6 ms·

I think a few folks are missing the point. How are web pages shared? By distributing links. How are pages censored? By deplatforming. This usually happens by

I think a few folks are missing the point. How are web pages shared? By distributing links. How are pages censored? By deplatforming. This usually happens by activists targeting the host right in their cashflow. If you remove the need to host, you remove a point of failure from publishing. Now the link is the content. It's an interesting concept whether or not you agree with this implementation.

TallGuyShort 7y ago
I agree it's interesting. What follows is not criticism of the author, but criticism of our society. Prediction: at some point someone will want to censor something and blame the host. The host or hostname will be taken offline, even though it's not storing or distributing the content.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jstrieb 7y ago
  I consciously accepted the risks of my host being blacklisted or taken down when I shared this. Luckily, the benefit of open source is that anyone can clone the repository and host any number of similar services if they are serious about using them for content distribution. I don't mind if there are problems with the host since it will mean people are actually making use of the project.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Call me silly but if you don't need a host then why do you need a link? That does this do that .html can't?
- the_pwner224 7y ago
  Sharing a snippet of text is much easier than sharing a file. Telling a normal person to click that link (or, go to decoder.com and paste this text into there, for a more distributed version) is much easier than getting them to view the HTML.
  - ziftface 7y ago
    But why not just share the raw text then? In a situation where you would need to distribute web pages without a host, presumably to share vital information, couldn't you just share the raw text via the same medium you use to send the link? I still think this is really interesting though.
    - _lflx 7y ago
      Because you can distribute web forms that post data to locations for aggregation of standardized data. Useful for organizing strikes and other civil disobedience. Think about the tools a modern political campaign uses, it would be somewhat similar.
      - JetSpiegel 7y ago
        If you need to have a host receiving that data, why not serve the page from that host?
        tzakrajs 7y ago
        Good point, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Perhaps the data from the form could get turned into an email or sms draft instead of an HTTP action.
  - chiefalchemist 7y ago
    Thx. Makes sense. But aren't there any other encoding standards? Perhaps also with encryption? I'm not knocking this url idea. Simply what-if'ing other possibilities.
hk__2 7y ago
> If you remove the need to host, you remove a point of failure from publishing. Now the link is the content. Storing the page in the URL doesn’t remove the need to have a platform to communicate those links to those who want them.
- bruth 7y ago
  In this context, you are implying the platform is the browser? Assuming you produce your own content and own the domain for which these URLs are being produced then, yes you are left to trust the clients that actually render the content.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > In this context, you are implying the platform is the browser? No, the platform is wherever you distribute the URLs to other people. Browsers, for the most part, don't share URLs with eachother without an intermediary server hosting the shared links, either as one or more traditional webpages with links or something like a shared bookmark list.
gruez 7y ago
>If you remove the need to host, you remove a point of failure from publishing I guess it's marginally better since there's no central "place" to take it down. However, the deplatforming concern is still there because you're still probably sharing those links on the major platforms. So they can still take those down. You can argue that having it distributed among random sites is better than having it centralized, but you can achieve the same thing by uploading to multiple sites. The proper way to do this (that doesn't involve shifting the problem), is to use IPFS/tor. When you're sharing it, you can use a gateway server, but if that gets taken down or blocked, users can still access it using the underlying network if they really wanted.
- icebraining 7y ago
  How is IPFS better? To share a piece of content, you need some place to share a new link, just like with this mechanism. In fact, IPFS is more failure-prone, because besides removing the link from where it's posted, attackers can also try to identify and DDOS the nodes hosting the content, thereby making the links useless. With this mechanism, anyone with the link could decode the data using some offline tool/script, even if the whole Internet goes down.
- jstrieb 7y ago
  This and IPFS/Tor are not mutually exclusive. The one sticking point is that this requires JavaScript to work, which is disabled by default in most tor installations.
wybiral 7y ago
But somehow you need to share the link itself, right? So instead of sharing the link couldn't you just... Share whatever the message or content is? Edit: what I'm saying is that "activists" (which is an interesting concern btw) will pressure the platform that the link is being shared on because the link IS the content.
- Skunkleton 7y ago
  The link is just a method of packaging a website. Its a neat idea.
- paulddraper 7y ago
  Yes. This is simply sharing content.* *Though the content is integrated well with modern browsers.
- atoav 7y ago
  Which also means rhat everybody with the link can change it’s content which means you cannot trust this content more than the person who sent it to you. Why not just copy and paste the content directly?
  - saintPirelli 7y ago
    For the same reason your not sending html-files via email when you want to share a website I suppose.
nickpsecurity 7y ago
They can still get that business to take it down. Another good strategy is simply hosting with businesses with strong commitment to free speech. DreamHost is an example of one with this policy that actually fought with the government in court to protect its users. They've been around a long time, too. https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/a-win-for-the-web/ https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/a-win-for-the-web/ One can also host in a different jurisdiction which doesn't have laws or action against your content. Preferrably that can stand up to demands of a major country. Switzerland is popular for this. Example host that I havent vetted but highlights common differentiators: https://swissmade.host/en/ https://swissmade.host/en/
- iamnothere 7y ago
  NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is also a great host for legal, but potentially controversial content.
  - nickpsecurity 7y ago
    That's also an interesting business model.
paulpauper 7y ago
encode a message in a crpyto currency transaction
dragonwriter 7y ago
> How are web pages shared? By distributing links. Mostly, by distributing links on other web pages. > How are pages censored? By deplatforming. This usually happens by activists targeting the host right in their cashflow. This does not avoid that problem, since you still need (for effective reach) hosting for the links. It also adds new problems, like the length limit most browsers impose on URLs limiting the size of content that can be shared by this method rather sharply.
- c22 7y ago
  Also, some browsers (like chrome) consider data URLs hostile and limit them further. Awhile ago I was messing around with some tiny js decompression code I was stuffing into a data URL that let me get a bit more content into the payload, but chrome wouldn't run the scripts at all.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    This has got nothing to do with data URLs.
    - c22 7y ago
      I'm very confused by your comment. Can you add some context or clarification?
- lemax 7y ago
  The length limit is high in most browsers (100k chars) except for IE, which will eventually be killed by MS Edge on Chromium.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    > The length limit is high in most browsers (100k chars) Huh, I just saw a 2018 post on a Chrome support forum indicating that Chrome had the same 2083 char limit as IE... Checking more deeply I've found more direct Chromium info indicating implying either no limit or a 2^31 character limit, with a 32kB display limit. So, yeah, the URL length limit may not be an issue.
spc476 7y ago
If you use a data: URI, you don't even need hosting. Edit: adding link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme

TallGuyShort 7y ago

I agree it's interesting. What follows is not criticism of the author, but criticism of our society. Prediction: at some point someone will want to censor something and blame the host. The host or hostname will be taken offline, even though it's not storing or distributing the content.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jstrieb 7y ago
I consciously accepted the risks of my host being blacklisted or taken down when I shared this. Luckily, the benefit of open source is that anyone can clone the repository and host any number of similar services if they are serious about using them for content distribution. I don't mind if there are problems with the host since it will mean people are actually making use of the project.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

Call me silly but if you don't need a host then why do you need a link? That does this do that .html can't?

the_pwner224 7y ago
Sharing a snippet of text is much easier than sharing a file. Telling a normal person to click that link (or, go to decoder.com and paste this text into there, for a more distributed version) is much easier than getting them to view the HTML.
- ziftface 7y ago
  But why not just share the raw text then? In a situation where you would need to distribute web pages without a host, presumably to share vital information, couldn't you just share the raw text via the same medium you use to send the link? I still think this is really interesting though.
  - _lflx 7y ago
    Because you can distribute web forms that post data to locations for aggregation of standardized data. Useful for organizing strikes and other civil disobedience. Think about the tools a modern political campaign uses, it would be somewhat similar.
    - JetSpiegel 7y ago
      If you need to have a host receiving that data, why not serve the page from that host?
      - tzakrajs 7y ago
        Good point, I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote that. Perhaps the data from the form could get turned into an email or sms draft instead of an HTTP action.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Thx. Makes sense. But aren't there any other encoding standards? Perhaps also with encryption? I'm not knocking this url idea. Simply what-if'ing other possibilities.

hk__2 7y ago

> If you remove the need to host, you remove a point of failure from publishing. Now the link is the content. Storing the page in the URL doesn’t remove the need to have a platform to communicate those links to those who want them.

