4 ms·

I think this is one reason why "web3", social media with a decentralized storage layer, could become a thing. As a user, when I tweet something, I do want the

by TekMol 5y ago

I think this is one reason why "web3", social media with a decentralized storage layer, could become a thing. As a user, when I tweet something, I do want the whole world to be able to read it. Without logging in. Ideally via the interface of their choice. Orbis is a proof of concept: https://orbis.club/ https://orbis.club/ A Twitter clone that stores the tweets on Arweave.

jessfyi 5y ago
Nothing about this requires blockchain. There are plenty of Twitter archive sites like nitter.net that are not only open source, but also have plenty[0] of distributed instances on good old "web 2" [0] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances
- TekMol 5y ago
  Nitter can only archive (and update) data Twitter allows them to access. For example, you cannot see who liked a Tweet on Nitter.
  - astoor 5y ago
    > "Nitter can only archive (and update) data Twitter allows them to access." That's exactly what you'd expect from a Twitter archive site. The author's point was that this is the same tech you'd need for a Twitter replacement, and this doesn't need blockchain or web3. Reminds me of the comment on HN from a few months back "On web2 music artists only get 18% of the revenue. Spotify gets 33%. The music industry takes 49%. Web3 flips the script." You don't need blockchain or web3 to fix that either - centralised solutions like bandcamp.com already give the artist 80-90%.
    - TekMol 5y ago
      How would a Twitter replacement via Nitter tech help here? The problem is that whoever builds the replacement can just fuck up the user experience any time in the future. Just like Twitter did.
      - astoor 5y ago
        If enough people don't like the changes in an open source system, they can get together and fix it or fork it. I see a number of others comments mentioning the already working (non web3) solution Mastodon - and that's a great example of this in practice. To look at it another way, how would web3 actually help here? As far as I can tell it would only make this example worse - a more user hostile UI (faffing around with wallets and keys and whatnot), less decentralised (everything going through one API to interact with the blockchain), more resistant to change (forking blockchains is a big deal and only tends to happen when rich people at the top of the pyramid don't like something), more expensive (gas fees), less privacy (your wallet address being essentially an undeletable cookie), more likely to incentivise divisiveness and conflict (flamewars driven by the expectation of personal profit rather than just likes), etc. etc.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    > For example, you cannot see who liked a Tweet on Nitter. That's a positive feature.
hald 5y ago
Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org) and the rest of the fediverse (https://www.fediverse.to https://www.fediverse.to) are well established if you're looking for a good alternative to Twitter.
- TekMol 5y ago
  With Mastodon, you are still at the mercy of whoever runs the instance you use. I expect most Mastodon instances will be shorter lived than Twitter. So changing from Twitter to Mastodon seems not like a good deal if I want my posts and the comments and likes I get to stay around.
  - hald 5y ago
    You can run your own instance. It's probably not easy to do with Mastodon, but there's other server software aiming to be lightweight and easy to set up. Though I guess it will probably not be the normal way to use the fediverse in the near future.
    - TekMol 5y ago
      I don't think self hosting will ever become the norm. I have decades in the IT industry, and I don't want to self host. As long as the majority does not self host their fediverse content, the fediverse is not a solution of the problem discussed in this HN story.
  - jll29 5y ago
    For that reason, I'd prefer an architecture, where the users don't belong to individual servers, but a transparent fediverse, where a few thousand servers disappearing won't even get noticed. It would be important to ensure the integrity of the software running on such servers, though, perhaps via regular check of the binaries also at runtime.
    - TekMol 5y ago
      Storing the data on a decentralized storage layer seems to achieve all of it and the tech is here now.
a2128 5y ago
This vision doesn't require blockchain whatsoever. Mastodon[0] is a successful decentralized social media without the use of blockchain. Because of federation, users can like and reply to posts from other instances, and other people will be able to see it. I can even follow a PeerTube channel and have recent videos show up in my feed, because of the ActivityPub federation protocol (a W3C standard). Best of all, it doesn't require the linking of a crypto wallet and the payment of cryptocurrency to interact with people. [0] https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/
- TekMol 5y ago
  Using Mastodon just shifts the power from Twitter to whoever runs the Mastodon instance you use. The Crypto wallet you use for Orbis can be a fresh, empty wallet. No need to put any cryptocurrency in it.
  - a2128 5y ago
    I disagree about the power shift. Twitter holds a complete information monopoly over all its content. This means they can make hostile changes, such as forcing a login in order to view public content, without much repercussion. If Twitter were to ban me, I would be completely cut off from all of my friends on Twitter. You can't easily move away from Twitter, because Twitter is a huge entity with swaths of content and users already on it. On the other hand, Mastodon instances have only a fraction of that power. They have control over information only that is on their instance, in a world that contains thousands of such instances. They are tiny entities holding control over small fractions of the content available in the fediverse. If a Mastodon instance started acting hostile, people can relatively easily move away to a different instance. If my Mastodon instance were to ban me, I can sign up on a different instance (or host my own) and still keep in touch with my friends; unless my friends used the same instance and the owners broke federation with the instance I moved to, at which point a lot of people would probably want to move away from that hostile instance immediately.
rpdillon 5y ago
I recently ran across twtxt[0], which appears to be fully distributed, in the same way .plan files were. [0]: https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html
- ynac 5y ago
  Just finished setting up my twtxt account and searched HN to see what the life force looked like - and here is a fresh comment! It took a little jiggering to make it part of my workflow within Sublime and my personal site, but I'm really liking it. I avoid Twitter completely - haven't touched it for a few years. This system allows for a NOW page on my personal site, a stream for communication, and even a private channel for short projects. Go twtxt!

