15 ms·

Manyverse – A social network off the grid

391 points by graderjs 5y ago

joshka 5y ago
A naive semi-unrelated question - why don't cell phones support LoraWAN (or similar mesh protocols)? This sort of thing could be ubiquitous in that landscape.
- MisterTea 5y ago
  Because LoraWAN was designed for low power, intermittent/sporadic communication from battery/solar operated things spread out over a wide area. It's bandwidth is limited to 50kbits/sec per channel so its design is for sending small messages. Perfect use case would be something like a farm where you want to monitor dozens of small things such as the temperature in the barn, water level in a stock tank, monitor an irrigation system, monitor soil conditions, etc.
  - int_19h 5y ago
    It sounds perfect for local-area SMS?
    - Chilko 5y ago
      It is! https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.letstalkthis.com/ https://meshtastic.letstalkthis.com/
      - krageon 5y ago
        I like the idea of this but the choice of colours on this website is actively user-hostile (e.g. bright green on a light background is unreadable).
      - int_19h 5y ago
        Very nice! But that's exactly what makes the question legitimate: why don't smartphones have this functionality, or at least the hardware to enable apps that would offer it?
        joshka 5y ago
        Yeah - not too interested in the exact how / mapping on to existing spectrum. More interested in the why part of working out why local is not as prevalent as further afield.
  - cheezymoogle 5y ago
    50kbp/s is equivalent to dial-up speed. 3G was only four times faster at 200kbp/s. I wouldn't say that LoraWAN's speed is the limiting factor. A single second of transmission (i.e. ~6kb) is about 1,500 characters in UTF8, assuming no overhead. With an average of 6 characters per word, that's still 250 words per second, more than ample for human communication.
    - genewitch 5y ago
      Matrix protocol has a extreme low bandwidth mode, and I know a couple of other things are aiming to be more "iot/off grid capable" Even packet radio would allow some of this stuff to flourish in remote areas - not matrix, it's encrypted.
    - vdqtp3 5y ago
      Your comment alone, with associated HTML, is 1159 characters. The Manyverse logo on their homepage is 46K characters. Scuttlebutt's "large-hermies-dancing.gif" is 118KB. Not including IP and TCP overhead, the Scuttlebutt handshake is 340 bytes, each message in a box stream is 35 to 4130 bytes, and the box stream finishes with another 34 bytes. There are two box streams for every Scuttlebutt communication. There are also RPC messages sent in the box stream that are a minimum of 9 byte header and 9 byte goodbye. Transmitting a single post containing the text "Second post!" takes 563 characters, not including the handshake, header, footer or encryption overhead. The web and social networks are far more data intensive today than low bandwidth modalities can support, especially long distance, low power RF links that would be rapidly saturated. Restricted length text a la Twitter might be manageable. Encrypted high fidelity blockchain social networks? Not a snowball's chance in hell unless so few people are using it that nobody is saturating the link. Edit: In North America for LoRa there are 64 125kHz uplink channels, 8 500kHz uplink channels, and 8 500kHz downlink channels. This should give you an idea of how little capacity there really is.
      - GekkePrutser 5y ago
        In addition to this, in Europe LoRa (or more specifically the 868Mhz ISM band it uses) has a legally imposed duty cycle of 1% so it can only use 1% of the available airtime to transmit. This makes it really impossible to send anything but a handful of bytes
null4bl3 5y ago
Branding says manyverse. Reviews says it's just scuttlebug
- choff 5y ago
  I found this article[1] which provided this insight into the relationship between the two. > Now, in 2021, there is a growing underground project called Scuttlebutt that is tackling the decentralized web from a different perspective. Unlike Diaspora and Mastodon, Scuttlebutt is not a product for end-users — rather, it’s a protocol (like HTTP or RSS). Decentralized social network products, like Manyverse and Planetary, are being built for end-users on top of the Scuttlebutt protocol. [1] https://thenewstack.io/scuttlebutt-decentralize-and-escape-the-social-media-rat-race/ https://thenewstack.io/scuttlebutt-decentralize-and-escape-t...
- anonymous532 5y ago
  I think Manyverse is just an UI for whatever Scuttlebug is.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt Secure Scuttlebutt, not Scuttlebug, as GP has it.
    - anonymous532 5y ago
      butt hehehe minion laugh
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  It's an implementation of SSB, but not SSB. Just like you wouldn't say Chrome is HTTP, but that it has an implementation of the HTTP protocol. Also, "scuttlebug", a not-so-subtle insult or odd typo?
- 1MachineElf 5y ago
  >scuttlebug If the last part of that comment is dig implying that SSB is buggy, then providing some additional details about bugs we should be aware of would be illuminating.
bovermyer 5y ago
The app is pretty slick, actually. I just wish it was easier to discover SSB users.
- iszomer 5y ago
  Or not. IIRC, one of the main ethos of SSB is to establish contact peer to peer not pick them out of the crowd (or swamp).
  - bovermyer 5y ago
    I suppose. The chance of meeting someone who uses SSB _and_ discovering that fact is near zero, though. This reminds me quite a bit of trying to find someone to email back in the early 1990s, before the web existed. I might be excited by the technology, but if there's no one to share it with, that dulls the excitement rather a lot.
    - myself248 5y ago
