Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

freenet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 302 posts

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#191

Post by SiempreViernes »

nextgens wrote: post #186
SiempreViernes wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any success stories about Hyphanet's censorship resistance mattering? Beyond serving run-of-the mill copyrigh violations (and probably child porn) I never heard anything about the content on Hyphanet. Even now when people in the US are organising against a fascist regime it's mostly WhatsApp and maybe Signal.

Thank you for the downvotes. You're moving the debate here. The question was "How are the goals different?" from the project leader (who ought to know better), not whether moving them makes sense.

Well I guess you think the important part of the goals is to make censorship technically difficult, without regard to if the software actually facilitates political speech at all.

Others could argue that software nobody uses for its stated purpose has failed; but you are right that is technically a different discussion than the one you started.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#192

Post by Alex_toani »

pikdum wrote: post #124
koolba wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The submitter is the creator of the original Freenet. If anybody gets to decide what we will call Freenet, it’s him.

I'd agree if this was more like a Freenet v3, but it's an entirely different project with completely different goals.

So what's the different between Hyphanet and Freenet? Only some anonymity？ I have try the River chat. I'm not sure how to find a people chat in here. It's hard.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#193

Post by pidgeon_lover »

qcl820DV34 wrote: post #16

Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, in favor of a rewrite from different developers, without asking anyone on the original team. It was an ivory tower decision which was announced on the mailing list without prior discussion. The old team did not agree, yet it was forced through by a decision of the "board". The "board" was a group of people…

I wasn't very happy as a user with an interest in tech/internet history to find my old bookmarks and notes had been hijacked by the new renamed project. The Original Freenet (Hyphanet) was quite interesting. The new one, less so, especially with the name hijacking.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#194

Post by ArneBab »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #184
nextgens wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've abstained form interfering until now... but have you honestly forgotten? Please explain how "the new freenet" tackles censorship resistance. https://web.archive.org/web/20001017133926/http://freenetpro... "Freenet is a peer-to-peer network designed to allow the distribution of information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of censorship." https://web.archive.org/web/20050201110519/http://free…

Are there any success stories about Hyphanet's censorship resistance mattering? Beyond serving run-of-the mill copyrigh violations (and probably child porn) I never heard anything about the content on Hyphanet. Even now when people in the US are organising against a fascist regime it's mostly WhatsApp and maybe Signal.

There actually are: among the darknets, Hyphanet is the only one that has a main use for "deviant data resistant to censorship":

Example publication: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/135485651880663...

> What are the content patterns on Freenet? Four patterns were identified. Freenet is (1) an archive of deviant data resistant to censorship (2) a space dominated by content associated with masculinity, (3) a nonmarket space where commercial exchange is non-existent, and (4) an empty space with many requests not returning information, and many flogs abandoned. We asked a third question: How does the analysis of Freenet inform current understandings of hacker culture? Freenet, we suggest, can be understood as a type of digital “wilderness”. It is a singular darknet space, supporting a distinct set of hacker practices

Practically: people in Hyphanet blog about stuff they dare not blog about in the clearnet -- anything from radical politics (from all kinds, left, right, libertarian, …) over personal opinion pages to wilder stuff like magick (yes, in that spelling).

Not to forget the Russian Poet who’s posting daily poems with the goal (as he wrote) that those poems still survive after police knocked at his door.

(besides talk about hyphanet and privacy tech)

So yes: I don’t understand the downvotes either, because it’s a legitimate question with a pretty clear answer: yes.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#195

Post by ArneBab »

KaiserPro wrote: post #185
sanity wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is offering the user more choice with respect to anonymity changing the goals of the project?

the _point_ of freenet was that you could anonymously share/store information. For better or worse, that was the point of it. It also drove the UX and tradeoffs for the network. It was slower than Kazaa/bittorrent, but it was far harder to work out who was shareing what. (if memory serves it also chunked files up so they weren;t on the same machine, but that could be me misremembering)

yes, it chunks files, and aggregates multiple chunks per packet, and pads packets it sends around, so size analysis by the ISP cannot trace the path.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#196

Post by ArneBab »

qcl820DV34 wrote: post #22
sanity wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Notably this project was conceived by a backroom decision to dump the original Freenet development team's work, This is a false narrative, from the Freenet FAQ[1]: Why was Freenet rearchitected and rebranded? In 2019, Ian began developing a successor to the original Freenet, internally named “Locutus.” This redesign was a ground-up reimagining, incorporating lessons learned from the original Freenet and addressing…

> and after over a year of debate There was no "year of debate". You came to the mailing list and announced it for the first time as a finalized decision already, without any prior debate with the original team. The "board" you cited as the body which allegedly discussed it did neither join the mailing list discussion, nor were you willing to hand out their contact info. It's all public for anyone to see on the maili…

There was no public debate, but he did start to talk to devs 18 months before, and the devs told him quite clearly that they strongly object to repurposing the name.

And that repurposing the name would cause lots of damage.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#198

Post by jazzyjackson »

16bitvoid wrote: post #161
sanity wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Endeavors that make decisions based on what will please the loudest people in the near term normally run into the ground pretty quickly. There was never any obligation to obtain the approval of "the community", whatever that is. Nothing about the name change prevented existing users from continuing to use the software just as they had been doing, and many of them said they agreed with the decision. I honestly only ev…

And endeavors, which are supposedly for the benefit of everyone, that listen to no one run into the ground even quicker. That's beside the point though. I was pointing out the hypocrisy. This sidestepping and deflection seems to be a trend with you, both here and in the mailing list. No point in responding to me though if it's just to grandstand. You've made it apparent to me that I want nothing to do with your proje…

You’re making it personal which is against site guidelines, chill.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#199

Post by ArneBab »

rohitsriram wrote: post #138

Decentralized web has been a pipe dream forever but group chat actually working in practice is more convincing than anything they could have shown. Real time sync was always the hard part. Curious about mobile though, you mentioned iOS is the main blocker because of wasm restrictions. Is the plan to run the peer on desktop and have mobile just connect to it, or are you expecting people to run a full peer on Android?

On Hyphanet (the original Freenet) there’s been working group chat via a Hyphanet-backed IRC server for over a decade (the server is named FLIP, the first working version was released in 2013, developed purely on Freenet/Hyphanet).
Post reply on HN