26 ms·

Cabal: A peer-to-peer, off-grid, community-first, hackable chat platform

• yamrzou 6y ago
  Interesting project. How does it compare to Briar https://briarproject.org/ https://briarproject.org/ ?
  • creamytaco 6y ago
    Briar only works on Android so it's inherently flawed. Of course, Cabal being written in javascript is also a major minus. As an oldschool Unix hacker, I don't really get the node.js fixation for command line tools. It's a certainty that they'll never be used by a significant chunk of knowledgeable, expert Unix users that want nothing to do with node. Finally, there is no protocol documentation anywhere that I can see. This is yet another way that these modern tools fail spectacularly. In the golden age of the Internet, published protocol documentation that allowed for multiple clients to be developed was the norm rather than the exception. Which led to robust, long living protocols and services (e.g. IRC). Even though we're being drowned in apps, this isn't happening today and we're worse off for it.
    • efdee 6y ago
      No knowledgeable, expert Unix user I know brushes a Node program aside just because it is Node.
      • Shared404 6y ago
        > knowledgeable, expert Unix user I wouldn't describe myself as that, but I think I'm a little bit past noob at this point. I don't "brush aside" a program because it's node, but it's definitely a strike against it. I don't like dealing with the massive amount of dependencies that always seems to follow along with it.
        • vertis 6y ago
          <deleted>
          • Shared404 6y ago
            On Pop!_OS, apt show python3-pip shows six dependencies, while apt show npm shows: nodejs (>= 6.11~), ca-certificates, node-abbrev (>= 1.1.1~), node-ajv, node-ansi, node-ansi-regex (>= 3.0~), node-ansi-styles, node-ansistyles, node-aproba, node-archy (>= 1.0~), node-are-we-there-yet, node-asap, node-asn1, node-assert-plus, node-asynckit, node-aws4, node-aws-sign2, node-balanced-match, node-bcrypt-pbkdf, node-bl, node-bluebird, node-boxen, node-brace-expansion, node-builtin-modules, node-builtins, node-cacache, node-call-limit, node-camelcase, node-caseless, node-chalk, node-chownr, node-ci-info, node-cli-boxes, node-cliui, node-clone, node-co, node-color-convert, node-color-name, node-colors, node-columnify, node-combined-stream, node-concat-map, node-concat-stream, node-config-chain, node-configstore, node-console-control-strings, node-copy-concurrently, node-core-util-is, node-crypto-random-string, node-cyclist, node-dashdash, node-debbundle-es-to-primitive, node-debug, node-decamelize, node-deep-extend, node-defaults, node-define-properties, node-delayed-stream, node-delegates, node-detect-indent, node-detect-newline, node-dot-prop, node-duplexer3, node-duplexify, node-ecc-jsbn, node-editor, node-encoding, node-end-of-stream, node-err-code, node-errno, node-es6-promise, node-escape-string-regexp, node-execa, node-extend, node-extsprintf, node-fast-deep-equal, node-find-up, node-flush-write-stream, node-forever-agent, node-form-data, node-from2, node-fs.realpath, node-fs-vacuum, node-fs-write-stream-atomic, node-function-bind, node-gauge, node-genfun, node-get-caller-file, node-getpass, node-glob (>= 7.1.2~), node-got, node-graceful-fs (>= 4.1.11~), node-gyp (>= 3.6.2~), node-har-schema, node-har-validator, node-has-flag, node-has-unicode, node-hosted-git-info (>= 2.6~), node-http-signature, node-iconv-lite, node-iferr, node-import-lazy, node-imurmurhash, node-inflight, node-inherits (>= 2.0.3~), node-ini (>= 1.3.5~), node-invert-kv, node-ip, node-ip-regex, node-isarray, node-isexe, node-is-npm, node-is-obj, node-is-path-inside, node-is-retry-allowed, node-is-stream, node-isstream, node-is-typedarray, node-jsbn, node-jsonparse, node-json-parse-better-errors, node-json-schema, node-json-schema-traverse, node-jsonstream (>= 1.3.2~), node-json-stringify-safe, node-jsprim, node-latest-version, node-lazy-property, node-lcid, node-libnpx, node-locate-path, node-lodash, node-lockfile (>= 1.0.3~), node-lowercase-keys, node-lru-cache (>= 4.1.1~), node-make-dir, node-mem, node-mime, node-mime-types, node-mimic-fn, node-minimatch, node-minimist, node-mississippi, node-mkdirp (>= 0.5.1~), node-move-concurrently, node-ms, node-mute-stream, node-nopt, node-normalize-package-data (>= 2.4~), node-npm-bundled, node-npm-package-arg (>= 6.1.1), node-npmlog (>= 4.1.2~), node-number-is-nan, node-oauth-sign, node-object-assign, node-once (>= 1.4~), node-opener, node-osenv (>= 0.1.5~), node-os-locale, node-os-tmpdir, node-package-json, node-parallel-transform, node-path-exists, node-path-is-absolute, node-path-is-inside, node-promise-inflight, node-promise-retry, node-promzard, node-performance-now, node-p-finally, node-p-is-promise, node-pify, node-p-limit, node-p-locate, node-prepend-http, node-process-nextick-args, node-proto-list, node-prr, node-pseudomap, node-psl, node-pump, node-pumpify, node-punycode, node-qs, node-qw, node-rc, node-read (>= 1.0.7~), node-readable-stream, node-read-package-json (>= 2.0.13~), node-registry-auth-token, node-registry-url, node-require-main-filename, node-require-directory, node-resolve-from (>= 4.0~), node-retry (>= 0.10.1~), node-rimraf (>= 2.6.2~), node-run-queue, node-safe-buffer, node-semver (>= 5.5~), node-set-blocking, node-sha (>= 2.0.1~), node-shebang-command, node-shebang-regex, node-signal-exit, node-slide (>= 1.1.6~), node-sorted-object, node-slash, node-semver-diff, node-spdx-correct, node-spdx-exceptions, node-spdx-expression-parse, node-spdx-license-ids, node-sshpk, node-ssri, node-stream-each, node-stream-iterate, node-stream-shift, node-strict-uri-encode, node-string-decoder, node-string-width, node-strip-ansi (>= 4.0~), node-strip-json-comments, node-strip-eof, node-supports-color, node-tar (>= 4.4~), node-term-size, node-text-table, node-through, node-through2, node-timed-out, node-tough-cookie, node-tunnel-agent, node-tweetnacl, node-typedarray, node-uid-number, node-unique-filename, node-unique-string, node-unpipe, node-url-parse-lax, node-util-deprecate, node-uuid, node-validate-npm-package-name, node-verror, node-which (>= 1.3~), node-which-module, node-wide-align, node-widest-line, node-wrap-ansi, node-wrappy, node-wcwidth.js, node-write-file-atomic, node-xdg-basedir, node-xtend, node-yargs, node-yargs-parser, node-yallist, node-y18n
      • wizzwizz4 6y ago
        I don't brush aside Node programs just because they're Node. I brush them aside because they usually drag in a few MB of dependencies, and melt my (mid-level) computer with compilation (often OOM-killing everything else I'm doing on the machine, before dying to the OOM-killer itself) – but for all that, I then need to keep the entire thing on my hard drive because the compilation was mere caching, and hasn't given me an executable; I've still got the runtime overhead of Node, and everything that comes with it. There are a few Python programs I also brush aside for this reason, though substantially fewer. Virtually every Node project I've seen is a spidery mess of dependencies bringing in dependencies bringing in yet more un-auditable dependencies; the worst Python tends to get is Tensorflow, and it's ready to run immediately (compiling C modules aside – though pip does that at installation time, making that a one-time annoyance for all but obscure C packages).
        • efdee 6y ago
          Melt your computer with compilation? A Node program? More to the point, did you audit Tensorflow? If no, then what's your point to begin with? If yes, what made you conclude that auditing Tensorflow is doable, but usually simple NPM modules are "un-auditable"?
          • wizzwizz4 6y ago
            I didn't audit Tensorflow. But I don't install Tensorflow programs, anyway, because I don't have the resources. The point isn't auditing, though; it's auditability. If it's auditable, then somebody's probably done it – but if it's not, you can't rely on just a spot check of a few dice-picked dependencies.
            • efdee 6y ago
              And what about these NPM modules is not auditable?
