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Mastodon and Keybase

keybase.io

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Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#121

Post by lokedhs »

speedplane wrote: post #118
Nursie wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always amazing to me to hear assumptions that decentralisation is a feature in and of itself. For most people it's an entirely secondary concern, not a concern at all or even an anti-feature. Who do I appeal to, to take down that cyber-bullying material? How do I get my transaction reversed, as the victim of fraud? What do you mean I can't and the system was deliberately designed that way?

> It's always amazing to me to hear assumptions that decentralisation is a feature. Decentralization is not a feature for the end-user, it's a feature to developers. It's probably impossible for a new social network to take on Twitter, Facebook, etc. directly. However, a decentralized social network allows startups to move far quickly and implement other features that the big social networks are lacking. I suspect th…

> Decentralization is not a feature for the end-user, it's a feature to developers.

On one hand you are right, it's a huge benefit to developers as they are able to create new services that leverage the strength of the existing network. Such as Peertube getting subscription and commenting features from other servers for free, and it “just works”. Imagine a youtube competitor wanting to leverage Twitter in the same way. Highly unlikely that it would be allowed, and even if it did, the integration would be Twitter-specific.

On the other hand, (at least some) end-users see decentralisation as a huge benefit, and at least in my case it gives me confidence that the whim of a single company can't ruin the experience for me, or even take away the platform altogether.

Most people may not consider this, but some people definitely do. And hopefully that number will increase over time.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#122

Post by mintplant »

founderling wrote: post #110

This seems backward. They want ActivityPub servers to apply to a central service (keybase) to offer cross server identities. And they want users to trust that central service to decide who is who. It's always amazing, how strong the force of centralization is. Even when the whole value proposition of a technology is that it is decentralized, users will soon flock to centralized services built around it and end up in…

> And they want users to trust that central service to decide who is who.

Actually, no, the whole point of Keybase is that you don't have to trust the central server, and can verify all the proofs yourself. The CLI does this automatically.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#123

Post by founderling »

mintplant wrote: post #122
founderling wrote: post #110

This seems backward. They want ActivityPub servers to apply to a central service (keybase) to offer cross server identities. And they want users to trust that central service to decide who is who. It's always amazing, how strong the force of centralization is. Even when the whole value proposition of a technology is that it is decentralized, users will soon flock to centralized services built around it and end up in…

> And they want users to trust that central service to decide who is who. Actually, no, the whole point of Keybase is that you don't have to trust the central server, and can verify all the proofs yourself. The CLI does this automatically.

1: They claim the integration is needed because people are too dumb to copy&paste a string.

2: The whole user interface is set up so users believe in what they see in the web interfaces.

And you want to tell me with a straight face that users will do their own crypto foo instead and validate hashes?

Even if the users used that CLI, that does not help. As we saw with Ethereum. They simply pushed out new code that rewrote history.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#124

Post by Nursie »

lokedhs wrote: post #121
speedplane wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always amazing to me to hear assumptions that decentralisation is a feature. Decentralization is not a feature for the end-user, it's a feature to developers. It's probably impossible for a new social network to take on Twitter, Facebook, etc. directly. However, a decentralized social network allows startups to move far quickly and implement other features that the big social networks are lacking. I suspect th…

> Decentralization is not a feature for the end-user, it's a feature to developers. On one hand you are right, it's a huge benefit to developers as they are able to create new services that leverage the strength of the existing network. Such as Peertube getting subscription and commenting features from other servers for free, and it “just works”. Imagine a youtube competitor wanting to leverage Twitter in the same wa…

Whilst I appreciate your views, for many/most the idea that no party can affect or take down the content is a negative.

"Nobody can censor us!"

is absolutely, unfortunately equivalent to -

"Nobody can take down race hatred, online harassment, child abuse images or other evil shit"

And we've adequate evidence now to show that humans will use such platforms to post exactly that sort of stuff. For instance one of the bitcoin forks that allows larger data payloads had child abuse images uploaded to it, in an immutable, permanent way. Many/most people are not OK with that.