      Bingo. I played with Patchwork for a few days, but found that no matter how many people I followed or posts I tried to respond to, nobody seemed to see what I wrote, or at least, nobody responded back. So either I was completely uninteresting, or invisible, and I couldn't figure out which to start addressing it. Maybe I'm expected to bootstrap a group of local friends and get everyone onto SSB and then we can talk using it? But if I already know them, we can just talk on IRC or whatever we already use. I'm missing something fundamental about how this is supposed to work.
      - aabbcc1241 5y ago
        Sometime I feel half the same when posting on HN: mostly of the time got no response, but at least I can read posts and comments from others. At least you can use it as a personal blog or daily journal when you write not for the purpose of getting response. When the amount of content is built up, it will have higher chance to get response if you're still on the network, and followed the audiences back.
anarchogeek 5y ago
Manyverse is a great app, one of several compatible ones which use the secure scuttlebutt protocol. For ios another open source one is https://planetary.social/ https://planetary.social/ which i wrote.
- lifty 5y ago
  Is it still the case that your identity is connected to a single device?
  - anarchogeek 5y ago
    Soon! We've got the new scuttlebutt metafeed format that will allow us to support multiple devices and a bunch of other interesting things. https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/ssb-meta-feeds https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/ssb-meta-feeds So the answer is soon.
    - nyx_land 5y ago
      it's good to see this is finally being addressed. lack of multi-device support is the one thing that has kept me from using scuttlebutt other than poking around to check things out and it's been several years now that people have been asking for this.
      - lifty 5y ago
        I want multi-device support and a way to delegate all the feed-syncing to an always on device like a raspberry pi or a VPS. That way, when I start the app on my phone or on my laptop, I can see the feeds much faster.
        crypt0x 5y ago
        sorry to rain down here but multi-device support is not a feature of metafeeds at all. It only realizes partial replication. It's equally important to grow the network but strictly distinct, all metafeeds are on the same device. multi-device is only spec'ed but not implemented in what we call "fusion identities": https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/fusion-identity-spec https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/fusion-identity-spec also, the ngi team has nothing to do with planetary.
toxik 5y ago
I tried to open the app and it crashed immediately every time. iOS 15
dang 5y ago
One past thread: Manyverse – A social network off the grid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18065567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18065567 - Sept 2018 (117 comments)
- wrycoder 5y ago
  And a link to one of the active recent threads for scuttlebutt itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25713830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25713830 - Jan 2021 (166 comments)
metalliqaz 5y ago
I wish them luck. I will start using it when I know anyone else that uses it.
- janandonly 5y ago
  Same. Also still buggy.
- winternett 5y ago
  Also I'd be very concerned about who developed it and why, and what the EULA truly is. If everything is decentralized, there are no records if you get threatened, extorted, or harassed on a platform, and harmful content isn't saved anywhere notable. At then end of the day, no platform can guarantee security but they all do cost money to develop and operate and nothing comes truly for free... this we all know... There is some motive for the platform being developed, which is unclear at this point to me. I'd rather deal conservatively and cautiously with non P2P platforms at this point just to be fully honest.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    I suggest reading up on Secure Scuttlebutt itself and seeing why it was made and by whom. That may help answer your questions regarding their motive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt http://scuttlebutt.nz/ http://scuttlebutt.nz/
    - void_mint 5y ago
      You linked two pages with practically no data. I'll paste all relevant data from both to save others the trouble. > Scuttlebutt can be transformative for society, decentralizing and enabling local community development free of big corp. It is a fast growing decentralized social network. As an alternative to the large corporate social networks it enables autonomy for the users and a free zone from big data harvesting... > Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a peer-to peer communication protocol, mesh network, and self-hosted social media ecosystem.[3][4] Each user hosts their own content and the content of the peers they follow, which provides fault tolerance and eventual consistency.[5] Messages are digitally signed and added to an append-only list of messages published by an author.[6] SSB is primarily used for implementing distributed social networks, and utilizes cryptography to assure that content remains unforged as it is propagated through the network.[7][8]
sergiomattei 5y ago
We off the grid grid grid, this for my kids kids kids. Obligatory joke aside, very cool project! Eager to try it out now.
- mrtnpwn 5y ago
  I was looking for this specific comment and I found it! An yes indeed this is very cool. Can't wait to try it when I'm home.
staticelf 5y ago
While it seems cool, I just think that it is kind of self-defeating? Sure I can see my friends posts after a while, but at the same time if you really live off-grid you will probably not have a connection for a while and in these times there is really no use case for the app anyway. I just think I am most likely to check the stuff I want to check whenever I have a connection. But perhaps I am wrong.
- myself248 5y ago
