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Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

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Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#131

Post by ytjohn »

nstart wrote: post #21

Just in case any bright eyed hopeful person is reading this, please don't think "ah shucks" and go away. Some of the biggest things in the internet including the protocols the internet lives on were never envisioned as something that would change the life of billions of people. They were initially created to solve a problem for a small group and then grew into something much bigger over time. Please please don't back…

I have my own server, I have had a blog since 2002. That blog has shifted around through multiple CMSes, from a homemade php script to movable type, to static generated to blogger.com to self-hosted wordpress. For quite a few years, my blogging has gone to almost non-existant (1-2 posts/year) due to me using the much easier facebook and g+ to post. However, I've been trying to get back into seriously blogging again.

I've also in the process of starting up a forum for local techies. Again, this will be self-hosted. I did some integration between wordpress and nodebb to be able to share my posts to a nodebb forum, and the comments are powered by nodebb.

Whenever I see a discussion on decentralized social, I get a bit excited, maybe try it out, then drift away. But now, I'm thinking about decentralized social a bit differently. I'd like to write a short status update (like a mastadon toot), post a picture, or write a 20 paragraph article all using the same interface. People should be able to reply right below it as comments, or share it. The forum I'm setting up could probably work that same way.. it's just a feed of things, and if it could be organized into topics (or perhaps even just #hashtags), that would be a good experience. So far, that's just all running on my server. If it was also federated, people on that federated network might see it and interact.

I don't know if there's anything active that can do that. mastadon looks like it's geared as a twitter clone (500 character limits) so I can do the short status and picture aspect of it, but not the longer posts. I like the idea of the local feed, which I believe could be displayed live on my site. I don't know if GNU Social or one of the others would fit in with this idea, but I'll be investigating this more now.

There is this ostatus plugin for wordpress. This makes it look like I can share posts to gnu social + mastadon, and integrate the comments with it, but not sure how that would work in practice.

https://wordpress.org/plugins/ostatus-for-wordpress/

To kind of sum that all up, I'd like to setup a federated blog (status updates, comments, articles) for myself, and a federated forum for a group. They could be the same instance, or two separate instances, or two entirely different applications.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#132

Post by aryehof »

htormey wrote: post #94

I think viable alternates to Facebook/Twitter have less to do with the underlying technology and are more about attracting audiences not served by these social networks. Hence I think the next viable alternative to twitter/Facebook will probably be a centeralized one that caters to multiple niche communities. Mastodon was released in October 2016, it currently has about 800k users spread across 2000+ servers. Current…

Is there a need for a more closed group solution for families and immediate friends? Perhaps one based on definable groups and encrypted posts and comments only those members can see?

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#133

Post by executesorder66 »

ab5tract wrote: post #70
vasilakisfil wrote: post #12

The same could have been said 30 years ago for an open source OS.

Then again, we're still waiting for the year of the Linux Desktop.

Yeah, but at least that open source OS dominates on literally every other platform in the world.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#134

Post by infinity0 »

inanutshellus wrote: post #121
infinity0 wrote: post #43

I've never seen an actual well-thought out technical argument on why decentralised social networks can't work. That's because there isn't one. People who are familiar with the technical issues surrounding this are humble and don't make bogus over-generalised statements like "X can't work [ever, everywhere, in all contexts]". This article is not a well-thought out argument either. It's a bunch of random irrelevant ane…

What "advanced stuff" was/is Diaspora lacking for you? The problems I had with it I can't imagine being able to solve technically. It was merely not top-of-mind for the group I set it up for. They came for a little while but weren't inherently invested (e.g. you're "inherently invested" in your football team's communication mechanism. don't log in, and you don't find out about a schedule change). Instead it was just…

Global search. Diaspora might have worked for you technically in the limited use-cases that you were using it for, but there are things Facebook can do that Diaspora couldn't have done (with non-shitty performance).

> It was merely not top-of-mind for the group I set it up for.

Some people make a big deal out of the "network effect" but they totally ignore how networks get going in the first place. It's the digital world, networks come and go all the time, overcoming the network effect is not a magical process. You offer more features than competitors and target people that have greater influence in the network.

It's for sure an uphill battle and this is one of the motivations of creating decentralised networks in the first place - to reduce network effects, to avoid these barriers to entry and these influences that make society's inequalities worse. But obviously if one has a depressing attitude about the whole process of overcoming network effects, and talk shit about "it can't work", then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#135

Post by lxrbst »

daveid wrote: post #104
lxrbst wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is not successful, at all. Apparently content that was not accepted on twitter, such as lolicon, has found a new home on Mastodon. The average user would never bother to migrate to decentralized services for any other reason then necessity, lack of choice, or to escape rules/laws.

Reposting from Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@Gargron/18213943 If you think the only reason to use a self-hosted social network is if you want to circumvent the laws, you're making the same argument as only wanting privacy if you've got something to hide. YouTube ran an algorithm to delete "extremist videos" and accidentally irreversibly deleted a bunch of historical evidence of destruction of Syrian historical s…

Didn't bother reading your link, cause that's not what I said. I was talking about the average user.

I also never said they don't have value, or that they're only there to circumvent rules or laws.