I'm not yet seeing a way to balance these concerns.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#125

Post by speedplane »

Nursie wrote: post #124
lokedhs wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decentralization is not a feature for the end-user, it's a feature to developers. On one hand you are right, it's a huge benefit to developers as they are able to create new services that leverage the strength of the existing network. Such as Peertube getting subscription and commenting features from other servers for free, and it “just works”. Imagine a youtube competitor wanting to leverage Twitter in the same wa…

Whilst I appreciate your views, for many/most the idea that no party can affect or take down the content is a negative. "Nobody can censor us!" is absolutely, unfortunately equivalent to - "Nobody can take down race hatred, online harassment, child abuse images or other evil shit" And we've adequate evidence now to show that humans will use such platforms to post exactly that sort of stuff. For instance one of the bi…

> Whilst I appreciate your views, for many/most the idea that no party can affect or take down the content is a negative.

Just b/c something is decentralized doesn't mean you can't take it down or hide it.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#126

Post by Diti »

thinkloop wrote: post #112
lokedhs wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched to Mastodon about a year or so ago. I fully agree with the grandparent post in that the atmosphere is very different compared to the major social media platforms. As you allude to, discovery is harder since you don't have an algorithm pointing you in the direction of content you're likely to engage with (yes, engage with, and not necessarily enjoy) but once you have found the right people to follow, it's m…

> I'm committed to never be active on a proprietary, closed social media platform again. Including HN?

I don’t think OP meant “proprietary, closed” as “centralized”. If it’s about the code: https://github.com/arclanguage/anarki

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#127

Post by lifthrasiir »

willvarfar wrote: post #119
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always amazing, how strong the force of centralization is. This is because Mastodon is a UX nightmare because of the way they decentralized it. With Twitter you go on and you @ your friends / etc and you're done. With Mastodon you have to figure out where they are and if they're not all in the same place it becomes a nightmare to try and manage. I get it, decentralization can be great. But so far most of the i…

People managed to share email addresses, which are name@domain.

And the domain is predictable. There were (and still are) a two-part email form around the web, where the domain part is a drop-down list.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#128

Post by phoe-krk »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #54
phoe-krk wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Keybase chat federated? Using a centralized service defeats the purpose of a decentralized Fediverse.

It's not, but decentralization isn't super effective for private channels of communication, particularly where neither end is running the software in question. (Most Mastodon users aren't site admins.) But presumably if proving a Keybase user and a Mastodon user are the same is given, when a Mastodon user wants to contact another outside of Mastodon, Keybase Chat may be the new default choice.

> but decentralization isn't super effective for private channels of communication

The two examples of that not being the case are OTR XMPP and PGP e-mail.

> particularly where neither end is running the software in question

You cannot have useful encrypted communication if your software does not support it.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#129

Post by feanaro »

Nursie wrote: post #124
lokedhs wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decentralization is not a feature for the end-user, it's a feature to developers. On one hand you are right, it's a huge benefit to developers as they are able to create new services that leverage the strength of the existing network. Such as Peertube getting subscription and commenting features from other servers for free, and it “just works”. Imagine a youtube competitor wanting to leverage Twitter in the same wa…

Whilst I appreciate your views, for many/most the idea that no party can affect or take down the content is a negative. "Nobody can censor us!" is absolutely, unfortunately equivalent to - "Nobody can take down race hatred, online harassment, child abuse images or other evil shit" And we've adequate evidence now to show that humans will use such platforms to post exactly that sort of stuff. For instance one of the bi…

> Whilst I appreciate your views, for many/most the idea that no party can affect or take down the content is a negative.

Citation needed, please. This really sounds like your personal opinion presented as a general statement.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#130

Post by feanaro »

speedplane wrote: post #125
Nursie wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whilst I appreciate your views, for many/most the idea that no party can affect or take down the content is a negative. "Nobody can censor us!" is absolutely, unfortunately equivalent to - "Nobody can take down race hatred, online harassment, child abuse images or other evil shit" And we've adequate evidence now to show that humans will use such platforms to post exactly that sort of stuff. For instance one of the bi…

> Whilst I appreciate your views, for many/most the idea that no party can affect or take down the content is a negative. Just b/c something is decentralized doesn't mean you can't take it down or hide it.

Exactly. Even a centralized filtering mechanism can be curated by the community. The important point is that each server gets to decide whether to use it. If a user considers their server is not doing a good enough job with this, they simply move to another server.
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