  My understanding is that it can also exchange traffic peer-to-peer, either when two nodes find each other on the same wifi network, or ever over Bluetooth. So if a friend (who presumably follows many of the same folks you follow) comes to visit your off-grid hovel, they bring the most recent network state with them. Anything you've written gets merged with that state, and if they later go back to some other form of connectivity, it propagates that way too. This gets really interesting if, say, you're out camping with a bunch of friends who are all on SSB. You take some photos of something you found on a hike, and post them. Your fellow campers can respond and interact, just like always, since the data propagates around the campsite. When (one or all of) you return to civilization, the whole corpus propagates to whoever else follows you, and they can see (and now participate in) the whole thing. Even if some of the folks are still off in the wilderness and their phones haven't seen a cell tower in months.
- aabbcc1241 5y ago
  When I was in high school, I took photos and write posts on paper. Then I post them on Facebook when I got access to the internet (in timeframe of less than an hour in 2 days)
jonstaab 5y ago
Scuttlebutt (the underlying protocol of Manyverse) is the best decentralized social network I've found so far. It takes a much more radical approach than that of federation ala Mastadon, which is just centralization in miniature. Under the hood, scuttlebutt uses multiple independent blockchains, each tied to a single user. The upside of this is that it makes for a great eventually consistent gossip protocol; the downside is that the entire chain needs to be propagated for any of it to make sense, making it a very storage-intensive protocol. Private messaging is implemented in a really interesting way using cryptographic envelopes that are publicly gossiped, but only decryptable by the recipient — whose address is also encrypted and therefore hidden. Personally, I'm looking forward to when they introduce a good decentralized solution for moderation. This would help keep the size of the chain smaller, and make the information you see more usable. The Scuttlebutt Protocol Guide [0] is a really easy and interesting read, I highly recommend it. [0] https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ Edit: clarified what Scuttlebutt is.
- strict9 5y ago
  >Under the hood, scuttlebutt uses multiple independent blockchains, each tied to a single user. Now wondering why the landing page for Manyverse prominently says: "No token. No ICO. No blockchain." It makes the downside you mention "making it a very storage-intensive protocol" more interesting, and confusing for someone trying to understand the tech stack behind it.
  - jonstaab 5y ago
    Maybe I'm getting some semantic distinction wrong. Each user's thread is essentially a cryptographically linked list. It differs from Bitcoin for example in that there's no change of ownership, and so no forking or input/output transactions, it's just a linear list of events. There are no gas fees or tokens, since there's no need to pay for anything, each peer voluntarily gossips information. The description you cited is also probably more for marketing purposes than technical explication. No one wants to use a social media platform built on ETH, the experience is just horrible.
amelius 5y ago
Why is offline mode such an important feature for a social network? Is bad cellular coverage still an issue?
- jonstaab 5y ago
  I think "offline" is sort of a smell test for decentralized. The problem isn't cell coverage, it's resilience. Centralized networks can implement censorship, get hacked, lose your data, become unavailable, and have to be accessed in a particular way. With scuttlebutt, you none of those particular limitations exist, at least in the same way.
  - drcode 5y ago
    Where on the Manyverse site does it say "no censorship"?
    - barbs 5y ago
      I imagine that's implied by the decentralisation. How could you possibly implement censorship, given its design?
      - drcode 5y ago
        The canonical app could have filtering built in, then if either you or the other person on the end is using the canonical version, the messages would get filtered. It's very likely everyone would be using an alternate release of the client.
    - choward 5y ago
      Why does it need to? Isn't that implied by the design? Non-proprietary software that doesn't need the internet to communicate. Where would the censorship fit in?
- nabeards 5y ago
  Yes, not everyone even has cellular data.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
I wonder why the F-Droid version hasn't been updated in almost a year.. The Google play version is from 2 weeks ago. I would expect for the privacy conscious community that F-Droid would be a big plus?
- stilisstuk 5y ago
  Personally. Yes. Fdroid is a plus. And it's especially annoying seeing it abonded without any explanation.
- khimaros 5y ago
  they are tracking it: https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/issues/1157 https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/issues/1157
- staltz 5y ago
  Hi, I'm the creator of Manyverse. We definitely want to be on F-Droid, the reason it's not there at the moment is merely technical. Manyverse is a beast to compile on F-Droid servers, requires compiling Node.js (Mobile) from scratch, compiling several Rust dependencies, C++ dependencies, and it's a React Native project (which comes with its own headaches). Some while ago the build broke and I've been pouring hours into it trying to bring the build back, but it's killing me. Sorry for the inconvenience
sykseh 5y ago
Wish they would QR the dang invite codes :D
afro88 5y ago
My hesitation is also the proposition: if everything for a community is stored on my phone, does that mean one person could post something illegal and now I have illegal material on my phone even if I never clicked a link to it? That's scary.
- genewitch 5y ago
