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Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

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Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#271

Post by nasredin »

mr_sturd wrote: post #265
ibdf wrote: post #120

2018 will be the year of "alternative to facebook" apps that are in no way an alternative to facebook. To be an alternative to facebook, it should at least do 50% of what facebook does, and it should be accessible to all. Anything that takes more than 3 steps to get it running it's going to keep people out. And if you keep people out, you don't have a social network, at least not anything like facebook where your gra…

One can always hope. But, we all know where "this is the year of..." gets us in the software industry.

Some day The Year of The Linux Desktop is gonna prove all the skeptics and doubters wrong.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#272

Post by nasredin »

dymk wrote: post #140
twtw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You need ... a business plan." I don't agree. What is the business plan of email (by which I mean SMTP, not some webmail provider)?

You're confusing a protocol with a product (or in Facebook's case, hundreds of products).

billions of products is more accurate.

Products in developed countries is much more valuable than products in third world countries.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#273

Post by sam152 »

I started looking at trying to write an implementation of the protocol documented here: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/. I was surprised just how little information exists on the handshake and message exchange protocols. The reference implementations of both seem quite immature.

Was there no existing protocol for sending P2P messages between clients this could have been built on top of?

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#274

Post by mr_sturd »

nasredin wrote: post #271
mr_sturd wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can always hope. But, we all know where "this is the year of..." gets us in the software industry.

Some day The Year of The Linux Desktop is gonna prove all the skeptics and doubters wrong.

Don't worry, I'm a dreamer too.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#275

Post by nasredin »

wolco wrote: post #113
s73v3r_ wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook may not have started doing everything they're doing now, but they do have it now. Any new competitor is not going to be judged based on what Facebook was 10 years ago; they're going to be judged against it now.

I think the point is facebook didn't have everything myspace did when they started but brought in users for what it offered. What they offered was a semi-private network for your college. Very local. Only later did they open up to all.

It was the UI.

MySpace UI was terrible. You just can't allow regular people to edit CSS of their profiles.

MySpace was like high school, FB was like college. More grown up and sophisticated. Exclusivity was part of it.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#276

Post by nasredin »

WovenTales wrote: post #168
CloudYeller wrote: post #95

wtf were they thinking when they named it that? if any non joke product with "butt" in the name ever succeeds, I will eat my hat.

They were thinking that "scuttlebutt" means "gossip", and that the "butt" is just a water barrel. Basically, the ancient form of water cooler talk.

Naming products is not a strength of the Web 2.0 Generation (2005+)

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#277

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

Bizarro wrote: post #223
rock_hard wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if people get tricked into approving malicious accounts? Who is gonna police that? How are you gonna prevent anarchy?

How are you gonna prevent anarchy? Cats and dogs living together...oh my. Let me clue you in on something. In free societies there's risks and individuals make bad decisions, and we live with it. We don't need someone policing everything.

I used to think like this too, but once you dive deep into "decentralization", ironically you learn so many things that are infeasible and impossible with decentralization, and you start to appreciate all the shitty rules that you used to despise.

For starters, you say "free societies", but try to think deeper about what that exactly means. It's most likely a collection of nation states, each with its own governance and military and law. Everything around you works because of some sort of centralized authority.

Most people don't realize this--I myself who's a programmer probably would have died without knowing this if I didn't get into decentralized tech stuff--because they never needed to question why governments exist or why nations exist.

TLDR: Anarchy is likely to happen if there's no regulation. Even the Internet itself is regulated if you look into every party involved.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#278

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

kabacha wrote: post #211
rock_hard wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if people get tricked into approving malicious accounts? Who is gonna police that? How are you gonna prevent anarchy?

> What if people get tricked into approving malicious accounts? Do you really need to idiot proof everything? I'd say just let natural selection happen at this point.

> Do you really need to idiot proof everything? I'd say just let natural selection happen at this point.

I'd say people with this mindset will be the first to be eliminated through natural selection, not because they're unintelligent, but because of the belief that they're intelligent and smart enough not to fall for this. The reason is: EVERYONE can fall for anything.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#279

Post by mkarnicki »

gregknicholson wrote: post #247
rock_hard wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if users don’t stay engaged then how would they retain? And if they don’t retain...how would it be useful to anyone when none of their friends are on it?

It's possible for people to be engaged because their friends are interesting; rather than because the service is designed to grab attention.

I would upvote this more than once if I could. This is the most important argument for "reason of engagement" as it should be.

Re: Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

#280

Post by iaml »

intrasight wrote: post #232
ilovecomputers wrote: post #18

All these decentralized alternatives don't have iPhone apps. It's app store policy that is blocking devs, ain't it?

And that's a good thing - because PWAs are easier to build and maintain

Are you suggesting there is a PWA scuttlebutt implementation out there somewhere? Or just joining the apple hate bandwagon?
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