4 ms·

Which are the platforms that let you own your data cryptographically and let you move your account around seamlessly for yourself and your followers? Basically

Which are the platforms that let you own your data cryptographically and let you move your account around seamlessly for yourself and your followers? Basically the network should be in the data and the servers should be replaceable. I think those are very obvious bottlenecks that affect most of these alternative networks. On the other side, censorship is also very important, nobody wants to have to dwell into spam and filth to read a small amount of valuable content. Maybe be able to choose your own censors somehow? Or build chains of trusts with your friends and "friends-of-friends" that can be revoked at any point?

emptysongglass 4y ago
Urbit does this: https://urbit.org/blog/an-urbit-overview https://urbit.org/blog/an-urbit-overview
- riffic 4y ago
  no one's adopting urbit, let's be real.
  - emptysongglass 4y ago
    You didn't come with any numbers so I will and they contradict your claims: https://hatryx-lastud.tlon.network/newsletter/urbit-takeoff-is-here https://hatryx-lastud.tlon.network/newsletter/urbit-takeoff-...
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- woojoo666 4y ago
  Love the idea and will look more into it. Not sure why you got such a non-constructive and rude dismissal in another comment, especially given the hacker news guidelines
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
smoldesu 4y ago
> Which are the platforms that let you own your data cryptographically and let you move your account around seamlessly for yourself and your followers? If you know of a homomorphic encryption scheme that would work for this and remain economically viable for other people to host, let me know. I simply don't think it's reasonable to expect that degree of privacy, much less on a Twitter clone. If you want privacy, use Matrix or OMEMO.
- Ambolia 4y ago
  I mean "own" not in the sense of privacy in this case. But in the sense that the account (public key) belongs to the person who has a certain private key. So you can move your content to a different server or domain and keep all your audience, maybe with a small transition period while the new server becomes well known, but not like now getting kicked out of twitter or youtube just results on a bunch or broken links and contextless comments.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    AFAIK Mastodon implements a migration feature that lets you move your followers to/from different accounts if you want to use a new homeserver. Not sure how it works on the backend, but it's got this base mostly covered.
mescaline 4y ago
I was thinking about "physical reality" as a means to establish a chain of trust. If you and I sit next to each other, we have vocal and image chat available. Other than someone coming and physically injecting themselves into our "sphere", our communications can be trustworthy and reliable. If a "chunk" of data could be "sovereignized" by association with other "nearby" chunks of data (through some common signing event), one could "move" seamlessly from one chunk to the other, regardless of where it was being "served" from. When I talk about "chunks" here, I'm talking about document boundaries and ownership/control of the data. If we were in some sort of simulation, moving from my sphere of data to yours would look something like a probability distribution. By having signed contracts between the spheres, one could increase the probability that movement in a general direction resulted in access and loading of trusted data. Because the chains start out empty, nobody "owns" these fictitious plots until they are established through preexisting trusted channels. Various channels as well. None of this bullshit NFT land grab crap that nobody can trust. Use NFTs, or even better, Lightning payments to establish the "authenticity" of the nearby data spheres.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rglullis 4y ago
I believe this is possible with ActivityPub already, and the servers just need to start making a distinction between the identities from its users and the "federation": https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825107786781891 https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825107786781891
- pat2man 4y ago
  Its interesting that DNS doesn't come up more often as the solution here. Owning a domain (or subdomain) seems a whole lot easier than most of the other "decentralized" solutions that get discussed. And if DNS is too centralized for you then something like ENS can replace it without needing very many changes to the rest of the stack.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Exactly. That's the approach defended and promoted by the indieweb thinking heads: start with identity and structure things bottom-up. Machines are quite good at translating between the different protocols. If I want to publish my content using RSS and you want to consume it using ActivityPub, it is easy to write software that makes the bridge, provided your identity doesn't change.
BaseballPhysics 4y ago
What you describe is essentially Tim Berners-Lee's vision for Solid: https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/ The idea is that every individual person has a container for their own data, and then platforms interact with that data using methods built on the Semantic Web. I frankly don't think it has a hope in hell of succeeding, but I love the concept!
- bduerst 4y ago
  I haven't dived into the specs, but how does solid solve bad actors getting access to your pod? Usually today your data is fragmented across platforms (so damage is reduced) which have centralized authorities who can step in and fix bad actor issues.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    Honestly, I'm gonna be super lazy and just quote the front page of the site: > Anyone or anything that accesses data in a Solid Pod uses a unique ID, authenticated by a decentralized extension of OpenID Connect. Solid's access control system uses these IDs to determine whether a person or application has access to a resource in a Pod. Of course, as a data owner, you could accidentally grant a bad actor access to your data, but presumably you can also revoke that access as well.
    - bduerst 4y ago
      But that's just it though - if bad actors gain control, you lose the ability to reject OAuth creds (which is what OpenID is). Things like social engineering or phishing of credentials, which happens at scale today. They need a way to handle situations when bad actors take over, because other solutions handle this with centralized authorities who step in and rectify the issue.
      - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
        I'm now confused by what you mean when you say "gain control". Are you talking about literally exploiting a bug and hacking the underlying service that is providing access to the pod? In that case, it's a question of who owns and operates the pod. Solid is conceived as a set of standards that can be implemented by either individuals, or by companies on behalf of individuals. Think "data ownership as a service". So you can still have centralized entities that implement the spec and provide support and other services for users, including dealing with security incidents.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
grenran 4y ago
I think this was the premise of the original World Wide Web (minus the cryptographic part) before everything was centralised. Essentially people would have their own personal web pages and readers subscribe via RSS.
- leephillips 4y ago
  That’s, to a large extent, what the WWW is today. I have my own personal site, and a collection of RSS/Atom feeds that I check to see what’s happening on other people’s personal sites. It’s surely an exaggeration to say that “everything” is centralized, despite the rise of the huge monoliths such as Twitter.
dharma1 4y ago
Try https://lens.dev https://lens.dev if you’re interested in portable data/social graph that is onchain (disclaimer - I work on this)
- emptysongglass 4y ago
  What does this solve that Urbit doesn't?
k__ 4y ago
Permissionless decentralized platforms. This includes Radicle, IPFS, Skynet, SSB, Arweave, Ethererum, and many more.
ianopolous 4y ago
You might be interested in Peergos - https://peergos.org https://peergos.org (co-founder here) Properties: * fully self-authenticating protocol independent of DNS and the TLS certificate authorities * self sovereign identity * you can migrate to a different host and keep all your data, and social graph, and old links continue to work. * You can authorize and run live mirrors of your data which help provide bandwidth * you only see things from or via people you follow

