10 ms·

$1M to build decentralized social networks

132 points by muneeb 8y ago

douglaswlance 8y ago
Decentralized search please too.
- douglaswlance 8y ago
  And ecommerce while we're at it.
  - hackandtrip 8y ago
    Try OpenBazaar!
  - ibdf 8y ago
    This is on producthunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/public-market https://www.producthunt.com/posts/public-market
franzpeterstein 8y ago
Nobody needs a social network anymore, whether it is decentralized (Mastodon, Diaspora) or centralized (Facebook, Twitter). I think the social media bubble burst a long time ago and we just didn't realize it. I also have a Mastodon account, but used it only for a short time. I speak now only for myself personally, social networks bore me quite and I have no more interest to sign up somewhere.
- lccarrasco 8y ago
  Do you mind elaborating on why do you think social media was a bubble?
  - franzpeterstein 8y ago
    Gladly. But I am not a scientist or start-up founder who may have a better insight into the subject. When I registered with social networks at the beginning of the Web 2.0 hype, it was all exciting and new. There were many offers and most companies (MySpace and Co had no idea how much potential was available for advertising and marketing). After that came Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. That's when it all got more professional. You went from a user to a customer, from a customer to a record with which you could earn money. It's getting around and everybody's jumping on the $$$-train. Youtube is like a TV channel, only that runs more advertising there and Instagram can also be seen as a advertising portal. Facebook dug its own grave because it became too greedy. Since only old people hang out on Snapchat, nobody wants to go there anymore. Not even my little nephew wants to join a social network and that's the point where I see it as a bubble that burst. Social networks are like alpha versions of open World Crafting Games on Steam. there are hundreds of offers, but nobody wants them anymore.
- notyourwork 8y ago
  I agree, for me it has become an advanced phone book more or less. I use it as a directory for those I don’t regularly talk to via phone, text or in person.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    I prefer email for this purpose.
- swalsh 8y ago
  I live 2000 miles away from my parents. I have 2 kids, my parents LOVE the small insights they get into their grandkids lives that happen on social media. I could lose the no win political debates, the self-aggrandizing from my friends, the memes, but seeing my friends kids grow, my parents seeing my kids grow. That's cool.
  - taytus 8y ago
    Do you use FB to share those moments? Wouldn't be other tools better for that? Even when is owned by FB seems to me that WhatsApp would do a better job at this.
    - philfrasty 8y ago
      Try the Path app, exact use case
- chimprich 8y ago
  Facebook alone has over 2 billion users, and keeps growing. I can't see how it is a bubble that has burst. I've met many people in developing countries that don't have running water, or indoor sanitation, but still access Facebook through a cheap smartphone. It's important to a great many people. Personally I find Facebook extremely useful; I just hate the implementation, which seems to be a buggy mix of dark patterns which attempt to manipulate my state of mind and do bad things with my personal data. A realistic open competitor would be extremely welcome, but first you have to somehow get past the network effect.
- LunaSea 8y ago
  The billion plus active users on Facebook would like to disagree with you. It's undeniable that social networks are needed and are as popular as ever. It's not always the same ones (more people moved to Instagram) but the overall number is definitely higher than ever. There is simply no replacement solution for staying in touch with people outside of phone number based solutions à la WhatsApp (which you could argue is also a social network).
- onion2k 8y ago
  Nobody needs a social network anymore This sort of comment is why people in tech are very often seen as being incredibly bad at solving non-trivial social problems by people outside of our industry. Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to use one regularly. There are plenty of problems with the way networks work, and what they do to our mental health, but the notion that no one should use them any more is plain stupid.
  - swsieber 8y ago
    Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to have signed up for one at some point. Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth use a product designed to addict them. I agree in general though - they can be useful, and they can fill a real purpose.
    - mayniac 8y ago
      I think a better argument is that between a third and a half of all people on Earth see enough value in some elements of social networks to sign up for them. A lot of people I know only use Facebook for messenger. Some only use it for private groups. Some for events. Some for the newsfeed. Those people use twitter, instagram, whatsapp, snapchat, or discord for the features they don't use on Facebook. IMO instead of looking for a service which could distribute the back-end servers of a single social network we should be encouraging the distribution of features, and make sure they can interact with each other smoothly.
    - onion2k 8y ago
      Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to have signed up for one at some point. I was referring to daily- and monthly-active-users numbers. That's people who sign in and interact with their accounts at least once a day or a month respectively. Those are the important numbers, and they're a fairly accurate representative of the number of people who currently use social media. I think it's fair to say people who stop seeing any positive value in their accounts stop being monthly active users.
- mortenjorck 8y ago
  > Nobody needs a social network anymore Nobody needs another Facebook or Twitter. The future of humans communicating, however, is wide open. Anything that succeeds on Blockstack will not be a clone of something that already exists, but rather something novel, even something that could only exist on the platform. I've said it before, but the closest thing to the future of social networking that I've seen is Slack: Right now, outside of its marketed purpose, it's mostly used as an extension of existing online communities or as a way for people to stay in touch after departing a company, but the way it's it's centered around distributed groups is powerful, much more so than the way groups were grafted onto the core topology of Facebook. A successful decentralized social network will not look like Slack, either. Just as Slack drew from IRC and Facebook drew from MySpace, a new network will have to draw on all of these and more, synthesizing a new experience that offers genuine value.
overcast 8y ago
If I had the money, I'd pledge $1B to erase social networks from our lives.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  If you feel that strongly, stop using them. I stopped using Facebook a year ago, and now my most social sites are YouTube and reddit. Neither are as toxic for me as Facebook was. You won’t save others, but it’s easy to save yourself.
  - amhokies 8y ago
    Just don't read the Youtube comments.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Sometimes they're pretty funny. One just has to remember that those aren't real people. They're all Martian bots.
  - fein 8y ago
    > now my most social sites are YouTube and reddit So out of the fire, and into the frying pan.
    - newscracker 8y ago
      I thought this was weird too, because both YouTube and reddit are quite addictive, just like Facebook. YouTube's recommendations are an endless pit of wasted time unless one takes care to view only a small, curated set of channels with daily time limits. As for reddit, it's quite noisy (like Twitter) and attracts a lot of what I consider low value comments and posts (the kinds that are discouraged on HN and get ruthlessly downvoted to oblivion here).
