Mastodon and Keybase • Hacker News Board

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#181

Post by Nursie » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 11:40 AM UTC

feanaro wrote: post #176

Nursie wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the news. Look at the outcry over teen suicides and how facebook/twitter didn't do enough to protect them. Look at the laws around child abuse imagery and how much popular support they get. It's not just my opinion.

I'm looking at the news but I'm not reaching the same conclusions. Public opinion heavily depends on context and evolves continually. Of course people are going to get behind the idea of preventing teen suicides, particularly when it seems that the solution might be preventing a huge, corporate giant do as it pleases. Given the context of government censorship, which is happening and is likely to increase and become…

I think these ought to be tempered with the knowledge of how such systems invariably end up being used for the transfer of child abuse imagery, and other abhorrent stuff.

I'm not saying you should abandon decentralisation efforts if that's your thing, I'm just saying don't expect the world to flock to (or praise) what you create. Censorship resistance is not seen as a universal good.

> Of course people are going to get behind the idea of preventing teen suicides, particularly when it seems that the solution might be preventing a huge, corporate giant do as it pleases.

The criticism is usually that not enough was done to police the harassment. Decentralised systems are likely to make that worse.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#182

Post by waferedpie » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 12:37 PM UTC

Can someone explain Mastodon to me? Because I’m not really sure I “get” it.

As I understand it, I need to register for Mastodon at some server ``foo``, and with this one single registration I can also access other servers ``bar`` and ``baz`` and read what their members post, but I’m not able to post on those servers myself, only on my original ``foo`` server.

So what happens when ``foo`` goes under for whatever reason? Or what if the admins at ``foo`` decided to ban me from their server for whatever reason? Am I just shit out of luck now?

And what if my friends decide to join Mastodon some time later, but they all agree to join ``bar`` leaving me the odd person out? I think I’ve read somewhere that it’s not possible to relocate my ‘home server’?

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#183

Post by fiatjaf » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

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…

There's no trust in Keybase, my friend. Everything is signed by users themselves and you can verify that. Keybase is only providing the infrastructure.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#184

Post by fiatjaf » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:34 PM UTC

waferedpie wrote: post #182

Can someone explain Mastodon to me? Because I’m not really sure I “get” it. As I understand it, I need to register for Mastodon at some server ``foo``, and with this one single registration I can also access other servers ``bar`` and ``baz`` and read what their members post, but I’m not able to post on those servers myself, only on my original ``foo`` server. So what happens when ``foo`` goes under for whatever reaso…

Yes, you are right.

The entire ActivityPub concept is flawed, but not because you would be left alone in your server, it's the opposite: since you're interacting with your friends, your friends' server would then fetch all posts from your server and vice-versa, it will be as if there was just one server, but maintenance costs are now duplicated and the discovery process is not great also.

These problems are less problematic the smaller the servers are, which makes me think the best structure would be one in which each user is its own server and just syncs to temporary syncing hubs when possible -- or maybe sync directly to other online peers they know.

Oh, wait, that's what https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/ does!

(Disclaimer: I don't use Scuttlebutt nor Mastodon nor anything like that, and I really thought about Scuttlebutt in the middle of my comment, not before.)

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#185

Post by fiatjaf » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 1:36 PM UTC

gtt wrote: post #6

I never understood keybase as a useful product. What do you use keybase for?

Do you have a PGP key? No, because it's a hassle. With Keybase it isn't anymore. You can sign stuff and encrypt stuff without telling people to install obscure software anymore.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#186

Post by s09dfhks » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 5:38 PM UTC

I'm not entirely sold on keybase.

Why would I want my online presence 100% identifiable and traceable back to me?

What is the appeal of this service exactly?

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#187

Post by dwighttk » Wed, Apr 17, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

metildaa wrote: post #92

dwighttk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I opened a Mastodon account and me and one other person I know who opened an account toot at each other every 6 months or so... I guess there is another person I know who opened one but never toots... I try to pretend it doesn't matter to me, but calling individual posts "toots" really does keep me from talking about the service with other people.

There are lots of interesting people on Mastodon, I would recommend searching by hashtag and joining an instance that matches your interests (eg: sdf.org, sergal.org (furries), cybre.space, etc). Many instances block Mastodon.social and other massive instances, and different instances will have different views of the network (based on who the users of the instance follow and how long toots are retained).

eh, I don't really even use Twitter to talk with randos online... I get enough of that here. But I can see that people do use Twitter and Mastodon that way...

