29 ms·

Scuttlebutt, a Decentralized Alternative to Facebook

• tschellenbach 9y ago
  I think it's fascinating to see distributed social networks from a tech perspective. From what I've seen so far they exacerbate the problems that Facebook has been seeing so much backlash against. 1. The whole Cambridge Analytica issue was caused by APIs that are too open. For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users. 2. There is a clear issue with Facebook's accountability in these areas. Distributed systems are typically open source, they run on multiple servers by different owners, this leads to zero accountability. 3. GDPR compliance about deleting data is almost impossible in a distributed system. 4. Some of the problems with Facebook are more about usability and clarifying how things work to users. For instance the scandal with people giving away access to their private messages. Open source software and distributed software tends to be much harder to use. 5. Any future concern/issue will be much harder to resolve if there are thousands of different instance running decentralized social networks. 6. Using AI to detect abusive content or spot fake news is much harder if you only have a subset of the data. So it becomes harder to address those concerns in a distributed setting. So while I think this stuff is awesome from a tech perspective, in many ways it just makes these problems harder to solve.
  • gcbw2 9y ago
    It's an open source alternative to FB, which makes this a more efficient FB. You are very correct on all points. Google and others operating a crawler would have the same data as FB has today.
  • wybiral 9y ago
    Your concern about APIs in distributed systems seems to neglect the fact that cryptography can be used to ensure that only the right people have access to the data. Although I do agree on the fake news point you make. Edit: It seems that scuttlebutt does support optional end-to-end encryption: https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt#security-properties https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt#security-properti...
    • lamename 9y ago
      > cryptography can be used to ensure that only the right people have access to the data That was my assumption too, but I have no technical knowledge on the subject. If encryption was used, would that keep a rogue server admin from accessing sensitive user data?
      • wybiral 9y ago
        You would encrypt the data before giving it to a rogue server using a key that reflects the access you want to permit. So if you want your friends to be able to use it then you'll need a shared key with your friends. But only the clients have the key, so the servers pushing the data around can't access it. Edit: Check out how Keybase handles this.
      • fabianhjr 9y ago
        > would that keep a rogue server admin from accessing sensitive user data? There are no servers, it is peer to peer. The pubs are just easy to connect to to bootstrap new users into the social network and have been mostly closed off now that it has become more popular to avoid bad actors from abusing that easy way in. You can bootstrap on a LAN / WAN without pubs.
  • ivanhoe 9y ago
    Well, it's not a Facebook replacement for the masses. It's more of the alternative in the way that Linux used to be an alternative to Windows long time ago. Linux was a nightmare for the majority, but for tech-inclined people (with a lot of spare time one might add) it offered a lot more safety and power, at the price that you had to learn how to set it up and use properly first. Same applies here. If you share data that shouldn't be shared it will not protect you, but if you know what you're doing it gives you a lot more control and safety.
  • crowbahr 9y ago
    The whole issue with facebook is that they: 1. Follow you from site to site, scooping up all the data they can on you. 2. Allowed all of that data to be accessible not just by you opening up to a bad actor app, but by any of your friends opening up to a bad actor app. Calling it "overly open APIs" is misleading at best. The point of an API is that it is a public interface. If Scuttlebut has proper permissions controls then they wont have these problems... and because they're open source those problems can be scrutinized rather than remaining opaque.
    • maemilius 9y ago
      Minor nitpick: API stands for "Application Programming Interface". There are plenty of private APIs in use right now all over the world.
      • crowbahr 9y ago
        Thanks for the correction! I did not know that. I guess that makes me one of today's 10,000.
        • c4urself 9y ago
          https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/
    • underwater 9y ago
      How can Scuttlebutt prevent (2) from happening? If you share data with your friends, how can you know that they haven't installed an app that will slurp up that data wholesale? The only solution would to be to enforce reasonable app usage in the client, and then require all your friends to use that client. That seems to defeat the purpose of a decentralised protocol.
      • gregknicholson 9y ago
        Nothing can prevent that from happening. DRM cannot ever work. Facebook can't stop “friends” from slurping data either. The SSB protocol has other design goals beyond “be Facebook but less evil”; for example it works seamlessly offline.
  • notheguyouthink 9y ago
    > The whole Cambridge Analytica issue was caused by APIs that are too open. For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users. Huh? Scuttlebutt is fully encrypted.. doesn't that make the API vastly more locked down than Facebook/etc? > There is a clear issue with Facebook's accountability in these areas. Distributed systems are typically open source, they run on multiple servers by different owners, this leads to zero accountability. This is no worse than Facebook though. With Facebook, your friend could steal all of the data you let them see. With Scuttlebutt, your friend could steal all of the data you let them see. At least with this I control who sees my data, no? Sure, I can't have accountability with a friend, but at least no company/etc has access to my data. > GDPR compliance about deleting data is almost impossible in a distributed system. Doesn't GDPR apply to companies? If my mom sends me a physical card, do I have to adhere to GDPR laws with her address/name? How is that any different than Scuttlebutt?
    • lukeschlather 9y ago
      > This is no worse than Facebook though. With Facebook, your friend could steal all of the data you let them see. With Scuttlebutt, your friend could steal all of the data you let them see. Your friend can, but Facebook can scrutinize third-party apps. In a decentralized world, there's no one who has access to holistically examine automated access and detect shady activity. In a decentralized world, everything is essentially a third-party app.
      • madamelic 9y ago
        >Facebook can scrutinize third-party apps I can assure you that they don't. Anyone can have a third-party app that scavenges for private info. See: Cambridge Analytica. >there's no one who has access to holistically examine automated access and detect shady activity There is. It is you. You can shut off access your data any time you want to. Yes, if you give someone access to some data, that data could potentially be out there forever but you can revoke access to your (future) data freely.
        • notheguyouthink 9y ago
  • cat199 9y ago
    this entire complaint centers on the over-paternalistic notion that it is the service operators responsibility, rather than the users, to solve these problems, and that this is the desired state of affairs. 1) ... on the users that have chosen to enable this 2) ... for the users that use other peoples servers or servers from disreputable people, or share to those who do the same. 3) ... and? this presumes GDPR is a good thing 4) ... it's impossible to view a list of viewed messages, perform bulk operations, flag, sort, group etc. facebook to the same level that can be done in other 'archaic' technologies such as email. presuming commercial ui's are designed for user friendlyness rather than increasing user engagement, etc. is a red herring. also, strawman. 5) much like HTML, TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP and everything else the internet runs on? 6) which is why spam filters don't work? and users don't have brains to do this themselves?
    • arcbyte 9y ago
      Preach!
  • erkose 9y ago
    We fail to consider policy when thinking about centralized/federated services. Centralized services provide strong, regular policy adherence across the network, whereas federated services provide weak, irregular policy adherence across the network. Centralized services can effectively silence a bad actor. They may also silence a good actor, but generally only under external pressure from government. Federated services have little or not ability to silence bad actors across the network, though individual instances may effectively silence "bad" actors. However in this capacity "bad" is not well understood and can simply mean the instance administrator does not like the person the silence. Individual instances may also give voice to bad actors.