  Is this considered concern trolling? A hostile actor could send you an MMS with illegal content, leave a bunch of voicemails with illegal content, clickjack/DNS hijack while you're getting coffee. Every time I see this (and no offense, person whom I replied to) - it smells like someone is asking how much illicit content is available and how much policing there is. Everything can be used for evil, if you try hard enough.
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    I think the distinction here is that GP is asking whether someone hosting something illegal on their timeline - which you are not subscribed to, have never looked at, etc. - will implicitly end up on your phone. Different scenario than something illegal being explicitly sent to you.
  - CJefferson 5y ago
    The difference with blockchains is (depending on how it is set up) that illegal content can't be removed, as it is needed to validate the blockchain (it might be OK in this case). While I don't think it's yet come up in court, if I was on a jury where someone's defense for keeping and distributing illegal material was "we need it so we can verify our blockchain", I wouldn't accept that argument.
- m4lvin 5y ago
  Scuttlebutt only downloads from people/nodes that you follow and a (maybe configurable?) small number of steps from there, so you do not download the whole network only posts by your contacts and posts by contacts of contacts. IIRC you can also block accounts which ensures their posts/data is never downloaded to your device.
cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Mobile only? Only an Android/iOS app, no web/desktop option?
- KatrKat 5y ago
  Manyverse is Android/iOS only, but it talks to desktop Secure Scuttlebutt clients like Patchbay: https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay
- staltz 5y ago
  Manyverse creator here. We're working on the desktop app and it's almost ready. I use it on a regular basis on my own desktop. Check a screenshot and progress report at the bottom of this blog post: https://www.manyver.se/blog/2021-09-update https://www.manyver.se/blog/2021-09-update
rchandna 5y ago
Won't this take up a ton of storage on my phone?
robertwt7 5y ago
This is great, however I'm curious, how do they handle the storage size that grows overtime? and how long does it take (depending on the growth) for the app to be unusable because of the size? At some point I think it will be like crypto where you have to download hundreds of gigabytes to get all the data right.
linuxandrew 5y ago
I've been meaning to use Manyverse for ages, but admittedly I've been delayed by procrastinating setting up my own SSSB pub node. The DHT sounds nice, in theory, but I heard in practice it doesn't work well which is a shame.
ilaksh 5y ago
Such a great concept..installed. Don't know where to find an invite or anything.
- staltz 5y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28616361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28616361
buro9 5y ago
Oh, this is interesting. So in theory one could create a web app client over this, and allow people to host their own client instances (locally, on their laptop) or to provide semi-centralised nodes. Why? Because this would overcome the limitations of Scuttlebutt for storage and syncing on mobile devices... yet the underlying data is decentralised and individuals could always avoid the website and access their data directly. But really why? Well the UK is busy legislating the "Online Safety Bill" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safety-bill https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safe... and I run large community websites with user generated content. The proposals place a large burden and liability on me as a UK entity involved in facilitating people talking... it's designed to address Facebook and Twitter, etc but it does not have a threshold and the Gov argument is that it should apply to every piece of user generated content that isn't a review on a product. I have no intention of accepting the liability involved (the paperwork is fine, the liability is not fine). Instead I am planning to solve this with tech and am looking at options - which I'll select from if the bill passes in it's current form. Specifically I'm looking to decentralise and distribute, to encrypt and avoid any central ownership or authority... to disempower myself but to enable the community. But I don't want to do this in a way that enables someone else to exert control over the communities, I'm proudest most that I wasn't a dictator so have no intention of creating one in my absence. The thought of a decentralised and unstoppable backend is very attractive.
- amelius 5y ago
  It might still be illegal to store encrypted data, especially if it is illegal to store that data in plaintext too. I know that is ridiculous, but this could become the interpretation of the new law.
mderazon 5y ago
20 minutes after downloading and I still can't figure out how to find a person to "follow" / "friend" or to join a community.
- staltz 5y ago
  Hi, I'm the creator of Manyverse. This part definitely needs to be clarified/improved on the UX side, and we know what should be done (we had a UX project dedicated to this: https://www.manyver.se/ux-research/ https://www.manyver.se/ux-research/ ) and we'll work on it soonish (still this year according to our roadmap). SSB is an invite-based system, and this is very important for community safety, this is what makes SSB really stand apart as a nice social network. If you, or anyone reading this, wants to join our community, send me a DM on Twitter @andrestaltz with a short comment on who you are and what you're interested in, and I'll invite you if you seem trustworthy and friendly.
seqizz 5y ago
I couldn't find in the FAQ: What if I lose access to my phone?
moderatorium 5y ago
related / unrelated, plugging my project that is not a ssb replacement but takes the best bits of it and turns into fully anon distributed forum called moderator. @moderatorium on twitter in case interested, take a look. live prototype at http://sd7ezzynq5jclyltgiwnvabtk4m6nccdrmzfth72raxisoiplrtnrcqd.onion/ http://sd7ezzynq5jclyltgiwnvabtk4m6nccdrmzfth72raxisoiplrtnr...