              • wizzwizz4 6y ago
                There are hundreds of them, and they are very large, and many have no clear purpose, and they keep getting new versions that change seemingly nothing, but actually change a lot.
      • swirepe 6y ago
        We've all taken some git precommit hook that a coworker has helpfully provided, and rewritten it in bash so you don't need the entire node runtime to append a ticket number to a string.
    • tachyonbeam 6y ago
      > I don't really get the node.js fixation for command line tools. It's simply because most developers are web developers. They use the programming language and tooling they're familiar with. I do also wish that there wasn't so much of a move to webify everything, particularly since web dev is so prone to constantly changing fads and dependency sprawl. It tends to lead to code/software that breaks all the time.
      • metadaemon 6y ago
        I’d say that JS desktop/web applications are becoming more prevalent due to most alternative GUI frameworks not being as simple and feature rich. I’d also say that this is most likely a side effect of most UI resources being targeted towards JS and therefore reducing the attention all other GUI tooling receives.
• olah_1 6y ago
  Have there been any breakthroughs recently? Or just sharing to share?
  • runawaybottle 6y ago
    Think of it this way, if 4chan wasn’t a website, no one would allow it to exist. Web technology has a certain responsibility, so I think all the alternative communication tech is in response to the theme of this week.
    • cutehax 6y ago
      Agreed, context here is timely for sure. Large groups perhaps trying to secretly coordinate online to stage an '' event''? Web technologies for this are abundant; and yet so very easily infiltrated. End to end encryption is redundant if you've no idea who to trust.
  • whoknew1122 6y ago
    Probably not a coincidence that this gets posted with no context the day that Parler gets kicked off AWS. I presume it's someone trying to offer Cabal as a Parler alternative.
    • bastard_op 6y ago
      My thoughts exactly, the Donald Chumps will take this up. Good news: Massive influx of users. Bad news: It's all American Fascists looking to hold hands. Saving grace is most are probably too stupid to read hacker news.
      • dangus 6y ago
        > Saving grace is most are probably too stupid to read hacker news. I wouldn’t make this assumption. I have seen plenty of modern conservative opinion around here, and some of it really does align with ideas of white male supremacy and support for fascist authoritarian leadership. It’s easier to find on “new” on posts that aren’t strictly technology related. They are definitely here. Of course, people are entitled to their opinions. 99.9% of normal liberal or conservative Americans aren’t going to get violent or take part in an insurrection. Nothing wrong with a having and expressing opinions. But to me, the concern here isn’t even what happened a few days ago at the Capitol. My concern is the mass radicalization of the right wing of politics, and therefore people, in America. This radicalization is mainstream because the media outlets pushing the ideas are themselves mainstream, more mainstream than you think. E.g. my family members, who are not deep down anything truly radical like the Q rabbit hole, but still believe it’s okay for Trump to be “joking” about 12 more years, running contrary to elementary school civics lessons that were supposed to be universal common ground. They got these ideas from America’s number one cable news channel, not some obscure Internet forum.
• benbristow 6y ago
  Looks nice. Sorely lacking image uploads though, just seems like a decentralized IRC that looks like Slack at the minute.
  • lemonspat 6y ago
    Image uploads are nice, but can be overcome through other channels until the feature is added. The page says that the project is "super young"
  • OkGoDoIt 6y ago
    According to the FAQ there is a prototype implementation of it in one of the clients, and apparently once that stabilizes they will standardize it on other clients. Looks like it’s a work in progress, not an oversight
• ve55 6y ago
  I like the idea but I think there's probably a few too many chat apps going around already as well.
  • tomcam 6y ago
    Which ones should be eliminated?
    • cpach 6y ago
      Evolution will take care of that. A lot of them will simply fizzle out.
      • wizzwizz4 6y ago
        Beware evolution's pruning. It optimises for survival (and as a consequence, reproduction and ruthlessness), which is often at odds with what people value.
        • jlkuester7 6y ago
          On the other hand, the chat system that "survives" is probably the best one to use in the long-term. Features, integrations, and a slick UI are great, but without a stable community of maintainers the project if probably not a good candidate for long-term use. An open, federate-able messaging protocol is also a good thing to have! (email, XMPP, Matrix)
        • didericis 6y ago
          I get your point, but a product is only bought or used if people value it in some way (whether for good reasons or bad reasons), so product evolution has people’s values built into the process.