    • EGreg 9y ago
      Why should “a service” silence anyone? How about letting people make their own decision who they want to talk to, without a third party saying “I forbid it”.
      • canadaduane 9y ago
        Can I use an analogy from biology to shed light on the valid point you have? Human beings exist as part of a society--a larger organism. Imagine if a cell were permitted to send any proteins or RNA it wanted to its neighboring cells. As long as the signals are benign or simply "nuisance" level, it's fine. But if the signals subvert the very organism of which they are a part--for example, by tricking neighboring cells into ignoring programmed cell death and encouraging enlarged blood vessel growth in the area--then there is a real danger that these cells are becoming a cancer to the host body that sustains their very existence. I think the scare-quotes you put around "service" might be to show that a communication service that silences your communication is no service at all. But isn't that true of any complex, principle-based decision? If you have a friend who says he is going to blow up a federal building, and you report him, are you a "friend"? Some principles trump others--like saving lives over sustaining friendships, for instance. In the same manner, I think there are legitimate cases where a "service" should not serve. How that should work in practice is still being worked out--in the halls of tech companies and legislatures all over the world.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • wpietri 9y ago
    I have similar concerns. If I had a magic wand, I'd solve this by splitting Facebook into an infrastructure-and-core-data non-profit and one or more for-profit companies that are building tools or interfaces on that platform. I think there is a natural monopoly for some aspects of this, which is why Facebook is so hard to quit. But I don't think the whole thing need be in private, for-profit hands. Mozilla shows that a nonprofit can be a good steward of important web assets, with much stronger user advocacy than for-profit companies normally do. Doing something like that for identity and interconnect between messaging and micropublishing providers seems much more robust than pure decentralization to me, which I expect would have the same failure mode as OpenSocial [1], where forces pushing toward natural monopoly are basically unchecked. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenSocial
    • dreamfactored 9y ago
      I think decentralisation is the wrong way to look at it. The protocol itself becomes the point of centralisation with many providers implementing in federation. Nothing to stop any of them being commercial (they may have all kinds of ease of use and features on top) or not. Since you lose the network effect of bigger player owning 'footfall' (e.g. ebay), there should be less natural tendency for monopoly and greater incentive towards user needs. For example, a more privacy conscious provider may choose to only share limited data with the wider federation. Others may be all about the exposure and getting more followers. (I'd expect federation to allow users a way to export their full profile+history and migrate to another provider taking their data away with them.)
      • wpietri 9y ago
        If the protocol is what makes it work, then it's definitely not centralized. Look at email, for example. I love it, but it's past its prime, because it just doesn't evolve to meet new needs and new mental models. Contrast this with how well proprietary messaging platforms have been taken up and improved iteratively. Or even look at how Google is advancing GMail. Email is nominally federated, but they have circa a billion users. 44% of US adults report using it, and it's 61% of 18-29 age users.
  • shmerl 9y ago
    You are mixing up openness of the code and protocol with access to data. Access to data should be managed by security features, and security through obscurity isn't the proper method anyway.
  • colordrops 9y ago
    For a properly designed distributed social network, there's no reason your data should be visible to anyone other than those you have approved.
    • rock_hard 9y ago
      What if people get tricked into approving malicious accounts? Who is gonna police that? How are you gonna prevent anarchy?
      • colordrops 9y ago
        People can get tricked into opening their door for robbers. This isn't a silver bullet - it would just avoid a central database with everyone's info that could easily be shared or scraped.
      • kabacha 9y ago
        > 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.
        • johnny22 9y ago
          herd immunity is a thing that you're not taking into account. It's rarely about single indviduals, but the entire group.
        • newfoundglory 9y ago
          Natural selection in this case means another Cambridge Analytica. Most people want to avoid that.
        • cocktailpeanuts 9y ago
          > 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.
  • staltz 9y ago
    The GDPR argument is a bit moot because Scuttlebutt is no different than sharing pictures in gossip style (a.k.a. memes). If one of your childhood pictures happens to become the new meme, there's little hope that GDPR enforcement would suffice to de facto delete it from the internet: from Reddit, from Imgur, from independent websites, from Torrent, etc. The same is with Scuttlebutt, but data is primarily shared between friends without contracts, not from people to a particular company. GDPR applies to institutions. The other points are just stating "much harder", which seems to just bring skepticism and little actionable suggestions.
  • arithma 9y ago
    Not saying that scuttlebutt is useless, but within the parent's perspective, almost everything applies as well on HTTP and HTTPS. But no one seems to care? I mean, google caches your website on their machines and so on, be it personal or not. I guess once things become ubiquitous enough, they start to become invisible. Whois service, I heard recently, was being scrutinized over personal data in the context of GDPR, so it's not ALL invisible.
  • make3 9y ago
    "1. The whole Cambridge Analytica issue was caused by APIs that are too open. For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users." No, the issue was that other people had access to data they shouldn't have. there's no problem with the API being open if only the right person has access to the right data, ie, if access management is done right
  • lucideer 9y ago
    You're missing one very large differentiator: user control. With Scuttlebutt, largely, the client controls every one of your points. Different clients (with different settings/controls) can interact with a network upon which other users are using completely separate clients, each with separate settings controlling how user data is contributed to the network. Consent is not an issue. With Facebook, as a user, you need to agree to Facebook's strict terms to be a part of their closed network, and—largely—cannot do so with your own client with its own data-contributing settings. The only close equivalent is using something like uBlock with your own browser, but the control you have their is very limited. I say consent is not an issue but I'll devil's advocate myself and describe a Scuttlebutt setup where it would be. Say a company sets up a normal centralised service, which you visit in your browser, sign up for a central account, and it's backed by Scuttlebutt behind the scenes. Users of that centralised service can connect to a larger Scuttlebutt network upon which other users may be using their own dedicated clients to access. Consent is an issue for that central service (which acts as a defacto client on your behalf), but not for the network at large.
  • black_puppydog 9y ago
    Personally, I hope (and I think I'm not alone here) that on a network like scuttlebutt, there will be much less "noise" than on facebook. My timeline on facebook (whenever I check it, like weekly) is a mishmash of... * ads (if using a browser that doesn't get rid of them) * "you missed someone's birthday who you didn't even remember you were "friends" with * look at this really popular post in your social vicinity, ENGAGE!!! * cat/dog/food pictures * politics of the same kind I had to ignore as a teenager, back then by mail. Sign $petition here! * the occasional thing I give a flying fk about This is not accidental. It is what facebook is built to do: keep you on their page, engaged. Scuttlebutt and such don't have that incentive. Liking "Pizza" or "Justing Bieber" doesn't exist. You can like a specific post, but that's not the same as putting your entire preferences on there. The possibility to digitally model your entire family and social graph and all your preferences in the open doesn't exist, simply because... why would someone implement that? And why would they then gear the UI to reward you for doing that? And it's not as inherently in danger of becoming an across-sites profile kept by a single entity.
    • rock_hard 9y ago
      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?