      - TaylorAlexander 8y ago
acconrad 8y ago
So why not just throw the $1M at Diaspora or Mastodon?
- Xeoncross 8y ago
  They use their own auth/storage systems. Browserstack is simply giving a tiny amount of the money they raised to build their own platform. If I was browser stack I'd be offering a lot more than $1 million considering how important this is to their platform.
- folex 8y ago
  Because it's mostly self advertising, not an attempt to really solve someone's problem?
snissn 8y ago
It's unclear if they're giving the money without taking equity, or if they're expecting to get a cut.
Robin_Message 8y ago
One of the questions is: "describe your social network in 50 characters or less." "Facebook but decentralised" is already 26 characters so that seems like a bit of a tight limit. I suppose it'll help find people who have any marketing nouse, which is the actual challenge for a project like this, not technology.
- gitgud 8y ago
  Last question: "Please implement the social network in 5 weeks or less, GitHub link to code too please"
  - DeadSuperHero 8y ago
    That's super ridiculous. You wouldn't want to use a decentralized social platform in a production environment that's only got 5 weeks of development work in it. As an aside, do the submissions have to use the Blockchain? There are already a ton of good decentralized social platforms that make no use of a blockchain whatsoever, and the majority of them inter-federate with one another.
    - gitgud 8y ago
      Sorry if it wasn't clear that it was a joke. A lot of these ICOs want developers to invest their money AND build the product for free. I agree, there are a lot of good non-blockchain solutions to this... like most ICOs
projectramo 8y ago
There is a documentary on HBO about this effort called "Silicon Valley". It is in the 5th season. The basic challenge is that smart people keep making really poor choices which are very funny but also counter productive.
- xnyanta 8y ago
  LOL
momentmaker 8y ago
If anyone is looking to learn how to build a DApp on a smart contract platform, check out Nebulas. It uses Javascript or Typescript as its language. You can learn to how to build a simple DApp in a day and get paid to do so (100 NAS for just submitting one or win up to 20,000 NAS for winning DApp of the month). Check it out here: https://incentive.nebulas.io/signup.html?invite=xDhnG https://incentive.nebulas.io/signup.html?invite=xDhnG
lyra_comms 8y ago
Decentralised social networks are a bad idea. Communication tools need to be inclusive and open to everyone, especially laypeople. Decentralised tools and blockchain turn off non-techies, and are overkill for the social networking problem.
- hunter2_ 8y ago
  People use decentralized things all the time without a problem. Email, for example. They can use a shim like Gmail, decide one day they hate it, switch to something else, and still email everyone in roughly the same way without convincing all those people to migrate somewhere simultaneously.
- arkona3 8y ago
  Is this sarcasm? I honestly can't tell.
- krapp 8y ago
  That's an implementation problem mainly caused by decentralized social networks being designed mainly by techies for techies, and touted in technical circles.
faizshah 8y ago
This blockstack architecture is pretty interesting, but I wish it didn't have a Token attached: https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf Anyone know of a similar decentralized DNS platform and allows users to 'own' their personal data without an attached ICO?
- tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
  I almost forgot crypto projects could exist without an ICO. Shit's crazy.
- cponeill 8y ago
  Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but I just stumbled upon the Dat project myself. https://datproject.org/ https://datproject.org/
  - wesleytodd 8y ago
    You should also check out Beaker Browser. It is a browser built around the dat protocol. Really great community and even has a few decentralized social networks already. https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/
  - faizshah 8y ago
    Thanks! A system after my own heart, it even uses a Merkle tree instead of a blockchain <3 Does this have a system that allows users to keep ownership of their personal data?
    - wesleytodd 8y ago
      Yes, the data is owned by you and signed for ownership attribution. AFAIK there is no "remove my data from the network", as it is a public network.
- woah 8y ago
  The issue with Dat, Mastodon, SSB, Diaspora, etc. is that they do not solve the problem of who's running the servers. They give you the tools to easily sync and migrate data that can back a social network, but you still need a live machine to host the files. These systems don't specify how to find those machines and how to compensate the people running them. The result is a cobbled-together list of servers posted on project web sites as a "temporary" way for people to get started. Cryptocurrency could potentially provide an avenue to compensate anonymous storage providers for storing encrypted data backing a social network. A well-integrated system could give users the one click to join experience you need to get wide adoption, without forcing them to think about who runs their server. This is what Blockstack and many other projects are trying to do (I don't know about Blockstack in particular, it didn't work when I tried it a couple months ago and the founders seem to grandstand a lot).
rplst8 8y ago
They want it built on their tech here: https://blockstack.org/ https://blockstack.org/. "New Internet" aye? Is this an based on an episode of Silicon Valley?
- muneeb 8y ago
  Muneeb Ali, Blockstack co-founder here. I'm a technical consultant to the Silicon Valley show (season 5) along with my co-founder Ryan. So yes there is a link to the show but the project is not based on the show :-) Blockstack was in the R&D phase until early 2017 (building the core tech & infrastructure), we launched our browser last summer and now have decentralized apps built on the platform that are live. These apps can scale to millions of users today. We're excited about enabling developers to build new apps like decentralized social networks.
  - pcmaffey 8y ago
    Quick question - what are the terms of the $100k funding? (grant, SAFE, equity, loan, etc ?)
  - folex 8y ago
    Quick question, do you really think $100k is enough money to build a social network? If so, how much time and people is needed for such task? P.S. I'm convinced it's not enough money. It will take over a year just to have something working and usable and it will take more than 5 people to do that.
    - muneeb 8y ago
      Typically yes. You'll need to build a lot of the components of a social network. With Blockstack most of the heavy-lifting is done for you by the underlying platform (identity, auth, storage -- all three decentralized). We've seen people build functioning chat apps and alternative to Google docs within few months. See stealthy.im and graphitedocs.com
    - daveid 8y ago
      I built Mastodon alone for a year for like $600/mo until it got popular. Now I'm getting more ($3k/mo from Patreon) but I don't think I'm even anywhere close to hitting $100k. So it's possible :P
wesleytodd 8y ago
Just stop now and give your money to Beaker Browser https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/
- notyourwork 8y ago
  Care to suggest why?
  - wesleytodd 8y ago
    IMHO it is the best bet for actually changing the foundation of the internet back to a distributed model.
    - krapp 8y ago
      > IMHO it is the best bet for actually changing the foundation of the internet back to a distributed model. What does the "foundation of the internet" mean in this context? The internet's structure and its protocols haven't really changed. Are you confusing the centralization of user attention via network effect for centralization of the actual network?