391 points by graderjs 5y ago

A naive semi-unrelated question - why don't cell phones support LoraWAN (or similar mesh protocols)? This sort of thing could be ubiquitous in that landscape.

MisterTea 5y ago
Because LoraWAN was designed for low power, intermittent/sporadic communication from battery/solar operated things spread out over a wide area. It's bandwidth is limited to 50kbits/sec per channel so its design is for sending small messages. Perfect use case would be something like a farm where you want to monitor dozens of small things such as the temperature in the barn, water level in a stock tank, monitor an irrigation system, monitor soil conditions, etc.
- int_19h 5y ago
  It sounds perfect for local-area SMS?
  - Chilko 5y ago
    It is! https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.org/ https://meshtastic.letstalkthis.com/ https://meshtastic.letstalkthis.com/
    - krageon 5y ago
      I like the idea of this but the choice of colours on this website is actively user-hostile (e.g. bright green on a light background is unreadable).
    - int_19h 5y ago
      Very nice! But that's exactly what makes the question legitimate: why don't smartphones have this functionality, or at least the hardware to enable apps that would offer it?
      - joshka 5y ago
        Yeah - not too interested in the exact how / mapping on to existing spectrum. More interested in the why part of working out why local is not as prevalent as further afield.
- cheezymoogle 5y ago
  50kbp/s is equivalent to dial-up speed. 3G was only four times faster at 200kbp/s. I wouldn't say that LoraWAN's speed is the limiting factor. A single second of transmission (i.e. ~6kb) is about 1,500 characters in UTF8, assuming no overhead. With an average of 6 characters per word, that's still 250 words per second, more than ample for human communication.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    Matrix protocol has a extreme low bandwidth mode, and I know a couple of other things are aiming to be more "iot/off grid capable" Even packet radio would allow some of this stuff to flourish in remote areas - not matrix, it's encrypted.
  - vdqtp3 5y ago
    Your comment alone, with associated HTML, is 1159 characters. The Manyverse logo on their homepage is 46K characters. Scuttlebutt's "large-hermies-dancing.gif" is 118KB. Not including IP and TCP overhead, the Scuttlebutt handshake is 340 bytes, each message in a box stream is 35 to 4130 bytes, and the box stream finishes with another 34 bytes. There are two box streams for every Scuttlebutt communication. There are also RPC messages sent in the box stream that are a minimum of 9 byte header and 9 byte goodbye. Transmitting a single post containing the text "Second post!" takes 563 characters, not including the handshake, header, footer or encryption overhead. The web and social networks are far more data intensive today than low bandwidth modalities can support, especially long distance, low power RF links that would be rapidly saturated. Restricted length text a la Twitter might be manageable. Encrypted high fidelity blockchain social networks? Not a snowball's chance in hell unless so few people are using it that nobody is saturating the link. Edit: In North America for LoRa there are 64 125kHz uplink channels, 8 500kHz uplink channels, and 8 500kHz downlink channels. This should give you an idea of how little capacity there really is.
    - GekkePrutser 5y ago
      In addition to this, in Europe LoRa (or more specifically the 868Mhz ISM band it uses) has a legally imposed duty cycle of 1% so it can only use 1% of the available airtime to transmit. This makes it really impossible to send anything but a handful of bytes

null4bl3 5y ago

Branding says manyverse. Reviews says it's just scuttlebug

choff 5y ago
I found this article[1] which provided this insight into the relationship between the two. > Now, in 2021, there is a growing underground project called Scuttlebutt that is tackling the decentralized web from a different perspective. Unlike Diaspora and Mastodon, Scuttlebutt is not a product for end-users — rather, it’s a protocol (like HTTP or RSS). Decentralized social network products, like Manyverse and Planetary, are being built for end-users on top of the Scuttlebutt protocol. [1] https://thenewstack.io/scuttlebutt-decentralize-and-escape-the-social-media-rat-race/ https://thenewstack.io/scuttlebutt-decentralize-and-escape-t...
anonymous532 5y ago
I think Manyverse is just an UI for whatever Scuttlebug is.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt Secure Scuttlebutt, not Scuttlebug, as GP has it.
  - anonymous532 5y ago
    butt hehehe minion laugh
Jtsummers 5y ago
It's an implementation of SSB, but not SSB. Just like you wouldn't say Chrome is HTTP, but that it has an implementation of the HTTP protocol. Also, "scuttlebug", a not-so-subtle insult or odd typo?
1MachineElf 5y ago
>scuttlebug If the last part of that comment is dig implying that SSB is buggy, then providing some additional details about bugs we should be aware of would be illuminating.

bovermyer 5y ago

The app is pretty slick, actually. I just wish it was easier to discover SSB users.