      • gregknicholson 9y ago
        It's possible for people to be engaged because their friends are interesting; rather than because the service is designed to grab attention.
        • mkarnicki 9y ago
          I would upvote this more than once if I could. This is the most important argument for "reason of engagement" as it should be.
        • rock_hard 9y ago
          But how the tool they use to do so is designed matters! If there is too much friction then people simply won't adopt it
  • wmf 9y ago
    I think the idea is no ads -> nothing to target -> no need/value for personal data. Sure, maybe Cambridge Analytica can scrape Scuttlebutt or Mastodon but then what can they do with that data?
    • rock_hard 9y ago
      Create a army of fake users to influence people that way maybe?
    • newfoundglory 9y ago
      Aside from the likely ability to connect it to other sources of data so they can show better ads on those platforms, there's regular market analysis - it's worth knowing that teenagers are increasingly interested in X even if you can't tie that back to individual teenagers.
  • sandov 9y ago
    In my case, I don't care about the "privacy protection" of a given social network: I assume that everything I post is public (except private messages), so I filter what I upload based on that assumption. Things I do care about: -No censorship -Chronological feed -Open source & non-abusive client. (i.e. no tracking what users see or read) -Good usability I don't care about abusive content or fake news. If I see fake news, I just stop following whoever posted it. So, under my criteria: decentralized > facebook
    • meesterdude 9y ago
      > -Chronological feed Isn't this asking for a bit much? /s
    • KirinDave 9y ago
      > I don't care about abusive content or fake news. If I see fake news, I just stop following whoever posted it. How do you know? Could you also tell me if my computer has virus, since you seem to have an oracle?
      • xj9 9y ago
        if you can't tell the difference between real news and fake news, what makes you think `$whatever_arbiter` will do a better job?
        • KirinDave 9y ago
          Why did you ask me a question totally unrelated to my post? I am not sure that I do think $$whatever_organization can do better, but perhaps it has more resources to issue corrections.
          • strypey 9y ago
            It might also have its own agenda about what news it wants to be considered "real" or "fake".
      • GCU-Empiricist 9y ago
  • woodandsteel 9y ago
    You're absolutely right. Distributed social networks are terrible, so we should stay on Facebook forever. And if that is not what you are implying, perhaps you could explain what it is you do think we should be doing instead.
  • 4bpp 9y ago
    I think your post hints at a general schizophrenia in the latest, culture-war-fueled push against Facebook. On the one hand, the public debate is still significantly dominated by the old guard of anti-Facebook activists, whose objectives can be summarised as "Facebook's power over its users must be reduced". On the other, the renewed interest in doing /something/ about Facebook in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and fake news (and, before that, cyberbullying, stalking, harassment...) essentially amounts to "Facebook's power over its users must be exercised to quell evil". More often than not, the two are actually diametrically opposed (as when quelling evil turns out to require an increase in power). A hypothetical actually usable decentralised social network would advance the former cause, and, as you pointed out, set back the latter.
    • yosefk 9y ago
      I think grandparent's point was that the first cause you mention - reducing FB's power over users - does nothing for the users if this power instead goes to other 3rd parties, and perhaps even grows. GP points out that in a distributed social network, 3rd parties can still mine your data, you still have trouble permanently erasing information, and in fact these problems grow instead of shrink. From a user's POV, what matters is the total amount of 3rd parties over them and the leverage they have against these 3rd parties as a whole. GP's point is that shrinking FB's power by going to a distributed social network might actually increase the total power 3rd parties have over users.
      • vlehto 9y ago
        I'm in the "facebook should have less power" - camp and I'm not worried about those 3rd parties if they are not unified. The amount of 3rd parties does not matter at all. I'm not afraid that I do something stupid and people find out. I'm afraid that I don't do anything stupid, but facebook makes it look like I did. They have authority a distributed system could never have. Also I'm not worried about someone who sells pruning shears could mine my data and find out that I like pruning shears. I'm worried that facebook only shows me adds of shitty pruning shears of certain companies. Who happen to be drinking buddies with facebook executives. You can say that these are delusional things to worry about. But how do you draw the line when concentration of power is OK and when it's not?
  • syrrim 9y ago
    The principle is that the network can become federated, which makes it possible to switch providers while remaining on the same network. This allows there to be competition between providers. Presumably, providers would compete based on their ability to protect your data. Facebook, on the other hand, competes almost solely based on the size of their network, which eclipses every other factor like accountability.
    • gregknicholson 9y ago
      Scuttlebutt isn't a service. There are no “providers”, so I don't understand what “federated” means in this context. It's a tool. The protocol sends data peer-to-peer.
  • fabianhjr 9y ago
    > 1. ... For distributed systems there are more ways to exploit the APIs and gather data on users. However there is no global state, users only push-pull feeds of friends and friends of friends. (In part for privacy and in part for performance, you don't need to carry all the data for a social network to be useful) > 3. GDPR compliance about deleting data is almost impossible in a distributed system. However that doesn't apply to individuals that aren't providing a public service. > 4. ... Open source software and distributed software tends to be much harder to use. Yes, however there has been some exiting discussion around what UX could become possible in a decentralized context. See https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical/ https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical... > 5. Any future concern/issue will be much harder to resolve if there are thousands of different instance running decentralized social networks. There are no instances, only peers. (Pubs are sort of easy to connect to peers and there is work being done on peer discovery to outdate most pubs; they could still be used to connect communits around topics, hobbies, etc as a way to reduce the distance between peers) > 6. Using AI to detect abusive content or spot fake news is much harder if you only have a subset of the data. There is no retweeting/sharing, though there is work being done on Out of Order Messaging to propagate a single message along the follow graph and there is work being done on flagging/tagging feeds/ids and posts. (Along with some semantics around how to interpret the flags/tags to improve UX and user control)
    • rapnie 9y ago
      > Pubs are sort of easy to connect to peers and there is work being done on peer discovery to outdate most pubs; this is cool! could you explain more? i thought Pubs were needed to connect with peers on internal networks, to alleviate NAT traversal issues. what i would like to know more about regarding Pubs - but could not find any info on some time ago - is how much it will cost, more or less, to host your own Pub in terms of data transfer/storage, CPU, etc. and whether rate limits can be set to manage this. nice to see your docs.. i have them bookmarked for later :)
      • fabianhjr 9y ago
        Hi rapnie, I suggest you try the protocol guide, it has a section on pubs: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/#pubs https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/#pubs
  • marricks 9y ago
    It’s hilarious that people think Facebook could be held accountable. Senators didn’t say we need rules for privacy protection or that any specific response should be made by them to CA leaks, just a vague “do suff better or we might regulate you” These guys really have free reign and just get a slap on the wrist WHEN ELECTIONS ARE MEDDLED WITH. We should leave their platforms in droves to deprive them of power cause it seems like even the US Congress won’t stand up to them.
