Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+ • Hacker News Board

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#141

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #47

Theodores wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just checked out Mastodon and I didn't feel compelled to sign up. I am sure it is fine but the network effect is lacking, it is not as if I need to go on there for any reason, don't know anyone on there. What I was surprised at was that there was no blockchain nonsense going on with it, lurking away in the footer. That really would have turned me off it.

Unless I'm mistaken, I think Mastodon predates the recent blockchain fad.

Mastodon dates from 2016. Depending on which aspects of blockchain, it lon postdates Bitcoin, and came up roughly in parallel with the blockchain-all-the-things idiocy.

Mastodon itself has no reliance on blockchain.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#142

Post by danShumway » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #132

gaius wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Diaspora has been a comedy of such errors for the decade it's existed I think I had a Diaspora account in like 2011... Then they announced they were blowing away everyone's account to redesign the database or something... Never bothered with it again.

Crazy if true. Imagine suggesting something like that at a real company.

Not to defend Diaspora, but it's not exactly like this stuff doesn't happen in real companies.

To pick one example out of a hat, when Twitter bough Smyte, they shut down the API 30 minutes after announcing the acquisition[0], leaving vendors like NPM with no warning. After getting hammered by large companies in the press who depended on their services, their response was, "we could have done better and are learning from this experience."

From a customer perspective, there's not really any practical difference between a company deleting your account because the founders were just given a ton of money, and a company deleting your account because the founders are worried about database performance.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/21/twitter-smytes-customers/

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#143

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:46 PM UTC

tentonbricks wrote: post #139

dredmorbius wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specific information would you want to see?

A "join" link would make the most sense, considering the name of the site.

Fair point, I'll pass it on.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#144

Post by md224 » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:47 PM UTC

deanclatworthy wrote: post #93

For a website called JoinDiaspora, I'm surprised I can't find out how to join Diaspora from the homepage.

Here's the account creation page for the largest US pod: https://diasp.org/users/sign_up

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#145

Post by Already__Taken » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:49 PM UTC

nakedrobot2 wrote: post #56

hguhghuff wrote: post #12

I think product names matter, and diaspora seems misnamed to me.

agree. it's simply a bad name. 4 syllables long, and a strange word that most people have never seen before.

I bet if they changed it to disapora most people wouldn't notice either.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#146

Post by erikb » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

Scuttlebutt, Gnu/Social and Mastodon are also worth checking out.

Comparison of many distributed (and some even decentralized) social networks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_pro...

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#147

Post by erikb » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:51 PM UTC

9712263 wrote: post #34

The most successful decentralized communication system - email as it turned out, people would concentrated to large free provider like Google. Decentralized server does not protect privacy for normal user because not most people could handle owning their server. The most success decentralized service is BitTorrent. It is decentralized and it is decentralized in client level. Though it also caused uncontrollable pirac…

Bittorrent is decentralized in theory, but I think nowadays it's not worth much without trackers. Trackers again enable centralized groups with self-serving interests to centralize the activities and track user activity.

Check out what gnutella or the dat-protocol have to offer for reasonable alternatives.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#148

Post by TenJack » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 3:58 PM UTC

hguhghuff wrote: post #12

I think product names matter, and diaspora seems misnamed to me.

I came for this comment. Seems like it was named after the act of people leaving other social networks, but what about if everyone really had left and was using Diaspora?

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#149

Post by dredmorbius » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 4:01 PM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #2

How does Diaspora compare to Mastodon? My naive impression is that Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter clone and Diaspora tries to be a nonprofit Facebook. Is that correct?

Both are federated platforms based on open protocols, capable of being self-hosted.

Feature-wise, Mastodon is a microblogging platform, defaulting to 500 characters per post, and supporting hashtags, images, and video, as well as lists and blocking/muting capabilities.

Diaspora (and the related Friendica and Hubzilla) are social-graph posting platforms, with Markdown-based formatted posts of significant length,[1] organised around Aspects (similar to G+ Circles),[2] and hashtag-based interest seaarch/streams. Images and video supported, multiple Notifications types.

Friendica and Hubzilla add groups and other features, as well as more robust blocking (a distinct weakness of Diaspora).

________________________________

Notes:

1. I seem to recall 100k characters mentioned, 16,700 words or so. Novella range. Possibly longer.

2. Google+ apparently took its early design from Diaspora, including its renamed 'Circles' and "Sparks" features.

Re: Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+

#150

Post by jklinger410 » Fri, Nov 02, 2018, 4:03 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #136

jklinger410 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you don't want to be harassed by someone taking your conversations out of context then doxxing you and trying to ruin your life.

As was recently demonstrated, online mob harassment is very doable on Mastodon: http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-...

Beyond the fact that I don't really believe Wil is entirely innocent in his complaints, he simply had to change instances.

He also used his real name. In fact, he didn't really take any steps to protect himself besides moving to mastadon. Large instances, after all, simply function like an unmonetized twitter.