iszomer 5y ago
Or not. IIRC, one of the main ethos of SSB is to establish contact peer to peer not pick them out of the crowd (or swamp).
- bovermyer 5y ago
  I suppose. The chance of meeting someone who uses SSB _and_ discovering that fact is near zero, though. This reminds me quite a bit of trying to find someone to email back in the early 1990s, before the web existed. I might be excited by the technology, but if there's no one to share it with, that dulls the excitement rather a lot.
  - myself248 5y ago
    Bingo. I played with Patchwork for a few days, but found that no matter how many people I followed or posts I tried to respond to, nobody seemed to see what I wrote, or at least, nobody responded back. So either I was completely uninteresting, or invisible, and I couldn't figure out which to start addressing it. Maybe I'm expected to bootstrap a group of local friends and get everyone onto SSB and then we can talk using it? But if I already know them, we can just talk on IRC or whatever we already use. I'm missing something fundamental about how this is supposed to work.
    - aabbcc1241 5y ago
      Sometime I feel half the same when posting on HN: mostly of the time got no response, but at least I can read posts and comments from others. At least you can use it as a personal blog or daily journal when you write not for the purpose of getting response. When the amount of content is built up, it will have higher chance to get response if you're still on the network, and followed the audiences back.

anarchogeek 5y ago

Manyverse is a great app, one of several compatible ones which use the secure scuttlebutt protocol. For ios another open source one is https://planetary.social/ https://planetary.social/ which i wrote.

lifty 5y ago
Is it still the case that your identity is connected to a single device?
- anarchogeek 5y ago
  Soon! We've got the new scuttlebutt metafeed format that will allow us to support multiple devices and a bunch of other interesting things. https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/ssb-meta-feeds https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/ssb-meta-feeds So the answer is soon.
  - nyx_land 5y ago
    it's good to see this is finally being addressed. lack of multi-device support is the one thing that has kept me from using scuttlebutt other than poking around to check things out and it's been several years now that people have been asking for this.
    - lifty 5y ago
      I want multi-device support and a way to delegate all the feed-syncing to an always on device like a raspberry pi or a VPS. That way, when I start the app on my phone or on my laptop, I can see the feeds much faster.
      - crypt0x 5y ago
        sorry to rain down here but multi-device support is not a feature of metafeeds at all. It only realizes partial replication. It's equally important to grow the network but strictly distinct, all metafeeds are on the same device. multi-device is only spec'ed but not implemented in what we call "fusion identities": https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/fusion-identity-spec https://github.com/ssb-ngi-pointer/fusion-identity-spec also, the ngi team has nothing to do with planetary.

toxik 5y ago

I tried to open the app and it crashed immediately every time. iOS 15

dang 5y ago

One past thread: Manyverse – A social network off the grid - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18065567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18065567 - Sept 2018 (117 comments)

wrycoder 5y ago
And a link to one of the active recent threads for scuttlebutt itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25713830 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25713830 - Jan 2021 (166 comments)

metalliqaz 5y ago

I wish them luck. I will start using it when I know anyone else that uses it.

janandonly 5y ago
Same. Also still buggy.
winternett 5y ago
Also I'd be very concerned about who developed it and why, and what the EULA truly is. If everything is decentralized, there are no records if you get threatened, extorted, or harassed on a platform, and harmful content isn't saved anywhere notable. At then end of the day, no platform can guarantee security but they all do cost money to develop and operate and nothing comes truly for free... this we all know... There is some motive for the platform being developed, which is unclear at this point to me. I'd rather deal conservatively and cautiously with non P2P platforms at this point just to be fully honest.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  I suggest reading up on Secure Scuttlebutt itself and seeing why it was made and by whom. That may help answer your questions regarding their motive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Scuttlebutt http://scuttlebutt.nz/ http://scuttlebutt.nz/
  - void_mint 5y ago
    You linked two pages with practically no data. I'll paste all relevant data from both to save others the trouble. > Scuttlebutt can be transformative for society, decentralizing and enabling local community development free of big corp. It is a fast growing decentralized social network. As an alternative to the large corporate social networks it enables autonomy for the users and a free zone from big data harvesting... > Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) is a peer-to peer communication protocol, mesh network, and self-hosted social media ecosystem.[3][4] Each user hosts their own content and the content of the peers they follow, which provides fault tolerance and eventual consistency.[5] Messages are digitally signed and added to an append-only list of messages published by an author.[6] SSB is primarily used for implementing distributed social networks, and utilizes cryptography to assure that content remains unforged as it is propagated through the network.[7][8]

sergiomattei 5y ago

We off the grid grid grid, this for my kids kids kids. Obligatory joke aside, very cool project! Eager to try it out now.

mrtnpwn 5y ago
I was looking for this specific comment and I found it! An yes indeed this is very cool. Can't wait to try it when I'm home.

staticelf 5y ago

While it seems cool, I just think that it is kind of self-defeating? Sure I can see my friends posts after a while, but at the same time if you really live off-grid you will probably not have a connection for a while and in these times there is really no use case for the app anyway. I just think I am most likely to check the stuff I want to check whenever I have a connection. But perhaps I am wrong.

