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Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

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Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#221

Post by carapace »

madamelic wrote: post #54
EGreg wrote: post #10

If I may, a decentralized alternative to facebook would be community-based, allow people to do group chats, discover and post events, see attendees, meet each other, add each other to contacts, maybe even drive each other to the events, date, book group reservations at local businesses etc. Like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI Yes that’s my project. Would love to get feedback. (The things I mentioned…

Here's my advice: You've missed the point and likely didn't do validation before building this (if you have). I don't want 1,000 features from launch. Facebook didn't start out doing everything they do today, neither should you. Copying another service won't win you users because maybe users don't like that feature or how it works. I want something that solves a problem without unnecessary doohickeys glued on to it.…

Qbix has a few million active users, apparently.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#222

Post by Bizarro »

canadaduane wrote: post #187
EGreg wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should “a service” silence anyone? How about letting people make their own decision who they want to talk to, without a third party saying “I forbid it”.

Can I use an analogy from biology to shed light on the valid point you have? Human beings exist as part of a society--a larger organism. Imagine if a cell were permitted to send any proteins or RNA it wanted to its neighboring cells. As long as the signals are benign or simply "nuisance" level, it's fine. But if the signals subvert the very organism of which they are a part--for example, by tricking neighboring cells…

How that should work in practice is still being worked out--in the halls of tech companies and legislatures all over the world.

You finally got to the crux of your argument after contorting around a bad analogy. Only tech companies and legislatures should be figuring out what services we should have.

Let me tell you something. That position is the complete opposite of what Hacker News is all about.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#223

Post by Bizarro »

rock_hard wrote: post #182
colordrops wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a properly designed distributed social network, there's no reason your data should be visible to anyone other than those you have approved.

What if people get tricked into approving malicious accounts? Who is gonna police that? How are you gonna prevent anarchy?

How are you gonna prevent anarchy?

Cats and dogs living together...oh my. Let me clue you in on something. In free societies there's risks and individuals make bad decisions, and we live with it. We don't need someone policing everything.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#224

Post by vvanders »

Vendan wrote: post #149
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…

Agree completely. I don't know if I'd choose s-expr, but at the bare minimum, wrapping with signatures is the sane thing to do.

Yup, I've got an implementation of http over packet radio I've been working through and came to the same conclusion. Header contains the signature, base64 the message for verification.

Even though it's super low bitrate(1200bps/9600bps) since you have a binary foundation w/ base64 you can send raw binary to get low over-head but then easily verify+decode since base64 is well supported across a wide range of languages.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#225

Post by fabianhjr »

_Marak_ wrote: post #194
lifty wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recently received 200k from the Dfinity project

Did they though? All I've been able to find related to this is a markdown document not updated in two months. The company mentioned to give the money, "Dfinity", has no mention of Scuttlebutt on their Twitter, Medium, or company website. I can only seem to find things related to the Dfinity token presale and airdrop, which I assume is an ICO. Scuttlebutt would greatly benefit from having a real source of funding. If…

Most grant discussion has been going on over SSB in the #ssbc-grants channel. (It has over 1,400 messages that I can see)

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#226

Post by neftaly »

_Marak_ wrote: post #194
lifty wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They recently received 200k from the Dfinity project

Did they though? All I've been able to find related to this is a markdown document not updated in two months. The company mentioned to give the money, "Dfinity", has no mention of Scuttlebutt on their Twitter, Medium, or company website. I can only seem to find things related to the Dfinity token presale and airdrop, which I assume is an ICO. Scuttlebutt would greatly benefit from having a real source of funding. If…

There is a regular recurring grant process: https://viewer.heropunch.io/channel/ssbc-grants?showAll

The grants issued this month are for client maintenance/features, hosted pubs, and on-boarding.

FWIW, most SSB talk happens on SSB, and "Funded" has a very different meaning to the VC world.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#227

Post by drstewart »

sergiotapia wrote: post #29

Anyone else not even use social networks anymore? Privacy or not, it's just garbage. Facebook, myspace, hello, whatever it's all the same crap with different CSS values. Do we even need social networks anymore?

>Do we even need social networks anymore?

Shockingly, it turns out the world includes people whose habits and preferences differ from yours.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#228

Post by c4urself »

crowbahr wrote: post #151
maemilius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#229

Post by tstactplsignore »

dgudkov wrote: post #212
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…

>it should at least do 50% of what facebook does It's a common mistake to attribute the success of Facebook to its features (it boils down to microblogging + threaded discussions). The usefulness (i.e. product from a marketing perspective) of Facebook isn't its features, it's the people who joined it. Look at Google+, it's not that bad in terms of features. But it lacks people, therefore it's not a competing product.…

Ahh, see, this is the second problem with Facebook alternatives- everyone misunderstands what other people use it for. For a younger demographic Facebook is not about microblogging at all. It's a (a) chat, (b) photo sharing, and (c) event/group organizer website. Everyone I know has a Facebook and uses it daily- can't remember the last time any of my closest friends posted a status.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#230

Post by pythonaut_16 »

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…

I joined a pub but 90% of the messages in my feed were other people joining the pub and subscribing to topics. 9% were people introducing themselves as new to Scuttlebutt. 0.9% were either talking about Scuttlebutt or unreachable, and 0.1% were actual content.
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