      - wesleytodd 8y ago
        Web applications as we write them today are largely centralized systems with centralized ownership of data and small groups of people owning the lion's share of the traffic/data/user attention etc. Beaker and dat are built on the same base protocols as the traditional web (tcp/udp), but also add higher level protocols for changing the centralized power dynamic I mentioned above. The key, IMO, is that there is a good story for users around transitioning from the centralized web into the decentralized web because of the shared foundation. I see the confusion. When I say "foundation" I mean how we build applications, not the underlying protocols. Maybe I should have said "foundation of web application design", or something like that.
- MH15 8y ago
  I finally looked into this yesterday. It promises amazing things and is well on it's way to delivery. I'm excited to see where this is going.
staticvar 8y ago
How does blockstack compare to alternatives like Dat (https://datproject.org/ https://datproject.org/) and IPFS (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/)?
- ranfdev 8y ago
  Dat and IPFS are decentralized file systems. Instead, blockstack is a network for decentralized application. It offers identity, storage and a way to transfer tokens. With blockstack you can easily create apps where users can sign-in in seconds and store all their data where they want.
  - lgierth 8y ago
    Dat and IPFS can be used to build applications too -- checkout out e.g. https://peerpad.net https://peerpad.net and the things on https://hashbase.io https://hashbase.io
    - tbv 8y ago
      To add to that, here's a whole list of websites and apps built with Dat https://github.com/beakerbrowser/explore https://github.com/beakerbrowser/explore
      - diggan 8y ago
        Similar list for IPFS projects: https://github.com/ipfs/awesome-ipfs https://github.com/ipfs/awesome-ipfs
- riffic 8y ago
  Or ActivityPub (https://activitypub.rocks/ https://activitypub.rocks/), a W3C recommended spec: https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/6785 https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/6785
sethev 8y ago
The big problems in social media are already decentralized. Tribalism (also termed as filter bubbles), the spread of false information, and outrage as a mechanism of virality all originate with people in a distributed fashion. Facebook selling ads based on demographics is centralized but it seems to me like a small part of what's messed up about social networks.
bluetwo 8y ago
Can anyone show me a use case for the end user with a clearly defined benefit?
EGreg 8y ago
It exists now, today. Use it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI It is simply a platform on top of the Web same as Wordpress, that anyone can install. It can even run on local wireless mesh networks. Oh and it’s totally Free and Open Source and any community or startup can use it to build apps to put in the store. https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform Contact me if you’re interested to be involved, or just have a question about how to get started. (Greg+hn, the at sign, then qbix.com)
vasilipupkin 8y ago
how would this work? if users own their own data, do you have to query them for data every time? would this be horribly inefficient ? I mean this as a technical question about how blockstack works. if you start caching or storing users data, then there is nothing stopping you from mischief with it, right?
folex 8y ago
Like $100k is enough to build social network, lol. You can't even hire 3 developers for that money.
godelski 8y ago
Why use blockchain? Doesn't that actually give you less control? Isn't the point of a blockchain to keep a ledger of the changes? So how can you delete anything without rebuilding the entire chain? Being decentralized in this case just means that now everyone has my data. Sure, it is encrypted, but are we just going to say what is secure today will be secure tomorrow? My understanding of blockchain is that it is meant to be tamper proof. Which is nice for things like tracking votes or ensuring the integrity of things, but with my personal data I WANT to have the power to tamper with it. These two ideas seem to be at odds. If I'm misunderstanding, maybe somebody can educate me.
- orthecreedence 8y ago
  I had the same thoughts. I'm really getting sick of seeing applications move to the blockchain that have absolutely no business being there. Sure, a ledger makes sense...you never want to remove or change the records. The blockchain is a really terrible medium for a social network. Maybe some kind of hybrid where the blockchain entries point/link to a centralized (or federated) location, but, then, why not just build your own protocol that doesn't use the blockchain? Just build it over Matrix or something. What does the blockchain provide, other than a buzzword?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - godelski 8y ago
    > Maybe some kind of hybrid where the blockchain entries point/link to a centralized (or federated) location... Well what makes me uncomfortable about this type of data being decentralized is that I want to guarantee a delete or edit. To do that on a decentralized network you need to have a way to guarantee that those edits propagate to machines that you do not control. Is there a way to ensure this?
    - empath75 8y ago
      You can’t guarsntee that with any service. Even if you trust the website to delete it, it can still be cached elsewhere.
kodablah 8y ago
Like everyone else, I'm building one. But I'm not hung up on distributed storage or any of that. It's just a simple way for people to host social network rooms from their always-on home computers if they want. The gist: app w/ statically compiled Tor (separate lib started at [0]), room config flexible enough to build different social network types, communicate via gRPC over Tor onion services (protos at [1]), and make it so dead simple that it just works (mobile remotes to home onion service). I think people are worrying so much about network and storage and uptime for ephemeral machines that they are missing the forest for the trees here. Just get a decent platform and iterate from there. At first, you don't have to federate, conform to a protocol, distribute data, etc. But if you are building these things, why not at least offer anonymity? 0 - https://github.com/cretz/bine https://github.com/cretz/bine 1 - https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto
debt 8y ago
Holy shit, why? This "decentralized social network" concept has been around literally since the beginning of Facebook. Apparently, people are failing to grasp that centralization isn't the problem and will never be a selling point to 2 billion people. The problem is making something as engaging and entertaining and interesting as Facebook. Good luck.
a-dub 8y ago
So first I would suggest some sort of global service for translating user friendly names to internet addresses. Something that might have a bit of centralization at the top, but ultimately a decentralized network of authority of sub-namespaces and protocols for building servers that can translate these names to addresses. This system should also support attaching small bits of metadata to these names. On top of this I propose building a protocol for store and forward messaging. Something where it is possible for anyone to develop a server that speaks this protocol. Instances of these servers can be registered in the namespace above and this is how these servers can find each other to push data around. Anyone should be able to run these servers, providing service just for themselves, small communities or even large organizations, businesses, institutions or resold commercial services. Lastly I propose an application layer on top of this. This application layer has two components: 1) A suite of standard protocols for user agents to contact these servers and download user data 2) A suite of standard protocols for rich content, encryption or group distribution From these pieces, it would be totally possible to build a giant decentralized social network that could present the same sort of data we see on social networks. While things could start with simple messaging, similar features to what we find on social networks could be built. Of course there's the problem of bad actors and abuse, but it seems this could be solved by merely blocking all communication except for that from a list of known senders... We could call this the friends list. It would be a lot of work to build and get right, it's a shame nothing like this exists today.
