Live data from Hacker News

Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

freenetproject.org

161–170 of 443 posts

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#161
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freenet feels very similar to IPFS, but it differs under the hood. On Freenet the network itself is the data store, you don't host your own files, you upload them and they spread over the network. If you go offline, the files still remain on the network. On IPFS on the other side you are storing your own files and the network is just used for lookup and caching. Everything on Freenet is also encrypted, so you don't g…

What is the discard policy? If I upload 10TB of random junk, where does it go and how long will it be stored?

It'll go to random nodes, and if those chunks have zero popularity they'll get discarded pretty quickly. The exact details would depend on client settings but probably don't matter for a general answer.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#162

…and its development has been exponentially decaying to zero for years. Mostly because of unsolved social problems (uneducated public doesn't understand they need real anonymous systems, and happily use corporate junk marketed as “private and secure”, while educated public dreams about making the next fart button app for the millions, and selling their data), but also because readily accessible public network gives t…

Freenet development is NOT dead! :) I have been contributing for ~ 12 years and now have acquired long-term funding (independent of Freenet's own funding!) to continue my contributions in a more intense fashion. The core network which serves static HTML sites + audio/video is stable and usable. It has a bunch of reliable long-term contributors working on it. Hence development on my personal side is focused on polishi…

How would you comment on the design of zeronet ?

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is interesting, I don't remember seeing more than trace amounts of “nazi/fascist material” there at all. Sure, someone has probably thought that the world needs another copy of Mein Kampf, or has had a real important story of how Jews did 9/11, and maybe these freesites are still (partially) available after a decade or so (I am not at all bothered to check, to be honest), but general amount of such loonies has d…

More like pictures of modern child abuse, child slavery (IE: ownership, sale, etc), and brutal torturous murder. Basically anything you've thought of the NSA or other intelligence agencies intercepting, it was wide out in the open there. The types of things you'd see kids telling themselves about urban legends of the "darkweb", well, it was extremely real and in the open on Freenet...

You forgot UFO parts for sale, bulk jenkem supply in railroad tank cars, and LSD application over screen oscillation, because you certainly was on something when you've seen those urban legends of the “darkweb”.

By the way, I really hate meaningless spooky terms like “dark web” and “dark net”. I can still remember the time before journalists invented them.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#164
post #83
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Makes no sense, Trump is pro vaccine and has been from the beginning.

It has been incredibly interesting how the antivax movement has suddenly become a right wing thing after years of festering on the left (including not so long ago with our own VP). I mean... I used to live in Marin county, one of the bluest in the country and one of the least vaccinated. Then COVID comes around and suddenly everyone's pro-COVID-vax, but anti every other vax. Robert Kennedy JR was also instrumental in the 'normal' anti-vax movement, but now it's suddenly a partisan and 'conservative' thing.

(Actually, I don't think it's 'conservative' at all. Living in Portland now, I know a lot of old hippie liberals that are anti-covid-vax, and I know few conservatives here, but it's certainly more mixed in that crowd than the hippies).

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if it is, so what? Plenty of things are illegal around the world that shouldn't be. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime. In some, atheism is a crime. In some, ingesting harmless substances is a crime.

When the original question is whether it's used for non-"super illegal" stuff, I don't think that includes things that are legal in most countries.

The original question is misleading, because it's asked from the perspective of somebody privileged wrt not having their opinions, beliefs, or topics of interest suppressed.

(Which, of course, is often a temporary state of affairs - the means of censorship are the same regardless of their target, so the more pervasive they are, the more chances that they'll be used against people who did not anticipate themselves being targets.)

But even if you go by this arbitrarily restricted definition, there's still one item on my list that is not legal in most countries.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but, is anybody actually using it for that ? Or is it just used for criminality, in practice?

And if it is, so what? Plenty of things are illegal around the world that shouldn't be. In some countries, homosexuality is a crime. In some, atheism is a crime. In some, ingesting harmless substances is a crime.

And in some, playing video game or music are illegal

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't think I was convincing anyone to run anything, just explaining that this approach wouldn't work. Moreover, there's always a possibility that you, a “decent person” can become a “criminal” one day, and, counter-intuitively, that's when you want the laws to work and be equal for everyone, not when you're a “decent person”. But it doesn't need to be so dramatic. Like most of the people on this site, you probabl…

> What if one of your neighbors is a maniac who streams killing people, or a botnet owner, or a military drone operator working from home, or just a domestic abuser? Have you asked your provider to only join the “decent people” network? If not, you are actively helping bad people right now. But they weren't asking about whether the network had some users doing "super-illegal" things. They asked if it was roughly all…

You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral.

One of the central ideas of Freenet (and some other projects) is that you don't know what exactly you transfer. Moreover, if you could discern “good content” from “bad content” in some general or specific fashion, you would instantly be forced to do so according to numerous laws.

If we followed that path, all bittorrent clients would get outlawed long ago (we all know certain businesses have always wanted that).

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if one of your neighbors is a maniac who streams killing people, or a botnet owner, or a military drone operator working from home, or just a domestic abuser? Have you asked your provider to only join the “decent people” network? If not, you are actively helping bad people right now. But they weren't asking about whether the network had some users doing "super-illegal" things. They asked if it was roughly all…

You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral. One of the central ideas of Freenet (and some other projects) is that you don't know what exactly you transfer. Moreover, if you could discern “good content” from “bad content” in some general or specific fashion, you would instant…

> You mean that helping some cold-blooded killers is okay, but after their percentage reaches some tipping point, it becomes too much of a headache? I can't say that I agree with that moral.

Participating in society inevitably helps some cold-blooded killers.

But I wouldn't deliberately help out a group made of cold-blooded killers.

So I think that moral makes sense. Which part would you disagree with?

> If we followed that path, all bittorrent clients would get outlawed long ago (we all know certain businesses have always wanted that).

Well, if I was strongly anti-piracy I sure wouldn't run a bittorrent client that helps relay anonymous chunks between other users. I don't think we need to involve legality in this discussion, that just complicates things.

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#169
post #52

Yes!! Finally. And the next generation of freenet is maidsafe. Many people on HN are unaware of most of these things. Tor still has sites hosted on a server. Dat and IPFS still have IP addresses of swarm peers. Freenet and SAFE network don’t.

Nice to see they implemented [1] it in a much better language than Freenet or I2P - Rust.

[1] https://github.com/maidsafe

Re: Freenet is a peer-to-peer platform for censorship-resistant communication

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the original question is whether it's used for non-"super illegal" stuff, I don't think that includes things that are legal in most countries.

The original question is misleading, because it's asked from the perspective of somebody privileged wrt not having their opinions, beliefs, or topics of interest suppressed. (Which, of course, is often a temporary state of affairs - the means of censorship are the same regardless of their target, so the more pervasive they are, the more chances that they'll be used against people who did not anticipate themselves bei…

> But even if you go by this arbitrarily restricted definition, there's still one item on my list that is not legal in most countries.

The harmless substances? You can't ingest those via ethernet, so I skipped that one on purpose.

Post reply on HN