    • jochung 9y ago
      Alternative explanation: if they actually go after Facebook all the previous shady shit US politicians have done would also come into question. So they'll stick to emotive appeals like "when elections are meddled with" instead of specific, measurable outcomes. Recall that the Obama campaign got the explicit go ahead from FB to violate their privacy policy, and built up equally large databases. Heck, recall Obama explicitly endorsing Macron. Does that count as large scale meddling? What's hilarious is that the same people worried about internet driven misinformation are now the ones jumping into action because the media told them to #deletefacebook.
  • deltron3030 9y ago
    It's a philosophical issue, negative liberty vs. positive liberty. Positive liberty is the distribution of responsibility to the collective (and managing/controlling the collective through central bureaucracy), negative liberty is distributing the responsibility to the individual, self organization, or stateful components in dev lingo. Your error is that you're set on only one perspective, positive liberty, like many people in europe. GDPR is like that, instead of giving people the tools to protect themselves, and not leak data in first place, and educate them about voting with their wallets, they just take it from the individual and apply it to the collective. That's the mindset of centralization. It's clear that decentralization efforts fail if you insist on distributing the responsibility collectively.
  • holri 9y ago
    You are assuming the network holds personalized data. While this is true for facebook (because this is their business model) it is not necessarily true for a non commercial social network.
  • KirinDave 9y ago
    > 6. Using AI to detect abusive content or spot fake news is much harder if you only have a subset of the data. So it becomes harder to address those concerns in a distributed setting. Maybe people will have to start paying the market what this data is worth, as opposed to burying it in EULAs and using venture and angel funding to create a next generation data oligarchy more difficult to overcome than any financial oppression?
• codingdave 9y ago
  It isn't an alternative to Facebook unless my grandma can use it, and she couldn't set this up for herself. The idea that centralized storage is the problem masks the actual concern. There is nothing inherently wrong with centrally stored data. There is a problem is when it is locked down by a 3rd party, and/or you don't control how it is used.
  • jeswin 9y ago
    > There is nothing inherently wrong with centrally stored data. I'd argue that a 3rd party having the personal details and communication logs of 2 billion people is a massive problem. Privacy, governmental data requests, accidental information leakages, profiling, job applicant scrutiny, fake news, spam, data misuse by employees etc. Or even worse, in times of war.
    • fao_ 9y ago
      What does this have to do with centrally stored data. Having data in a central store doesn't imply third parties. If the store is decentralized, then any party could be equivalent to a third party, and therefore anyone has access to your data.
      • jeswin 9y ago
        > Having data in a central store doesn't imply third parties. How is that going to work then? Every single company holding your data in a central place is mining it today and selling the information to advertisers. On a distributed network you replicate data only with people you choose. Since you're not going to add a government (or an ad company) to your friend list, they won't have your data. Private communications are encrypted and flowing directly to the recipient, so there's no port that agencies can tap into to listen. There won't be any big data to analyze, since data is spread across the network. Backup is easy, it's just a folder. Fake news never gets promoted, since there are no paid promotions. Spam is a non-issue since there are no advertisers. There's no way to get into your feed than through your friends. There's no server or central storage, so employee misuse is not an issue. And you can have as many identities as you choose, there won't be a mandatory real name policy. I could go on.
• hackbinary 9y ago
  I thought this was being done by Diaspora? https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ What's new/different here over this and other efforts?
  • jeswin 9y ago
    Diaspora is federated, which for non-technical users is worse than FaceBook itself. The individual nodes (to which thousands of users are connected) will have far fewer resources to secure themselves than a behemoth like FaceBook. Also, uptime, badwidth etc. ScuttleButt is peer to peer, somewhat like torrents but for data feeds.
    • notheguyouthink 9y ago
      Minor note to readers, it's partially p2p. It uses gossip, so at times your peer might be a semi-centralized server, and at other times it could be a peer. I know that doesn't make it not p2p, but reading p2p makes me think I need direct connections with peers. Gossip is sort of nifty that way.. though I'm not a fan of semi-centralized redirect servers.
      • maemilius 9y ago
        Considering it didn't seem particularly difficult to operate your own relay server, I don't really consider that much of a negative. Spin up your own relay, generate some invites for your friends, and share all of your gossip through a server that you control yourself.
    • kabacha 9y ago
      > Diaspora is federated, which for non-technical users is worse than FaceBook itself. The individual nodes (to which thousands of users are connected) will have far fewer resources to secure themselves than a behemoth like FaceBook That's a weird argument - it doesn't even make sense no matter how you look at it. 1. Security is more or less centralized as per core code and core protocol. 2. Why do you imply big monolith is secure than a small instance? Where's the logical connection in that?
• yeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
  No one is going to use a social network called Scuttlebutt.
• _Marak_ 9y ago
  Scuttlebutt is a great idea and has some really smart people working on it ( like Andre and Dominic ) . With that being said, I don't think Scuttlebutt has any chance of succeeding. SB network has some fairly serious architectural issues which may or may not have solutions that are achievable with the current design. I ended up uninstalling.
  • mr_spothawk 9y ago
    toxic users is a definite thing, but I think scuttlebutt is the best alternative social network I've ever found. the development community & the rest of the community are largely awesome, and they actually have a ton of funding.
    • _Marak_ 9y ago
      Can you show us any links or documentation that Scuttlebutt is actually funded? Or as you put it, "a ton of funding". I believe the actual number is 0. Would be pleased to hear otherwise.
      • lifty 9y ago
        They recently received 200k from the Dfinity project
        • _Marak_ 9y ago
          Did they though? All I've been able to find related to this is a markdown document not updated in two months. The company mentioned to give the money, "Dfinity", has no mention of Scuttlebutt on their Twitter, Medium, or company website. I can only seem to find things related to the Dfinity token presale and airdrop, which I assume is an ICO. Scuttlebutt would greatly benefit from having a real source of funding. If anyone can provide proof Scuttlebutt is now funded please post it here.
          • fabianhjr 9y ago
• patrickbolle 9y ago
  I really love the concept of this. I travel a ton and am without internet for days/ weeks at a time. Scuttlebutt allows me to keep up to date with friends and communities while offline and when I do eventually get online, just grab the newest updates and download them locally. This is such a cool thing in my eyes for parts of the world with little / no internet access. The creator of the project (AFAIK) sails around the world and, again, has little internet access. this allows him to keep people updated when he eventually does find internet.
  • slfnflctd 9y ago
    Your explanation of the offline utility definitely makes this more interesting.
  • tzakrajs 9y ago
    What is this "offline" you speak of?
    • ytjohn 9y ago
      When I'm on a plane and Gogo is moving about dialup speeds, while blocking protocols that would make dialup usable.
• EGreg 9y ago
  If I may, a decentralized alternative to facebook would be community-based, allow people to do group chats, discover and post events, see attendees, meet each other, add each other to contacts, maybe even drive each other to the events, date, book group reservations at local businesses etc. Like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI Yes that’s my project. Would love to get feedback. (The things I mentioned above are actually social things, the main thing that distinguishes them is that they are taking place in the future and group collaboration online is always leading to a goal. Anything that doesn’t satisfy those two criteria is more about socializing online than offline.)
