin could be
| built to make it easier to create profiles, friends, browse,
| etc. Just some simple buttons and fields to start.
| rektide wrote:
| Dont underestimate the value of a community of enthusiastic
| avid folk! This can work & do great things & have amazing value
| & be awesome, without having to scale to a billion people.
|
| I agree a lot that this is a super pragmatic approach. Loqseq
| users are, by and large, enthusiasts, who already are willing
| to go far. Giving them some conventions for how to express
| social metadata, and then letting the existing graph based
| product do it's thing, building some books of queries people
| can use: it seems like a wonderful organic strategy. It invents
| very little, and rides on the strength of what already is.
| malfist wrote:
| Why would you want a social network platform with even LESS
| moderation?
|
| More spam, more misinformation, more hate speech, more everything
| bad.
|
| Sure, you get, maybe, some more privacy. But you can get that by
| just staying off social media.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I personally prefer to use a chat system that uses an open
| standard, is not moderated and requires me to moderate the
| channels I manage/own. Being an open standard means I can use a
| generic client with regex filters that could be conditionally
| applied to usernames, chat text, links, emojis, whatever I
| want. That is just my own preference but should say something
| given how lazy I am ... that I would be willing to take the
| time to ban something myself.
|
| At least one of the IRC daemons [1] for example allows people
| to toggle any of their channels to have a word filter on/off.
| _+G /-G_ Channel operators can contribute to word filters or
| ask an IRC admin to remove one. Since I am linking an IRC
| daemon I should link one of the web front-ends [2] as so few
| these days use IRC. I assume these days both of the linked
| projects are probably dockerized and mostly pre-configured.
|
| As a side note and real world example anyone can already do
| this today with anything that uses HTML because it is an open
| standard. [3] I have not seen the word "butt" in ages.
|
| [1] - https://www.unrealircd.org/docs/Badword_block
|
| [2] - https://github.com/thelounge
|
| [3] - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/foxreplace/
| ajvs wrote:
| Unless filtering algorithms are transparent, can be configured
| by users and errs towards allowing speech that is acceptable
| globally instead of just in Silicon Valley, then it just
| incites feelings of biased censorship.
| hungryhobo wrote:
| have you thought of the possibility that transparent
| algorithms are easily game-able and thus would lose all
| effectiveness
| TuringTest wrote:
| _> More spam, more misinformation, more hate speech, more
| everything bad._
|
| I don't think you would get all that from a network like this.
| You only see content from people you follow, there is no
| algorithm pushing viraliced posts and advertisements on your
| "feed" of "things you want to see". If you are careful about
| who you follow, it could work like a BBS or a web forum.
| hamuraijack wrote:
| That's the problem. The already loud echo chamber will just
| become louder and more consolidated. Misinformation doesn't
| just come from bots.
| rektide wrote:
| This seems like the exact opposite claim to the top post.
| First we said, sorry, you don't have permission to innovate
| & explore & connect with people unless you have moderation
| and control. Ok, yes, this is opt-in following: that's how
| we moderate.
|
| Now we're saying, sorry, you don't have permissions to
| innovate & explore & connect with people unless you also
| admit in the public & get exposed to randos.
|
| In general I think both of these views impose unreasonable
| limitations & constraint upon people getting out there &
| trying things. Not all value that is created has to be
| perfect value, in my humble opinion. Should we try to keep
| an eye on these factors? Absolutely. To you I'd say,
| blogrolls (what this effectively is) is generally a pretty
| good way to explore, that in the blogging era different
| people would have different blogrolls & it was always fun
| to cruise around, & check out new people you hadn't checked
| out before. Even if you didn't end up following that
| person, they might have their own blogroll that had some
| interesting people on it. Connectivity, being able to go to
| different places, is a precondition for diversity, and this
| unqualifiedly enables connectivity. Worrying about that
| connectivity being an insular one is premature a concern.
| groby_b wrote:
| True, it also comes from the algorithmic feed.
|
| The "echo chamber" is a made up thing. We've always mostly
| socialized with people close to us. What makes it toxic is
| the existence of reward systems that specifically target
| the most outrageous statements because we need to goose
| those enragement numbers.
|
| Misinformation gets pushed because it generates clicks. As
| a result, it floats up in everybody's stream. More eyeballs
| -> more clicks -> more visibility -> more eyeballs.
|
| Will there be small groups that traffic in misinfo? Yes,
| absolutely - but the large scale impact is gone once you
| remove the ability to artificially boost visibility.
| Vladimof wrote:
| Ideally you would have a platform where you could enable or
| disable filters for spam, hate speech, etc (independently)...
| to make sure that they don't filter out stuff that you want to
| see.
|
| Privacy is a completely different topic though...
| Xeoncross wrote:
| From what I remember, before we had highly moderated/censored
| social monopolies we had a lot less spam and misinformation on
| the old forums and chat spaces.
|
| I'd much rather be on HN, biggerpockets, or some auto forums
| than on twitter or facebook.
| cm42 wrote:
| I'd readily give up the spam-free and misinformation-free
| networks of Facebook and Twitter for a moderator who knows what
| satire is, doesn't get nudes and dunes confused, and can
| generally parse context.
|
| Private communities tend to have less of all of that, unless
| maybe you're building them with the worst of humanity, in which
| case I guess it's good that Facebook is there to keep you and
| your friends from doing Everything Bad. Yikes.
|
| Out of curiosity: what level of AI or human-driven moderation
| would it take to prevent you from linking your own site to,
| let's say, a Hitler Fan Club page? Is that something you feel
| you might do by accident without Facebook there to tell you
| that is Bad?
|
| Or, say a random site said it's Good to drink bleach - would a
| browser extension be sufficient to prevent you from linking to
| them, or would it require an actual human like Keegan-Michael
| Key to show up and slap the mouse out of your hand and explain
| to you in-person that this is Stupid and Bad and Dumb?
|
| I fear for people who rely on Twitter Safety to keep them from
| doing a Big Dumb.
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