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Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

tent.io

131–140 of 229 posts

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#131
> Tent is specifically designed to be usable by high-risk activists and people in countries that block other social networks.

I can't help but read that and think, "terrorists." Then again, there will always be that tradeoff and you are probably on the right side.

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#132
post #97

A few years back, I started getting interested in a similar idea. I'm definitely intrigued in seeing how well it goes. Good luck to you. Of course, as ideas go, I allowed myself to think further into the possibilities, and found some interesting avenues. For instance, why allow the facebooks, twitters, etc to own domain over our content? Let people store their own data, and offer API endpoints giving facebook, twitte…

It's a great concept, but here's where it breaks down: once data is given out, it can never be retracted. Whether it's an author's novel or a shopper's purchase history, once the data is released to someone in a readable format, they are unable to stop the recipient from doing something they don't like with that data.

Granted, the issue can be mitigated with trust networks, social conventions, or laws, but it comes down the same issues faced by DRM media formats: if someone can consume the content, they can find a way to duplicate the content.

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#134

> Tent is specifically designed to be usable by high-risk activists and people in countries that block other social networks. I can't help but read that and think, "terrorists." Then again, there will always be that tradeoff and you are probably on the right side.

Osama denied my friend request! :-( (Sad terrorist)

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#135
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean this in a cruel way (I'd really like this to succeed), but that's a list of features, not a plan for getting adoption. Figuring out how to bootstrap network effects is critical.

You're right-- Our plan is to get the protocol and reference server functioning for general use. We're mindful of the notes made here: http://liberationtech.tumblr.com/post/13377461578/how-the-ne... . We have some thoughts on adoption tactics and strategy, but the master plan is still under development. All insights are welcome. edit: wow, wrong link.

Twitter and LinkedIn are successful in distinct niches from Facebook. Companies and privacy-conscious people apart from activists (Germans?) may also be interested in a social network that lets them own their information.

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#136

My first thought was "Well, Diaspora with another name". But after reading and understanding it (it's not very well explained there) seems like a much more abstract thing. They want to build an abstraction layer to the social web, not a social network. The idea seems pretty good. It's just the basics: you follow people and receive their content (text, images, whatever), and people follow you and you share content wit…

inter-app protocols will emerge spontaneously.

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#137
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argghhh. Ruby.

Only the site generator is in Ruby. While most of our core team are Rubyists, someone is working on a C++ implementation, too. It's a protocol which means you can write an implementation in any language you want. We hope to see many server implementations with different optimal use cases in different languages. For libraries, Ruby and Javascript are our top priorities with Java and Obj-C/iOS to follow. We'd love help…

Okay but there are more PHP users out there. If you had one PHP server I would start to run it right now. My (and many others) shared hostings do not provide Ruby, Java, C++ support.

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#138
post #97

A few years back, I started getting interested in a similar idea. I'm definitely intrigued in seeing how well it goes. Good luck to you. Of course, as ideas go, I allowed myself to think further into the possibilities, and found some interesting avenues. For instance, why allow the facebooks, twitters, etc to own domain over our content? Let people store their own data, and offer API endpoints giving facebook, twitte…

It's a great concept, but here's where it breaks down: once data is given out, it can never be retracted. Whether it's an author's novel or a shopper's purchase history, once the data is released to someone in a readable format, they are unable to stop the recipient from doing something they don't like with that data. Granted, the issue can be mitigated with trust networks, social conventions, or laws, but it comes d…

I think security of data is where a lot of the open source networks have fallen down. (I'm thinking Diaspora and their SSL-encypted node).

Because you shouldn't be trying to close the analog hole, it's essentially impossible (just look at sites like failbook).

Instead you should be trying to be about as secure as email, and allow other people to secure it if that's what they want to try and do.

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#139
post #114

"Every user decide which other users can follow them and what information will be shared with each of their followers." This effectively makes each person an island in h/herself and hence the model of social-web breaks down. It wouldn't work and people know it. In order to liberate the data, you're throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I'm not following your rationale. Isn't that Facebook's default model? I explicitly choose who is allowed to see my content, and I have control over how much of that content they can see through privacy settings / lists. The problem with Facebook is that I simply don't trust them with my data.

Yes, that's correct, hence Facebook's user feed is not really based on, or helping, the social-web part of the user's life. The user feed or stream is there as an advertisement, a selling product, for the product and services to advertise to (it is sort of a loop, isn't it - you are selling yourself to the one who is also selling to you).

The real social-web aspect of the Facebook is in their Groups, or Pages, where users collaborate, converge "together" on a single entity (of any particular Group or Page).

Do you follow my logic now?

I am against the idea of making users standing independent on their own because they then become an island in themselves. It is fine if you are making them a product, a brand, or portfolio, but none of this is helpful for the authentic social-interaction. You don't need a brand or portfolio to be social, that's not its original purpose. The original purpose of the user (individual human being) is to communicate, be social, create communities.

Re: Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

#140
post #115
post #103

"How is Tent licensed? Tent will be completely free and open and treated as a standard. To prevent fragmentation before launch, the original authors currently retain copyright. This is a temporary situation which will be remedied immediately after a governance model is chosen. We decided it would be best to share what we could as soon as possible, releasing early and often. We are entirely committed to free and open…

Retaining copyright means that you can't fork their code to easily establish a working but slightly incompatible version, which is what fragmentation is. Project leader is not a formalized position (or even a meaningful concept, really) in free software and doesn't come with the power to prevent forks or fragmentation. I guess their thinking is once a community of users and developers is brought together, they can be…

Retaining copyright isn't what matters. The license they choose on the copyright they (naturally) retain does.

It is possible that they could craft a license such that protocol-incompatible changes are not allowed, but I don't think that would be in their best interest. This is a starting point. The risk isn't fragmentation, it's crickets (ie nobody cares) and an untested protocol that may need multiple versions to get right.

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