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Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

joindiaspora.com

111–120 of 197 posts

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#111
post #19
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No country in the world gives you right of free speech on someone else's platform.

There is no free speech in Germany, so chances are that someone will say something on Diaspora that the government of Germany won't like. Then, if the owner of Diaspora refuses to delete the "illegal" post, he will be thrown in jail, so he doesn't really have a chance not to censor whatever the government forces him to censor.

I get the impression that Diaspora pods can be anywhere on the planet, so you can pick one in not-germany, if you're truly concerned.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#112
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, cryptocurrencies was one way. (I don't think that it's really complicated.) But on the other hand I don't think that it's really expensive. As in have a RasPi lying around at home that's keeping track of everything when you're not online. That should totally suffice for your own needs. If you have bigger needs or want to support the network (maybe even for a small compensation in whatever form) that's easily sca…

Asking the average person to install a device in their home to properly utilize a social network might be a non-starter

Let it run on the router or NAS...

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#113
post #78
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not happy with these new services because they are all hosted in the EU where there is no right to free speech, so to me they are not an improvement over what they are supposed to replace.

Here you go: https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2018-table-cou... The most comprehensive survey on various freedoms in the World that I know of ranks Germany at 94, ahead of France at 90 and the US at 86. (100 is the perfect score) Freedom of speech is also a guaranteed right in the German constitution, as it is in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the Europea…

Op doesnt understand what free speech is.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#114
post #34

The most successful decentralized communication system - email as it turned out, people would concentrated to large free provider like Google. Decentralized server does not protect privacy for normal user because not most people could handle owning their server. The most success decentralized service is BitTorrent. It is decentralized and it is decentralized in client level. Though it also caused uncontrollable pirac…

Another example - Git. It's decentralized in principle, but in reality, people either centralize around GitHub and alternatives, and even when self-hosted, there is usually a notion of master repo.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#116
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree. The problem is that it's even harder to design something that is fully p2p than something federated. (One thing that tries to be exactly what you want would be https://secushare.org/ But its in a very very early stage, right now. There exist others, though.) And you have to agree that (even if most people choose the biggest provider) simply having the choice of different providers or even being your ow…

Its not really about the design. At some point you have to recognize the physical impossibilities of p2p models - primarily availability. The reason why Matrix is more popular than Tox or why we haven't seen any remotely successful p2p social network while projects like Mastodon took off is because there is simply no way to make the UX of the scenario where you want to send a message to X, who is offline, and before…

"Physical impossibilities of p2p models" - Although there might be structural limitations, I think they're not too strong. Just because we currently do not have a major p2p network doesn't mean that it's not possible. I think it's very possible to have something like this (even for availability). You just need to have a good design/mechanism.

But there's the problem (why we didn't see something like this yet): No one puts many resources into the design of p2p-stuff. The competing, central solutions get tons of resources from big companies that try to make money with it. There is no company that tries to build something p2p because with giving away the control, they give away the possibility to make money out of it.

A working example of offline storage would be bitmessage (although I think It won't scale). A much more interesting development would be lake: https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8974-practical_mix_network_desig...

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#117
post #34

The most successful decentralized communication system - email as it turned out, people would concentrated to large free provider like Google. Decentralized server does not protect privacy for normal user because not most people could handle owning their server. The most success decentralized service is BitTorrent. It is decentralized and it is decentralized in client level. Though it also caused uncontrollable pirac…

Playing devils advocate here, but I also kind of believe this... There is no such thing as privacy in the social network. It is foolhardy to assume it is even possible. Even a real life social network relies on trust, trust that can be broken very easily and totally outside of your control. Maybe the answer is to accept that privacy isn't a real thing and stop sharing things, even in what you assume is a protected en…

Technical solutions can't stop people you intended to share your secrets with from breaking your trust, but they can help prevent uninvolved third parties from getting direct access that no one intended to give them.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#118
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diaspora has been a comedy of such errors for the decade it's existed.

Diaspora has been a comedy of such errors for the decade it's existed I think I had a Diaspora account in like 2011... Then they announced they were blowing away everyone's account to redesign the database or something... Never bothered with it again.

Engineers, not people.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#119
post #34

The most successful decentralized communication system - email as it turned out, people would concentrated to large free provider like Google. Decentralized server does not protect privacy for normal user because not most people could handle owning their server. The most success decentralized service is BitTorrent. It is decentralized and it is decentralized in client level. Though it also caused uncontrollable pirac…

Playing devils advocate here, but I also kind of believe this... There is no such thing as privacy in the social network. It is foolhardy to assume it is even possible. Even a real life social network relies on trust, trust that can be broken very easily and totally outside of your control. Maybe the answer is to accept that privacy isn't a real thing and stop sharing things, even in what you assume is a protected en…

That’s an interesting point and I’m stealing it for in real life conversations, to point out the human element of secrets - but we should understand people are bad at keeping them while also not allowing Facebook to monitor messages to find a better way / leverage to sell us things.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#120

How does Diaspora compare to Mastodon? My naive impression is that Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter clone and Diaspora tries to be a nonprofit Facebook. Is that correct?

Diaspora is to Mastodon as FB is to TW. Basically, a decentraliced "Facebook like" app.

Friendica and others will also post to both, I believe.
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