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Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

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Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#61

Post by alexandercrohde »

stareatgoats wrote: post #50
orbifold wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually the real name requirement and the fact that anyone could easily find me is what kept me off Facebook, so I don't consider it a killer feature at all. If you know my real name it is easy enough to find me with some additional information on google and get a work email + current office phone number, I don't feel like sharing more than that with random strangers anyways.

Yes, it's a sentiment you share with many here on HN, I'm sure. But Facebook doesn't address our needs primarily; it addresses the networking needs of the average person, which may add up to half the global population or more by the time they are done. Who can at any time reach out to another average person on the other side of the globe, be it acquaintance or stranger, and discuss matters of mutual interest, without…

>> But hey, to each his or her own.

Then build a system that supports both. Let people opt-in to a lookup directory (phone-book), but make it anonymous by default.

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#62

Post by naasking »

douglaswlance wrote: post #57
fake-name wrote: post #12

If you're thinking about building a distributed social network, you HAVE to have answers to the question: How do you moderate it? (Or how do the users moderate what they consume, if you will) Basically, think of the most annoying person you can imagine, give them infinite free time, and a uncontrollable urge to do EVERYTHING they can think of to make your life miserable on said social network (doxxing, abusive messag…

I believe we should look to the human brain to discover how it filters out noise; then try to replicate in our human-scale networks.

> then try to replicate in our human-scale networks.

Human scale networks are small. Our brains can only handle a few hundred people in our social circle, maybe up to 1,000.

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#63

Post by alexandercrohde »

RSSify wrote: post #34
jancsika wrote: post #17

How do I find Waldo? On Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Google, Github, GnuCentral, etc., I type in Waldo's name and instantly discover Waldo's profile. On Facebook it even shows me Waldo's profile before I consider discovering him. Also, how does the system make it likely that when I search for Waldo I get Waldo and not his evil twin Odlaw? Also, how do you incentivize adoption so that the community doesn't en…

How do you find people's email addresses?

Exactly. I think there are two types of social network users

1. People who want to consensually maintain two-way contact with people they talk to in normal life.

2. People who want to anonymously get life details of classmates they have a crush on, ex's, etc

Building a network to support #1 while maintaining true anonymity and privacy is much more doable. Not being in group #2, I don't worry about it.

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#64

Post by throwaway736369 »

orbifold wrote: post #44
stareatgoats wrote: post #42

I believe the main problems of "the social network" (FB) can't be solved in this way, it focuses almost entirely on the privacy and "freedom from surveillance" aspect, to the detriment of other vital aspects (like non-anonymity). What we seem to need is a solution that does what Facebook does right, which corresponds to the networking needs of billions of people, combined with a transparent and ethical content policy…

In principle every problem solved by facebook in a centralised fashion has already been solved by phone companies in a decentralised fashion. You can buy one or several numbers, which are quasi anonymous and distribute them to anyone you care to share them with. Noone can easily find you unless you give them that number, it easily possible to separate between work and private numbers and you get a new number if you c…

>I think what will eventually happen is that the traditional telco providers will gradually improve their service quality, prices and infrastructure

That's going to take a long time. Maybe 50 years? Working in the telecom business has taught me that federation has pretty ugly failure modes. The result of the structure of the telecom business has been the SIP "standard" and the horrible abuses of SS7 before that. The horrible reality of telecom is that most work is integration work. New features or similar is a secondary priority. Did you know that telecom providers actually test every single new phone on their network and add workarounds? It's the Tower of Babylon, except made from technical debt and divergence from expected behavior.

I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've arrived at an explanation: Each telecom provider is large enough to do their own development, switching costs are high, and vast majority of traffic is internally in a country. This situation incentivices creating new features and services that only need to work internally in a country or even just in a single network on a low budget using the path of least resistance (read:abuse of standards, bad solutions, technical debt). Most advanced functionality break down at country borders. For advanced functionality it's common to only support a small set of clients.

