Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform • Hacker News Board

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#231

Post by sarakayakomzin » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 12:34 AM UTC

oivey wrote: post #223

londons_explore wrote: post #178

Network connections are getting faster... Peoples typing/reading speeds are not... One day it will be feasible for someone's phone to receive all messages sent by every other person on earth. They can then try to decode every message till they find one that their private key can decode. You've now made the perfect privacy messaging system - by sending all messages to all users, no quantity of network packet sniffing/…

I wouldn’t call that perfect because if your private key is ever compromised, all of your communication ever is compromised. Ideally data would be destroyed after a while, which isn’t really possible to do if everyone ever has the data. Broadcasting all messages everywhere would also be an incredible waste of resources, even if it was theoretically possible.

>I wouldn’t call that perfect because if your private key is ever compromised, all of your communication ever is compromised

When did forward secrecy stop existing?

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#232

Post by SulfurHexaFluri » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 12:46 AM UTC

generalizations wrote: post #195

PurpleFoxy wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly how bitmessage worked. The problem was that spammers would be able to flood the network with crap so to counter that it was added that proof of work must be completed to have your message forwarded on. The problem with this is it means you could not send a message from a mobile device because the PoW required was too high. Also a method to reduce the amount of traffic required was called streams. Inst…

> spammers would be able to flood the network with crap Would there be a legit motivation to do that? I get that it's a threat, but would it be possible to gain anything from DDOSing that network? Seems like either a) you come up with a system for banning spam IPs, or b) the spammers improve the anonymity of the rest of the network by creating more noise for the messages to hide in.

If its easy and annoying then there does not need to be a motivation. Someone somewhere in the world will pump out terabytes of junk just to ruin the system for others.

And banning spam IPs is a kind of crap solution. Spammers would be running on home network IP spaces mostly so as those addresses shuffle around you end up banning most legitimate users as well.

I have found my self banned from many sites I am only visiting for the first time due to someone else who was on my IP address before.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#233

Post by jonathankoren » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:04 AM UTC

tonymet wrote: post #218

jonathankoren wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the legal scope of the literal first amendment doesn’t help the discussion on what people and companies should be doing. If you're going to go down this road, then you must address government compelled speech, and the limits on the control of private property. I've found that the "private corporations are censoring me" crowd, don't want to engage with this obvious outcome, or pay lip service by saying, "Make [in…

Why is the government the litmus test here? The law is only one realization of virtue.

So you accept that I can control your private property?

I’m easy to contact on the internet. I’ll be expecting all your social media credentials emailed to me by the end of of the day. Failure to do so, will be censoring me.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#234

Post by meekmockmook » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #208

meekmockmook wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Sanders supporter and as Left as it gets but there is serious denial about the past 6 months of coordinated violence in major city cores from militant groups that claimed to speak for me. We have a problem with Big Tech and sectarian violence in this country no matter which way you look at it.

> I'm a Sanders supporter and as Left as it gets I'm a Sanders supporter, and there's quite bit (obviously, alienated from the duopoly fostered by the structure of US government and elections) to the left of the left-most Sanders supporter. > but there is serious denial about the past 6 months of coordinated violence in major city cores from militant groups that claimed to speak for me. Since you don't claim to be fr…

>even moreso his largely-White and not >particularly race conscious base of support

This is baseless and such a slap in the face to the massive Latino, Middle Eastern, and Asian constituency in the Sanders coalition who worked their butts off to deliver him multiple states. I won't engage with any comments designed to inflame racial conflict and have flagged your post.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#235

Post by rakoo » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:25 AM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #178

Network connections are getting faster... Peoples typing/reading speeds are not... One day it will be feasible for someone's phone to receive all messages sent by every other person on earth. They can then try to decode every message till they find one that their private key can decode. You've now made the perfect privacy messaging system - by sending all messages to all users, no quantity of network packet sniffing/…

This has already been done, and it uses bitcoin code (but no blockchain): https://wiki.bitmessage.org/

Of course there are scalability issues but they have a plan for that.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#236

Post by rakoo » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

oivey wrote: post #223

londons_explore wrote: post #178

Network connections are getting faster... Peoples typing/reading speeds are not... One day it will be feasible for someone's phone to receive all messages sent by every other person on earth. They can then try to decode every message till they find one that their private key can decode. You've now made the perfect privacy messaging system - by sending all messages to all users, no quantity of network packet sniffing/…

I wouldn’t call that perfect because if your private key is ever compromised, all of your communication ever is compromised. Ideally data would be destroyed after a while, which isn’t really possible to do if everyone ever has the data. Broadcasting all messages everywhere would also be an incredible waste of resources, even if it was theoretically possible.

That's why you rotate keys, the best way being whatever Signal does

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#237

Post by ben0x539 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:53 AM UTC

dr_kiszonka wrote: post #183

I wish they excluded extremes on both sides of the spectrum. Otherwise, it makes Cabal seem like a Parler for the extreme left. (Maybe it is not; I know nothing about people behind Cabal.)

Why is excluding the far-right a thing associated specifically with the far-left? Would politically moderate people not also want to exclude eg. Nazis?

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#238

Post by qwerty456127 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 1:55 AM UTC

I'm glad to see people care and engineer new, more resilient platforms like this. Nevertheless, despite being generally anti-centralization and pro-free speech I have to conclude:

Large-scale social networks political bias should not be fixed by making social networks more free, it has be fixed by making social networks less free.

When "conservatives" call for violence or actual hatred (not just antipathy or disagreement) they must be stopped.

When "liberals" storm people and destroy their careers and lives for merely using wrong vocabulary or having and expressing an unpopular (even plain wrong) opinion they should be stopped too.

Large-scale social networks meant for general audience, those websites which have serious effects on off-line lives, are the new streets and they have to be policed the same way streets are. We don't want to live where street violence is a norm.

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#239

Post by loceng » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 2:00 AM UTC

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #229

loceng wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is fear speaking, stand up for free speech that isn't inciting violence, racism, etc - like everyone else - and we'll all be safe, and we can all fight against tyranny when it shows itself. There's a nuance to understand as well that these people deplatformed aren't victims: they still have their freedom of speech, just not on these private platforms. It's inconvenient for them, yes, that they depended on them,…

Sounds like you're fundamentally opposed to free speech. Maybe we can coin a new term something like "non-dangerous speech" or "mostly free speech". I'm glad we'll get Apple and Amazon to figure out what dangerous is too.

Not at all. Free speech but with consequences. And there is free speech in America and free speech on the internet in America - however the moment you're on private property of a technology company's property (website or app or other) - it's their rules you follow.

People easily, and they are doing it, post to thedonald.win to say whatever the fuck they want there because the moderators are allowing it. So I don't accept your premise that these people playing victim role, behaving as if they're being persecuted and claiming they're blocked from free speech - because they're not.

I presume you don't just let anyone into your house whenever they want to, and to say whatever they want anytime?

Re: Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

#240

Post by evanfabry » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 2:11 AM UTC

I think "hackable" is an unfortunate description for a messaging platform as it can convey a lack of security/privacy.

Fwiw, the concept of a strictly insecure/zero-privacy messaging platform is interesting, but the word "hackable" wouldn't really help get the message across in that setting either. :)