Sidenote: Loss of privacy/centralization isn't a problem to be solved, it's a reality that needs to be accepted. We lost already.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#136

Post by lxrbst »

awalton wrote: post #117
lxrbst wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is not successful, at all. Apparently content that was not accepted on twitter, such as lolicon, has found a new home on Mastodon. The average user would never bother to migrate to decentralized services for any other reason then necessity, lack of choice, or to escape rules/laws.

> Mastodon is not successful, at all. I don't know about your definitions, but in my playbook 800,000 users is pretty damned successful. Let me reinterpret your comment for you: "I do not want to believe Mastodon is successful, since it hurts my view." > Apparently content that was not accepted on twitter, such as lolicon, has found a new home on Mastodon. Unsurprising. All communities end up with some version of thi…

> "I do not want to believe Mastodon is successful, since it hurts my view."

What? I like Mastodon, it just doesn't have any people from the circles I follow on Twitter. I don't think the average user (who I was talking about btw) who follows mainstream celebrities does either.

Anyway I didn't bother reading the rest of your post, seems like you're coming from a place of anger.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#137

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

always_good wrote: post #127
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you gain from a democracy over a monarchy or a dictatorship? The only added value is being decentralized. Yes, the "only" added value of decentralized power structures is their decentralization. And the absense of all the terrible effects that centralized power structures tend to have in the long term.

I'll have to pop your analogy bubble and ask the question again: How are you going to convince people that the decentralization of a platform they use to get laid and keep up with friends/family is going to have a meaningful impact on their lives? And how are you going to do it to the point where you can cause an exodus large enough to cause any real change? You're going to have to do better than draw some analogies…

I don't know, nor did I claim to know? Though in the end it will have to boil down to "because no dictatorship", just probably packaged in a way people understand what that means. Potentially we'll have to live through it before people do understand, though, just as we have with monarchies and dictatorships.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#138

Post by egypturnash »

ojr wrote: post #100
egypturnash wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralize the funding; rely on users rather than advertising or VC. Developing Mastodon is now the full-time job of he guy who wrote it, thanks to Patreon. I think he's starting to hire a few people, too. And a lot of Mastodon servers also have their own Patreons to help out with the hosting costs.

To be an accredited investor in the United States, you need to make at least $200,000 a year or have $1,000,000 in assets. Would you rather be funded by users of your app or accredited investors? I think in a free market, the most competitive companies will prefer the second option.

Would you rather be in charge of a machine designed to make money, no matter what the cost to the humans who use it, or would you rather be in charge of something designed to foster useful connections between people?

Would you be happier building a social network designed to keep people on it as long as possible, so that it looks like a good way to get a lot of eyeballs in front of the ads posted by your real customers, or would you be happier building one that people interact with for a small portion of their day in ways that generally leave them happier, and then get on with doing whatever else they're gonna do?

Not everything needs to be about making as much money as possible. And so far Mastodon has been doing okay by taking a more distributed approach: development is partially funded by users who care to pay something, and partially a volunteer effort by people with enough time to spare; hosting is funded by people spinning up a Mastodon instance for their friends or their community, and if it starts to get to be more than they can handle they close off new signups and/or start asking their users for a few bucks here and there.

Mastodon is, thus, not obligated to anyone but Gargron's vision of what it should be, and what the users of his software are willing to support. Sure, it's not gonna make any lists of "ten hottest unicorns in Silicon Valley". Who gives a shit?

Would you rather lie there on your deathbed thinking "I sure generated a ton of value for shareholders and helped a racist con-man get elected president", or "I sure helped a ton of people have a lot of conversations and connections"?

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#139

Post by CM30 »

scandox wrote: post #26
nstart wrote: post #21

Just in case any bright eyed hopeful person is reading this, please don't think "ah shucks" and go away. Some of the biggest things in the internet including the protocols the internet lives on were never envisioned as something that would change the life of billions of people. They were initially created to solve a problem for a small group and then grew into something much bigger over time. Please please don't back…

I'd like to add one remark to this: everything doesn't have to be huge. We don't have to deal always in millions and billions. Small groups. Even individuals. What they do is meaningful. What we do is not pointless just because it doesn't create some massive impact.

This. Not every community has to have a million users to be useful. Lots of people are also members of smaller ones dedicated to certain niches. Like say, a genre of music or a favourite sports team or a video game series or anything else.

Just look at Hacker News for example. It'll never be as big as Facebook, Twitter or Reddit, but it doesn't need to be. It's a good community for the people it's aimed at.

The idea you should only make stuff for as large an audience as possible or to get rich quick is perhaps one of the most depressing aspects of the internet (and world) today.

Re: Decentralized Social Networks Won't Work

#140

Post by dspillett »

Kiro wrote: post #18
cetra3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's decentralized but needs: - My Email Address - My Phone Number Not really the sort of decentralized I was hoping for..

You can spin up a node or use a wallet to create an account directly on the Steem blockchain instead of doing it through the Steemit webpage.

I've only scanned the "how to build" documentation but from what I saw there is only information on producing a test network not joining the public blockchain? Is there a set of instructions for hosting your own "real" node?

(I've not read the white paper or other documentation so the info may be buried in there, I'm unlikely to find time for that in the near future though so asking out of "laziness" in case you have a quick answer to give)

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