- kodablah 8y ago
  > So first I would suggest some sort of global service for translating user friendly names to internet addresses. You can't do this without having a central authority (which people don't want to be beholden to), making names cost money (or be otherwise difficult), or accepting squatters. People aren't going to pay for names and you've gained nothing if you centralize the name store. People aren't going to accept the immobility of federation like they do with email (and it still gravitates towards centralized authorities). I think we're just going to have to accept large hard-to-gen and hard-to-read identities (e.g. base32'd pub keys like onion service names) and we each "tag" friendly names to them locally as we choose.
colordrops 8y ago
Seems that 1 million to 1 group or even 333k to 3 groups would be more effective than 100k to 10 groups.
rixrax 8y ago
I sound like a broken record, but in my humble view decentralized social network is even worse than centralized one. Key feature of any social network should be 'right to be forgotten' (e.g. delete content), and ability of network to moderate and update content (due to legal requirements, or due to users requests for their own content or for other reasons). How do you manage that in a system such as proposed here? How do you enforce content to be removed due to court order? How do you take down a revenge this or that after your account gets hijacked and your password/keys are gone?
- vasilipupkin 8y ago
  decentralized social network just means users own their own data. it doesn't mean the UI that displays the aggregate social network feed cannot moderate the contents
  - rixrax 8y ago
    So you're saying it can be centralized too, as long as TOS says users keep owning their data? But even in decentralized model, you may think you 'own' you data (as in TOS), but surely it cannot just reside on computing resources you have full control over. Now if you lose your passwords/keys, who do you contact to take your content down, grant you access to it again? What is an arbitration process to decide that you're you, not some impostor?
    - vasilipupkin 8y ago
      I think the idea is that your identity is registered on the blockchain and the data physically resides in your encrypted storage, that is accessed via this identity. if you lose your keys you are ducked in the same way that you are ducked with crypto in general if you lose your keys. I am not sure exactly, but that's my understanding.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  > Key feature of any social network should be 'right to be forgotten' I've said this before, the only data an user should have the right to remove should have no value to someone else. I absolutely hate reddit threads filled with "[deleted]", people deleting their Mediafire accounts, picture hosts removing infrequently fetched images and so on and on. It's so hard to avoid "digital Alzheimer's" it's infuriating and we should curb it rather than encourage it. I do myself want to delete old FB Messenger conversations, but I'd be seriously pissed seeing some old chat containing only my incoherent ramblings. I think one-sided deletion isn't the solution, fine-tuned privacy settings (and thus hiding and possible recovery) is. It's important that we don't forget to deal with this before we actually do start to notice that "f* shouldn't have deleted that".
livestyle 8y ago
Blockchains are good for one thing and one thing only. Censorship resistant money exchanges. That's it. These guys launched the same concept last year. For $25m and they literly have nobody using the platform. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockstack-partners-vcs-launch-25-million-blockstack-signature-fund/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockstack-partners-vcs...
haolez 8y ago
There is an interesting experiment in the Bitcoin (Cash) camp called Memo.cash, which mimics early Twitter using Bitcoin's blockchain. Posts need to spend a few satoshis to be posted and you cal also tip others. Pretty neat!
- skorbenko 8y ago
  Didn’t Siraj Raval make something like this in his book on dApps?
pcmaffey 8y ago
Lots of anti in this thread, so I don't mean to pile it on. But... a new browser is the wrong UX to develop an ecosystem of apps. It needs to be an API, that developers can use existing platforms (current browsers, mobile and native apps) to build their apps. Users aren't going to care enough about decentralized data to change their behavior.
LinuxBender 8y ago
I still believe this approach is not optimal in the practical sense. I believe the issue is having a common and standard source of truth for user metadata. Social platforms are secondary to this problem. I would suggest we come up with an authentication system that can scale across several small technical groups of people, perhaps something like OpenLDAP. Then lets put a few gateways in front of it like SAML2/OAuth/whatever. Set up replication between a few technical folks in a small circle of trust. If a friend leaves the circle, exclude their node from replication. Now put whatever trendy web app, chat app, misc app in front of that authentication. The apps can come and go, but the authentication data, email contacts, phone numbers, all maintained in one authentication system and highly replicated. Each application should be coded in such a way that users own their data and are prompted to download backups. Data retention policies should be very obvious to the end user and they should know this is not a long term archive for their binary data. Each small group of technical folks share their platform with their circle of technical and non technical friends. Each geek pulls a copy of the backups in the even a friend wants to leave the circle. Different geeks in the circle can manage different pieces of the platform or different applications. At least, that is how I would approach this problem. YMMV.
money_talks 8y ago
Users must own and control their data, using open standards, so that apps can come and go and people aren’t locked into them. The biggest obstacle to this is browsers. Browsers must implement decent identity and authentication with pluggable encrypted data storage. Without that there simply can’t be a decentralized social network on the web. Beaker browser is the only active project attempting to move in that direction, even though it might not be the right solution. They deserve the $1 million, not some idiot blockchain bikeshedders.
tw1010 8y ago
It's interesting to personally experience the rise of politically motivated technology like this.
intrasight 8y ago
Is it public discourse or private discourse?. If public, then you have no right to anonymity or to be forgotten. Anyone can record what you say in public, and that is reasonable and expected. Myself, I would like to have both - just as I do in the non-digital world. I don't expect that one platform can serve both purposes. Private communication is not possible. Humans have been striving to achieve it for all of history. I guess that the rich and powerful can achieve it to a certain degree. The analog hole is the problem. Why is there not more technical discussion about plugging the analog hole?
neumann 8y ago
Best joke on hn today. Keep dreaming, dreamer.

