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

171–180 of 356 posts

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#171

Post by jeffschofield »

staltz wrote: post #101
codingdave wrote: post #3

It isn't an alternative to Facebook unless my grandma can use it, and she couldn't set this up for herself. The idea that centralized storage is the problem masks the actual concern. There is nothing inherently wrong with centrally stored data. There is a problem is when it is locked down by a 3rd party, and/or you don't control how it is used.

Actually with a few tweaks, this technology would be much simpler to use than Facebook, for a person like your grandma, simply because it removes that annoying registration process. You just open the installed app, and that's it. It's odd that we got used to the idea that "(1) registration, (2) strong password creation, (3) username selection (in case of conflicts), (4) email verification link, (5) login" is somehow…

I have a question, how would my Grandma signal her identity to SSB from multiple devices? Say she has an iPhone and an iPad and she wants to use the iPad at home and the iPhone when she's out. I imagine it's not as simple as installing the app on both devices in this case? I'm curious how this is approached.

Cycle.js and xstream are amazing, as an aside. Thank you.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#172

Post by dreamfactored »

wpietri wrote: post #75
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…

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…

I think decentralisation is the wrong way to look at it. The protocol itself becomes the point of centralisation with many providers implementing in federation. Nothing to stop any of them being commercial (they may have all kinds of ease of use and features on top) or not. Since you lose the network effect of bigger player owning 'footfall' (e.g. ebay), there should be less natural tendency for monopoly and greater incentive towards user needs. For example, a more privacy conscious provider may choose to only share limited data with the wider federation. Others may be all about the exposure and getting more followers. (I'd expect federation to allow users a way to export their full profile+history and migrate to another provider taking their data away with them.)

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#173

Post by scrollaway »

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)?

> by which I mean SMTP, not some webmail provider

Cheap cop-out. "some webmail provider" is what runs 99.999% of email. The people who run their own email, or run off hobby email servers, are insignificant.

You can't turn a blind eye to where the majority of users are going to be if you're implementing anything that actually needs traction in order to be successful.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#174

Post by dreamfactored »

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 can build 'a facebook' in Drupal which is more or less functionally equivalent and people have been doing that for years. But you still have the real work - building the network of users, which is where the value lies and not the software features (which are mundane in the case of fb).

What's far more compelling but challenging is open source federated social networking, which is a facebook on rocket fuel and overcomes the network effect as each provider implementing adds to a shared network. Even if it takes decades, this is going to be the inevitable model and fb will end up either joining in as a provider or do a myspace.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#175

Post by jancsika »

Are there others like me who tend to read "alternative" as a misnomer in stories about "decentralized X as alternative to centralized Y?"

I take git vs. svn as what I think is a fair reference point. Someone can still argue in favor of svn, but I don't think they could seriously argue that git isn't a viable alternative.

Moreover, git is so popular because it specifically targeted svn's users. Scuttlebutt does not yet meet that standard-- at best its a framework on top of which a yet-to-be-built Facebook alternative might sit.

I don't want to be a pest but the barrage of FLOSS "alternatives" to Facebook/Twitter can have a numbing or frustrating affect on readers who don't reflect on this discrepancy.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#177

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

staltz wrote: post #98

Okay Hackernews, I get it. Scuttlebutt isn't fully ready for everything yet. I wrote that article hoping that it would sparkle interest to both use it, plus make it happen. This is not your usual startup launch, it's a community project by multiple open source hackers. If something is missing, you can make it happen. And there are so many ongoing developments right now (see list below), that it really doesn't make se…

It certainly seems interesting. I tried to test it out quickly today, but couldn't connect to any of the public hubs.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#178

Post by _emacsomancer_ »

walterbell wrote: post #163
zeveb wrote: post #147

Earlier 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?

Hacker News. Emacs. Anything Lispy.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#179

Post by wmf »

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…

I think the idea is no ads -> nothing to target -> no need/value for personal data. Sure, maybe Cambridge Analytica can scrape Scuttlebutt or Mastodon but then what can they do with that data?

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#180

Post by sandov »

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…

In my case, I don't care about the "privacy protection" of a given social network: I assume that everything I post is public (except private messages), so I filter what I upload based on that assumption.

Things I do care about:

-No censorship

-Chronological feed

-Open source & non-abusive client. (i.e. no tracking what users see or read)

-Good usability

I don't care about abusive content or fake news. If I see fake news, I just stop following whoever posted it.

So, under my criteria: decentralized > facebook

Post reply on HN