I'd suggest not waiting for Telco providers. They're going to become dumb pipes because of their incentives. Centralization works extremely well. Any decentralized network needs a lot of thought put into how it will avoid the traps of the telco industry.

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#65

Post by da02 »

hateful wrote: post #29

I've been keeping an eye on peer-to-peer/federated social networks for a while. And though I left Facebook a couple of months ago, none of these can replace it until they do one simple thing: Allow one user to post to another users "feed". This is what Google+ was missing when it came out. This is what Twitter is missing. This is the reason why Facebook is so popular, IMO. I see something on the Internets which I thi…

It sounds like a "profile"/feed also acts like a message board? (I never had a fb account, so pardon the stupid question.)

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#66

Post by izuchukwu »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #59
espadrine wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, in your view, email and the web are examples of garbage networks? Mostly so, but it is worth the trouble. About 90% of emails I receive are spam. So, email is 90% garbage. The 10% left is the sinews of my life. Fortunately, the industry found ways to cope, by contributing to mostly centralized DNSBL services such as spamhaus. The same goes for the Web: centralized services like Google or (is there something els…

You're speaking way too strongly. Email is a huge success, it's potentially the most successful network. I've had my email address over a decade and get less than 1% spam, handled by gmail spam filtering. You can say that you personally want moderation in your networks, but you have no basis to make general claims about moderation being necessary.

I don’t think garbage and success are mutually exclusive in this regard. Email is a huge success, and is an important centerpiece of most of our online lives, but as said, most is spam.

Gmail spam filtering is moderation, which is being argued that without which, email would be near unusable, which is true for most.

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#67

Post by jancsika »

RSSify wrote: post #34
jancsika wrote: post #17

How do I find Waldo? On Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Google, Github, GnuCentral, etc., I type in Waldo's name and instantly discover Waldo's profile. On Facebook it even shows me Waldo's profile before I consider discovering him. Also, how does the system make it likely that when I search for Waldo I get Waldo and not his evil twin Odlaw? Also, how do you incentivize adoption so that the community doesn't en…

How do you find people's email addresses?

I'm confused-- I thought all these HN posts about federation and distribution were appearing because Facebook looked like it could be crumbling.

Facebook got its start for one reason and one reason only-- you could use it to find Waldo.

Are you saying that global discoverability is not a valuable feature of a usable social network?

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#68

Post by amelius »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #63
RSSify wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find people's email addresses?

Exactly. I think there are two types of social network users 1. People who want to consensually maintain two-way contact with people they talk to in normal life. 2. People who want to anonymously get life details of classmates they have a crush on, ex's, etc Building a network to support #1 while maintaining true anonymity and privacy is much more doable. Not being in group #2, I don't worry about it.

3. People who want to share messages/data in groups (e.g. a local acting class)

4. People who want to follow events, share events, and follow which friends are going to what events.

Anyway, still horribly incomplete. Somebody should have put this list in the requirements, and put it up for discussion. System design starts with requirements!

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#69

Post by jancsika »

alexandercrohde wrote: post #63
RSSify wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find people's email addresses?

Exactly. I think there are two types of social network users 1. People who want to consensually maintain two-way contact with people they talk to in normal life. 2. People who want to anonymously get life details of classmates they have a crush on, ex's, etc Building a network to support #1 while maintaining true anonymity and privacy is much more doable. Not being in group #2, I don't worry about it.

Being in group #1 is great.

Denying that there is profound value in digital communication between two consenting adults who have never met in normal life is a Luddite position.

Re: Blueprint of a distributed social network on IPFS, and its problems

#70

Post by amelius »

fake-name wrote: post #12

If you're thinking about building a distributed social network, you HAVE to have answers to the question: How do you moderate it? (Or how do the users moderate what they consume, if you will) Basically, think of the most annoying person you can imagine, give them infinite free time, and a uncontrollable urge to do EVERYTHING they can think of to make your life miserable on said social network (doxxing, abusive messag…

> Basically, think of the most annoying person you can imagine

I'd change that into companies or even governments that actively try to subvert your system.

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