132 points by muneeb 8y ago

douglaswlance 8y ago

Decentralized search please too.

douglaswlance 8y ago
And ecommerce while we're at it.
- hackandtrip 8y ago
  Try OpenBazaar!
- ibdf 8y ago
  This is on producthunt today: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/public-market https://www.producthunt.com/posts/public-market

franzpeterstein 8y ago

Nobody needs a social network anymore, whether it is decentralized (Mastodon, Diaspora) or centralized (Facebook, Twitter). I think the social media bubble burst a long time ago and we just didn't realize it. I also have a Mastodon account, but used it only for a short time. I speak now only for myself personally, social networks bore me quite and I have no more interest to sign up somewhere.

lccarrasco 8y ago
Do you mind elaborating on why do you think social media was a bubble?
- franzpeterstein 8y ago
  Gladly. But I am not a scientist or start-up founder who may have a better insight into the subject. When I registered with social networks at the beginning of the Web 2.0 hype, it was all exciting and new. There were many offers and most companies (MySpace and Co had no idea how much potential was available for advertising and marketing). After that came Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc. That's when it all got more professional. You went from a user to a customer, from a customer to a record with which you could earn money. It's getting around and everybody's jumping on the $$$-train. Youtube is like a TV channel, only that runs more advertising there and Instagram can also be seen as a advertising portal. Facebook dug its own grave because it became too greedy. Since only old people hang out on Snapchat, nobody wants to go there anymore. Not even my little nephew wants to join a social network and that's the point where I see it as a bubble that burst. Social networks are like alpha versions of open World Crafting Games on Steam. there are hundreds of offers, but nobody wants them anymore.
notyourwork 8y ago
I agree, for me it has become an advanced phone book more or less. I use it as a directory for those I don’t regularly talk to via phone, text or in person.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  I prefer email for this purpose.
swalsh 8y ago
I live 2000 miles away from my parents. I have 2 kids, my parents LOVE the small insights they get into their grandkids lives that happen on social media. I could lose the no win political debates, the self-aggrandizing from my friends, the memes, but seeing my friends kids grow, my parents seeing my kids grow. That's cool.
- taytus 8y ago
  Do you use FB to share those moments? Wouldn't be other tools better for that? Even when is owned by FB seems to me that WhatsApp would do a better job at this.
  - philfrasty 8y ago
    Try the Path app, exact use case
chimprich 8y ago
Facebook alone has over 2 billion users, and keeps growing. I can't see how it is a bubble that has burst. I've met many people in developing countries that don't have running water, or indoor sanitation, but still access Facebook through a cheap smartphone. It's important to a great many people. Personally I find Facebook extremely useful; I just hate the implementation, which seems to be a buggy mix of dark patterns which attempt to manipulate my state of mind and do bad things with my personal data. A realistic open competitor would be extremely welcome, but first you have to somehow get past the network effect.
LunaSea 8y ago
The billion plus active users on Facebook would like to disagree with you. It's undeniable that social networks are needed and are as popular as ever. It's not always the same ones (more people moved to Instagram) but the overall number is definitely higher than ever. There is simply no replacement solution for staying in touch with people outside of phone number based solutions à la WhatsApp (which you could argue is also a social network).
onion2k 8y ago
Nobody needs a social network anymore This sort of comment is why people in tech are very often seen as being incredibly bad at solving non-trivial social problems by people outside of our industry. Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to use one regularly. There are plenty of problems with the way networks work, and what they do to our mental health, but the notion that no one should use them any more is plain stupid.
- swsieber 8y ago
  Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to have signed up for one at some point. Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth use a product designed to addict them. I agree in general though - they can be useful, and they can fill a real purpose.
  - mayniac 8y ago
    I think a better argument is that between a third and a half of all people on Earth see enough value in some elements of social networks to sign up for them. A lot of people I know only use Facebook for messenger. Some only use it for private groups. Some for events. Some for the newsfeed. Those people use twitter, instagram, whatsapp, snapchat, or discord for the features they don't use on Facebook. IMO instead of looking for a service which could distribute the back-end servers of a single social network we should be encouraging the distribution of features, and make sure they can interact with each other smoothly.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough value in social networks to have signed up for one at some point. I was referring to daily- and monthly-active-users numbers. That's people who sign in and interact with their accounts at least once a day or a month respectively. Those are the important numbers, and they're a fairly accurate representative of the number of people who currently use social media. I think it's fair to say people who stop seeing any positive value in their accounts stop being monthly active users.
mortenjorck 8y ago
> Nobody needs a social network anymore Nobody needs another Facebook or Twitter. The future of humans communicating, however, is wide open. Anything that succeeds on Blockstack will not be a clone of something that already exists, but rather something novel, even something that could only exist on the platform. I've said it before, but the closest thing to the future of social networking that I've seen is Slack: Right now, outside of its marketed purpose, it's mostly used as an extension of existing online communities or as a way for people to stay in touch after departing a company, but the way it's it's centered around distributed groups is powerful, much more so than the way groups were grafted onto the core topology of Facebook. A successful decentralized social network will not look like Slack, either. Just as Slack drew from IRC and Facebook drew from MySpace, a new network will have to draw on all of these and more, synthesizing a new experience that offers genuine value.

overcast 8y ago

If I had the money, I'd pledge $1B to erase social networks from our lives.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
If you feel that strongly, stop using them. I stopped using Facebook a year ago, and now my most social sites are YouTube and reddit. Neither are as toxic for me as Facebook was. You won’t save others, but it’s easy to save yourself.
- amhokies 8y ago
  Just don't read the Youtube comments.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Sometimes they're pretty funny. One just has to remember that those aren't real people. They're all Martian bots.
- fein 8y ago
  > now my most social sites are YouTube and reddit So out of the fire, and into the frying pan.
  - newscracker 8y ago
    I thought this was weird too, because both YouTube and reddit are quite addictive, just like Facebook. YouTube's recommendations are an endless pit of wasted time unless one takes care to view only a small, curated set of channels with daily time limits. As for reddit, it's quite noisy (like Twitter) and attracts a lot of what I consider low value comments and posts (the kinds that are discouraged on HN and get ruthlessly downvoted to oblivion here).
    - TaylorAlexander 8y ago

acconrad 8y ago

So why not just throw the $1M at Diaspora or Mastodon?

