Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fediverse

fediverse.party

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 143 posts

Re: Fediverse

#11

Post by smoldesu »

Ambolia wrote: post #9
smoldesu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which are the platforms that let you own your data cryptographically and let you move your account around seamlessly for yourself and your followers? If you know of a homomorphic encryption scheme that would work for this and remain economically viable for other people to host, let me know. I simply don't think it's reasonable to expect that degree of privacy, much less on a Twitter clone. If you want privacy, use…

I mean "own" not in the sense of privacy in this case. But in the sense that the account (public key) belongs to the person who has a certain private key. So you can move your content to a different server or domain and keep all your audience, maybe with a small transition period while the new server becomes well known, but not like now getting kicked out of twitter or youtube just results on a bunch or broken links…

AFAIK Mastodon implements a migration feature that lets you move your followers to/from different accounts if you want to use a new homeserver. Not sure how it works on the backend, but it's got this base mostly covered.

Re: Fediverse

#13

Post by DerekBickerton »

Is having both a normal social media account & a federated version okay? I've seen a lot of people delete their Twitter and then hop on Mastodon because they're worried about Musk. Whether their concern about Musk is valid is another question. How do people see his acquisition of Twitter as a bad thing? If anything he will try to improve it no?

Re: Fediverse

#14

Post by elitepleb »

echelon wrote: post #10

A Twitter replacement shouldn't be federated. It should be fully P2P. Federated platforms can still be censored and walled off. Not all Mastodon instances are peers, and your data isn't portable. It still has most of the same pitfalls as the platforms we complain about today. P2P is naturally efficient. The best ideas will gain traction within their memetic networks, and you can branch out and explore anything and re…

there's a project brewing hoping to do just that by july https://liberapay.com/Revolver

Re: Fediverse

#15

Post by grishka »

echelon wrote: post #10

A Twitter replacement shouldn't be federated. It should be fully P2P. Federated platforms can still be censored and walled off. Not all Mastodon instances are peers, and your data isn't portable. It still has most of the same pitfalls as the platforms we complain about today. P2P is naturally efficient. The best ideas will gain traction within their memetic networks, and you can branch out and explore anything and re…

No, P2P is impractical and it inevitably leaks into the UX, making it significantly more cumbersome. With a P2P system, you can't just send someone a link to something you found — you either expect them to have a client for the service, or use a web proxy.

> Sign and publish with a pubkey

No, absolutely not. Public keys make terrible identifiers. You leak it and anyone can impresonate you, with you having no recourse. You lose it and you have to start a new life basically.

Account recovery and the ability to revoke access are not "nice to have" things — they're hard requirements for any identity system that is to be used in the real world by real, including non-tech, people. Trust me, I worked at the largest Russian social media company, they have a dedicated account recovery department for a reason.

Re: Fediverse

#16

Post by lynndotpy »

DerekBickerton wrote: post #13

Is having both a normal social media account & a federated version okay ? I've seen a lot of people delete their Twitter and then hop on Mastodon because they're worried about Musk. Whether their concern about Musk is valid is another question. How do people see his acquisition of Twitter as a bad thing? If anything he will try to improve it no?

You can certainly have a normal and a federated social media. I do. You likely already have email, which is also kind of federated and kind of social media.

Re: Fediverse

#17

Post by Ambolia »

DerekBickerton wrote: post #13

Is having both a normal social media account & a federated version okay ? I've seen a lot of people delete their Twitter and then hop on Mastodon because they're worried about Musk. Whether their concern about Musk is valid is another question. How do people see his acquisition of Twitter as a bad thing? If anything he will try to improve it no?

Intra-elite competition between old media types and silicon valley types has being on for a while in different ways. Musk has been openly exposing some outsider narratives, so he is seen as an enemy to the old media types.

I think this is most of it. The "billionaire" narrative doesn't make any sense. It's not like Twitter, or any other media companies, were owned by poor people until now.

Re: Fediverse

#18

Post by Ambolia »

grishka wrote: post #15
echelon wrote: post #10

A Twitter replacement shouldn't be federated. It should be fully P2P. Federated platforms can still be censored and walled off. Not all Mastodon instances are peers, and your data isn't portable. It still has most of the same pitfalls as the platforms we complain about today. P2P is naturally efficient. The best ideas will gain traction within their memetic networks, and you can branch out and explore anything and re…

No, P2P is impractical and it inevitably leaks into the UX, making it significantly more cumbersome. With a P2P system, you can't just send someone a link to something you found — you either expect them to have a client for the service, or use a web proxy. > Sign and publish with a pubkey No, absolutely not. Public keys make terrible identifiers. You leak it and anyone can impresonate you, with you having no recourse…

Couldn't this be solved by chains of trust and "blacklisting" accounts? This is pretty much how it already works in the most annonymous corners of the internet, and those are the best corners.

Re: Fediverse

#19

Post by pgeorgi »

echelon wrote: post #10

A Twitter replacement shouldn't be federated. It should be fully P2P. Federated platforms can still be censored and walled off. Not all Mastodon instances are peers, and your data isn't portable. It still has most of the same pitfalls as the platforms we complain about today. P2P is naturally efficient. The best ideas will gain traction within their memetic networks, and you can branch out and explore anything and re…

Try [Scuttlebutt](https://scuttlebutt.nz/), which is fully peer to peer. You'll experience the limitations soon enough.

Re: Fediverse

#20

Post by echelon »

grishka wrote: post #15
echelon wrote: post #10

A Twitter replacement shouldn't be federated. It should be fully P2P. Federated platforms can still be censored and walled off. Not all Mastodon instances are peers, and your data isn't portable. It still has most of the same pitfalls as the platforms we complain about today. P2P is naturally efficient. The best ideas will gain traction within their memetic networks, and you can branch out and explore anything and re…

No, P2P is impractical and it inevitably leaks into the UX, making it significantly more cumbersome. With a P2P system, you can't just send someone a link to something you found — you either expect them to have a client for the service, or use a web proxy. > Sign and publish with a pubkey No, absolutely not. Public keys make terrible identifiers. You leak it and anyone can impresonate you, with you having no recourse…

> No, absolutely not. Public keys make terrible identifiers. You leak it and anyone can impresonate you, with you having no recourse. You lose it and you have to start a new life basically.

Most average people can't even get the platforms to deal with ATOs.

I'm not into crypto, but it's also accepted in that community that you must safeguard your keys.

But beyond the status quo, I can easily imagine dozens of mitigations and protections and additional proofs: revokable cert authorities and peers, multiple signatures, portable / updatable keys, etc. etc.

Post reply on HN