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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
by 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 agoThis 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 agoYou 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 agoThanks 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.