Xeoncross 8y ago
They use their own auth/storage systems. Browserstack is simply giving a tiny amount of the money they raised to build their own platform. If I was browser stack I'd be offering a lot more than $1 million considering how important this is to their platform.
folex 8y ago
Because it's mostly self advertising, not an attempt to really solve someone's problem?

snissn 8y ago

It's unclear if they're giving the money without taking equity, or if they're expecting to get a cut.

Robin_Message 8y ago

One of the questions is: "describe your social network in 50 characters or less." "Facebook but decentralised" is already 26 characters so that seems like a bit of a tight limit. I suppose it'll help find people who have any marketing nouse, which is the actual challenge for a project like this, not technology.

gitgud 8y ago
Last question: "Please implement the social network in 5 weeks or less, GitHub link to code too please"
- DeadSuperHero 8y ago
  That's super ridiculous. You wouldn't want to use a decentralized social platform in a production environment that's only got 5 weeks of development work in it. As an aside, do the submissions have to use the Blockchain? There are already a ton of good decentralized social platforms that make no use of a blockchain whatsoever, and the majority of them inter-federate with one another.
  - gitgud 8y ago
    Sorry if it wasn't clear that it was a joke. A lot of these ICOs want developers to invest their money AND build the product for free. I agree, there are a lot of good non-blockchain solutions to this... like most ICOs

projectramo 8y ago

There is a documentary on HBO about this effort called "Silicon Valley". It is in the 5th season. The basic challenge is that smart people keep making really poor choices which are very funny but also counter productive.

xnyanta 8y ago
LOL

momentmaker 8y ago

If anyone is looking to learn how to build a DApp on a smart contract platform, check out Nebulas. It uses Javascript or Typescript as its language. You can learn to how to build a simple DApp in a day and get paid to do so (100 NAS for just submitting one or win up to 20,000 NAS for winning DApp of the month). Check it out here: https://incentive.nebulas.io/signup.html?invite=xDhnG https://incentive.nebulas.io/signup.html?invite=xDhnG

lyra_comms 8y ago

Decentralised social networks are a bad idea. Communication tools need to be inclusive and open to everyone, especially laypeople. Decentralised tools and blockchain turn off non-techies, and are overkill for the social networking problem.

hunter2_ 8y ago
People use decentralized things all the time without a problem. Email, for example. They can use a shim like Gmail, decide one day they hate it, switch to something else, and still email everyone in roughly the same way without convincing all those people to migrate somewhere simultaneously.
arkona3 8y ago
Is this sarcasm? I honestly can't tell.
krapp 8y ago
That's an implementation problem mainly caused by decentralized social networks being designed mainly by techies for techies, and touted in technical circles.

faizshah 8y ago

This blockstack architecture is pretty interesting, but I wish it didn't have a Token attached: https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf Anyone know of a similar decentralized DNS platform and allows users to 'own' their personal data without an attached ICO?

tenaciousDaniel 8y ago
I almost forgot crypto projects could exist without an ICO. Shit's crazy.
cponeill 8y ago
Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but I just stumbled upon the Dat project myself. https://datproject.org/ https://datproject.org/
- wesleytodd 8y ago
  You should also check out Beaker Browser. It is a browser built around the dat protocol. Really great community and even has a few decentralized social networks already. https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/
- faizshah 8y ago
  Thanks! A system after my own heart, it even uses a Merkle tree instead of a blockchain <3 Does this have a system that allows users to keep ownership of their personal data?
  - wesleytodd 8y ago
    Yes, the data is owned by you and signed for ownership attribution. AFAIK there is no "remove my data from the network", as it is a public network.
woah 8y ago
The issue with Dat, Mastodon, SSB, Diaspora, etc. is that they do not solve the problem of who's running the servers. They give you the tools to easily sync and migrate data that can back a social network, but you still need a live machine to host the files. These systems don't specify how to find those machines and how to compensate the people running them. The result is a cobbled-together list of servers posted on project web sites as a "temporary" way for people to get started. Cryptocurrency could potentially provide an avenue to compensate anonymous storage providers for storing encrypted data backing a social network. A well-integrated system could give users the one click to join experience you need to get wide adoption, without forcing them to think about who runs their server. This is what Blockstack and many other projects are trying to do (I don't know about Blockstack in particular, it didn't work when I tried it a couple months ago and the founders seem to grandstand a lot).

rplst8 8y ago

They want it built on their tech here: https://blockstack.org/ https://blockstack.org/. "New Internet" aye? Is this an based on an episode of Silicon Valley?

muneeb 8y ago
Muneeb Ali, Blockstack co-founder here. I'm a technical consultant to the Silicon Valley show (season 5) along with my co-founder Ryan. So yes there is a link to the show but the project is not based on the show :-) Blockstack was in the R&D phase until early 2017 (building the core tech & infrastructure), we launched our browser last summer and now have decentralized apps built on the platform that are live. These apps can scale to millions of users today. We're excited about enabling developers to build new apps like decentralized social networks.
- pcmaffey 8y ago
  Quick question - what are the terms of the $100k funding? (grant, SAFE, equity, loan, etc ?)
- folex 8y ago
  Quick question, do you really think $100k is enough money to build a social network? If so, how much time and people is needed for such task? P.S. I'm convinced it's not enough money. It will take over a year just to have something working and usable and it will take more than 5 people to do that.
  - muneeb 8y ago
    Typically yes. You'll need to build a lot of the components of a social network. With Blockstack most of the heavy-lifting is done for you by the underlying platform (identity, auth, storage -- all three decentralized). We've seen people build functioning chat apps and alternative to Google docs within few months. See stealthy.im and graphitedocs.com
  - daveid 8y ago
    I built Mastodon alone for a year for like $600/mo until it got popular. Now I'm getting more ($3k/mo from Patreon) but I don't think I'm even anywhere close to hitting $100k. So it's possible :P

wesleytodd 8y ago

Just stop now and give your money to Beaker Browser https://beakerbrowser.com/ https://beakerbrowser.com/