  • codingdave 9y ago
    FWIW, I did a survey of people asking which features from Facebook that absolutely must have to consider switching to a replacement. As much as people say the events, chats, and local community features are important... exactly zero people checked those boxes in my survey results. Pretty much the only thing people checked was 'connect with friends'
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • exolymph 9y ago
      Worth noting that what users say they will do and what they actually end up doing frequently diverge.
  • madamelic 9y ago
    Here's my advice: You've missed the point and likely didn't do validation before building this (if you have). I don't want 1,000 features from launch. Facebook didn't start out doing everything they do today, neither should you. Copying another service won't win you users because maybe users don't like that feature or how it works. I want something that solves a problem without unnecessary doohickeys glued on to it. So basically throw out everything you've suggested and start over. What does a social network mean in 2018? What pain point can you solve easily without a lot of work? Don't spend more time on this than you need to, to get it in front of users who will tell you whether they will like it or not.
• remir 9y ago
  I downloaded Patchwork after someone talked about Scuttlebutt on HN, but when I tried to join any pub servers on their Github repo, none of them worked/connected. 30 minutes later, I uninstalled the thing. The idea was interesting, the UI was pleasant, and I could see this working at some tech conference where people connect with each-other and there's a common pub server so people can keep in touch afterward, but I don't see uncle Joe or grandma using this thing over FB.
  • f_leon 9y ago
    Same. Just tried to give it another shot and there's only 3 public servers and none are currently working
    • staltz 9y ago
      Public servers were a temporary hack and nowadays most of the community is putting their public servers down. It's not a good idea for scaling, but above all, public servers connect you with strangers, which is basically undesired for a social network with a similar use case as Facebook. There should be a pub server for each real community. I know it's not the most user friendly, but it suffices that one person in a real community of friends is techy enough to set it up, and it's not that hard: http://butt.nz/install?url=https://github.com/ahdinosaur/ssb-pub http://butt.nz/install?url=https://github.com/ahdinosaur/ssb... (this tool enables you to install your own server with a few clicks)
      • lsiebert 9y ago
        You have to handle the case of people who belong to multiple communities though, whether through context switching or otherwise.
        • staltz 9y ago
          Intersections are allowed. It's not like you need strictly one server per community, because servers are just mirrors of each community member. In fact, when a server goes down, no data is lost and it's easy to put a new one up.
• haolez 9y ago
  I think that the main obstacle of descentralized social networks is collaborative censoring. I don’t want to see posts in my timeline about ISIS propaganda or child pornography, for example. Are there any solutions around which allows users to block (most of) this kind of content?
  • yellowsir 9y ago
    you can vote, if you downvote a userid, it is like a block. http://scuttlebot.io/docs/message-types/vote.html http://scuttlebot.io/docs/message-types/vote.html
  • roywiggins 9y ago
    Now that machine learning classifiers are more and more mainstream, I'd hope someone would build a system of pluggable ones you could use to dynamically block what you don't want to see. When it comes to systems like scuttlebutt though, can't you just pick who you follow and if someone posts stuff you don't like, unfollow them?
  • wolco 9y ago
    But you control who your friends are and can remove people posting content you deem unacceptable.
  • boomlinde 9y ago
    Just off the bat, you could have feeds that handle complaints and publish blocklists that users can freely subscribe to depending on their content preferences, or just block whatever you don't like when you see it. Scuttlebutt is "against consensus" in that the only enforced consensus is that its users are using the same basic protocol—you can block content, but that doesn't mean everyone else has to agree to it and block the same content.
• ilovecomputers 9y ago
  All these decentralized alternatives don't have iPhone apps. It's app store policy that is blocking devs, ain't it?
  • madamelic 9y ago
    Native implementation is what is blocking it. The libraries would have to be implemented for it to work in different environments.
  • staltz 9y ago
    I'm working the mobile app for Android. Groundwork for iOS is underway: https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/981622147864039424 https://twitter.com/andrestaltz/status/981622147864039424
    • s73v3r_ 9y ago
      They're not native apps?
      • gregknicholson 9y ago
        Staltz is working on a mobile app for Android. Other people can make other apps too.
  • intrasight 9y ago
    And that's a good thing - because PWAs are easier to build and maintain
    • iaml 9y ago
      Are you suggesting there is a PWA scuttlebutt implementation out there somewhere? Or just joining the apple hate bandwagon?
• shp0ngle 9y ago
  Facebook, but in javascript and giant Electron app with hundreds of dependencies, probably including stuff like is-number and is-odd
  • staltz 9y ago
    There is work underway to implement the protocol in Go, Rust, C and a bit of Haskell. Some of those are usable, but partially complete. There is no reason for the protocol to be restricted to JS and Electron.
    • Vendan 9y ago
      Note the Go implementation is effectively halted due to frustrations largely stemming from questionable choices in message layout and incompatibilities arising from JS (un)marshalling oddities that are largely hidden by the single implementation (it's easy to be compatible with yourself). I would not classify SSB as "simple" to implement in anything but JS.
    • boomlinde 9y ago
      Well, the lack of a specification is a major hurdle. IMO, some of the glaring issues of the protocol could have been caught early if there had been an attempt to formalize the protocol. That said, hindsight is 20/20, and I don't doubt there'll be some work to write a specification once the idea stabilizes somewhat, but since the current version of the protocol has been adopted by users, I think updates to it will be challenging.
• Promarged 9y ago
  I wanted to take a look at how it works but the on-boarding process is not really welcoming. Getting started [0] redirects to this weird site [1] served over plain HTTP, installer is also not signed :( [0]: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting-started.html https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting-started.html [1]: http://dinosaur.is/patchwork-downloader/ http://dinosaur.is/patchwork-downloader/
  • wolco 9y ago
    Have we reached the point where plain http seeks not welcoming. If the site above doesn't require you to login why do you think you need https? Is the only reason to hide your visit to that site from your isp?
    • fjfaase 9y ago
      The idea of https to have a secure communication channel where you can verify that the other party is who they say they are. Each https domain needs a certificate that is bound to the domain. It is a good way to prevent malware to be installed on your machine. A website only needs to require you to login if they want to make sure that you are who you are and/or to prevent others from accessing information that you have shared with that website.
    • Jtsummers 9y ago
      HTTPS can be used to verify that the host is actually the host we think they are. This is especially useful when we're downloading executables/scripts. A plain HTTP site which is merely informative is perfectly reasonable.
    • allannienhuis 9y ago
      short answer is - yes, we've reached that point. https by default is a reasonable default, in part because cpu and latency costs of https are basically zero for most implementations. And the implementations where it's not zero can afford the cost. Given the almost-no-cost of the choice, why default to the less-secure alternative?
    • cortesoft 9y ago
• fenwick67 9y ago
  The biggest problem with SSB right now as a FB alternative is there's no way to sign your messages so only your friends can read them, unless you have only 7 friends. The utility of Facebook is that I can share things privately with friends and family. There are already lots of alternatives for public sharing.
• sergiotapia 9y ago
  Anyone else not even use social networks anymore? Privacy or not, it's just garbage. Facebook, myspace, hello, whatever it's all the same crap with different CSS values. Do we even need social networks anymore?