bruth 7y ago
In this context, you are implying the platform is the browser? Assuming you produce your own content and own the domain for which these URLs are being produced then, yes you are left to trust the clients that actually render the content.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > In this context, you are implying the platform is the browser? No, the platform is wherever you distribute the URLs to other people. Browsers, for the most part, don't share URLs with eachother without an intermediary server hosting the shared links, either as one or more traditional webpages with links or something like a shared bookmark list.

gruez 7y ago

>If you remove the need to host, you remove a point of failure from publishing I guess it's marginally better since there's no central "place" to take it down. However, the deplatforming concern is still there because you're still probably sharing those links on the major platforms. So they can still take those down. You can argue that having it distributed among random sites is better than having it centralized, but you can achieve the same thing by uploading to multiple sites. The proper way to do this (that doesn't involve shifting the problem), is to use IPFS/tor. When you're sharing it, you can use a gateway server, but if that gets taken down or blocked, users can still access it using the underlying network if they really wanted.

icebraining 7y ago
How is IPFS better? To share a piece of content, you need some place to share a new link, just like with this mechanism. In fact, IPFS is more failure-prone, because besides removing the link from where it's posted, attackers can also try to identify and DDOS the nodes hosting the content, thereby making the links useless. With this mechanism, anyone with the link could decode the data using some offline tool/script, even if the whole Internet goes down.
jstrieb 7y ago
This and IPFS/Tor are not mutually exclusive. The one sticking point is that this requires JavaScript to work, which is disabled by default in most tor installations.

wybiral 7y ago

But somehow you need to share the link itself, right? So instead of sharing the link couldn't you just... Share whatever the message or content is? Edit: what I'm saying is that "activists" (which is an interesting concern btw) will pressure the platform that the link is being shared on because the link IS the content.

Skunkleton 7y ago
The link is just a method of packaging a website. Its a neat idea.
paulddraper 7y ago
Yes. This is simply sharing content.* *Though the content is integrated well with modern browsers.
atoav 7y ago
Which also means rhat everybody with the link can change it’s content which means you cannot trust this content more than the person who sent it to you. Why not just copy and paste the content directly?
- saintPirelli 7y ago
  For the same reason your not sending html-files via email when you want to share a website I suppose.

nickpsecurity 7y ago

They can still get that business to take it down. Another good strategy is simply hosting with businesses with strong commitment to free speech. DreamHost is an example of one with this policy that actually fought with the government in court to protect its users. They've been around a long time, too. https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/a-win-for-the-web/ https://www.dreamhost.com/blog/a-win-for-the-web/ One can also host in a different jurisdiction which doesn't have laws or action against your content. Preferrably that can stand up to demands of a major country. Switzerland is popular for this. Example host that I havent vetted but highlights common differentiators: https://swissmade.host/en/ https://swissmade.host/en/

iamnothere 7y ago
NearlyFreeSpeech.NET is also a great host for legal, but potentially controversial content.
- nickpsecurity 7y ago
  That's also an interesting business model.

paulpauper 7y ago

encode a message in a crpyto currency transaction

dragonwriter 7y ago

> How are web pages shared? By distributing links. Mostly, by distributing links on other web pages. > How are pages censored? By deplatforming. This usually happens by activists targeting the host right in their cashflow. This does not avoid that problem, since you still need (for effective reach) hosting for the links. It also adds new problems, like the length limit most browsers impose on URLs limiting the size of content that can be shared by this method rather sharply.

c22 7y ago
Also, some browsers (like chrome) consider data URLs hostile and limit them further. Awhile ago I was messing around with some tiny js decompression code I was stuffing into a data URL that let me get a bit more content into the payload, but chrome wouldn't run the scripts at all.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  This has got nothing to do with data URLs.
  - c22 7y ago
    I'm very confused by your comment. Can you add some context or clarification?
lemax 7y ago
The length limit is high in most browsers (100k chars) except for IE, which will eventually be killed by MS Edge on Chromium.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > The length limit is high in most browsers (100k chars) Huh, I just saw a 2018 post on a Chrome support forum indicating that Chrome had the same 2083 char limit as IE... Checking more deeply I've found more direct Chromium info indicating implying either no limit or a 2^31 character limit, with a 32kB display limit. So, yeah, the URL length limit may not be an issue.

spc476 7y ago

If you use a data: URI, you don't even need hosting. Edit: adding link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_URI_scheme