notyourwork 8y ago
Care to suggest why?
- wesleytodd 8y ago
  IMHO it is the best bet for actually changing the foundation of the internet back to a distributed model.
  - krapp 8y ago
    > IMHO it is the best bet for actually changing the foundation of the internet back to a distributed model. What does the "foundation of the internet" mean in this context? The internet's structure and its protocols haven't really changed. Are you confusing the centralization of user attention via network effect for centralization of the actual network?
    - wesleytodd 8y ago
      Web applications as we write them today are largely centralized systems with centralized ownership of data and small groups of people owning the lion's share of the traffic/data/user attention etc. Beaker and dat are built on the same base protocols as the traditional web (tcp/udp), but also add higher level protocols for changing the centralized power dynamic I mentioned above. The key, IMO, is that there is a good story for users around transitioning from the centralized web into the decentralized web because of the shared foundation. I see the confusion. When I say "foundation" I mean how we build applications, not the underlying protocols. Maybe I should have said "foundation of web application design", or something like that.
MH15 8y ago
I finally looked into this yesterday. It promises amazing things and is well on it's way to delivery. I'm excited to see where this is going.

staticvar 8y ago

How does blockstack compare to alternatives like Dat (https://datproject.org/ https://datproject.org/) and IPFS (https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/)?

ranfdev 8y ago
Dat and IPFS are decentralized file systems. Instead, blockstack is a network for decentralized application. It offers identity, storage and a way to transfer tokens. With blockstack you can easily create apps where users can sign-in in seconds and store all their data where they want.
- lgierth 8y ago
  Dat and IPFS can be used to build applications too -- checkout out e.g. https://peerpad.net https://peerpad.net and the things on https://hashbase.io https://hashbase.io
  - tbv 8y ago
    To add to that, here's a whole list of websites and apps built with Dat https://github.com/beakerbrowser/explore https://github.com/beakerbrowser/explore
    - diggan 8y ago
      Similar list for IPFS projects: https://github.com/ipfs/awesome-ipfs https://github.com/ipfs/awesome-ipfs
riffic 8y ago
Or ActivityPub (https://activitypub.rocks/ https://activitypub.rocks/), a W3C recommended spec: https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/6785 https://www.w3.org/blog/news/archives/6785

sethev 8y ago

The big problems in social media are already decentralized. Tribalism (also termed as filter bubbles), the spread of false information, and outrage as a mechanism of virality all originate with people in a distributed fashion. Facebook selling ads based on demographics is centralized but it seems to me like a small part of what's messed up about social networks.

bluetwo 8y ago

Can anyone show me a use case for the end user with a clearly defined benefit?

EGreg 8y ago

It exists now, today. Use it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI It is simply a platform on top of the Web same as Wordpress, that anyone can install. It can even run on local wireless mesh networks. Oh and it’s totally Free and Open Source and any community or startup can use it to build apps to put in the store. https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform Contact me if you’re interested to be involved, or just have a question about how to get started. (Greg+hn, the at sign, then qbix.com)

vasilipupkin 8y ago

how would this work? if users own their own data, do you have to query them for data every time? would this be horribly inefficient ? I mean this as a technical question about how blockstack works. if you start caching or storing users data, then there is nothing stopping you from mischief with it, right?

folex 8y ago

Like $100k is enough to build social network, lol. You can't even hire 3 developers for that money.

godelski 8y ago

Why use blockchain? Doesn't that actually give you less control? Isn't the point of a blockchain to keep a ledger of the changes? So how can you delete anything without rebuilding the entire chain? Being decentralized in this case just means that now everyone has my data. Sure, it is encrypted, but are we just going to say what is secure today will be secure tomorrow? My understanding of blockchain is that it is meant to be tamper proof. Which is nice for things like tracking votes or ensuring the integrity of things, but with my personal data I WANT to have the power to tamper with it. These two ideas seem to be at odds. If I'm misunderstanding, maybe somebody can educate me.

orthecreedence 8y ago
I had the same thoughts. I'm really getting sick of seeing applications move to the blockchain that have absolutely no business being there. Sure, a ledger makes sense...you never want to remove or change the records. The blockchain is a really terrible medium for a social network. Maybe some kind of hybrid where the blockchain entries point/link to a centralized (or federated) location, but, then, why not just build your own protocol that doesn't use the blockchain? Just build it over Matrix or something. What does the blockchain provide, other than a buzzword?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- godelski 8y ago
  > Maybe some kind of hybrid where the blockchain entries point/link to a centralized (or federated) location... Well what makes me uncomfortable about this type of data being decentralized is that I want to guarantee a delete or edit. To do that on a decentralized network you need to have a way to guarantee that those edits propagate to machines that you do not control. Is there a way to ensure this?
  - empath75 8y ago
    You can’t guarsntee that with any service. Even if you trust the website to delete it, it can still be cached elsewhere.

kodablah 8y ago

Like everyone else, I'm building one. But I'm not hung up on distributed storage or any of that. It's just a simple way for people to host social network rooms from their always-on home computers if they want. The gist: app w/ statically compiled Tor (separate lib started at [0]), room config flexible enough to build different social network types, communicate via gRPC over Tor onion services (protos at [1]), and make it so dead simple that it just works (mobile remotes to home onion service). I think people are worrying so much about network and storage and uptime for ephemeral machines that they are missing the forest for the trees here. Just get a decent platform and iterate from there. At first, you don't have to federate, conform to a protocol, distribute data, etc. But if you are building these things, why not at least offer anonymity? 0 - https://github.com/cretz/bine https://github.com/cretz/bine 1 - https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto

debt 8y ago

Holy shit, why? This "decentralized social network" concept has been around literally since the beginning of Facebook. Apparently, people are failing to grasp that centralization isn't the problem and will never be a selling point to 2 billion people. The problem is making something as engaging and entertaining and interesting as Facebook. Good luck.

