openDNS blcoks inthemesh.com for malware
Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
71–80 of 356 posts
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is no worse than Facebook though. With Facebook, your friend could steal all of the data you let them see. With Scuttlebutt, your friend could steal all of the data you let them see. Your friend can, but Facebook can scrutinize third-party apps. In a decentralized world, there's no one who has access to holistically examine automated access and detect shady activity. In a decentralized world, everything is ess…
Do apps really bring that much value to the social network experience? I know for myself I have not found a single Facebook app that brings any positive value to my life.
A lot of people like using them as a login system. Maybe WebAuthn will help with that since it’s a valid use but most people didn’t see what else they were agreeing to.
The other thing I’ve seen a lot of people use are notifications / invites. e.g. most big gaming communities are bad experiences but you can bootstrap your friends into a better group. That seems harder to change and it’s definitely a real need.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#73Perhaps I am being dense, but I don't see a public repo with the source code and technical documentation. Is this an open source framework? What language is it written in?
It's written in nodejs, here is the repo: https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#74I think it's fascinating to see distributed social networks from a tech perspective. From what I've seen so far they exacerbate the problems that Facebook has been seeing so much backlash against. 1. The whole Cambridge Analytica issue was caused by APIs that are too open. For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users. 2. There is a clear issue with Facebook's accountability…
> The whole Cambridge Analytica issue was caused by APIs that are too open. For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users. Huh? Scuttlebutt is fully encrypted.. doesn't that make the API vastly more locked down than Facebook/etc? > There is a clear issue with Facebook's accountability in these areas. Distributed systems are typically open source, they run on multiple servers…
Scuttlebutt is not at all "fully encrypted", it's fairly trivial to spider and download just about everything. The hardest part is the first foothold (which can be found posted various places, including the official docs on ssb), from there, downloading the entire "social web" it has can be done with the "main client" by basically changing a single config value.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#75I think it's fascinating to see distributed social networks from a tech perspective. From what I've seen so far they exacerbate the problems that Facebook has been seeing so much backlash against. 1. The whole Cambridge Analytica issue was caused by APIs that are too open. For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users. 2. There is a clear issue with Facebook's accountability…
I have similar concerns. If I had a magic wand, I'd solve this by splitting Facebook into an infrastructure-and-core-data non-profit and one or more for-profit companies that are building tools or interfaces on that platform.
I think there is a natural monopoly for some aspects of this, which is why Facebook is so hard to quit. But I don't think the whole thing need be in private, for-profit hands. Mozilla shows that a nonprofit can be a good steward of important web assets, with much stronger user advocacy than for-profit companies normally do.
Doing something like that for identity and interconnect between messaging and micropublishing providers seems much more robust than pure decentralization to me, which I expect would have the same failure mode as OpenSocial [1], where forces pushing toward natural monopoly are basically unchecked.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#76I still think that's an awful name.
Ya, I would be afraid to ask an acquaintance if they are on scuttlebutt. It sounds like some kind of illicit pirate drug in that context. I wonder if Facebutt would be trademark infringement...
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#77I think it's fascinating to see distributed social networks from a tech perspective. From what I've seen so far they exacerbate the problems that Facebook has been seeing so much backlash against. 1. The whole Cambridge Analytica issue was caused by APIs that are too open. For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users. 2. There is a clear issue with Facebook's accountability…
You are mixing up openness of the code and protocol with access to data. Access to data should be managed by security features, and security through obscurity isn't the proper method anyway.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diaspora is federated, which for non-technical users is worse than FaceBook itself. The individual nodes (to which thousands of users are connected) will have far fewer resources to secure themselves than a behemoth like FaceBook. Also, uptime, badwidth etc. ScuttleButt is peer to peer, somewhat like torrents but for data feeds.
Minor note to readers, it's partially p2p. It uses gossip, so at times your peer might be a semi-centralized server, and at other times it could be a peer. I know that doesn't make it not p2p, but reading p2p makes me think I need direct connections with peers. Gossip is sort of nifty that way.. though I'm not a fan of semi-centralized redirect servers.
Considering it didn't seem particularly difficult to operate your own relay server, I don't really consider that much of a negative.
Spin up your own relay, generate some invites for your friends, and share all of your gossip through a server that you control yourself.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It isn't an alternative to Facebook unless my grandma can use it, and she couldn't set this up for herself. Facebook isn't an alternative to email if my grandma can't use it. Computers aren't an alternative to telephones if my grandma can't use it. Telephones aren't an alternative to mail if my grandma can't use it. etc. --- It'll get easier and simpler, I promise.
My Grandma definitely skipped from a corded phone to an iPad with Facebook and right over email. It's still too complicated for her.
And yet billions of people use email. Goes to show the grandma argument is not very useful.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#80I downloaded Patchwork after someone talked about Scuttlebutt on HN, but when I tried to join any pub servers on their Github repo, none of them worked/connected. 30 minutes later, I uninstalled the thing. The idea was interesting, the UI was pleasant, and I could see this working at some tech conference where people connect with each-other and there's a common pub server so people can keep in touch afterward, but I…
Yeah, I had the exact same experience. It's cool conceptually but basically unusable at this point.
That's just now. It's evolving fast, and two new developments will improve the onboarding problem: WebRTC-based invites, and connecting p2p to friends through a DHT (Kademlia).