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#188

Post by bisby » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 4:08 AM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #73

bisby wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a concept of a federated timeline, which does get synced to your local instance. If you follow someone on a remote instance, that instance feeds content into your instance so it can be loaded.

It syncs the people you follow, right? So presumably the only additional content on your instance is content from the people you follow, which should generally be low-risk.

I believe once you follow someone, you become federated with their instance. and you potentially receive all content from that instance... I think?

there are also admin controls for managing moderation and federation.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#189

Post by feanaro » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #181

feanaro wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm looking at the news but I'm not reaching the same conclusions. Public opinion heavily depends on context and evolves continually. Of course people are going to get behind the idea of preventing teen suicides, particularly when it seems that the solution might be preventing a huge, corporate giant do as it pleases. Given the context of government censorship, which is happening and is likely to increase and become…

I think these ought to be tempered with the knowledge of how such systems invariably end up being used for the transfer of child abuse imagery, and other abhorrent stuff. I'm not saying you should abandon decentralisation efforts if that's your thing, I'm just saying don't expect the world to flock to (or praise) what you create. Censorship resistance is not seen as a universal good. > Of course people are going to g…

> I'm not saying you should abandon decentralisation efforts if that's your thing [...]

Isn't not being controlled by the whim of a single corporation/government everyone's thing? Or the ability to be your own free person whose actions are not thwarted by a petty desire or ulterior motive?

Of course, in times of relative stability, people are sometimes lulled into thinking this is not and cannot be compromised in any way.

> Censorship resistance is not seen as a universal good.

Of course, it's a deep and fundamental issue. There are bound to be proponents of both sides with a lot of people in between.

I argue that inability to destroy abhorrent stuff is likewise not universally viewed as the ultimate evil, though.

> The criticism is usually that not enough was done to police the harassment.

You elided the rest of my argument so I'll repeat it rephrased: I think the current design of the system, where there is a very public single point-of-"failure" that is very easy to hate (big corporation) makes this more prominent.

There is abhorrent stuff printed on paper all around the world, but you don't see people claiming that not enough was done to seek out and destroy every such piece of paper. It is apparently enough to people that such paper is not very prominent in day-to-day situations.

Re: Mastodon and Keybase

#190

Post by feanaro » Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 6:12 AM UTC

Nursie wrote: post #180

feanaro wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As far as I'm aware, the first amendment doesn't protect the distribution of child abuse images, or allow harassment, etc. Yes, but those are already illegal. That does not (or at the very least should not ) mean politicians get to dictate what kind of technology is allowed. You cannot outlaw a technology (or require a backdoor) simply because it may not support deletion as a feature by virtue of being decentralize…

I'm not sure I'm arguing for a ban on decentralised tech as a whole, to go back to my first post on the topic - far from being a selling point, decentralisation is a negative feature for a lot of people. Centralisation provides points of control that are useful way beyond political suppression of speech, to allow (for instance) transaction reversal and material take down. The post I replied to was singing the praises…

Of course decentralized architectures are not without downsides, just like any engineering trade-off. I'm not so sure it is a strictly negative feature for a lot of people though -- they may just consider it an overall negative due to some conveniences they may have lost as part of the trade-off.

And that's okay. It's important to bear in mind the things lost by not being decentralized also, though. I think this is presently not very prominent since a lot people started using the internet for a few large centralized services so they are not very familiar with the idea. Arguably, there was a period when people flocked to the internet because of the newfound decentralization.

> I'm just putting across the counterpoint that it's not, there are circumstances where unilateral control could be (and is, by large sections of the population) seen as a good thing.

It's seen as a good thing as long as the single point of control is doing things which are (mostly) aligned with the desires of these large sections of the population. This is a tautology. History teaches us that this is not at all given, though, so it's important not to rely on it strongly.

> I mean, you can. I'm not necessarily saying it's a good thing to do, but there's no real reason a government couldn't make exactly such a rule. Whether it could be enforceable in any way is a different matter.

Well, certainly. You can declare anything at all. I was proclaiming that from a position of practicality.