I 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...
Faecebook
Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
161–170 of 356 posts
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't looked into the protocol in any depth yet but it does seem like it supports end-to-end encrypted updates. What data are you talking about that can easily be crawled without any permissions? If it is that simple then maybe Scuttlebutt isn't a good protocol, but a secure end-to-end platform like this is definitely possible. And if anyone is going to build it it's not going to be a company who makes all of the…
I've written a partial implementation of the scuttlebutt p2p protocol (not the encryption, but everything on top). While point to point is encrypted, the bulk of the data is not encrypted. You can specifically send "private" messages that are encrypted such that only a set of keys (users) can decrypt (read) them, but this is by no means the default for anything.
So the feed is public like Twitter?
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
example message: { "previous": "%26AC+gU0t74jRGVeDY01...MnutGGHM=.sha256", "author": "@hxGxqPrplLjRG2vtjQL87...0nNwE=.ed25519", "sequence": 216, "timestamp": 1442590513298, "hash": "sha256", "content": { "type": "vote", "vote": { "link": "%WbQ4dq0m/zu5jxll9zUb...KjZ80JvI=.sha256", "value": 1 } } } Signed example message: { "previous": "%26AC+gU0t74jRGVeDY01...MnutGGHM=.sha256", "author": "@hxGxqPrplLjRG2vtjQL87...0nN…
I know that I sound like a broken record, but this is exactly the issue which canonical S-expressions were designed for, and which SPKI wrestled with & solved twenty years ago. The SPKI version of a message would look something like (I've removed the hash property, because I don't think it makes sense for an object to specify the hash to be used to refer to it, but one could add it back in if one wished): (message (p…
Which large scale open-source or commercial software is using s-expr today?
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#164Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've written a partial implementation of the scuttlebutt p2p protocol (not the encryption, but everything on top). While point to point is encrypted, the bulk of the data is not encrypted. You can specifically send "private" messages that are encrypted such that only a set of keys (users) can decrypt (read) them, but this is by no means the default for anything.
So the feed is public like Twitter?
essentially public, and also basically requires downloading and storing the entire history of a "feed" to verify it.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#166I wanted to take a look at how it works but the on-boarding process is not really welcoming. Getting started [0] redirects to this weird site [1] served over plain HTTP, installer is also not signed :( [0]: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting-started.html [1]: http://dinosaur.is/patchwork-downloader/
Have we reached the point where plain http seeks not welcoming. If the site above doesn't require you to login why do you think you need https? Is the only reason to hide your visit to that site from your isp?
short answer is - yes, we've reached that point. https by default is a reasonable default, in part because cpu and latency costs of https are basically zero for most implementations. And the implementations where it's not zero can afford the cost.
Given the almost-no-cost of the choice, why default to the less-secure alternative?
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#1672018 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…
Completely agree.
I am very interested in the UI/UX opportunities for training the decentralized generation how to interface with decentralized systems and manage their identities, especially across devices and contexts. This has been my biggest criticism of pretty much all of the attempts at a decentralized version of an existing mainstream web service that I have seen.
I love the decentralization community but it often feels very much like an engineer's realm, probably because it's mostly interesting from an engineering perspective. Maybe it's just who I follow, but I don't see a lot of activity in this area from user experience designers. Some collaboration could really help build a decentralized service that stands a chance of truly competing in the global space. Thus far I think it's highly unlikely the average mainstream user will convert.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#168wtf were they thinking when they named it that? if any non joke product with "butt" in the name ever succeeds, I will eat my hat.
They were thinking that "scuttlebutt" means "gossip", and that the "butt" is just a water barrel. Basically, the ancient form of water cooler talk.
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Sure you can download everything, but you can't read it...
Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know that I sound like a broken record, but this is exactly the issue which canonical S-expressions were designed for, and which SPKI wrestled with & solved twenty years ago. The SPKI version of a message would look something like (I've removed the hash property, because I don't think it makes sense for an object to specify the hash to be used to refer to it, but one could add it back in if one wished): (message (p…
Which large scale open-source or commercial software is using s-expr today?
Why do you ask?