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Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

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Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#11

Post by GekkePrutser »

chx wrote: post #2

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those oth…

I hadn't heard much about IPFS but the way this is built, with the immutability and hash keys etc, sounds very much like FreeNet. That's the first thing I thought of, and predates this by about 20 years. I remember when that promised to be the next big thing and save us from the commercialisation of the internet that was in full swing then.

Unfortunately, that didn't turn out very well. Let's just say the 'fringes of free speech' took the upper hand and really started defining the platform in the public view, to the point of being strongly associated with the platform. Why would you run a node if it was mainly used for horrible stuff. Same as what happened to tor services, but to a bigger extent.

I really believe in the idea freedom of speech. But some kind of control is unfortunately needed. Otherwise a platform like this will always spiral out of control and kill itself. I think it's one of those things that sounds great in theory but doesn't work in real life.

Perhaps some kind of user voting could be implemented, but it would be extremely slow, too slow to catch up with new content being published. It's a very hard thing to tackle. Free speech is unfortunately not as black and white as its advocates like to see it.

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#12

Post by londons_explore »

jedieaston wrote: post #8

How long does it take to propagate an edit with this? The previous PoC I saw (2+ years ago) worked from a static dump from the Kiwix project.

Theoretically milliseconds.

Practically I don't think code for real time updates is written uet

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#13

Post by tal8d »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #11
chx wrote: post #2

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those oth…

I hadn't heard much about IPFS but the way this is built, with the immutability and hash keys etc, sounds very much like FreeNet. That's the first thing I thought of, and predates this by about 20 years. I remember when that promised to be the next big thing and save us from the commercialisation of the internet that was in full swing then. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out very well. Let's just say the 'fringes of…

> Let's just say the 'fringes of free speech' took the upper hand...

Luckily for you that blurry line between mainstream and "fringe" is rapidly shifting, and the list of permissible opinions continues to shrink. More and more people will be forced to decide how important guilt by association is to them, and will either make use of the stigmatized tech - or simply shutup.

> But some kind of control is unfortunately needed.

To what end? Are we protecting the children? Are we preventing the rise of Turbo-Hitler?

> Otherwise a platform like this will always spiral out of control and kill itself.

How do you imagine that happens? Shaming from people saying exactly what you have just said, leading to reduced uptake, justifying censorship - because only bad people use the dark web.

Here is a clue: look at what has happened to lesbians, they are already going through this. I know this because I frequent a thoroughly demonized site run by a free-speech absolutist (well, almost). One day a whole bunch of these women showed up to complain about some insane pre-op transsexual who had succeeded in getting them censored on every major platform. These ladies absolutely hated the site and everyone on it, but they had no alternative.

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#14

Post by AgentME »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #11
chx wrote: post #2

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those oth…

I hadn't heard much about IPFS but the way this is built, with the immutability and hash keys etc, sounds very much like FreeNet. That's the first thing I thought of, and predates this by about 20 years. I remember when that promised to be the next big thing and save us from the commercialisation of the internet that was in full swing then. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out very well. Let's just say the 'fringes of…

I think comparisons to FreeNet are misleading, because IPFS doesn't let you publish content to other people's nodes, and it doesn't try to provide any way to browse content in IPFS. It's more like torrents, if torrent applications were tuned to serve content to web browsers quickly.

It seems like every single thread about IPFS on HN has several people asking "what happens if you run an IPFS node and a random person online puts something illegal on it?", and that's just not a thing that happens with IPFS.

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#15

Post by AgentME »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #3
chx wrote: post #2

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those oth…

I remember discussions of Freenet on "news for nerds" forums in the early millennium, and it was obvious that that particular technology was doomed and would never be widely adopted. You see, people were reluctant to run a Freenet instance because that would involve hosting and passing on content from other users as well. While all Freenet content was encrypted, people were horrified by the thought that if the crypto…

>Thus, distributed platforms today must allow people to pick and choose what content they wish to host.

IPFS works more like torrents than FreeNet. If you run an IPFS node, it only hosts content that you pinned on it yourself.

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#16

Post by [deleted] »

tal8d wrote: post #13
GekkePrutser wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't heard much about IPFS but the way this is built, with the immutability and hash keys etc, sounds very much like FreeNet. That's the first thing I thought of, and predates this by about 20 years. I remember when that promised to be the next big thing and save us from the commercialisation of the internet that was in full swing then. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out very well. Let's just say the 'fringes of…

> Let's just say the 'fringes of free speech' took the upper hand... Luckily for you that blurry line between mainstream and "fringe" is rapidly shifting, and the list of permissible opinions continues to shrink. More and more people will be forced to decide how important guilt by association is to them, and will either make use of the stigmatized tech - or simply shutup. > But some kind of control is unfortunately n…

[deleted]

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#17

Post by snvzz »

chx wrote: post #2

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those oth…

>While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was,

Shitty or not, freenet did and does still provide anonymity, which IPFS does not.

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#18

Post by sthottingal »

jedieaston wrote: post #8

How long does it take to propagate an edit with this? The previous PoC I saw (2+ years ago) worked from a static dump from the Kiwix project.

Author of this new PoC here. IPNS propagation is slow in the current implementation and it is a blocker for instant propagation irrespective of number of peers. In my discussion with IPFS developers, I was told that they are going to look into this issue in next versions.

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#19

Post by mirimir »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #3
chx wrote: post #2

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those oth…

I remember discussions of Freenet on "news for nerds" forums in the early millennium, and it was obvious that that particular technology was doomed and would never be widely adopted. You see, people were reluctant to run a Freenet instance because that would involve hosting and passing on content from other users as well. While all Freenet content was encrypted, people were horrified by the thought that if the crypto…

It hasn't even been necessary to break the encryption. Police can just run Freenet nodes, which serve child porn, and then log IPs of peers that download chunks of those files. While it's true that Freenet does a good job of obscuring data routing, arguably providing plausible deniability, it's in practice nontrivial to convince juries of that.

Re: Wikipedia-IPFS: An exploration to host Wikipedia in IPFS

#20

Post by mirimir »

snvzz wrote: post #17
chx wrote: post #2

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those oth…

>While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, Shitty or not, freenet did and does still provide anonymity, which IPFS does not.

That's dangerously incorrect. Freenet provides no anonymity. What it provides is "plausible deniability".

All Freenet peers know each others IP addresses. There's no onion routing. There is the option of running in "darknet" mode. That is, connecting only with known peers. Ideally, people you know and trust. But that provides no access to data from the global Freenet opennet. For that, at least one darknet peer must risk peering freely with the global opennet.

Although there's no onion routing, there is a very effective method for routing data through peer networks. With that, it's arguably impossible to distinguish those who share and access data from those who merely relay it. However, the "plausible deniability" argument depends on understanding how Freenet routing works.

If you want to check out Freenet, never run a node at home. Use a VPS that you lease and access only via Tor. Ideally, connect to Tor via nested VPN chains. Use cryptocurrency that's been thoroughly anonymized. And setup the Freenet WebGUI as a Tor onion service.

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