          • wizzwizz4 6y ago
            Product evolution has people's actions built into the process. Who, before playing Farmville, would value spending $1000 on digital sheep?
• flal_ 6y ago
  The name clash with Haskell's build tool is unfortunate...
  • amelius 6y ago
    Yes, but is that name really fitting?
    • orblivion 6y ago
      Yes because it's always conspiring against you. (credit goes to someone else for this one)
  • allenleein 6y ago
    Should change it to stack
  • marcod 6y ago
    Yeah, I installed the wrong package initially ;)
  • rtkwe 6y ago
    The namespace is pretty cluttered at this point. Most posts on HN about a new app/project/library/etc have at least one "name is already taken by ...." post under them.
• qorrect 6y ago
  I still don't know what's wrong with IRC.
  • based2 6y ago
    https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/113532/how-is-irc-so-secure-untraceable-that-hackers-and-pirates-use-it-to-communicate https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/113532/how-is-i...
    • anthk 6y ago
      Meh. IRC now can use TLS/SSL (Freenode), among SASL. On X11 vulns, I use a tty, so I don't care, and even on X, xterm has a secure mode.
  • hu3 6y ago
    Different goals. IRC needs a central server. This is peer-to-peer.
    • fulafel 6y ago
      IRC servers are peer to peer, so it's a kind of archipelago architecture. But they trust each other so it has to be coordinated and built on trusted relationships.
  • greatgirl 6y ago
    Not user friendly. Not everyone is an internet nerd like us.
    • tsujp 6y ago
      That's tentative I feel. Anyone can go to https://webchat.freenode.net/ https://webchat.freenode.net/ and join a channel someone posted the name of, "join ##channel_name_here on Freenode". Registering with the nickserv and what not? For some I'd agree but it's not entirely obscure.
  • rcxdude 6y ago
• rex_lupi 6y ago
  why would I want yet another chat platform when there's already Matrix/IRC/XMPP/telegram/signal, and oh yes, Whatsapp etc?
  • Yoric 6y ago
    I should add that Matrix p2p has been demonstrated. My understanding is that it's not ready for prime time just yet, but it works.
    • jlkuester7 6y ago
      Wait, what? Matrix is working on p2p protocols?
      • Arathorn 6y ago
        https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/ https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/
        • jlkuester7 6y ago
          Oh wow! I must have missed that somehow! Very interesting! I have been a fan of Matrix for a long time and have been very excited by all of the progress made recently! Particularly, the new UI experience for E2E encrypted channels is amazing! You managed to get solid security without sacrificing usability. Thank you for your dedication to Matrix and its community!
          • Multicomp 6y ago
            this is why i resist new chat apps....signal is tiding me over until p2p capable, e2e by default matrix is ready to go on desktop, android and ios...then i will be ready to use, donate, buy vector hosting, and evangelize oodles.
            • 6y ago
• lemonspat 6y ago
  This looks promising. Is there a web client, or only a desktop client?
  • oftheoaks 6y ago
    Right now it's desktop and terminal only, but there is a lot of interest in web and mobile clients.
    • WClayFerguson 6y ago
      If you want the best Web App in the world take my codebase (quanta.wiki) and built on top of it. The whole thing is a simple tree structure, on MongoDB, using a 'path-based' tree so you don't even have to learn a specific relational database structuring, and you can put something else on the back end to replace MongoDB. If you like Java+TypeScript+React then I've given you a 250,000 loc head start.
      • djtriptych 6y ago
        LOL the best web app in the world according to who?
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
        • WClayFerguson 6y ago
          The User Guide and screencasts only show about 10% of the functionality, so you really don't have any way to judge it, but you can still guess can't you.
          • djtriptych 6y ago
            Right so according to you and no one else. Any reason you're keeping it under wraps? Trying to build up that mystery?
• g8oz 6y ago
  Just the place to plan a second attack on the Capitol.
  • colesantiago 6y ago
    open source software at this point is just a pawn for being misused by extremists. someone once said 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions' or something like that. anyway, i'll get some friends on there and organise a a̶t̶t̶a̶c̶k̶ party.
    • SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      > open source software at this point is just a pawn for being misused by extremists. This comment makes me question if you know what open source software is.
      • scrps 6y ago
        I wonder if this (baffling) line of reasoning will become the new "Open Source/FOSS is Communism" of the late '90s early '00s...
        • jkepler 6y ago
          But bitcoin is open source (logiciel libre), and its pretty capitalist: look at how it enables people to put market value on really-hard-to-find prime numbers. What's needed to counter any 'open source is communist' rhetoric seems to be an awareness of how much private enterprise and entrepreneurial activity depends on open source.
      • colesantiago 6y ago
        1. get banned from platform. 2. move to another platform. 3. spew shit. 4. go to step 1. If the above happens for a certain amount of time, think about what the extremists are going to use when they finally realise they need to "build their own" stuff? The next one after Mastodon will probably be Matrix and by then it's already too late.
• frob 6y ago
  This site doesn't render properly on mobile. Many of the blocks flow off the screen to the left and right. I was intrigued, but like many projects, the first impression I got was of sloppy development unable to even test one of the most common ways to view their site and it drove me away.
  • dgellow 6y ago
    Which browser? Looks fine for me using latest Edge.
    • gpanders 6y ago
      Not OP but I had the same experience in Safari on iPhone
      • kevdev 6y ago
        Same for me when viewing vertically. Rotating my phone to view horizontally worked better.
    • frob 6y ago
      Chrome on Android
    • lukevp 6y ago
      Do you use edge on mobile? I haven’t heard of anyone using that before, so was curious if you missed the mobile part of the post or if you do use it mobile.
      • dgellow 6y ago
        You’re correct, I did miss the mobile part.
    • jkepler 6y ago
      Fennec (Firefox) on Lineage OS.
  • 6y ago
• supermatt 6y ago
  How does peer discovery work? Im assuming there must be some central server(s) to handle the bootstrap? I had a quick scan through the github projects, but couldnt see any high level documentation explaining the architecture. Would appreciate some insight!
  • jakswa 6y ago
    "Currently searches across and advertises on the Bittorrent DHT, centralized DNS servers and Multicast DNS simultaneously."
    • Sayrus 6y ago
      Implementations details can be found on discovery-channel GitHub's [0] As far as I can tell Cabal uses discovery-swarm [1] for connection management. [0] https://github.com/maxogden/discovery-channel https://github.com/maxogden/discovery-channel [1] https://github.com/mafintosh/discovery-swarm https://github.com/mafintosh/discovery-swarm
    • supermatt 6y ago
      Oh yeah, I understand that bit - but how does it connect to the DHT in the first place. I couldnt see any information on where it connects when you arent yet peered (i.e. how does it bootstrap).
      • oftheoaks 6y ago
        There are a collection of hyperswarm bootstrap node IPs that can get the discovery process started for new peers.
        • supermatt 6y ago
          Many thanks - is this in the codebase or handled via some config? I couldnt see it from my (limited) searching.
  • nanomonkey 6y ago
• EGreg 6y ago
  Why are there so many threads today about alternative platforms?
  • jhardy54 6y ago
    MAGA folks looking for platforms for their "free speech".
    • oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
      I was thinking WhatsApp but maybe you're right
      • EGreg 6y ago
        Okay I’ll bite Just posted our free open source platform we were working on for 10 years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25717417 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25717417
        • oehtXRwMkIs 6y ago
          Sorry man not interested in non-federated solutions.
          • EGreg 6y ago
            Not sure what you mean by non-federated... Qbix can support many protocols including foaf, matrix, scuttlebutt, DID and so on. You can make it as federated as you wish.
        • jhardy54 6y ago
          > MAGA folks looking for platforms for their "free speech". This is not a target demographic you should strive for.
