A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git • Hacker News Board

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#21

Post by piedar » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 5:48 PM UTC

creshal wrote: post #14

ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #9

I'm sorry but I believe I'm missing something here. How does this solve any of the problems that people commonly have with decentralized, federated social networks? * You're still either hosting your own, or at the whim of whomever hosts your repository. Mastodon.social or GitHub. * Hosting your own Git is not particularly easier than hosting your own GoTo Social or Akkoma. * What if you end up with either a big foll…

Git makes it easy to make copies, but its nature of having one designated "origin" remote per repository that serves as upstream source of truth (on platforms like github also across forks) makes it not really federated/decentralized the way Mastodon et al. are. And I don't reaaally see how this tool solves that problem. Or any of the other problems you mentioned. But that said, Mastodon/ActivityPub don't really feel…

> one designated "origin" remote

Git is not limited to a single remote. The default remote is called "origin" but there's nothing particularly special about it.

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#22

Post by tedunangst » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #9

I'm sorry but I believe I'm missing something here. How does this solve any of the problems that people commonly have with decentralized, federated social networks? * You're still either hosting your own, or at the whim of whomever hosts your repository. Mastodon.social or GitHub. * Hosting your own Git is not particularly easier than hosting your own GoTo Social or Akkoma. * What if you end up with either a big foll…

It's a more difficult to use version of rss.

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#23

Post by numtel » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 6:02 PM UTC

ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #9

I'm sorry but I believe I'm missing something here. How does this solve any of the problems that people commonly have with decentralized, federated social networks? * You're still either hosting your own, or at the whim of whomever hosts your repository. Mastodon.social or GitHub. * Hosting your own Git is not particularly easier than hosting your own GoTo Social or Akkoma. * What if you end up with either a big foll…

If you want decentralized without hosting your own servers, you can store data on a public blockchain. Each interaction pays a small amount of gas that grants them hosting indefinitely. Protocols are a progression from platforms since they can be ownerless. Blockchains enable protocols by acting as a general purpose database.

This is what I'm doing with https://nonphysical.systems

It's still under construction so it's on Polygon mumbai testnet therefore gas is free. The source is linked in the first message board.

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#24

Post by cryptonector » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

Are we reinventing Usenet?

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#25

Post by msla » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 7:36 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #24

Are we reinventing Usenet?

That's what it seems like: Usenet built on Git instead of NNTP, which was, itself, a reinvention of Usenet built on UUCP.

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#26

Post by ape4 » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 7:37 PM UTC

cryptonector wrote: post #24

Are we reinventing Usenet?

I still miss it

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#27

Post by jayd16 » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 7:42 PM UTC

ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #9

I'm sorry but I believe I'm missing something here. How does this solve any of the problems that people commonly have with decentralized, federated social networks? * You're still either hosting your own, or at the whim of whomever hosts your repository. Mastodon.social or GitHub. * Hosting your own Git is not particularly easier than hosting your own GoTo Social or Akkoma. * What if you end up with either a big foll…

>But you don't do that if you're on GitHub, right?

How do you push to github without a repo you own and control? Are people pushing patches through the web interface or something?

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#28

Post by uptown » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 7:46 PM UTC

jdthedisciple wrote: post #16

uptown wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll let you know.

But will I get notified?

See! It’s already working!

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#29

Post by jmount » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 7:57 PM UTC

Seems like it all gets wiped by one git force-push.

Re: A non-federated decentralized social protocol based on Git

#30

Post by blooalien » Tue, Mar 28, 2023, 8:06 PM UTC

ClawsOnPaws wrote: post #9

I'm sorry but I believe I'm missing something here. How does this solve any of the problems that people commonly have with decentralized, federated social networks? * You're still either hosting your own, or at the whim of whomever hosts your repository. Mastodon.social or GitHub. * Hosting your own Git is not particularly easier than hosting your own GoTo Social or Akkoma. * What if you end up with either a big foll…

> "Hosting your own Git is not particularly easier than hosting your own GoTo Social or Akkoma."

Easiest way I've found (so far) to "host your own git" is https://github.com/charmbracelet/soft-serve