6 ms·

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.o

by chx 7y ago

> I think this issues are going to continue till some big use cases emerge and protocol becomes main stream. Nailed it. Remember Freenet? https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2009/nov/26/dark-side-internet-freenet https://web.archive.org/web/20130908073158/http://www.thegua... There's always a chance of Freenet being the IBM Simon and Apple Newton and IPFS is the iPhone. Or, the VFX1 vs the Oculus. But no. While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, all those other examples had immediately obvious use cases and just needed the tech to catch up which it did.

Mediterraneo10 7y ago
I remember discussions of Freenet on "news for nerds" forums in the early millennium, and it was obvious that that particular technology was doomed and would never be widely adopted. You see, people were reluctant to run a Freenet instance because that would involve hosting and passing on content from other users as well. While all Freenet content was encrypted, people were horrified by the thought that if the crypto algorithm were ever broken, they would suddenly be revealed to have been hosting child pornography on their computers (unwittingly, but still). Thus, distributed platforms today must allow people to pick and choose what content they wish to host.
- anotheracct_ 7y ago
  A good reminder that not everybody has reasoned opinions or should be listened to.
- xtracto 7y ago
  It was also terribly slow.
  - realusername 7y ago
    Indeed, I think it's the slowness which killed it more than anything. Also I remember it supported a very limited subset of CSS even for the time and no way to make websites dynamic since there were no JS, that for sure did not help.
- AgentME 7y ago
  >Thus, distributed platforms today must allow people to pick and choose what content they wish to host. IPFS works more like torrents than FreeNet. If you run an IPFS node, it only hosts content that you pinned on it yourself.
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    IPFS also has none of the anonymity. So it's a tradeoff.
- mirimir 7y ago
  It hasn't even been necessary to break the encryption. Police can just run Freenet nodes, which serve child porn, and then log IPs of peers that download chunks of those files. While it's true that Freenet does a good job of obscuring data routing, arguably providing plausible deniability, it's in practice nontrivial to convince juries of that.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    The question being, how that is supposed to be any different than any other service operated by anybody else? If a pedophile signs up for AT&T, is AT&T not routing their illegal data? Or Starbucks if they use the WiFi there? If they sign up for AWS or some other hosting provider, isn't the provider hosting their illegal data? The obvious solution is to make actual knowledge a prerequisite to liability. The pedophile who knows what it is goes to jail, the random person who is only providing a generic service to the public does not.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      In reality, police identify Freenet users that have "downloaded" child pornography. And then they arrest those people, impound all their gear, and file charges. So defendants now face the challenge of convincing juries that they were just relaying data to other users. And that's not trivial. Or at least, it's expensive to hire expert witnesses. So many just accept some plea bargain.
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        These are the stories fearmongers tell because it happened to one or two people many years ago. The same thing has happened to hosting providers. Sometimes bad police are malicious or incompetent and screw up the lives of innocent people. But that doesn't have anything to do with Freenet, that can even happen to you driving down the street when some dirty cop needs a bust and decides to pull over a random car and plant drugs on it. The answer isn't to never do anything, it's to fix the systems that oppress innocent people for no good reason. And in the meantime you can't live your life in fear of low-probability oppression by defective authority figures.
kick 7y ago
It seems more likely that IPFS is the GM-NAA I/O to something in the future's OS/360. The concept is cool, but it doesn't seem like it's there yet.
Mindless2112 7y ago
IPFS is waiting for the use case to catch up. If/when we start to colonized Mars, the InterPlanetary File System might actually be useful. (Only being somewhat tongue-in-cheek.)
- StavrosK 7y ago
  Small static sites like this one sound like a good use case: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZCGRVJNjVJtEqtS2HwhELszNBSU2XNwuBkFEQTqM4RKG/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZCGRVJNjVJtEqtS2HwhELszNBSU2XNwuBkFEQ...
- mirimir 7y ago
  Actually, IPFS' network resilience is a great fit for high-latency overlay networks.
  - devhugo 7y ago
    I believe that is their point.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Where do you see that?
      - devhugo 7y ago
        You're right. I read your comment and thought it was in reference to the thought of an Inter Planetary network, not realizing you were talking about a present day usecase. Sorry. I've actually heard about IPFS being used by some private cloud/on prem operators to speed up delivery of container images.
GekkePrutser 7y ago
I hadn't heard much about IPFS but the way this is built, with the immutability and hash keys etc, sounds very much like FreeNet. That's the first thing I thought of, and predates this by about 20 years. I remember when that promised to be the next big thing and save us from the commercialisation of the internet that was in full swing then. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out very well. Let's just say the 'fringes of free speech' took the upper hand and really started defining the platform in the public view, to the point of being strongly associated with the platform. Why would you run a node if it was mainly used for horrible stuff. Same as what happened to tor services, but to a bigger extent. I really believe in the idea freedom of speech. But some kind of control is unfortunately needed. Otherwise a platform like this will always spiral out of control and kill itself. I think it's one of those things that sounds great in theory but doesn't work in real life. Perhaps some kind of user voting could be implemented, but it would be extremely slow, too slow to catch up with new content being published. It's a very hard thing to tackle. Free speech is unfortunately not as black and white as its advocates like to see it.
- tal8d 7y ago
  > Let's just say the 'fringes of free speech' took the upper hand... Luckily for you that blurry line between mainstream and "fringe" is rapidly shifting, and the list of permissible opinions continues to shrink. More and more people will be forced to decide how important guilt by association is to them, and will either make use of the stigmatized tech - or simply shutup. > But some kind of control is unfortunately needed. To what end? Are we protecting the children? Are we preventing the rise of Turbo-Hitler? > Otherwise a platform like this will always spiral out of control and kill itself. How do you imagine that happens? Shaming from people saying exactly what you have just said, leading to reduced uptake, justifying censorship - because only bad people use the dark web. Here is a clue: look at what has happened to lesbians, they are already going through this. I know this because I frequent a thoroughly demonized site run by a free-speech absolutist (well, almost). One day a whole bunch of these women showed up to complain about some insane pre-op transsexual who had succeeded in getting them censored on every major platform. These ladies absolutely hated the site and everyone on it, but they had no alternative.
snvzz 7y ago
>While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, Shitty or not, freenet did and does still provide anonymity, which IPFS does not.
- mirimir 7y ago
  That's dangerously incorrect. Freenet provides no anonymity. What it provides is "plausible deniability". All Freenet peers know each others IP addresses. There's no onion routing. There is the option of running in "darknet" mode. That is, connecting only with known peers. Ideally, people you know and trust. But that provides no access to data from the global Freenet opennet. For that, at least one darknet peer must risk peering freely with the global opennet. Although there's no onion routing, there is a very effective method for routing data through peer networks. With that, it's arguably impossible to distinguish those who share and access data from those who merely relay it. However, the "plausible deniability" argument depends on understanding how Freenet routing works. If you want to check out Freenet, never run a node at home. Use a VPS that you lease and access only via Tor. Ideally, connect to Tor via nested VPN chains. Use cryptocurrency that's been thoroughly anonymized. And setup the Freenet WebGUI as a Tor onion service.
  - bawolff 7y ago
    Well by that definition Tor doesn't provide anonyminity either. A common definition of anonoyminity is that given a set of users, its impossible to determine which element (person) of the set did the action (published a document) [or have a better chance of guessing than guessing at random]. I think freenet mostly provides this property (with a bunch of devil in the details)
    - mirimir 7y ago
      I agree that Freenet allows publication that's both anonymous and not readily censurable. What it doesn't allow is anonymous access, except in the sense of plausible deniability that depends on highly technical arguments. Tor actually does provide anonymity through onion routing. It's not effective against global adversaries, and doesn't claim to be. But it's hard to imagine how any low-latency overlay network could resist global adversaries. Chaff, caching and mixing would help, but they aren't that practical or effective unless you accept greater latency.