          • EGreg 6y ago
            I am not really a big fan of end-to-end encryption for solving society’s main communication problems, I think people (pseudonymous or not) should be accountable for their speech. But I do believe in empowering people and uniting communities. If you want to run your own social network out of your own servers, you should be able to. The fact that the software to power user friendly communication platforms is scarce is a big problem. They extract rents. They cut you off if they don’t like what you have to say. And worst of all, they concentrate power in the hands of a few people regarding what decisions are to be made. That is actually the source of all this arguing. If you’re arguing whether we should have Title I or Title II, or whether we should use Facebook or Google, Microsoft or Amazon, Democrat and Republican, you’ve already lost. Open source collaboration beats closed source competition every time in the end. Everyone can host their own network and label the map however they want, and so on. No fighting over flags or one size fits all policies! In the 19th century there was a word for this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
• snvzz 6y ago
  No full forward secrecy. >All traffic is encrypted using a symmetric key, meaning that anybody who has the cabal://abcdef key can read cabal network traffic. If you're even considering this, look at https://tox.chat/ https://tox.chat/ instead. That one's been around for a while (thus mature) and actually has full forward secrecy.
  • mempko 6y ago
    Problem with forward secrecy is that it doesn't really work well for a use case like cabal. You want to be able to join a cabal and read all the past conversations.
    • snvzz 6y ago
      That's desirable for some rooms, not on every room and definitely not on private conversations. Matrix handles that well, by having a setting per-room regarding handling of room history.
  • Multicomp 6y ago
    (never tried cabal, it could be worse) tox was accused of having a poor crypto implementation / playing silly buggers with libsodium. I've tried it on android, works ok but most apps at the time seemed older. not sure where tox stands re community liveliness but its certainly a good start on p2p messaging, my claims notwitshtanding.
    • snvzz 6y ago
      >tox was accused of having a poor crypto implementation The actual flaw: If _your_ *private* key is stolen, your friends can be impersonated to you. Hardly worth the infamy. There's a bug open on this, the solution is known, the opportunity for a fix, and when it will be made live, will be the next time a protocol break ("flag day") is necessary for other reasons.
      • Multicomp 6y ago
        I will be trying tox again after that event then.
• WClayFerguson 6y ago
  I've developed a great social media system that's basically a centralized system, although I added Fediverse capability to it recently. It's here: https://quanta.wiki https://quanta.wiki. I'm looking for a way to leverage Quanta's power on top of some kind of true peer-to-peer architecture to make it censorship resistant, because BigTech has just now gone nuclear in their censorship efforts. So I'm currently trying to find the right peer-to-peer (won't be ActivityPub) infrastructure, to let Quanta instances network better.
  • antris 6y ago
    >BigTech has just now gone nuclear in their censorship efforts Who's being censored? Twitter, Facebook etc. are private platforms and they've been banning users who break their TOS throughout their histories.
    • mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
      Private entities can and do engage in censorship.
      • WClayFerguson 6y ago
        The best analogy to help low-information people understand this is to just remind them that AT&T owns the hardware and can shut down people too. Do we want powerful companies to be allowed to censor Americans at their whim is the question. I say no.
        • deanstag 6y ago
          Does that mean an alternative solution would allow inciting violence?
        • jazzyjackson 6y ago
          So lobby the government to break up AT&T so they don't have monopoly power... (oh wait)
      • 6y ago
• f430 6y ago
  wow this space is really taking off after the moves by big tech. this is the way of the future.
• jv22222 6y ago
  For clarification: The 1st amendment ensures that the government may not stop you from saying what you want. This is a separate issue from private companies removing/banning you. Each company has their own right and freedom to be as dickish as they want with regard to deleting your account etc - but that is not related to the 1st.
  • bluesign 6y ago
    Yeah but if they have this freedom (being dickish etc) then they should also be responsible for what they are publishing on their platforms. They want to have their cake and eat it.
  • s17n 6y ago
    "Freedom of press" can and should be interpreted to proscribe deplatforming by the big tech companies.
  • aidenn0 6y ago
    It used to be true that companies could be dickish to you, but now thanks to the 13th amendment (and the courts interpretation thereof), there are specific ways that they cannot be dickish to you. Either way you are right that it's not related to the 1st amendment though.
