Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
blog.datproject.org
Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#2I would vote for a forth protocol from matrix.org for realtime conversations, instead of the other store-forward other protocols.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#3The issue with federated services is that they operate from the assumption that everyone has an anarchist sysadmin in their friend group who is going to help everyone run the federated infrastructure.
I’ll use SSB as an example. If you install the software and make an identity, you’ll soon find that you have to sign up with something called a “pub server” to actually get any of your friend’s updates.
Where do you find such a pub server? There’s a wiki: https://github.com/ssbc/ssb-server/wiki/Pub-Servers. The author of the wiki has found that it is necessary to admonish people not to just pick the first pub server on the list, since there isn’t really any criteria by which to choose them. If there was a sudden influx of more than a few hundred new users, it would cause utter chaos on this list. Someone would need to spend a lot of money on hosting, with no way to earn revenue.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#4The issue with federated services is that they operate from the assumption that everyone has an anarchist sysadmin in their friend group who is going to help everyone run the federated infrastructure. I’ll use SSB as an example. If you install the software and make an identity, you’ll soon find that you have to sign up with something called a “pub server” to actually get any of your friend’s updates. Where do you fin…
The hosting cost problem becomes acceptable if the pub server is fast enough and hosting is cheap enough. Look at IRC.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#5Easy user mobility should be a goal of decentralized protocols and platforms. That would help users leave one provider and join another if/when the need arises. If I join Server A today as User A, I should be able to carry my identity as User A to another server or provider in the future without losing the ability to still remain in touch with everyone I was in touch with or having to tell them that my address has changed. This would be similar to email where one owns a domain but can move it around to any provider (or self-host) for storing and managing the content.
I have generally observed that some initial servers for a decentralized platform get more users over time and remain the largest, while later and/or smaller ones may not get attention, and could possibly even close down because of low usage.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#6Easy user mobility should be a goal of decentralized protocols and platforms. That would help users leave one provider and join another if/when the need arises. If I join Server A today as User A, I should be able to carry my identity as User A to another server or provider in the future without losing the ability to still remain in touch with everyone I was in touch with or having to tell them that my address has ch…
Mastodon has this. SSB doesn't, because your identity is just your message chain and key pair on your computer.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#7The issue with federated services is that they operate from the assumption that everyone has an anarchist sysadmin in their friend group who is going to help everyone run the federated infrastructure. I’ll use SSB as an example. If you install the software and make an identity, you’ll soon find that you have to sign up with something called a “pub server” to actually get any of your friend’s updates. Where do you fin…
The hosting cost problem becomes acceptable if the pub server is fast enough and hosting is cheap enough. Look at IRC.
The cost would be zero if residential ISPs issued static ipv6 and allowed servers.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#8In what way do Dat, IPFS, SSB, Mastodon, ActivityPub, Matrix etc. counter the push for some centralizing effect, in that eventually everyone is still dependent on the same server?
It's still possible to host your own website & server, but not as easy as setting up a Facebook profile. Same goes for e.g. Mastodon: running your own server isn't as easy as creating your just an account.
How do projects like Mastodon not end up with a big server (or a few big ones) that everybody uses?
Edit: Not all of the protocols I mentioned use servers, some are P2P which don't have that issue, I think.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#9The issue with federated services is that they operate from the assumption that everyone has an anarchist sysadmin in their friend group who is going to help everyone run the federated infrastructure. I’ll use SSB as an example. If you install the software and make an identity, you’ll soon find that you have to sign up with something called a “pub server” to actually get any of your friend’s updates. Where do you fin…
>Where do you find such a pub server?
If it's anything like email, you would use the server your employer or organization you belong to created an account on for you to use.
Re: Three protocols and a future of the decentralized internet
#10Easy user mobility should be a goal of decentralized protocols and platforms. That would help users leave one provider and join another if/when the need arises. If I join Server A today as User A, I should be able to carry my identity as User A to another server or provider in the future without losing the ability to still remain in touch with everyone I was in touch with or having to tell them that my address has ch…
Mastodon has this. SSB doesn't, because your identity is just your message chain and key pair on your computer.
Mastodon doesn’t seem to have a way to move a user account and still have others message or tag one in the same way as before. When you switch from, say mastodon.social to mastodon.xyz, it’s almost like switching from Yahoo Mail to Gmail. There seems to be a way to export one’s following list and move that to the new instance, but this does require informing others of the address change on one’s account.
See https://medium.com/@jimpjorps/a-non-computer-persons-guide-t...
Have I misunderstood how this works?