by chx 7y ago

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

I remember discussions of Freenet on "news for nerds" forums in the early millennium, and it was obvious that that particular technology was doomed and would never be widely adopted. You see, people were reluctant to run a Freenet instance because that would involve hosting and passing on content from other users as well. While all Freenet content was encrypted, people were horrified by the thought that if the crypto algorithm were ever broken, they would suddenly be revealed to have been hosting child pornography on their computers (unwittingly, but still). Thus, distributed platforms today must allow people to pick and choose what content they wish to host.

anotheracct_ 7y ago
A good reminder that not everybody has reasoned opinions or should be listened to.
xtracto 7y ago
It was also terribly slow.
- realusername 7y ago
  Indeed, I think it's the slowness which killed it more than anything. Also I remember it supported a very limited subset of CSS even for the time and no way to make websites dynamic since there were no JS, that for sure did not help.
AgentME 7y ago
>Thus, distributed platforms today must allow people to pick and choose what content they wish to host. IPFS works more like torrents than FreeNet. If you run an IPFS node, it only hosts content that you pinned on it yourself.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  IPFS also has none of the anonymity. So it's a tradeoff.
mirimir 7y ago
It hasn't even been necessary to break the encryption. Police can just run Freenet nodes, which serve child porn, and then log IPs of peers that download chunks of those files. While it's true that Freenet does a good job of obscuring data routing, arguably providing plausible deniability, it's in practice nontrivial to convince juries of that.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  The question being, how that is supposed to be any different than any other service operated by anybody else? If a pedophile signs up for AT&T, is AT&T not routing their illegal data? Or Starbucks if they use the WiFi there? If they sign up for AWS or some other hosting provider, isn't the provider hosting their illegal data? The obvious solution is to make actual knowledge a prerequisite to liability. The pedophile who knows what it is goes to jail, the random person who is only providing a generic service to the public does not.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    In reality, police identify Freenet users that have "downloaded" child pornography. And then they arrest those people, impound all their gear, and file charges. So defendants now face the challenge of convincing juries that they were just relaying data to other users. And that's not trivial. Or at least, it's expensive to hire expert witnesses. So many just accept some plea bargain.
    - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
      These are the stories fearmongers tell because it happened to one or two people many years ago. The same thing has happened to hosting providers. Sometimes bad police are malicious or incompetent and screw up the lives of innocent people. But that doesn't have anything to do with Freenet, that can even happen to you driving down the street when some dirty cop needs a bust and decides to pull over a random car and plant drugs on it. The answer isn't to never do anything, it's to fix the systems that oppress innocent people for no good reason. And in the meantime you can't live your life in fear of low-probability oppression by defective authority figures.

kick 7y ago

It seems more likely that IPFS is the GM-NAA I/O to something in the future's OS/360. The concept is cool, but it doesn't seem like it's there yet.