  • lowkeyokay 9y ago
    You might have point...But can we keep HN?
    • krapp 9y ago
      Obviously, this is where the cool kids hang out. We don't need those lame squares and their dank memes.
  • JetSpiegel 9y ago
    Ironic words from a HN user with over 10k karma.
    • sergiotapia 9y ago
      This isn't a social network. Do you see me posting picture of my bathroom/kids/furniture/food?
      • exolymph 9y ago
        Forums are typically considered social networks, although I suppose the definition is debatable. Whether users discuss their daily lives is not the standard, though. On Twitter everyone just kvetches about the news, and it's still a social network.
        • projektir 9y ago
          I haven't started hearing the term "social network" until myspace showed up. While forums may be that by some technical definition, in practice, there seems to be a core difference. For one, forum communities tend to be focused on a relatively small group of people in that forum. Twitter, Facebook, etc., tend to be fully global with the idea that anyone can access anyone else. Presence of media, I think, also matters a lot. On many forums media exists, but is not visible to unregistered users. There's an aspect of "you join or you're an outsider, and if we don't like you we can make you stop joining". I don't know if I can straight up define it but there seems to be some fundamental difference between Facebook and your random hardware forum.
• daniper 9y ago
  Not to be too meta, but the magazine this was published in is all about decentralization — I'm biased because I was involved in it, but if you're on this thread, you may want to check it out. Just launched: https://inthemesh.com https://inthemesh.com
  • severine 9y ago
    Nice, no RSS feed?
    • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
      When in doubt, add /feed and it probably works: https://inthemesh.com/feed/ https://inthemesh.com/feed/
      • severine 9y ago
        :) I knew it, but now I won't forget it! Added, thanks and thanks!
  • ocdtrekkie 9y ago
    I've added it to my TTRSS instance, their initial articles look interesting. Will yet be seen if the content holds up on a regular publishing basis.
• LinuxBender 9y ago
  Perhaps I am being dense, but I don't see a public repo with the source code and technical documentation. Is this an open source framework? What language is it written in?
  • nanomonkey 9y ago
    It's written in nodejs, here is the repo: https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt
    • LinuxBender 9y ago
      Ah, I was being dense. Thankyou! I've never run anything with nodejs before.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• michaelchisari 9y ago
  Good luck.
• blamestross 9y ago
  I like scuttlebutt but it is not in a form sutible for public consumption yet: - Providing a "secure" system in nodejs (it does not matter how good your crypto code is I I can poison left-pad) - Bad privacy behaviour: you can follow anybody, limited ability to have private/friend-only messages.
• CiPHPerCoder 9y ago
  I was noodling around with a basic protocol design the other day, and it turns out it already exists. I'll definitely look into contributing to Patchwork / Scuttlebutt. It's a great idea.
• dlwiest 9y ago
  I still think that's an awful name.
  • deckar01 9y ago
    Ya, I would be afraid to ask an acquaintance if they are on scuttlebutt. It sounds like some kind of illicit pirate drug in that context. I wonder if Facebutt would be trademark infringement...
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • twohearted 9y ago
      Faecebook
  • staltz 9y ago
    It's a protocol, not a product. Just make a new product that uses the protocol and there you go, a new name.
  • hoodoof 9y ago
    100% agree - names matter.
    • buoyantair 9y ago
      I don't think you say you contact over some HTTP or HTTPS protocol, you just say that you contact over twitter or fb or some other product that is built on top of this :3 In the same way scuttlebutt is just the name of the protocol not the product.
  • cbenz 9y ago
    Users manipulate applications named Patchwork or Patchbay, for instance. Scuttlebutt is the protocol.
• madez 9y ago
  The fact that one cannot delete or modify the history of a feed one "owns" is a show-stopper. Of course, people can always mirror stuff, but that is no argument against modifications.
  • coatmatter 9y ago
    If one stops to think about it, not being able to ever delete by design is a ludicrous concept when it comes to social networking. It takes relatively isolated cases of people mirroring and publicising stuff without consent to an extreme. Never expecting to need to delete is akin to expecting that you've peaked in life already and future-you will not be looking back and cringing. Facebook's "On this Day" feature I believe has helped a lot of people realise this - at least when it comes to users who have been around for ~10 or so years. It might well be possible that the solution to Facebook and Twitter isn't more internet social networking, but more real life networking. So while some people appear to be raving about the merits of Steemit and Mastodon, many more are probably already too jaded to continue on yet another "social" network. The problem isn't necessarily the technology if the problem is us. Fixing societal and political problems by trying to throw more technology at it isn't the answer.
• johnny313 9y ago
  I love the name, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scuttlebutt
• jason46 9y ago
  openDNS blcoks inthemesh.com for malware
• gjmacd 9y ago
  "As soon as I put the card into my phone, Scuttlebutt automatically updates and syncs with the new posts that my friends or I make." Yeah... so I'm out. Where's that card going to fit into my iPhone?
  • allannienhuis 9y ago
    That was just an example for how your data could be transferable for fully offline/airgap type uses. Its not the ordinary use case. The ordinary case is simply that your data resides on your device's storage. https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting-started.html https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/getting-started.html has links to more information on how it all works. So far, I like the implementation (I've checked out the patchwork client). The issue for me is the ease of getting started, and the social graph issue. Social networks are only useful to me if my friends are on it. I'm not a twitter kind of guy, I'm a facebook kind of guy and I'm not sure what the solution is when everyone else is on facebook.
    • strypey 9y ago
      > I'm a facebook kind of guy and I'm not sure what the solution is when everyone else is on facebook. Somebody was the first person you knew who was on FarceBook, otherwise, from what you're saying, you wouldn't be on there. Be that someone for your network of family and friends, on a user-respecting platform. May the source be with you ;)
      • allannienhuis 9y ago
        the effort to get started and the social graph issue are related. If it were easy to install and get my friends connected to the same networks I'm connected to, then I'd be way more inclined to be the first person in my network to recommend it to friends. Today the bar is really low for 'easy' - clicking on a web link and providing some credentials. I think having a really nice introductory web experience and the ability to have the same experience on multiple devices for the same user is a must-have for this. I understand they're working on it, but in my mind it's the #1 barrier to adoption.
• brightball 9y ago
  Would be great if they could set this up to work over your email account. Just add a rule to hide the data passing messages from your normal inbox activity.
• CloudYeller 9y ago
  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.
  • romwell 9y ago
    While I agree with your general premise, you might as well start picking your favorite hat condiments. H-E-B is a wildly successful grocery store chain in Texas, and also the in-house brand for many of the products sold in that store. The marketing slogan is "HEB: Here Everything's is Better!" The reality is that, while it is often better than the competing chains (sometimes sadly so, killing Krogers and other chains in my area), HEB are the initials of the founder. And B stands for Butt.[1] It didn't even start as HEB - the original name was "C.C. Butt Grocery Store". Hope your hat tastes well. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-E-B
    • carapace 9y ago
      Okay, but see, that's Texas. If I lived in Texas I would shop at the C.C. Butt Grocery Store and not think twice, except to smile. It's all about the character of the state... I once saw in Colorado a university that had the "Alferd Packer Cafeteria" (sic) ;-)
  • WovenTales 9y ago
    They were thinking that "scuttlebutt" means "gossip", and that the "butt" is just a water barrel. Basically, the ancient form of water cooler talk.