myself248 5y ago
My understanding is that it can also exchange traffic peer-to-peer, either when two nodes find each other on the same wifi network, or ever over Bluetooth. So if a friend (who presumably follows many of the same folks you follow) comes to visit your off-grid hovel, they bring the most recent network state with them. Anything you've written gets merged with that state, and if they later go back to some other form of connectivity, it propagates that way too. This gets really interesting if, say, you're out camping with a bunch of friends who are all on SSB. You take some photos of something you found on a hike, and post them. Your fellow campers can respond and interact, just like always, since the data propagates around the campsite. When (one or all of) you return to civilization, the whole corpus propagates to whoever else follows you, and they can see (and now participate in) the whole thing. Even if some of the folks are still off in the wilderness and their phones haven't seen a cell tower in months.
aabbcc1241 5y ago
When I was in high school, I took photos and write posts on paper. Then I post them on Facebook when I got access to the internet (in timeframe of less than an hour in 2 days)

jonstaab 5y ago

Scuttlebutt (the underlying protocol of Manyverse) is the best decentralized social network I've found so far. It takes a much more radical approach than that of federation ala Mastadon, which is just centralization in miniature. Under the hood, scuttlebutt uses multiple independent blockchains, each tied to a single user. The upside of this is that it makes for a great eventually consistent gossip protocol; the downside is that the entire chain needs to be propagated for any of it to make sense, making it a very storage-intensive protocol. Private messaging is implemented in a really interesting way using cryptographic envelopes that are publicly gossiped, but only decryptable by the recipient — whose address is also encrypted and therefore hidden. Personally, I'm looking forward to when they introduce a good decentralized solution for moderation. This would help keep the size of the chain smaller, and make the information you see more usable. The Scuttlebutt Protocol Guide [0] is a really easy and interesting read, I highly recommend it. [0] https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ Edit: clarified what Scuttlebutt is.

strict9 5y ago
>Under the hood, scuttlebutt uses multiple independent blockchains, each tied to a single user. Now wondering why the landing page for Manyverse prominently says: "No token. No ICO. No blockchain." It makes the downside you mention "making it a very storage-intensive protocol" more interesting, and confusing for someone trying to understand the tech stack behind it.
- jonstaab 5y ago
  Maybe I'm getting some semantic distinction wrong. Each user's thread is essentially a cryptographically linked list. It differs from Bitcoin for example in that there's no change of ownership, and so no forking or input/output transactions, it's just a linear list of events. There are no gas fees or tokens, since there's no need to pay for anything, each peer voluntarily gossips information. The description you cited is also probably more for marketing purposes than technical explication. No one wants to use a social media platform built on ETH, the experience is just horrible.

amelius 5y ago

Why is offline mode such an important feature for a social network? Is bad cellular coverage still an issue?

jonstaab 5y ago
I think "offline" is sort of a smell test for decentralized. The problem isn't cell coverage, it's resilience. Centralized networks can implement censorship, get hacked, lose your data, become unavailable, and have to be accessed in a particular way. With scuttlebutt, you none of those particular limitations exist, at least in the same way.
- drcode 5y ago
  Where on the Manyverse site does it say "no censorship"?
  - barbs 5y ago
    I imagine that's implied by the decentralisation. How could you possibly implement censorship, given its design?
    - drcode 5y ago
      The canonical app could have filtering built in, then if either you or the other person on the end is using the canonical version, the messages would get filtered. It's very likely everyone would be using an alternate release of the client.
  - choward 5y ago
    Why does it need to? Isn't that implied by the design? Non-proprietary software that doesn't need the internet to communicate. Where would the censorship fit in?
nabeards 5y ago
Yes, not everyone even has cellular data.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

I wonder why the F-Droid version hasn't been updated in almost a year.. The Google play version is from 2 weeks ago. I would expect for the privacy conscious community that F-Droid would be a big plus?

stilisstuk 5y ago
Personally. Yes. Fdroid is a plus. And it's especially annoying seeing it abonded without any explanation.
khimaros 5y ago
they are tracking it: https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/issues/1157 https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/-/issues/1157
staltz 5y ago
Hi, I'm the creator of Manyverse. We definitely want to be on F-Droid, the reason it's not there at the moment is merely technical. Manyverse is a beast to compile on F-Droid servers, requires compiling Node.js (Mobile) from scratch, compiling several Rust dependencies, C++ dependencies, and it's a React Native project (which comes with its own headaches). Some while ago the build broke and I've been pouring hours into it trying to bring the build back, but it's killing me. Sorry for the inconvenience

sykseh 5y ago

Wish they would QR the dang invite codes :D

afro88 5y ago

My hesitation is also the proposition: if everything for a community is stored on my phone, does that mean one person could post something illegal and now I have illegal material on my phone even if I never clicked a link to it? That's scary.