by TekMol 5y ago

jessfyi 5y ago

Nothing about this requires blockchain. There are plenty of Twitter archive sites like nitter.net that are not only open source, but also have plenty[0] of distributed instances on good old "web 2" [0] https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances

TekMol 5y ago
Nitter can only archive (and update) data Twitter allows them to access. For example, you cannot see who liked a Tweet on Nitter.
- astoor 5y ago
  > "Nitter can only archive (and update) data Twitter allows them to access." That's exactly what you'd expect from a Twitter archive site. The author's point was that this is the same tech you'd need for a Twitter replacement, and this doesn't need blockchain or web3. Reminds me of the comment on HN from a few months back "On web2 music artists only get 18% of the revenue. Spotify gets 33%. The music industry takes 49%. Web3 flips the script." You don't need blockchain or web3 to fix that either - centralised solutions like bandcamp.com already give the artist 80-90%.
  - TekMol 5y ago
    How would a Twitter replacement via Nitter tech help here? The problem is that whoever builds the replacement can just fuck up the user experience any time in the future. Just like Twitter did.
    - astoor 5y ago
      If enough people don't like the changes in an open source system, they can get together and fix it or fork it. I see a number of others comments mentioning the already working (non web3) solution Mastodon - and that's a great example of this in practice. To look at it another way, how would web3 actually help here? As far as I can tell it would only make this example worse - a more user hostile UI (faffing around with wallets and keys and whatnot), less decentralised (everything going through one API to interact with the blockchain), more resistant to change (forking blockchains is a big deal and only tends to happen when rich people at the top of the pyramid don't like something), more expensive (gas fees), less privacy (your wallet address being essentially an undeletable cookie), more likely to incentivise divisiveness and conflict (flamewars driven by the expectation of personal profit rather than just likes), etc. etc.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  > For example, you cannot see who liked a Tweet on Nitter. That's a positive feature.

hald 5y ago

Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org) and the rest of the fediverse (https://www.fediverse.to https://www.fediverse.to) are well established if you're looking for a good alternative to Twitter.

TekMol 5y ago
With Mastodon, you are still at the mercy of whoever runs the instance you use. I expect most Mastodon instances will be shorter lived than Twitter. So changing from Twitter to Mastodon seems not like a good deal if I want my posts and the comments and likes I get to stay around.
- hald 5y ago
  You can run your own instance. It's probably not easy to do with Mastodon, but there's other server software aiming to be lightweight and easy to set up. Though I guess it will probably not be the normal way to use the fediverse in the near future.
  - TekMol 5y ago
    I don't think self hosting will ever become the norm. I have decades in the IT industry, and I don't want to self host. As long as the majority does not self host their fediverse content, the fediverse is not a solution of the problem discussed in this HN story.
- jll29 5y ago
  For that reason, I'd prefer an architecture, where the users don't belong to individual servers, but a transparent fediverse, where a few thousand servers disappearing won't even get noticed. It would be important to ensure the integrity of the software running on such servers, though, perhaps via regular check of the binaries also at runtime.
  - TekMol 5y ago
    Storing the data on a decentralized storage layer seems to achieve all of it and the tech is here now.

a2128 5y ago

This vision doesn't require blockchain whatsoever. Mastodon[0] is a successful decentralized social media without the use of blockchain. Because of federation, users can like and reply to posts from other instances, and other people will be able to see it. I can even follow a PeerTube channel and have recent videos show up in my feed, because of the ActivityPub federation protocol (a W3C standard). Best of all, it doesn't require the linking of a crypto wallet and the payment of cryptocurrency to interact with people. [0] https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/

TekMol 5y ago
Using Mastodon just shifts the power from Twitter to whoever runs the Mastodon instance you use. The Crypto wallet you use for Orbis can be a fresh, empty wallet. No need to put any cryptocurrency in it.
- a2128 5y ago
  I disagree about the power shift. Twitter holds a complete information monopoly over all its content. This means they can make hostile changes, such as forcing a login in order to view public content, without much repercussion. If Twitter were to ban me, I would be completely cut off from all of my friends on Twitter. You can't easily move away from Twitter, because Twitter is a huge entity with swaths of content and users already on it. On the other hand, Mastodon instances have only a fraction of that power. They have control over information only that is on their instance, in a world that contains thousands of such instances. They are tiny entities holding control over small fractions of the content available in the fediverse. If a Mastodon instance started acting hostile, people can relatively easily move away to a different instance. If my Mastodon instance were to ban me, I can sign up on a different instance (or host my own) and still keep in touch with my friends; unless my friends used the same instance and the owners broke federation with the instance I moved to, at which point a lot of people would probably want to move away from that hostile instance immediately.

rpdillon 5y ago

I recently ran across twtxt[0], which appears to be fully distributed, in the same way .plan files were. [0]: https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html

ynac 5y ago
Just finished setting up my twtxt account and searched HN to see what the life force looked like - and here is a fresh comment! It took a little jiggering to make it part of my workflow within Sublime and my personal site, but I'm really liking it. I avoid Twitter completely - haven't touched it for a few years. This system allows for a NOW page on my personal site, a stream for communication, and even a private channel for short projects. Go twtxt!