Introducing Tent - the decentralized social web

I've been thinking about this for a while too, and I agree that the peer-to-peer element is essential. So far, it appears that all the would-be open social media apps/protocols/whatever rely on you having your own server. That, frankly, is a deadly failing. Per Metcalfe's Law, social networks are only valuable when they are maximally inclusive, and the requirement to have your own server is something that will always exclude the majority of (non-technical) users. The need for easy non-technical access means that there are only two viable paths for any social media application. Either:

1.) Go to web page and use application, or 2.) Download app and use application

This is how Facebook / Twitter / etc. do it., and they're clearly doing it right. But there's no law which says that the application needs to keep its data on a third-party server. Why not have it run a Peer-to-peer service?

In fact, I think that Peer-to-peer is especially suitable to social networking, given that social networks are typically highly clustered (eg., people who are my friends are much more likely to be each others' friends as well). This means that if the every client application is able to redistribute copies of friends' status updates as well as its own status updates, then a sync between any given pair of clients is likely to allow them to bring a large subset of their friends' statuses up to date.

Of course if you're rebroadcasting your friends' status updates as a P2P host, then the question of spoofing/authentication becomes paramount. Obviously that would have to be solved by having all status updates transmitted in encrypted formats which can only be decrypted / authenticated with a users' public key.

Oh, and once you've got dual-key authentication embedded in widely-used social trust networks, you could probably solve a lot of other authentication problems while you're at it.

All of this would need to be completely transparent to the user, of course. If it's any more difficult to set up and use than standard Facebook / Twitter, it will fail. But I don't see any fundamental obstacles to making it that easy.

Unfortunately I don't have time to do anything about this!

Telehash discussion here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4420634 - hopefully :)

My thoughts are similar. All due respect, this is a brittle approach and vary narrowly targeted.

Relying on HTTP, SSL, Ruby, JSON does not inspire confidence . When I see "Ruby 100%" on the github page for something that aims to move us forward out of centralisation, it makes me shudder. You need to think beyond the web, and get lower level (Tor hidden services, being outside the centralised web, are the right idea, but Tor has a certain stigma). You do need to get below the level of partisan languages- for a number of reasons, one of which is to make it open and easy for anyone to build on, not just web developers and people who know certain languages. That's a given. Get people connected (stateful) and all that will follow.

Something more like cjdns. It's the connection that's important, not the web or whatever else you chose to use the connection for. A webserver is one of many things that can be offered over a connection. I don't want to make the connection through an all-purpose application like a web browser, written by some company (Chrome in all its complex glory is trying to supplant your OS's DNS fer chrissakes, wake up- in the end, it's all about control). I want a very small and simple open source app that handles the connection to my peers and which works via the OS, not "the web". It makes the connection, keeps it alive and otherwise stays out of the way.

I think these kids need to go back to the drawing board. But anyone working on stuff like this should not give up!

Whatever the successor to centralised social networking is, it will largely be a matter of timing. The best solution might not prevail. Instead it might be the one that hits the news at exactly the right time and catches on for some unexplainable reason.

There will be more to come. That's a promise.

Yes, but who cares? You're just sending json down the wire. Fuck it.

Every day I wake up and I think 'If only we had more social networks!'