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We don't need another service provider. We need a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. A way that my device c

We don't need another service provider. We need a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. A way that my device can securely communicate with my friends devices and say "Sup?". A way that we can share messages, photos, calendars, contacts, etc without some behemoth (or state) sticking its nose in the middle. I've had this conversation here before and somebody mentions RSS but it's not enough on its own. It's certainly a basis for content exchange but nowhere near enough for the authentication, and authoring side of things.

nanomonkey 7y ago
Try the Scuttlebutt protocol, it's a gossip network that does essentially just what you specified.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Zaskoda 7y ago
Decentralize. I've been working on a federated address book and thinking about how to sync contacts with other address books... It's like Really Simple Federation.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Feels like that war was lost when all the chat providers abandoned XMPP messaging. RSS was downplayed and essentially deprecated round about the same time. Open and decentralised is last decade's answer. I don't much like what's come since, but there you go.
- oliwarner 7y ago
  Honestly, the players in this space all abandoned any pretences of "interop" long ago. They are invested in ensuring they remain the gatekeeper. They won't be the people proving real solutions.
  - sitkack 7y ago
    Part of censure of the megacorps should be forcing them to use open federated standards or face steep repercussions. As it stands not even email or the web would have been created, they all want their own AOL portals.
    - oliwarner 7y ago
      Yeah. Microsoft have been through this a couple of times now. Office's interop has been dragged through various international courts. I'm all for pushing Google, Facebook and friends through the same process. But I'm not sure they meet antitrust/monopoly definitions because they're "free" services.
      - sitkack 7y ago
        They do in the EU, in the US we have perverse monopoly rules not measuring customer harm but customer cost. As long as the megacorps dump free services on us and starve out everyone else, large and small. They aren't monopolies (by US rules). Lack of choice is ok, lack of vendor diversity is also ok. This will change.
        sitkack 7y ago
        To quell any confusion > Lack of choice is ok, lack of vendor diversity is also ok. Is how current US monopoly regulation works, this needs to change.
vorpalhex 7y ago
Mastodon[1] is probably the future here. Decentralized nodes but you can follow folks on any other node. Each node is moderated by it's own policies - you can have a very tight topic based node, or a super wide open anything-goes approach. It's not perfect yet, but it's the best solution so far that works, and works today. [1] - https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
- neltnerb 7y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately as well intentioned as this piece is, a centralized government funded social network just sounds like a terrible idea. I cannot imagine trusting that. Decentralize and interoperate...
  - egypturnash 7y ago
    As someone running a Mastodon server out of her own pocket (with some help from enough of her users that it’s not too bad), I certainly wouldn’t mind if there was some kind of government funding available to help out on that.
    - vorpalhex 7y ago
      (If you don't mind me asking) how much does it cost to keep the node running, and about how many hours a week of work does it require?
      - egypturnash 7y ago
        Very little work to keep it running, mostly I just deal with blocking troll instances. If I had a large user base I would probably have to deal with inter-user squabbles but I keep it small. I think the cost has grown to around us$50/mo, it has some issues with refusing to purge remote media and I’ve been too busy to see if updating will help that.
    - johnisgood 7y ago
      > I certainly wouldn’t mind if there was some kind of government funding available to help out on that. One of the requirements to get the funds probably would be "install backdoors" or something of the like. :P Have you tried asking the users to donate? That might work.
jasode 7y ago
>We need a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. I know it seems logical that a "social network protocol" is the answer to replace Facebook but after studying the mechanics of social networks, I've concluded that focusing on technical protocols is incorrect. My suggestion to programmers seriously thinking of new solutions in the social networking space: don't get sidetracked into thinking about the protocol because if you do, your new social network will end up in the graveyard of previous failed projects like Diaspora. Instead, think about the database of real names. My previous comment on why protocols like ActivityPub & Mastodon are not the answer for a general purpose social network adopted by the masses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727230 Also, another previous comment on how focusing on protocols is (inadvertently) analyzing the wrong drivers for success: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20231960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20231960 And another previous comment about how an open and free-to-use protocol like Signal does not mean Moxie Marlinspike is willing to federate with others' servers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232499 (If you still believe that designing a new protocol is the correct answer after reading my 3 previous comments, please explain your thinking. I'm open to changing my mind on this.)
