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Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

scuttlebutt.nz

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Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#121

Post by rglullis »

lukan wrote: post #108
rglullis wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please name one FOSS project that has found its success after being renamed to something more "appropriate".

Codemonkey became codemirror. And it is now quite well established (in chrome dev tools for example). But usually FOSS projects don't get renamed at all, or if they do the renaming causes so much drama that kills the project. So nothing changes, also not obscure design choices - and they remain niche.

Was the name change motivated by general public rejection or branding issues?

Was it holding back mindshare growth?

Why greasemonkey" and "tampermonkey" didn't change their names?

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#122

Post by lukan »

rglullis wrote: post #121
lukan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Codemonkey became codemirror. And it is now quite well established (in chrome dev tools for example). But usually FOSS projects don't get renamed at all, or if they do the renaming causes so much drama that kills the project. So nothing changes, also not obscure design choices - and they remain niche.

Was the name change motivated by general public rejection or branding issues? Was it holding back mindshare growth? Why greasemonkey" and "tampermonkey" didn't change their names?

You should probably ask the maintainer those questions. All I know he did made that decision at some point(before it took off) and he likely had a reason. Probably to be taken seriously, as he wants to live off his work. (I think he can)

And greasemonkey and tampermonkey are not really mainstream, nor do they make money as far as I know.

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#123

Post by rglullis »

lukan wrote: post #122
rglullis wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the name change motivated by general public rejection or branding issues? Was it holding back mindshare growth? Why greasemonkey" and "tampermonkey" didn't change their names?

You should probably ask the maintainer those questions. All I know he did made that decision at some point(before it took off) and he likely had a reason. Probably to be taken seriously, as he wants to live off his work. (I think he can) And greasemonkey and tampermonkey are not really mainstream, nor do they make money as far as I know.

I searched a bit to see if I could find myself the answer, and what I found instead is that there is another project called "code monkey", which seems to an educational tool to help people learn to code. That would explain the name change a lot better than "the author changed the name because he wanted to be taken seriously".

Besides, the original criticism of Scuttlebutt was "it will never catch on because it has a silly name", not "it will make money". By making it about "making money" you are moving the goalposts a bit, aren't you?

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#124

Post by beAbU »

Solvency wrote: post #41
shp0ngle wrote: post #11

I keep hearing about Scuttlebutt for a long time but haven't seen anyone actually using it? Why? edit: hm, the recommended application on the website itself is ... from 2021, and the github of the app itself is archived now. And there is "bleeding edge" one ... from 2019. OK I can see that there might be problems

Everyone here is focused on the tech and I'm here wondering how I'm supposed to convince my friends and family to join me on something called Scuttlebutt.

Scuttlebutt is a brilliant name for a social network. It's right up there in the "why didn't I think of that" territory.

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#125

Post by beAbU »

Solvency wrote: post #59
kstrauser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name was the part I liked best! "Scuttlebutt" is a naval term for a water keg, and it became slang for conversation around the watering hole. In other words, it was gossip around the water cooler from before we had water coolers.

...and this is why 99% of niche developer attempts don't flourish into the next big social network. Might as well call it "Codswallop", which is also a valid historical slang that is equally completely ridiculous for mass appeal.

You honestly saying you've never heard of the term scuttlebutt? Like "what's the latest gossip/scuttlebutt".

I've never associated this term with being nerdy or niche.

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#126

Post by lukan »

rglullis wrote: post #123
lukan wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably ask the maintainer those questions. All I know he did made that decision at some point(before it took off) and he likely had a reason. Probably to be taken seriously, as he wants to live off his work. (I think he can) And greasemonkey and tampermonkey are not really mainstream, nor do they make money as far as I know.

I searched a bit to see if I could find myself the answer, and what I found instead is that there is another project called "code monkey", which seems to an educational tool to help people learn to code. That would explain the name change a lot better than "the author changed the name because he wanted to be taken seriously". Besides, the original criticism of Scuttlebutt was "it will never catch on because it has a…

"Besides, the original criticism of Scuttlebutt was "it will never catch on because it has a silly name", not "it will make money". By making it about "making money" you are moving the goalposts a bit, aren't you? "

Operating a social global network, even decentralized, is not possible without money, if you are aiming to get mainstream adoption(which was the main question/goal here). But you are very welcome, to proof me wrong.

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#127

Post by rakoo »

Solvency wrote: post #59
kstrauser wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name was the part I liked best! "Scuttlebutt" is a naval term for a water keg, and it became slang for conversation around the watering hole. In other words, it was gossip around the water cooler from before we had water coolers.

...and this is why 99% of niche developer attempts don't flourish into the next big social network. Might as well call it "Codswallop", which is also a valid historical slang that is equally completely ridiculous for mass appeal.

...and this is why 99% of developers will defend for-profit companies stealing data, enabling mass genocides and foregoing all privacy: because everything must become the next big XXX.

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#128

Post by rakoo »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #101
pcloadletter_ wrote: post #37

At this point my decentralized social network is RSS. Just the right level of interactivity for me!

SSB is basically RSS, but with nice guarantees to prevent the RSS server from lying to you! Take an RSS feed and do the following: * Hash each entry in your RSS feed including the hash from the previous entry in the feed * Sign that hash with your private key You now have the original SSB data structure! It has overhead. It adds 64bytes for the signature and 32bytes for the hash. But that overhead is pretty small for…

If the RSS server lies to me, then the RSS content is garbage, signed or not.

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#129

Post by nightpool »

r3trohack3r wrote: post #99
nightpool wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scuttlebutt had the Bitcoin like problem of requiring everybody to have a local copy of the entire database, with a confusing / glitchy "syncing" process to download the latest posts. I tried to use it for a few days on my Android, but it never showed any new posts and the syncing process took like 30 seconds every time I opened the app.

This isn't entirely true. Scuttelbutt had some design and scaling issues. But there wasn't a global database. Each user gets their own blockchain. Its a network of tiny blockchains where the consensus model was the signature from the private key and the chain of hashes.

Yeah, sorry, when I said "entire database" I was handwaving over "the entire database of posts relevant to them". The Merkle tree structure is the root of the scaling issues which is why I think it's fair to describe it as "bitcoin-like" and it serves as an intuition pump for people to understand why it was so difficult to use on mobile, regardless of whether it was actually quite as bad as Bitcoin or not.

Re: Scuttlebutt social network: a decentralised platform

#130

Post by hinkley »

p4bl0 wrote: post #106
r3trohack3r wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't entirely true. Scuttelbutt had some design and scaling issues. But there wasn't a global database. Each user gets their own blockchain. Its a network of tiny blockchains where the consensus model was the signature from the private key and the chain of hashes.

Not disagreeing with you, just nitpicking on the use of a word: What you are describing is simply a signed Merkle tree, not a blockchain. You cannot really call an individual signing it's own ledger a consensus mechanism. Maybe "validity" or "authenticity" would be better terms here. I know a lot of people make this mistake of labelling anything that has a Merkle-tree like structure a blockchain but it's impractical…

Many of these systems also don’t have a Merkle tree, they have a Merkle linked list. Which I think contributes a lot to the syncing problem. A skip list structure where each node has multiple hashes/identities would let you skip the last five years of edits and pull down only the individual edits for the last month.

The “Merkle tree” I worked on before this blockchain nonsense started was a Merkle DAG, representing a mostly linear state flow with some parallel elements.

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