4 ms·

Messenger apps, more than anything are screaming out for decentralisation. I'm not sure what the solution is - none of the major clients operate outside of a ce

Messenger apps, more than anything are screaming out for decentralisation. I'm not sure what the solution is - none of the major clients operate outside of a centralised model yet - and it's incredibly difficult to counteract the hive effect when it comes to these kinds of services. Messenger apps are also inherently highly personal. It's your primary means of communication in the digital age. The idea of ads being injected into that experience appalls me.

rahoulb 9y ago
They used to be decentralised. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Gtalk were all based on XMPP and they all deliberately switched off the federation feature, then changed protocol.
mercer 9y ago
I've posted a link earlier about 'Scuttlebutt' (and the actual client on top of it, Patchwork), which is kind of a decentralized Facebook. It's main innovation, as far as I can tell, is that it uses the real world as a model for its approach. Your content spreads as 'gossip', peer to peer (over LAN/wifi), but also propagates through 'pubs' that are internet-accessible. What first made me interested is that the Patchwork client is quite user-friendly and I've noticed that the relatively small group of current users are not all tech-savvy. That's something of an achievement. Furthermore, some other options I've looked into strike me as either unrealistically decentralized, or too (pragmatically?) centralized. Anyways, even as just as a look into how thing could work different I can highly recommend checking out these types of alternatives!
- msangi 9y ago
  This is an extremely interesting project, but when I logged in I found it difficult to find someone to interact with. It might be that I joined a pub with very little traffic, I haven't spent much time on it and I plan to have another look when I have some free time.
  - mercer 9y ago
    You might have to poke around the channels and, more importantly, follow people that you find interesting. That should liven things up a bit. That said, I suppose the whole thing is inherently quieter than something like Facebook or a forum because it's decentralized and, of course, still a small community at this point. And quite possibly the whole point is not to be as busy as other social platforms :).
    - msangi 9y ago
      Thanks for the advice, following people made it much more interesting. I also started to appreciate what's the price for decentralization: after following just a couple of users I already have several hundreds megabytes downloaded.

rahoulb 9y ago

They used to be decentralised. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Gtalk were all based on XMPP and they all deliberately switched off the federation feature, then changed protocol.

mercer 9y ago

I've posted a link earlier about 'Scuttlebutt' (and the actual client on top of it, Patchwork), which is kind of a decentralized Facebook. It's main innovation, as far as I can tell, is that it uses the real world as a model for its approach. Your content spreads as 'gossip', peer to peer (over LAN/wifi), but also propagates through 'pubs' that are internet-accessible. What first made me interested is that the Patchwork client is quite user-friendly and I've noticed that the relatively small group of current users are not all tech-savvy. That's something of an achievement. Furthermore, some other options I've looked into strike me as either unrealistically decentralized, or too (pragmatically?) centralized. Anyways, even as just as a look into how thing could work different I can highly recommend checking out these types of alternatives!

msangi 9y ago
This is an extremely interesting project, but when I logged in I found it difficult to find someone to interact with. It might be that I joined a pub with very little traffic, I haven't spent much time on it and I plan to have another look when I have some free time.
- mercer 9y ago
  You might have to poke around the channels and, more importantly, follow people that you find interesting. That should liven things up a bit. That said, I suppose the whole thing is inherently quieter than something like Facebook or a forum because it's decentralized and, of course, still a small community at this point. And quite possibly the whole point is not to be as busy as other social platforms :).
  - msangi 9y ago
    Thanks for the advice, following people made it much more interesting. I also started to appreciate what's the price for decentralization: after following just a couple of users I already have several hundreds megabytes downloaded.