- cat199 7y ago
  agree that protocol doesn't solve the funding/promotion problem. but this is not an either/or, it's a both/and - the problems with excessive influence on some open protocol (r.e. your Moxie comment) are funding problems (perhaps what you mean). But, even if funding is the main issue, one still needs something worthy of funding.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  The problem here is that you're looking at it from an entrepreneur perspective, while the people building it are looking at it from a privacy perspective. I don't use Facebook because of the reasons it's popular. I don't want my information easily accessible online, and I do want as much control as possible over who sees my information. I believe it should be easy to give and revoke access to my information and content. The European solution here is to legislate our way to that end goal, whereas the "market" way is to make something that's appealing that gets you most of what you liked about the centralized service, but with more control over your data. And that's why I'm so interested in projects like ActivityPub and Matrix: it's not because I think they'll become popular, but because of what will happen if they become popular. If I was to invest money, I'd go with Facebook's business model every time, but if I'm going to evangelise something, it'll be something like Mastodon or Riot.im.
amelius 7y ago
Yes, we need universities to research social networks, not just the CS departments but also human sciences, so we get something that actually benefits us and society. Let companies provide the hardware, and let government agencies run the software just like in the old days of the internet. No company should ever see or touch any of the data.
buboard 7y ago
Do decentralized protocols scale well? Is there one that scales better than others? Is the better solution to have a POSSE model signed cryptographically? Ideally a decentralized protocol that gets better - not worse as more people join would be more likely to succeed (like bittorrent)
- oliwarner 7y ago
  What scale do you need? Yeah, I'm "friends" with hundreds of people on Facebook but how many do I really care about?
  - buboard 7y ago
    i dont mean this scale, but able to support quick syndication in a network of billions of users. more practically, how much will it cost to run e.g. a Matrix synapse server to support a community of a few thousands (the size of a typical small website community). Since chat is really deadweight and typically unmonetizable, if this cost is too high it will not get traction
    - oliwarner 7y ago
      Well what I'm talking about is peer-to-peer. Literally my devices asking my friends devices for messages, updates and content. I "add" you to my friends. I send you something like a v-card: A blob of metadata saying who I am and what my devices are (with certificates). You get a notification, you see this information and you get to decide there and then what access (if any) I get. This information gets sent to all your devices and you send me back a list of devices and their certificates. You post an update. It gets sent to all your devices. My device does a round-robin attempt on your devices for updates. It sees new stuff, downloads and spawns a notification (if applicable). I'd imagine there'd be ways to make push notifications happen too (ie for chat). That scales well with a sensibly sized pool of people. "But I'm an Insta-model with 2 million subs and a business!" ... then make one of your devices a real server in a real datacentre. That's the good thing here, with multiple devices, you can throw as much or little as you like at this. People at the low end still get first-class service up to a point, for just their data. So people like Facebook and Google can stay in business but only as federated endpoints to this system, charging to provide delegated access.
zzzcpan 7y ago
> We need a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. This assumes that social network is not a purely commercial idea that has some important social benefit. I don't think this is the case, even the name itself implies some control over an entire network of people. Communications between people don't have to take such form whatsoever. If people were respected and their limited attention was cherished and not steered somewhere for profit, there shouldn't be a social network at all.
marknadal 7y ago
We built this, without having to join a new network. It works with Gmail/Facebook/Discord/Reddit, etc. By encrypting your message end-to-end on public platforms: https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol
- catacombs 7y ago
  A bit ironic Party's browser extension says it keeps privacy in mind only to make it available for Chrome exclusively, a browser that is no friend to privacy.
gregknicholson 7y ago
> a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. Scuttlebutt is exactly this: https://scuttlebutt.nz https://scuttlebutt.nz

nanomonkey 7y ago

Try the Scuttlebutt protocol, it's a gossip network that does essentially just what you specified.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Zaskoda 7y ago

