11–20 of 96 posts
The privacy problem is especially interesting because I work on a distributed key management system called NuCypher. We use proxy re-encryption to do this and have a distributed network of nodes that perform the actual re-encryption on split keys.
If anyone is reading this article and wants to work on this problem, we have a split-key threshold PRE scheme called Umbral that we used to decentralize the key management part. The link is below:
Basically, think of the most annoying person you can imagine, give them infinite free time, and a uncontrollable urge to do EVERYTHING they can think of to make your life miserable on said social network (doxxing, abusive messaging in every way possible, creating dozens or hundreds of accounts, etc...). If you do not have facilities to deal with this, your network is garbage.
With the focus on "distributed" and "resilient" and "unblockable", you're effectively creating the perfect environment for every abusive stalker, internet creep, and troll.
Lord of the flies is not a functional governance mechanism. Moderation and control have to be designed into the network from the outset.
There's no reason I can think of that some sort of "distributed control" isn't possible, but you'd better have it planned out first. Bolting on tools for handling abusive users after-the-fact will likely be much harder.
IPFS is nifty but I'm not convinced of its ability to support an intergalactic workload quite yet. I've looked at it vs. CDN for a video delivery platform and have a much more robust system built on primitives DNS -> CDN -> HTTP -> HLS segmented MP4 + static HTML site w/ SPA chunks in just a few weeks. I explored similar ideas with using encoded public keys, hashing, and side-channel crypto key distribution to support some interesting workloads. This is cool because it's a no-voodoo solution, just HTML and RSS and JS and chunked video files, and the CDN handles the details invisibly. With IPFS on DTube I've only been able to author a little data before running into queuing blocks where I was unable to continue adding content.
I have some videos on my YouTube channel talking about IPFS and giving demos in the past 1-2mo, 'iSpooge Daily'.
Why not just pay a few bucks a month for a social network, and get all the benefits of centralization without the evils of ad-supported corporations? Most of us here use and trust GitHub, and imho that's what we need more of. While I'm a huge supporter of blockchain projects and their allies, in the case of social networks I don't see how this is going to turn out any differently than FOAF.
If you're thinking about building a distributed social network, you HAVE to have answers to the question: How do you moderate it? (Or how do the users moderate what they consume, if you will) Basically, think of the most annoying person you can imagine, give them infinite free time, and a uncontrollable urge to do EVERYTHING they can think of to make your life miserable on said social network (doxxing, abusive messag…
Its a bit like the internet itself. Lots of shoddy sites, but no one needs to visit them. Search spam is the exception but let a Google handle that.
If you're thinking about building a distributed social network, you HAVE to have answers to the question: How do you moderate it? (Or how do the users moderate what they consume, if you will) Basically, think of the most annoying person you can imagine, give them infinite free time, and a uncontrollable urge to do EVERYTHING they can think of to make your life miserable on said social network (doxxing, abusive messag…
On Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Google, Github, GnuCentral, etc., I type in Waldo's name and instantly discover Waldo's profile. On Facebook it even shows me Waldo's profile before I consider discovering him.
Also, how does the system make it likely that when I search for Waldo I get Waldo and not his evil twin Odlaw?
Also, how do you incentivize adoption so that the community doesn't end up rationalizing "Error 404: Waldo not found" as the proud badge of an artisanal social network?
Why not just pay a few bucks a month for a social network, and get all the benefits of centralization without the evils of ad-supported corporations? Most of us here use and trust GitHub, and imho that's what we need more of. While I'm a huge supporter of blockchain projects and their allies, in the case of social networks I don't see how this is going to turn out any differently than FOAF.
Because not all of my friends and family are willing to pay a subscription fee :-/
In this model it might be possible to assist uptake by having a class of power user who can manage their group over onto an ad free network.
Example: I have a private github account with repos I share with various friends who are not paying github users but are nonetheless now engaged in the github platform.
Why not just pay a few bucks a month for a social network, and get all the benefits of centralization without the evils of ad-supported corporations? Most of us here use and trust GitHub, and imho that's what we need more of. While I'm a huge supporter of blockchain projects and their allies, in the case of social networks I don't see how this is going to turn out any differently than FOAF.
If you're thinking about building a distributed social network, you HAVE to have answers to the question: How do you moderate it? (Or how do the users moderate what they consume, if you will) Basically, think of the most annoying person you can imagine, give them infinite free time, and a uncontrollable urge to do EVERYTHING they can think of to make your life miserable on said social network (doxxing, abusive messag…