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Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

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Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#151

Post by rakoo »

darksaints wrote: post #70
systemvoltage wrote: post #40

Part of the genius of Twitter is the name and its brand. Twitter, tweet, tweeting, tweeted, etc. Even if Twitter had no goodwill, it's an excellent name for such a service. None of the options presented here have that. "Hey dude, did you see that mastodon post?" "I'll add you on GNU Social" "Fediverse is getting popular, wanna fediverse?" "Nmd'ed you!" "Totally Aaether that!" "Breaking News: The Prime Minister of Aus…

Speaking of GNU social, I have always thought that GNU was quite possibly the worst name to use for the project, simply because nobody knows how to pronounce it, and maybe if you do know how to pronounce it, someone else might pronounce it completely differently, so it you end up pronouncing it in two (or more!) ways until the person you're talking to knows what you're talking about. Is it 'new'? Or 'nyew'? I've also…

Pronunciation issues have never stopped us from posting GIFs even though too many people still mispronounce it

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#152

Post by jeffreyrogers »

>...and the scale of supporting such a centralized network in the future could be unsustainable.

I don't think this is borne out in practice. Centralization seems to be the rule for large systems since networking scales O(n^2) otherwise, so decentralization has to provide pretty compelling advantages to overcome this large disadvantage.

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#153

Post by runjake »

systemvoltage wrote: post #37
ignoranceprior wrote: post #2

Mastodon, GNU Social, and the Fediverse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse The two software systems are compatible (both comply with the OStatus standard) so you can interact with content on servers that use the system. Diaspora also exists, but it's arguably more like Facebook: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(soc…

GNU Social is exactly how I imagined it to be.

I hear that it hosts a relatively vibrant Hurd community.

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#154

Post by watwut »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #136
shawnz wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that this isn't a characteristic of the platform but of the users. The users don't want to be federated with someone who is federated with someone they don't like. How do you fix that, just force everyone to federate with each other? How do you stop people from forking their own clients to remove the forced federation?

Right, it's users, not tech (it's always people, not tech - Twitter is a problem not because it's centralized, but because of decisions made by people at the helm). What both 'tgsovlerkhgsel and I are trying to say is that there is this kind of realpolitik going on at Mastodon, of which you should be aware before considering to join. You start going against the "party line", you risk getting defederated or, if you're…

Freedom comes with realpolitik, always.

At some point, people learn that their lives are better without this or that group constantly coming in and will take protective/separatists measures. Which is exactly what you are seeing.

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#155

Post by pjc50 »

thebigspacefuck wrote: post #144

Every time I go looking for one of these open alternatives it’s filled with fringe conspiracy theorists, actual racists, etc. Example is LBRY. Bryan Lunduke says he’s switching off YouTube for LBRY, so I go there to check it out. Top trending video is some white supremacist thing why I shouldn’t forget my ancestry. Search for “how to repair furnace”, second result is video how Epstein is alive. Even Lunduke is taking…

Well, yes. There are only two reasons to use the less popular alternative: ideological preference, which is very rare, or being banned from the #1 service.

> no censorship actually makes these smaller platforms something that people don’t want to use

Invert that sentence and you see why it's happening on the major platforms; deplatforming the deplorables is necessary or they drive normal people and advertisers away.

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#156

Post by mumblemumble »

jere wrote: post #149
thebigspacefuck wrote: post #144

Every time I go looking for one of these open alternatives it’s filled with fringe conspiracy theorists, actual racists, etc. Example is LBRY. Bryan Lunduke says he’s switching off YouTube for LBRY, so I go there to check it out. Top trending video is some white supremacist thing why I shouldn’t forget my ancestry. Search for “how to repair furnace”, second result is video how Epstein is alive. Even Lunduke is taking…

I think you're right. A little surprised about Mastodon because I've only heard that from people I follow on twitter who tend to not be crazy, but I guess it makes sense. I have an idea for an app whose primary motivation is offering a comment section for websites that don't normally have comments or have them disabled (yes, this idea is old as dirt and has been tried many times). The part I'm really struggling with…

This is the one thing that I still miss from Google Reader. It got discussing articles right. Specifically, what it got right is that you discuss them with a small group of direct acquaintances.

I think that any attempt to produce something that works like the comments section of a newspaper website will invariably produce something that works like the comments section of a newspaper website.

Yes, I am aware of the irony of saying this in the comments section of a website called Hacker News.

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#157

Post by StanislavPetrov »

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #82

Hive is a decentralized, blockchain based alternative, though the layout resembles Reddit a bit more than Hive. There are a variety of front ends people use to connect to the Hive blockchain (and you can create your own, if you're so inclined). PeakD is one of the most popular and user-friendly ways to connect, and they have a bunch of links on their front page that have a lot more information: https://peakd.com/ Dir…

Edit: *..resembles Reddit a bit more than Twitter.

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#158

Post by kain_niak »

I use a protocol on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, through my software wallet. It also has a bunch of portal sites like memo.cash and member.cash

These protocols were initially developed for Bitcoin but after it dropped the ball on scaling everything was ported over to Bitcoin Cash.

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#159

Post by jb775 »

VoxPelli wrote: post #121

There are two approaches: * The federated approach, where many Twitter like sites can interconnect and exchange messages. One current example of this is Mastodon, older examples are Status.net/Identi.ca * An indie approach, where everyone basically hosts their own profile and there are no Twitter like sites at all, one instead uses readers that are completely separate from ones hosted profile, just like it was in the…

For the indie approach, you would need to automate the self-hosting setup to gain realistic traction with the masses. What about somehow utilizing wireless router hardware for the local hosting? Pretty much everyone has a similar router/modem setup that's always connected to the internet. Could create a script that sets up a file structure directly on the router (or a usb stick plugged into the router) that stores/hosts that person's data (and maybe even stores/hosts misc data of others to backup other people's data)

Re: Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

#160

Post by onpointed »

74d-fe6-2c6 wrote: post #132
zhte415 wrote: post #105

PMs: Email. Posts: Blog. [XML-RPC if you wanna email from your phone to your blog. Different post-type or tag for 'like' vs 'post' (heck, invent any 'like' 'like' you like).] Follow: RSS. It's all there and decentralised for years, just not in a polished package of a 140 character comment, and likely requires more than 15 seconds of thinking. Actually really straightforward. Only tricky thing would be SMS but that's.…

With RSS you have to follow explicitely. I like the non-linear composition of the suggested tweets.

That's a good point! Could someone (or many someones) provide 'suggested' blogs/posts as a service on top of the existing infrastructure?
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