Decentralize. I've been working on a federated address book and thinking about how to sync contacts with other address books... It's like Really Simple Federation.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Feels like that war was lost when all the chat providers abandoned XMPP messaging. RSS was downplayed and essentially deprecated round about the same time. Open and decentralised is last decade's answer. I don't much like what's come since, but there you go.

oliwarner 7y ago
Honestly, the players in this space all abandoned any pretences of "interop" long ago. They are invested in ensuring they remain the gatekeeper. They won't be the people proving real solutions.
- sitkack 7y ago
  Part of censure of the megacorps should be forcing them to use open federated standards or face steep repercussions. As it stands not even email or the web would have been created, they all want their own AOL portals.
  - oliwarner 7y ago
    Yeah. Microsoft have been through this a couple of times now. Office's interop has been dragged through various international courts. I'm all for pushing Google, Facebook and friends through the same process. But I'm not sure they meet antitrust/monopoly definitions because they're "free" services.
    - sitkack 7y ago
      They do in the EU, in the US we have perverse monopoly rules not measuring customer harm but customer cost. As long as the megacorps dump free services on us and starve out everyone else, large and small. They aren't monopolies (by US rules). Lack of choice is ok, lack of vendor diversity is also ok. This will change.
      - sitkack 7y ago
        To quell any confusion > Lack of choice is ok, lack of vendor diversity is also ok. Is how current US monopoly regulation works, this needs to change.

vorpalhex 7y ago

Mastodon[1] is probably the future here. Decentralized nodes but you can follow folks on any other node. Each node is moderated by it's own policies - you can have a very tight topic based node, or a super wide open anything-goes approach. It's not perfect yet, but it's the best solution so far that works, and works today. [1] - https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/

neltnerb 7y ago
Yeah, unfortunately as well intentioned as this piece is, a centralized government funded social network just sounds like a terrible idea. I cannot imagine trusting that. Decentralize and interoperate...
- egypturnash 7y ago
  As someone running a Mastodon server out of her own pocket (with some help from enough of her users that it’s not too bad), I certainly wouldn’t mind if there was some kind of government funding available to help out on that.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    (If you don't mind me asking) how much does it cost to keep the node running, and about how many hours a week of work does it require?
    - egypturnash 7y ago
      Very little work to keep it running, mostly I just deal with blocking troll instances. If I had a large user base I would probably have to deal with inter-user squabbles but I keep it small. I think the cost has grown to around us$50/mo, it has some issues with refusing to purge remote media and I’ve been too busy to see if updating will help that.
  - johnisgood 7y ago
    > I certainly wouldn’t mind if there was some kind of government funding available to help out on that. One of the requirements to get the funds probably would be "install backdoors" or something of the like. :P Have you tried asking the users to donate? That might work.

jasode 7y ago

>We need a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. I know it seems logical that a "social network protocol" is the answer to replace Facebook but after studying the mechanics of social networks, I've concluded that focusing on technical protocols is incorrect. My suggestion to programmers seriously thinking of new solutions in the social networking space: don't get sidetracked into thinking about the protocol because if you do, your new social network will end up in the graveyard of previous failed projects like Diaspora. Instead, think about the database of real names. My previous comment on why protocols like ActivityPub & Mastodon are not the answer for a general purpose social network adopted by the masses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727230 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18727230 Also, another previous comment on how focusing on protocols is (inadvertently) analyzing the wrong drivers for success: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20231960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20231960 And another previous comment about how an open and free-to-use protocol like Signal does not mean Moxie Marlinspike is willing to federate with others' servers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20232499 (If you still believe that designing a new protocol is the correct answer after reading my 3 previous comments, please explain your thinking. I'm open to changing my mind on this.)