a-dub 8y ago

So first I would suggest some sort of global service for translating user friendly names to internet addresses. Something that might have a bit of centralization at the top, but ultimately a decentralized network of authority of sub-namespaces and protocols for building servers that can translate these names to addresses. This system should also support attaching small bits of metadata to these names. On top of this I propose building a protocol for store and forward messaging. Something where it is possible for anyone to develop a server that speaks this protocol. Instances of these servers can be registered in the namespace above and this is how these servers can find each other to push data around. Anyone should be able to run these servers, providing service just for themselves, small communities or even large organizations, businesses, institutions or resold commercial services. Lastly I propose an application layer on top of this. This application layer has two components: 1) A suite of standard protocols for user agents to contact these servers and download user data 2) A suite of standard protocols for rich content, encryption or group distribution From these pieces, it would be totally possible to build a giant decentralized social network that could present the same sort of data we see on social networks. While things could start with simple messaging, similar features to what we find on social networks could be built. Of course there's the problem of bad actors and abuse, but it seems this could be solved by merely blocking all communication except for that from a list of known senders... We could call this the friends list. It would be a lot of work to build and get right, it's a shame nothing like this exists today.

kodablah 8y ago
> So first I would suggest some sort of global service for translating user friendly names to internet addresses. You can't do this without having a central authority (which people don't want to be beholden to), making names cost money (or be otherwise difficult), or accepting squatters. People aren't going to pay for names and you've gained nothing if you centralize the name store. People aren't going to accept the immobility of federation like they do with email (and it still gravitates towards centralized authorities). I think we're just going to have to accept large hard-to-gen and hard-to-read identities (e.g. base32'd pub keys like onion service names) and we each "tag" friendly names to them locally as we choose.

colordrops 8y ago

Seems that 1 million to 1 group or even 333k to 3 groups would be more effective than 100k to 10 groups.

rixrax 8y ago

I sound like a broken record, but in my humble view decentralized social network is even worse than centralized one. Key feature of any social network should be 'right to be forgotten' (e.g. delete content), and ability of network to moderate and update content (due to legal requirements, or due to users requests for their own content or for other reasons). How do you manage that in a system such as proposed here? How do you enforce content to be removed due to court order? How do you take down a revenge this or that after your account gets hijacked and your password/keys are gone?

vasilipupkin 8y ago
decentralized social network just means users own their own data. it doesn't mean the UI that displays the aggregate social network feed cannot moderate the contents
- rixrax 8y ago
  So you're saying it can be centralized too, as long as TOS says users keep owning their data? But even in decentralized model, you may think you 'own' you data (as in TOS), but surely it cannot just reside on computing resources you have full control over. Now if you lose your passwords/keys, who do you contact to take your content down, grant you access to it again? What is an arbitration process to decide that you're you, not some impostor?
  - vasilipupkin 8y ago
    I think the idea is that your identity is registered on the blockchain and the data physically resides in your encrypted storage, that is accessed via this identity. if you lose your keys you are ducked in the same way that you are ducked with crypto in general if you lose your keys. I am not sure exactly, but that's my understanding.
dcbadacd 8y ago
> Key feature of any social network should be 'right to be forgotten' I've said this before, the only data an user should have the right to remove should have no value to someone else. I absolutely hate reddit threads filled with "[deleted]", people deleting their Mediafire accounts, picture hosts removing infrequently fetched images and so on and on. It's so hard to avoid "digital Alzheimer's" it's infuriating and we should curb it rather than encourage it. I do myself want to delete old FB Messenger conversations, but I'd be seriously pissed seeing some old chat containing only my incoherent ramblings. I think one-sided deletion isn't the solution, fine-tuned privacy settings (and thus hiding and possible recovery) is. It's important that we don't forget to deal with this before we actually do start to notice that "f* shouldn't have deleted that".

livestyle 8y ago

Blockchains are good for one thing and one thing only. Censorship resistant money exchanges. That's it. These guys launched the same concept last year. For $25m and they literly have nobody using the platform. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockstack-partners-vcs-launch-25-million-blockstack-signature-fund/ https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockstack-partners-vcs...

haolez 8y ago

There is an interesting experiment in the Bitcoin (Cash) camp called Memo.cash, which mimics early Twitter using Bitcoin's blockchain. Posts need to spend a few satoshis to be posted and you cal also tip others. Pretty neat!

skorbenko 8y ago
Didn’t Siraj Raval make something like this in his book on dApps?

pcmaffey 8y ago

Lots of anti in this thread, so I don't mean to pile it on. But... a new browser is the wrong UX to develop an ecosystem of apps. It needs to be an API, that developers can use existing platforms (current browsers, mobile and native apps) to build their apps. Users aren't going to care enough about decentralized data to change their behavior.

LinuxBender 8y ago

I still believe this approach is not optimal in the practical sense. I believe the issue is having a common and standard source of truth for user metadata. Social platforms are secondary to this problem. I would suggest we come up with an authentication system that can scale across several small technical groups of people, perhaps something like OpenLDAP. Then lets put a few gateways in front of it like SAML2/OAuth/whatever. Set up replication between a few technical folks in a small circle of trust. If a friend leaves the circle, exclude their node from replication. Now put whatever trendy web app, chat app, misc app in front of that authentication. The apps can come and go, but the authentication data, email contacts, phone numbers, all maintained in one authentication system and highly replicated. Each application should be coded in such a way that users own their data and are prompted to download backups. Data retention policies should be very obvious to the end user and they should know this is not a long term archive for their binary data. Each small group of technical folks share their platform with their circle of technical and non technical friends. Each geek pulls a copy of the backups in the even a friend wants to leave the circle. Different geeks in the circle can manage different pieces of the platform or different applications. At least, that is how I would approach this problem. YMMV.

money_talks 8y ago

Users must own and control their data, using open standards, so that apps can come and go and people aren’t locked into them. The biggest obstacle to this is browsers. Browsers must implement decent identity and authentication with pluggable encrypted data storage. Without that there simply can’t be a decentralized social network on the web. Beaker browser is the only active project attempting to move in that direction, even though it might not be the right solution. They deserve the $1 million, not some idiot blockchain bikeshedders.

tw1010 8y ago

It's interesting to personally experience the rise of politically motivated technology like this.

intrasight 8y ago

Is it public discourse or private discourse?. If public, then you have no right to anonymity or to be forgotten. Anyone can record what you say in public, and that is reasonable and expected. Myself, I would like to have both - just as I do in the non-digital world. I don't expect that one platform can serve both purposes. Private communication is not possible. Humans have been striving to achieve it for all of history. I guess that the rich and powerful can achieve it to a certain degree. The analog hole is the problem. Why is there not more technical discussion about plugging the analog hole?

neumann 8y ago

Best joke on hn today. Keep dreaming, dreamer.