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

Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

inthemesh.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 356 posts

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#151

Post by crowbahr »

maemilius wrote: post #66
crowbahr wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole issue with facebook is that they: 1. Follow you from site to site, scooping up all the data they can on you. 2. Allowed all of that data to be accessible not just by you opening up to a bad actor app, but by any of your friends opening up to a bad actor app. Calling it "overly open APIs" is misleading at best. The point of an A P I is that it is a public interface. If Scuttlebut has proper permissions contr…

Minor nitpick: API stands for "Application Programming Interface". There are plenty of private APIs in use right now all over the world.

Thanks for the correction! I did not know that. I guess that makes me one of today's 10,000.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#153

Post by Kalium »

twtw wrote: post #127
ibdf wrote: post #120

2018 will be the year of "alternative to facebook" apps that are in no way an alternative to facebook. To be an alternative to facebook, it should at least do 50% of what facebook does, and it should be accessible to all. Anything that takes more than 3 steps to get it running it's going to keep people out. And if you keep people out, you don't have a social network, at least not anything like facebook where your gra…

"You need ... a business plan." I don't agree. What is the business plan of email (by which I mean SMTP, not some webmail provider)?

You're absolutely right! A protocol doesn't need a business plan.

Of course, a protocol by itself isn't very useful. You need services using it and systems implementing and supporting it, which do cost money and require some kind of resourcing model...

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#154

Post by lifty »

_Marak_ wrote: post #97
mr_spothawk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

toxic users is a definite thing, but I think scuttlebutt is the best alternative social network I've ever found. the development community & the rest of the community are largely awesome, and they actually have a ton of funding.

Can you show us any links or documentation that Scuttlebutt is actually funded? Or as you put it, "a ton of funding". I believe the actual number is 0. Would be pleased to hear otherwise.

They recently received 200k from the Dfinity project

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#155

Post by black_puppydog »

tschellenbach wrote: post #2

I 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…

Personally, I hope (and I think I'm not alone here) that on a network like scuttlebutt, there will be much less "noise" than on facebook. My timeline on facebook (whenever I check it, like weekly) is a mishmash of...

* ads (if using a browser that doesn't get rid of them)

* "you missed someone's birthday who you didn't even remember you were "friends" with

* look at this really popular post in your social vicinity, ENGAGE!!!

* cat/dog/food pictures

* politics of the same kind I had to ignore as a teenager, back then by mail. Sign $petition here!

* the occasional thing I give a flying fk about

This is not accidental. It is what facebook is built to do: keep you on their page, engaged. Scuttlebutt and such don't have that incentive. Liking "Pizza" or "Justing Bieber" doesn't exist. You can like a specific post, but that's not the same as putting your entire preferences on there. The possibility to digitally model your entire family and social graph and all your preferences in the open doesn't exist, simply because... why would someone implement that? And why would they then gear the UI to reward you for doing that? And it's not as inherently in danger of becoming an across-sites profile kept by a single entity.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#156

Post by ahdinosaur »

f_leon wrote: post #23
remir wrote: post #11

I 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…

Same. Just tried to give it another shot and there's only 3 public servers and none are currently working

hey, have you tried contacting a private pub? i'm Mikey, owner of `one.butt.nz`, happy to give you an invite if you send me an email! mikey@rootsystems.nz

if you want to setup your own pub, i made an automated Digital Ocean installer (also a detailed manual) for a Docker-based pub: http://github.com/ahdinosaur/ssb-pub.

i'm also working (with funding from #ssbc-grants) on a hosted pub-as-a-service product: http://buttcloud.org.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#157

Post by fenwick67 »

_Marak_ wrote: post #97
mr_spothawk wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

toxic users is a definite thing, but I think scuttlebutt is the best alternative social network I've ever found. the development community & the rest of the community are largely awesome, and they actually have a ton of funding.

Can you show us any links or documentation that Scuttlebutt is actually funded? Or as you put it, "a ton of funding". I believe the actual number is 0. Would be pleased to hear otherwise.

https://github.com/ssbc/grants-process/blob/master/grants.md

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#159

Post by fenwick67 »

roadbeats wrote: post #122

Imagine if Mark created Facebook as an open source alternative for Myspace. Would it ever succeed ? Good technology is not enough to replace a popular product. We need to find the next popular product. The next cool, fun product can be also an ethical one if right team works on it. It's harder than building a robust decentralized network.

Imagine if Linus created Linux as an open source alternative for Unix. Would it ever succeed?

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#160

Post by hathawsh »

Vendan wrote: post #146
hathawsh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that hurts. What solutions have you suggested to the project?

I had expressed interest in changing it, but it would require changing the core data structure the network is built on, and basically be a breaking change that would almost inevitably result in having to start the entire social web over from scratch. Didn't see huge interest from the devs in doing so.

It sounds like the best path forward might be to document the NodeJS serialization format in perfect detail and create a test suite to verify all known corner cases. Until that's done, alternative implementations will be unreliable.
Post reply on HN