    • nasredin 9y ago
      Naming products is not a strength of the Web 2.0 Generation (2005+)
  • bitdiddle 9y ago
    https://scuttlebuttbrewing.com/ https://scuttlebuttbrewing.com/
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• staltz 9y ago
  Okay Hackernews, I get it. Scuttlebutt isn't fully ready for everything yet. I wrote that article hoping that it would sparkle interest to both use it, plus make it happen. This is not your usual startup launch, it's a community project by multiple open source hackers. If something is missing, you can make it happen. And there are so many ongoing developments right now (see list below), that it really doesn't make sense, at this point, to point out the current problems with the protocol. It's evolving fast, and can evolve even faster if you choose to make it your own and do something about it. Here are a couple of things being developed: - Mobile app for Android - Better cryptographically-verified user invites - P2P replication over WebRTC - P2P replication over DHT (Kademlia) - Better scalability (Epidemic broadcast trees) - GitHub alternative - "Out-of-order" replication (get messages from distant friends of your friends) - Private groups - Moderation tools (every person as a moderator) - Socio-technical discussion around data accountability - New RPC stack, rewrite - Rust client - Go implementation - C implementation - Groundwork for iOS support - Multi-devices accounts - Scuttlebutt on Firefox as an extension - Overall improving onboarding and docs - Replication over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi P2P - Web viewer - Scuttlebutt cloud (easy way of setting up servers) - Websites on scuttlebutt - etc It's a moving target
  • nemo1618 9y ago
    Can you point me towards the Go implementation? I'd love to contribute.
    • staltz 9y ago
      https://github.com/andyleap/go-ssb https://github.com/andyleap/go-ssb
      • Vendan 9y ago
        (I'm the author of the repo in question) Note that this repo has been sidelined, as I have fundamental issues with the protocol SSB is built on. Unless there's changes to how the messages are signed and verified, I'm not planning on putting any serious effort into SSB.
• icc97 9y ago
  Perhaps this is just a depressive thought. But I don't see any of these services taking over Facebook or even making a slight dent. What might happen is that Facebook dies a slow death and none of my friends keep in contact on there. But then none of us really built up and real friendships on there so there's no incentive to start again on another site. I guess, even say we all got our wish and Facebook died, I don't see utopia running up behind it. Utopia for most geeks was probably the early days of the internet. I don't see anything bringing those back.
  • coatmatter 9y ago
    I don't think it's so entirely depressing if you can recognise Facebook for what it is and be free enough of it while your "competition" stays there and stagnates. Focus on what you want from life and ignore the rest.
• valeg 9y ago
  Looks interesting but I think that something like Mastodon is more approachable for a general audience.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • yellowsir 9y ago
    why do you think that? i was looking at Mastondon and i can not find out what it's advanced is. e.g. compaired with scuttlebutt
    • valeg 9y ago
      Simpler concept to grasp, just works in browser alone, looks like twitter.
  • cbenz 9y ago
    I prefer Scuttlebutt because of the P2P architecture which allows offline-first and no-backend. With Mastodon I still have to have an internet connection, and create an account on a server.
• albertTJames 9y ago
  dankiewankie.com was already taken?
• notemaker 9y ago
  > What makes Scuttlebutt unique is the simple idea that users should own and control all of their data. I find this to be fundamentally wrong. After you post something on Scuttlebutt, you have no control of that data. Sure, it's stored on your computer, but it's also shared with your whole network who now have as much control of it as you have. I'd instead put it like this: > What makes Scuttlebutt unique is the simple idea that no one entity should control all of the users' data.
  • tzakrajs 9y ago
    Can I chip away at that final assertion even more? If the data is easily discovered through crawling the network, and nodes on the network are less resilient than Facebook's sprawling infrastructure, you've potentially given a single attacker control over reading and denying access* to data. There will need to be protocol to mitigate attacks on the network by sharing information between nodes. *if they can determine where the copies reside
    • notemaker 9y ago
      How would the attacker be able to deny access to data?
      • tzakrajs 9y ago
        DDOS the limited nodes that are known to have the shards of data you care about i.e. Iranians ddos shard nodes that contain dissident communications
• ibdf 9y ago
  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 grandma and people you went to school with but never met (or pretend you never met) are. Plus you need marketing, a business plan, and so much more than just code that puts people together on the same page. I hope for a social network where the data belongs to the user, but unless you get the complication out of it... it will be just something cool but not worth the time.
  • twtw 9y ago
    "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)?
    • dymk 9y ago
      You're confusing a protocol with a product (or in Facebook's case, hundreds of products).
      • nasredin 9y ago
        billions of products is more accurate. Products in developed countries is much more valuable than products in third world countries.
    • Kalium 9y ago
      You're absolutely right! A protocol doesn't need a business plan. Of course, a protocol by itself isn't very useful. You need services using it and systems implementing and supporting it, which do cost money and require some kind of resourcing model...
      • gregknicholson 9y ago
• roadbeats 9y ago
  Imagine if Mark created Facebook as an open source alternative for Myspace. Would it ever succeed ? Good technology is not enough to replace a popular product. We need to find the next popular product. The next cool, fun product can be also an ethical one if right team works on it. It's harder than building a robust decentralized network.
  • fenwick67 9y ago
    Imagine if Linus created Linux as an open source alternative for Unix. Would it ever succeed?
• hw 9y ago
  Why are we finding alternatives to Facebook, when in fact we should really be educating ourselves and people to stop sharing every single bit of personal information about themselves online, be it on Facebook or a decentralized application. The problem with Facebook is that it holds way too much personal information about a person - phone numbers, emails, a person's likes/dislikes, hometown, current location, etc, and because society has been 'programmed' to share so much about themselves, no thanks to social networks like Facebook that promotes building your 'profile'. In fact, strip away all that personal information and have people share their thoughts and their dinner photos and what you get is just Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat or a blogging platform. A decentralized alternative to Facebook will not solve the problems Facebook has because in the end even if you own the private key to your own data it's up to you if you want to share your data with someone or an app, and once you've done that to a malicious party, your social network is compromised. And as some have pointed out in this thread, a decentralized and open source alternative would be worse. In the end, it's up to the individual to be smart about what to share and what not to share, and reveal as little about themselves as possible rather than parade it all out to the world or to their 'friends' list. All it takes is for someone not too technical to download a hacked 'client update' to their decentralized Facebook alternative to have everything they thought to be secure be leaked out. An alternative that promises to be more secure than what it's replacing is just asking for more complacency. I'm sure we thought Facebook was extremely secure at some point, so why not share everything?
  • bigphishy 9y ago
    A large point of concern I do not see discussed with centralized currator like FB is the ability of massive cesnsorship
• twtw 9y ago
  Does anyone know how this compares to ActivityPub?