  • ravenstine 6y ago
    No, it isn't. There's already precedents for what businesses can and cannot prevent you from doing. If, for instance, you think a business should be compelled to bake a cake with a certain message on it, then you can't make the argument that there should be no regulation on how much a business can censor its users. That's not the only example. There's extensive case law that establishes how both governments and businesses have to either allow or curtail speech under certain conditions. A business can't legally compel you to do say something or wear a piece of clothing in a way that discriminates against you. A sex shop can't just open anywhere because, while it's been argued that they should be allowed as a form of free expression, they tend not to be considered as such under the spirit of the law. A person can be held responsible for the aftermath of shouting "fire" in a crowded room, even though this speech is superficially supported by the first amendment. Point being, we make decisions about freedom of speech that don't necessarily follow the letter of the constitution or stay within the bounds of the government. Freedom of speech isn't just a law. It's a social principle upon which America was founded. If all meaningful communication is dominated by too-big-to-fail businesses with AI that can scour all correspondence, a reality we are rapidly approaching, then freedom of speech becomes meaningless. The situation becomes worse when these companies are all politically aligned with the regime. This is why we can't ignore how private companies regulate communication through their systems.
• ReactiveJelly 6y ago
  Checked the FAQ. Downside: It doesn't support Tor and they don't seem to have any plan for that. So it's trusted-friends-only, IPs are always visible. Which is pointless for me, as a person trying to build healthy online friendships from behind Tor. Upside: I was afraid it's a reaction to Parler being deplatformed. And then I thought maybe it was a side-project of Urbit. But looking at the Values page: "No nazis, no TERFs, no alt-right—or anyone friendly with them" So that's cool.
  • eznzt 6y ago
    > as a person trying to build healthy online friendships from behind Tor. As someone who's spent a lot of time on Tor-related IRC channels and other communities, gl lol
  • snowflake_ptr 6y ago
    > or anyone friendly with them This is disgusting - it implies that you should pick and choose your friends based on political affiliation, which not only is extremely (and intentionally) divisive, but also provides no room for guiding these individuals back to a more moderate political stance. Without being friends (or at least interacting with) with those who have been ostracized by society, how, exactly, do you propose to try to get them to change their minds? I'm also curious as to how they plan to enforce this constraint - Cabal appears to be completely decentralized, correct?
    • generalizations 6y ago
      > pick and choose your friends based on political affiliation I think this is the saddest part of what's been happening recently. We don't need to separate ourselves from people with different viewpoints. I'm lucky enough to be friends with people on the left and the right, but I think that's only because we stay away from politics. In fact, it's something that used to be a Christian ideal - to be able to maintain a courteous friendship with someone you are fundamentally at odds with (See: Song of Roland, Christian & "Saracen" Knights). It's not often something I see folks right of center doing, but it seems like a ton of people left of center have been distancing themselves from people with whom they disagree too strongly. It's too bad. We need to open up to more discourse, not less.
• fortran77 6y ago
  The word Cabal comes from Hebrew. It probably grew about because outsiders perceived the people who studied Jewish mysticism as being part of some secret society. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabal
• camdenlock 6y ago
  It’s incredibly disheartening to see how quickly people are warming to the practice of coordinated top-down gagging of certain individuals and groups. You won’t be so happy to cheer on such behavior and policies when in the future the one silenced turns out to be you. The power to censor should be given solely to the individual to curate their own information diet; it should never belong to the medium itself (whether government, private company, autonomous network, etc).
  • deegles 6y ago
    I used to think that way until I learned about the illusory truth effect, which basically states that being exposed to information multiple times makes you more likely to believe it to be true. The consequence of this is that attempting to curate information might "infect" you with ideas that you never wanted in your brain in the first place.
    • nx20593 6y ago
      If you started in the wrong way," I said in answer to the investigator's questions, "everything that happened would be a proof of the conspiracy against you. It would all be self−validating. You couldn't draw a breath without knowing it was part of the plot." "So you think you know where madness lies?" My answer was a convinced and heartfelt, "Yes." "And you couldn't control it?" "No I couldn't control it. If one began with fear and hate as the major premise, one would have to go on the conclusion." "Would you be able," my wife asked, " to fix your attention on what The Tibetan Book of the Dead calls the Clear Light?" I was doubtful. "Would it keep the evil away, if you could hold it? Or would you not be able to hold it?" I considered the question for some time. "Perhaps," I answered at last, "perhaps I could − but only if there were somebody there to tell me about the Clear Light. One couldn't do it by oneself. That's the point, I suppose, of the Tibetan ritual − somebody sitting there all the time and telling you what's what." [Doors of Perception, 57−58]
    • lez 6y ago
      The problem that you mention was largely amplified by Big Tech, the same companies who are now offering their "solutions".