genewitch 5y ago
Is this considered concern trolling? A hostile actor could send you an MMS with illegal content, leave a bunch of voicemails with illegal content, clickjack/DNS hijack while you're getting coffee. Every time I see this (and no offense, person whom I replied to) - it smells like someone is asking how much illicit content is available and how much policing there is. Everything can be used for evil, if you try hard enough.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  I think the distinction here is that GP is asking whether someone hosting something illegal on their timeline - which you are not subscribed to, have never looked at, etc. - will implicitly end up on your phone. Different scenario than something illegal being explicitly sent to you.
- CJefferson 5y ago
  The difference with blockchains is (depending on how it is set up) that illegal content can't be removed, as it is needed to validate the blockchain (it might be OK in this case). While I don't think it's yet come up in court, if I was on a jury where someone's defense for keeping and distributing illegal material was "we need it so we can verify our blockchain", I wouldn't accept that argument.
m4lvin 5y ago
Scuttlebutt only downloads from people/nodes that you follow and a (maybe configurable?) small number of steps from there, so you do not download the whole network only posts by your contacts and posts by contacts of contacts. IIRC you can also block accounts which ensures their posts/data is never downloaded to your device.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

Mobile only? Only an Android/iOS app, no web/desktop option?

KatrKat 5y ago
Manyverse is Android/iOS only, but it talks to desktop Secure Scuttlebutt clients like Patchbay: https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay https://github.com/ssbc/patchbay
staltz 5y ago
Manyverse creator here. We're working on the desktop app and it's almost ready. I use it on a regular basis on my own desktop. Check a screenshot and progress report at the bottom of this blog post: https://www.manyver.se/blog/2021-09-update https://www.manyver.se/blog/2021-09-update

rchandna 5y ago

Won't this take up a ton of storage on my phone?

robertwt7 5y ago

This is great, however I'm curious, how do they handle the storage size that grows overtime? and how long does it take (depending on the growth) for the app to be unusable because of the size? At some point I think it will be like crypto where you have to download hundreds of gigabytes to get all the data right.

linuxandrew 5y ago

I've been meaning to use Manyverse for ages, but admittedly I've been delayed by procrastinating setting up my own SSSB pub node. The DHT sounds nice, in theory, but I heard in practice it doesn't work well which is a shame.

ilaksh 5y ago

Such a great concept..installed. Don't know where to find an invite or anything.

staltz 5y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28616361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28616361

buro9 5y ago

Oh, this is interesting. So in theory one could create a web app client over this, and allow people to host their own client instances (locally, on their laptop) or to provide semi-centralised nodes. Why? Because this would overcome the limitations of Scuttlebutt for storage and syncing on mobile devices... yet the underlying data is decentralised and individuals could always avoid the website and access their data directly. But really why? Well the UK is busy legislating the "Online Safety Bill" https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safety-bill https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/draft-online-safe... and I run large community websites with user generated content. The proposals place a large burden and liability on me as a UK entity involved in facilitating people talking... it's designed to address Facebook and Twitter, etc but it does not have a threshold and the Gov argument is that it should apply to every piece of user generated content that isn't a review on a product. I have no intention of accepting the liability involved (the paperwork is fine, the liability is not fine). Instead I am planning to solve this with tech and am looking at options - which I'll select from if the bill passes in it's current form. Specifically I'm looking to decentralise and distribute, to encrypt and avoid any central ownership or authority... to disempower myself but to enable the community. But I don't want to do this in a way that enables someone else to exert control over the communities, I'm proudest most that I wasn't a dictator so have no intention of creating one in my absence. The thought of a decentralised and unstoppable backend is very attractive.

amelius 5y ago
It might still be illegal to store encrypted data, especially if it is illegal to store that data in plaintext too. I know that is ridiculous, but this could become the interpretation of the new law.

mderazon 5y ago

20 minutes after downloading and I still can't figure out how to find a person to "follow" / "friend" or to join a community.

staltz 5y ago
Hi, I'm the creator of Manyverse. This part definitely needs to be clarified/improved on the UX side, and we know what should be done (we had a UX project dedicated to this: https://www.manyver.se/ux-research/ https://www.manyver.se/ux-research/ ) and we'll work on it soonish (still this year according to our roadmap). SSB is an invite-based system, and this is very important for community safety, this is what makes SSB really stand apart as a nice social network. If you, or anyone reading this, wants to join our community, send me a DM on Twitter @andrestaltz with a short comment on who you are and what you're interested in, and I'll invite you if you seem trustworthy and friendly.

seqizz 5y ago

I couldn't find in the FAQ: What if I lose access to my phone?

moderatorium 5y ago

related / unrelated, plugging my project that is not a ssb replacement but takes the best bits of it and turns into fully anon distributed forum called moderator. @moderatorium on twitter in case interested, take a look. live prototype at http://sd7ezzynq5jclyltgiwnvabtk4m6nccdrmzfth72raxisoiplrtnrcqd.onion/ http://sd7ezzynq5jclyltgiwnvabtk4m6nccdrmzfth72raxisoiplrtnr...