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

Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

freenet.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 302 posts

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#121

Post by sanity »

blamestross wrote: post #81
sanity wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghost keys will ultimately be just one of a menu of options for bootstrapping reputation in a decentralized reputation system. They have the advantage of simplicity, anonymity, and helping to fund the project, but as you correctly point out - they are centralized. A cryptocurrency-based solution like you suggest will undoubtedly be one of a menu of reputation bootstrapping options that will develop over time.

Reputation systems have been a theoretical idea for a while, but we haven't come up with anything sybil-proof without centralized identity management. "we have a menu" sounds a lot like "we don't actually have any viable plan" in this case. Don't get me wrong, this is awesome. I think it is built on a subtlety bad premise. I think it is time to start build organizational nomic games on this sort of contract system, l…

Appreciate your feedback.

> Reputation systems have been a theoretical idea for a while, but we haven't come up with anything sybil-proof without centralized identity management.

I don't think it's accurate to say that we haven't come up with anything. The original Freenet has had a decentralized web-of-trust plugin for over 20 years[0].

It's far from perfect, in practice it seems to have empowered a small number of people with disproportionate influence - but that's due to solvable design issues, it's not a sybil problem.

It's also important to distinguish between sybil-proof and "raising the cost of sybil attacks to the point that they're manageable".

I do agree with your broader point that there is massive scope for building truly decentralized governance systems on Freenet. I've done some thinking about it but it's still very speculative[1].

[0] https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust

[1] https://freenet.org/about/news/799-proof-of-trust-a-wealth-u...

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#122

Post by sanity »

spankalee wrote: post #119
sanity wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you mean but I stand by every word I said in that thread.

> The woke mind virus, more formally postmodern neo-marxism, is the greatest threat to civilization today. "The woke mind virus" really? You used that non-ironically? This is not something a serious or sane person would say for real.

You'd be surprised how mainstream these views are outside certain bubbles.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#123

Post by bglusman »

sanity wrote: post #78
kstrauser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF. These are some of the first things I clicked through on that page: - https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5534... - https://www.mail-archive.com/devl@freenetproject.org/msg5534... Gee, I can't imagine how that mailing list could ever be toxic.

Not sure what you mean but I stand by every word I said in that thread.

You can stand by things you said but also learn from them/from people’s responses to them…. For instance, you declare someone’s response virtue signaling… This hit me in a funny way, partly because it’s valid, it’s true, there is a lot of signaling that goes on you learn to see, virtue and otherwise… but also because of how insidious a criticism it is, because it reframes a debate away from correctness and towards who said it, whether they’re posturing…

I think it’s a category error and an ad hominem attack to bring it up in a debate with someone. It doesn’t mean your wrong or can’t still beleive they were virtue signaling, if that’s what you mean by standing by what you said, but more than one thing can be true and that being your reaction is not honest engagement with the criticism… I don’t care think it’s about the joke very much, it’s not especially funny but not all humor has to be, and I don’t love their reaction to it either, but I think you’re confusing the feedback you’re getting here and there and probably elsewhere that your opinions should change… a sibling comment spoke of being right vs effective, and there’s something to that, but there’s also being right vs having a growth mindset, about being open to genuine conflict that sometimes brings new perspective or insight… But that doesn’t happen when one side shuts down the other with ad hominem attacks or uncharitable assumptions. To be fair, it doesn’t happen online in mailing lists or discussion forums at all very often. Maybe you only get these kinds of reactions here and when people seem more real to you in person you engage differently… I know most people engage differently online than in person, and different pseudonymously than using real names. Someone else here compared you to Linus, and there’s probably something there? There’s no doubt you brought some vision and insight to both these projects, as he did, but something changed for him some years back that was a growth moment and caused him new perspective on how he engaged with people online. The same could still happen for you, and it wouldn’t mean you were giving in to a “woke mind virus”, it would mean you were growing.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#124

Post by pikdum »

koolba wrote: post #101
pikdum wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm not a fan. Feels like this project is trying to get popular off of Freenet's name recognition rather than its own merits.

The submitter is the creator of the original Freenet. If anybody gets to decide what we will call Freenet, it’s him.

I'd agree if this was more like a Freenet v3, but it's an entirely different project with completely different goals.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#125

Post by outside1234 »

sanity wrote: post #99
subscribed wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think this is a correct communication style for someone who thinks they're a leader, I suggest getting an assistant to write your correspondence, or maybe some socialisation bootcamp. This is grim. If you stand by it I'd say good.... luck, yeah, good luck, you're singlehandedly the gravest enemy of the project.

Yes, I stand by what I wrote. I'm not going to pretend otherwise because someone dug up an old mailing list post. If you think a specific statement was wrong, harmful, or dishonest, then explain why. I'll wait.

It is hard to take anyone seriously that says “The woke mind virus.”

That is what is wrong with it.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#127

Post by sanity »

serf wrote: post #120
sanity wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The new Freenet will support the creation of anonymity systems as services on top of it, which is much better architecturally than tying the platform to one approach to anonymity as I did when I designed the original Freenet. We will also have a decentralized reputation system that will protect people from being exposed to unsavory or illegal content, a common criticism of the old Freenet architecture.

less anonymity and a reputation system? I know you designed the thing, and that was a great effort, but what a miss when compared to the vast majority of freenet users priorities.

I wouldn't describe it as "less anonymity", it's more that the new Freenet gives applications and users different choices about anonymity depending on their requirements. I don't see how more choice is a bad thing - versus forcing the same (imperfect) solution on everyone as in my original design.

Similarly, reputation systems aren't inherently coercive, they're more analogous to spam filtering or trust heuristics, mechanisms for deciding what to prioritize - but ultimate control always remains with the user.

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#129

Post by FEELmyAGI »

sanity wrote: post #46
qcl820DV34 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the original name, "Freenet", was repurposed for a different codebase.

Different codebase, same purpose. This isn't even the first time we did a ground-up redesign/rewrite of the Freenet codebase, we did this in 2008 with the 0.7 release.

Neither of you get to be freenet, another project with the name predated it by a lot. and throughout the 90s many ISPs were named $PLACENAME_freenet

https://case.edu/ech/articles/c/cleveland-freenet

Re: Show HN: Freenet, a peer-to-peer platform for decentralized apps

#130

Post by adamfisk »

Exciting to see Freenet innovating so much, Ian! I haven't really dug in too deep but love that it's in Rust. What's it look like over the wire? How conspicuous is it in the face of, say government censors who can see and control every packet?

Been chatting a lot with the HolePunch/Tether folks, and their work is impressive, particularly the use of the DHT for all signaling, Tailscale-inspired (aka Birthday Paradox) NAT hole-punching, an entire JavaScript runtime, etc. I'm curious about some of those details in Freenet. In particular, does it do fully decentralized hole punching?

Either way, congrats!

Post reply on HN