• londons_explore 6y ago
  Network connections are getting faster... Peoples typing/reading speeds are not... One day it will be feasible for someone's phone to receive all messages sent by every other person on earth. They can then try to decode every message till they find one that their private key can decode. You've now made the perfect privacy messaging system - by sending all messages to all users, no quantity of network packet sniffing/timing analysis/evil nodes can figure out who is talking to who.
  • londons_explore 6y ago
    Thought experiment: There are 7e9 people on earth. Say they send 10, 100 byte messages per day, but that compresses 10x (modern text compression using big neural networks is amazing). That works out to 7e11 bytes per day, or 8 Megabytes per second. That is nearly feasible today...
    • generalizations 6y ago
      However, that's also 21 Terabytes per month. It'll be a while before that's feasible. Hopefully the population doesn't grow with our bandwidth capabilities.
      • cmrx64 6y ago
        the square kilometer array produces a terabyte a second. 21tb/mo is peanuts. we’ll get there :)
    • XorNot 6y ago
      Battery life is a problem though. Your phone running hot the entire time trying to decrypt every message in the stream becomes the new limiting factor.
  • rhencke 6y ago
    You may find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station interesting.
  • 6y ago
• dr_kiszonka 6y ago
  I wish they excluded extremes on both sides of the spectrum. Otherwise, it makes Cabal seem like a Parler for the extreme left. (Maybe it is not; I know nothing about people behind Cabal.)
  • m1sta_ 6y ago
    Obvious conclusion since everything that isn't far-right is far-left. /s
    • snowflake_ptr 6y ago
      More like anyone who's willing to condemn one extreme but not the other is almost certainly supporting the latter.
    • meekmockmook 6y ago
      I'm a Sanders supporter and as Left as it gets but there is serious denial about the past 6 months of coordinated violence in major city cores from militant groups that claimed to speak for me. We have a problem with Big Tech and sectarian violence in this country no matter which way you look at it.
      • dragonwriter 6y ago
        > I'm a Sanders supporter and as Left as it gets I'm a Sanders supporter, and there's quite bit (obviously, alienated from the duopoly fostered by the structure of US government and elections) to the left of the left-most Sanders supporter. > but there is serious denial about the past 6 months of coordinated violence in major city cores from militant groups that claimed to speak for me. Since you don't claim to be from either the far-right groups that the many identified violent provocateurs represented, nor from the movement that the protestors represented (which wasn't either “the Left” in general, or Sanders supporters in particular—in fact, being in the overlap of the two groups, I'm very much aware that it's a group that has had a very conflicted relationship with Sanders and even moreso his largely-White and not particularly race conscious base of support), I’m not sure what your basis is for claiming that the supposed coordinated violence, no matter who you attribute it to (there has been considerable disagreement on that) was from people who claim to represent you.
• thoughtsunifica 6y ago
  9/11 Never Happened
• qwerty456127 6y ago
  I'm glad to see people care and engineer new, more resilient platforms like this. Nevertheless, despite being generally anti-centralization and pro-free speech I have to conclude: Large-scale social networks political bias should not be fixed by making social networks more free, it has be fixed by making social networks less free. When "conservatives" call for violence or actual hatred (not just antipathy or disagreement) they must be stopped. When "liberals" storm people and destroy their careers and lives for merely using wrong vocabulary or having and expressing an unpopular (even plain wrong) opinion they should be stopped too. Large-scale social networks meant for general audience, those websites which have serious effects on off-line lives, are the new streets and they have to be policed the same way streets are. We don't want to live where street violence is a norm.
• evanfabry 6y ago
  I think "hackable" is an unfortunate description for a messaging platform as it can convey a lack of security/privacy. Fwiw, the concept of a strictly insecure/zero-privacy messaging platform is interesting, but the word "hackable" wouldn't really help get the message across in that setting either. :)
• BuzzwordBingo 6y ago
  What ever overcomes people to post their stupid political/life philosophies as part of a software package?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Lenny86 6y ago
  I downloaded the windows zip of cabal-cli, unzipped and tried to run the executable but nothing happens. Forgive me but this looks crappy, not even amateuristic.