cat199 7y ago
agree that protocol doesn't solve the funding/promotion problem. but this is not an either/or, it's a both/and - the problems with excessive influence on some open protocol (r.e. your Moxie comment) are funding problems (perhaps what you mean). But, even if funding is the main issue, one still needs something worthy of funding.
beatgammit 7y ago
The problem here is that you're looking at it from an entrepreneur perspective, while the people building it are looking at it from a privacy perspective. I don't use Facebook because of the reasons it's popular. I don't want my information easily accessible online, and I do want as much control as possible over who sees my information. I believe it should be easy to give and revoke access to my information and content. The European solution here is to legislate our way to that end goal, whereas the "market" way is to make something that's appealing that gets you most of what you liked about the centralized service, but with more control over your data. And that's why I'm so interested in projects like ActivityPub and Matrix: it's not because I think they'll become popular, but because of what will happen if they become popular. If I was to invest money, I'd go with Facebook's business model every time, but if I'm going to evangelise something, it'll be something like Mastodon or Riot.im.

amelius 7y ago

Yes, we need universities to research social networks, not just the CS departments but also human sciences, so we get something that actually benefits us and society. Let companies provide the hardware, and let government agencies run the software just like in the old days of the internet. No company should ever see or touch any of the data.

buboard 7y ago

Do decentralized protocols scale well? Is there one that scales better than others? Is the better solution to have a POSSE model signed cryptographically? Ideally a decentralized protocol that gets better - not worse as more people join would be more likely to succeed (like bittorrent)

oliwarner 7y ago
What scale do you need? Yeah, I'm "friends" with hundreds of people on Facebook but how many do I really care about?
- buboard 7y ago
  i dont mean this scale, but able to support quick syndication in a network of billions of users. more practically, how much will it cost to run e.g. a Matrix synapse server to support a community of a few thousands (the size of a typical small website community). Since chat is really deadweight and typically unmonetizable, if this cost is too high it will not get traction
  - oliwarner 7y ago
    Well what I'm talking about is peer-to-peer. Literally my devices asking my friends devices for messages, updates and content. I "add" you to my friends. I send you something like a v-card: A blob of metadata saying who I am and what my devices are (with certificates). You get a notification, you see this information and you get to decide there and then what access (if any) I get. This information gets sent to all your devices and you send me back a list of devices and their certificates. You post an update. It gets sent to all your devices. My device does a round-robin attempt on your devices for updates. It sees new stuff, downloads and spawns a notification (if applicable). I'd imagine there'd be ways to make push notifications happen too (ie for chat). That scales well with a sensibly sized pool of people. "But I'm an Insta-model with 2 million subs and a business!" ... then make one of your devices a real server in a real datacentre. That's the good thing here, with multiple devices, you can throw as much or little as you like at this. People at the low end still get first-class service up to a point, for just their data. So people like Facebook and Google can stay in business but only as federated endpoints to this system, charging to provide delegated access.

zzzcpan 7y ago

> We need a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. This assumes that social network is not a purely commercial idea that has some important social benefit. I don't think this is the case, even the name itself implies some control over an entire network of people. Communications between people don't have to take such form whatsoever. If people were respected and their limited attention was cherished and not steered somewhere for profit, there shouldn't be a social network at all.

marknadal 7y ago

We built this, without having to join a new network. It works with Gmail/Facebook/Discord/Reddit, etc. By encrypting your message end-to-end on public platforms: https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol https://github.com/eraeco/party.lol

catacombs 7y ago
A bit ironic Party's browser extension says it keeps privacy in mind only to make it available for Chrome exclusively, a browser that is no friend to privacy.

gregknicholson 7y ago

> a protocol, a specification for completely decentralised, carry-with-us social networks. Scuttlebutt is exactly this: https://scuttlebutt.nz https://scuttlebutt.nz