Mindless2112 7y ago

IPFS is waiting for the use case to catch up. If/when we start to colonized Mars, the InterPlanetary File System might actually be useful. (Only being somewhat tongue-in-cheek.)

StavrosK 7y ago
Small static sites like this one sound like a good use case: https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZCGRVJNjVJtEqtS2HwhELszNBSU2XNwuBkFEQTqM4RKG/ https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmZCGRVJNjVJtEqtS2HwhELszNBSU2XNwuBkFEQ...
mirimir 7y ago
Actually, IPFS' network resilience is a great fit for high-latency overlay networks.
- devhugo 7y ago
  I believe that is their point.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Where do you see that?
    - devhugo 7y ago
      You're right. I read your comment and thought it was in reference to the thought of an Inter Planetary network, not realizing you were talking about a present day usecase. Sorry. I've actually heard about IPFS being used by some private cloud/on prem operators to speed up delivery of container images.

GekkePrutser 7y ago

I hadn't heard much about IPFS but the way this is built, with the immutability and hash keys etc, sounds very much like FreeNet. That's the first thing I thought of, and predates this by about 20 years. I remember when that promised to be the next big thing and save us from the commercialisation of the internet that was in full swing then. Unfortunately, that didn't turn out very well. Let's just say the 'fringes of free speech' took the upper hand and really started defining the platform in the public view, to the point of being strongly associated with the platform. Why would you run a node if it was mainly used for horrible stuff. Same as what happened to tor services, but to a bigger extent. I really believe in the idea freedom of speech. But some kind of control is unfortunately needed. Otherwise a platform like this will always spiral out of control and kill itself. I think it's one of those things that sounds great in theory but doesn't work in real life. Perhaps some kind of user voting could be implemented, but it would be extremely slow, too slow to catch up with new content being published. It's a very hard thing to tackle. Free speech is unfortunately not as black and white as its advocates like to see it.

tal8d 7y ago
> Let's just say the 'fringes of free speech' took the upper hand... Luckily for you that blurry line between mainstream and "fringe" is rapidly shifting, and the list of permissible opinions continues to shrink. More and more people will be forced to decide how important guilt by association is to them, and will either make use of the stigmatized tech - or simply shutup. > But some kind of control is unfortunately needed. To what end? Are we protecting the children? Are we preventing the rise of Turbo-Hitler? > Otherwise a platform like this will always spiral out of control and kill itself. How do you imagine that happens? Shaming from people saying exactly what you have just said, leading to reduced uptake, justifying censorship - because only bad people use the dark web. Here is a clue: look at what has happened to lesbians, they are already going through this. I know this because I frequent a thoroughly demonized site run by a free-speech absolutist (well, almost). One day a whole bunch of these women showed up to complain about some insane pre-op transsexual who had succeeded in getting them censored on every major platform. These ladies absolutely hated the site and everyone on it, but they had no alternative.

snvzz 7y ago

>While surely the tech has evolved from a shitty Java app as Freenet was, Shitty or not, freenet did and does still provide anonymity, which IPFS does not.

mirimir 7y ago
That's dangerously incorrect. Freenet provides no anonymity. What it provides is "plausible deniability". All Freenet peers know each others IP addresses. There's no onion routing. There is the option of running in "darknet" mode. That is, connecting only with known peers. Ideally, people you know and trust. But that provides no access to data from the global Freenet opennet. For that, at least one darknet peer must risk peering freely with the global opennet. Although there's no onion routing, there is a very effective method for routing data through peer networks. With that, it's arguably impossible to distinguish those who share and access data from those who merely relay it. However, the "plausible deniability" argument depends on understanding how Freenet routing works. If you want to check out Freenet, never run a node at home. Use a VPS that you lease and access only via Tor. Ideally, connect to Tor via nested VPN chains. Use cryptocurrency that's been thoroughly anonymized. And setup the Freenet WebGUI as a Tor onion service.
- bawolff 7y ago
  Well by that definition Tor doesn't provide anonyminity either. A common definition of anonoyminity is that given a set of users, its impossible to determine which element (person) of the set did the action (published a document) [or have a better chance of guessing than guessing at random]. I think freenet mostly provides this property (with a bunch of devil in the details)
  - mirimir 7y ago
    I agree that Freenet allows publication that's both anonymous and not readily censurable. What it doesn't allow is anonymous access, except in the sense of plausible deniability that depends on highly technical arguments. Tor actually does provide anonymity through onion routing. It's not effective against global adversaries, and doesn't claim to be. But it's hard to imagine how any low-latency overlay network could resist global adversaries. Chaff, caching and mixing would help, but they aren't that practical or effective unless you accept greater latency.