  • strypey 9y ago
    Very roughly: * AP is a decentralized protocol, like email or XMPP, that standardizes federated interactions from server-to-server, and interactions from server-to-client. Sharing data between end users depends on one or more servers. * SSB is distributed protocol, more like Git or BitTorrent. It has a concept of "pubs" which play a supernode role vaguely similar to that of BitTorrent trackers, or maybe a WebRTC server. Sharing data between users is P2P, not mediated by a server, although the pubs help user locate each other. EDIT: formatting
• some_random 9y ago
  I set this up a few months ago and found basically nothing. I wasn't expecting much, but there was literally no conversation anywhere. Perhaps I didn't put enough time in or connect to enough shards, but after about an hour I wasn't interested in continuing. Has this changed?
• _davebennett 9y ago
  I think projects like these are cool for tech nerds out there. But to the average user, unless it's super easy to use and looks pretty, they don't care for it.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• jancsika 9y ago
  Are there others like me who tend to read "alternative" as a misnomer in stories about "decentralized X as alternative to centralized Y?" I take git vs. svn as what I think is a fair reference point. Someone can still argue in favor of svn, but I don't think they could seriously argue that git isn't a viable alternative. Moreover, git is so popular because it specifically targeted svn's users. Scuttlebutt does not yet meet that standard-- at best its a framework on top of which a yet-to-be-built Facebook alternative might sit. I don't want to be a pest but the barrage of FLOSS "alternatives" to Facebook/Twitter can have a numbing or frustrating affect on readers who don't reflect on this discrepancy.
• profalseidol 9y ago
  Since it's AGPL, why not call it Free Software instead of Open Source. https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/blob/master/LICENSE
  • no_u 9y ago
    What's the difference? I've been calling my AGPL and MIT licensed projects as free and open source.
    • carapace 9y ago
      "Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software" by Richard Stallman https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
      • no_u 9y ago
        Visible source proprietary code is not libre and not necessarily free. Potayto potahto.
        • profalseidol 9y ago
          https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/blob/master/LICENSE
• mdu96 9y ago
  "Of course, unscrupulous firms like Cambridge Analytica are also able to access some users’ personal data by finding exploits in Facebook’s policies." The "unscrupulous firms" did not find an exploit in Facebook's policies. Facebook designed those policies so that 3rd-party developers had access to user's data, and they knew it since the very beginning.
• macawfish 9y ago
  Okay, but the immutable references sure make it hard to get rid of stuff once you've put it up there... I much prefer the DAT protocol, which has mutability built into its assumptions about how people will use it. I know you could do the same thing with an immutable protocol, but Scuttlebutt is a perfect example of why immutability shouldn't be the default. Try deleting something you put on there and maybe you'll see why. I couldn't figure out any obvious way to do this. I'd imagine that's because nobody has coded the "mutability feature" for deleting posts. Mutability needs to be built in. You shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel (mutability) every time you need it. Beaker Browser/DAT is a much more interesting decentralized experience in my opinion.
• anateus 9y ago
  The way I've described scuttlebutt to folks is that it's "what if Facebook felt like Usenet in the 90s".
  • seattle_spring 9y ago
    ...Until the voat/the_donald/conspiracy/incels crowd ruins it within a few weeks of it gaining any momentum.
    • fwn 9y ago
      That is just a problem of offering good filters. Every bubble other than the own is unpleasant. Social networks need to reproduce the filters we create in real life (social, territorial, etc.) to represent human interaction. Facebook is sometimes famously called out for creating those filters. ... although I often struggle to unfollow unpleasant (stupid/hateful/hivemind/low effort) content fast enough.
      • strypey 9y ago
        > That is just a problem of offering good filters. True, and this is a solved problem in the fediverse. Mastodon dev team have been particularly good at implementing filtering tools at both the user and instance level (like the email filters that block whole domains used only for spam or other abuse). We've had a couple of waves of folks banned from the birdsite turn up, get asked to set up their own instances, and after a while, you just stop noticing they're there. It's like a normal after-work drinks pub and a skinhead bar being in the same street. You occasionally walk past some unsavoury characters, but you don't have to interact with them. > Facebook is sometimes famously called out for creating those filters. No, what FarceBook and goOgle (among others) are called out for is creating echo chambers, not filters. The difference is subtle but crucial. In a nutshell, filters allow you to mute people who abuse you; spamming, flooding, flaming, dogpiling, sea-lioning, all the old favourites from UseNet/ mailing lists and a few new ones. Echo chambers quietly disappear the opinions of people who may disagree with you, however politely, and regardless of how many peer-reviewed citations they offer. You don't even know its happening, leading to dangerous levels of false consciousness, and uncritical partisanship.
• Bye_Felicia 9y ago
  Hate to be a jerk, but the name is all wrong. Again, I apologize, it's just the mood I'm in, but seriously, the name.
  • coatmatter 9y ago
    It's probably about as daft as the direction that led to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS - "Bionic Beaver".
  • osdiab 9y ago
    Agreed, I've seen Scuttlebutt around but I can't help but feel that it will ever be mass market with that name.
• senatorobama 9y ago
  Terrible name.
• tzakrajs 9y ago
  Could the Iranians have a malicious node join the scuttlebutt network to crawl and identify nodes hosting content for dissidents? Aren't scuttlebutt nodes more susceptible to DDOS than Facebook or Twitter? Are there features in scuttlebutt to mitigate this?
• zealsham 9y ago
  Only tech heads will understand the importance of a decentralized social network. Casual people who make up the bulk of social media won't .
  • strypey 9y ago
    Yeah, only tech heads will understand the importance of decentralized media like the internet and the web. Casual people who make up the bulk of media consumers won't, they'll stick to centralized media like TV, radio, and newspapers. Wait ... what happened ... I couldn't sworn that 20 seconds ago it was 1987 and I was watching MTV ...
• sam152 9y ago
  I started looking at trying to write an implementation of the protocol documented here: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ 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?
• newscracker 9y ago
  It's not an alternative to Facebook (or even Google+) for two reasons on viability for users. Firstly, it seems to have one client in development for Android, and none for iOS. Secondly, it doesn't offer a way to use multiple devices (with activity synced). [1] This restricts the platform a lot. I've been looking at Scuttlebutt once in a while for sometime, but I don't think it's developing fast enough to be a contender. I'd really like to have a decentralized offering, but unless it provides the key features Facebook does, like the timeline, newsfeed, groups and pages, it'll be a very hard sell to get others on board. [1]: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/faq/applications/multiple-devices.html https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/faq/applications/multiple-devices...
• brylie 9y ago
  Just spent about 30 minutes trying to install and connect to a hub. Ended up at a GitHub bug report with no way forward. While SSB looks very promising, and I REALLY hope we can re-decentralize the web, SSB seems to have a long way to go to match the simplicity of getting started on a service like FB.
• strypey 9y ago
  As the Diaspora* community learned the hard way years ago, the first rule of Replace FB Club is; don't talk about replacing FB. FB is different things to different people, some of which can be replaced, and some of which can't (and probably shouldn't be anyway).