emptysongglass 4y ago

Urbit does this: https://urbit.org/blog/an-urbit-overview https://urbit.org/blog/an-urbit-overview

riffic 4y ago
no one's adopting urbit, let's be real.
- emptysongglass 4y ago
  You didn't come with any numbers so I will and they contradict your claims: https://hatryx-lastud.tlon.network/newsletter/urbit-takeoff-is-here https://hatryx-lastud.tlon.network/newsletter/urbit-takeoff-...
- woojoo666 4y ago
  > Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
woojoo666 4y ago
Love the idea and will look more into it. Not sure why you got such a non-constructive and rude dismissal in another comment, especially given the hacker news guidelines
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

smoldesu 4y ago

> Which are the platforms that let you own your data cryptographically and let you move your account around seamlessly for yourself and your followers? If you know of a homomorphic encryption scheme that would work for this and remain economically viable for other people to host, let me know. I simply don't think it's reasonable to expect that degree of privacy, much less on a Twitter clone. If you want privacy, use Matrix or OMEMO.

Ambolia 4y ago
I mean "own" not in the sense of privacy in this case. But in the sense that the account (public key) belongs to the person who has a certain private key. So you can move your content to a different server or domain and keep all your audience, maybe with a small transition period while the new server becomes well known, but not like now getting kicked out of twitter or youtube just results on a bunch or broken links and contextless comments.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  AFAIK Mastodon implements a migration feature that lets you move your followers to/from different accounts if you want to use a new homeserver. Not sure how it works on the backend, but it's got this base mostly covered.

mescaline 4y ago

I was thinking about "physical reality" as a means to establish a chain of trust. If you and I sit next to each other, we have vocal and image chat available. Other than someone coming and physically injecting themselves into our "sphere", our communications can be trustworthy and reliable. If a "chunk" of data could be "sovereignized" by association with other "nearby" chunks of data (through some common signing event), one could "move" seamlessly from one chunk to the other, regardless of where it was being "served" from. When I talk about "chunks" here, I'm talking about document boundaries and ownership/control of the data. If we were in some sort of simulation, moving from my sphere of data to yours would look something like a probability distribution. By having signed contracts between the spheres, one could increase the probability that movement in a general direction resulted in access and loading of trusted data. Because the chains start out empty, nobody "owns" these fictitious plots until they are established through preexisting trusted channels. Various channels as well. None of this bullshit NFT land grab crap that nobody can trust. Use NFTs, or even better, Lightning payments to establish the "authenticity" of the nearby data spheres.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rglullis 4y ago

I believe this is possible with ActivityPub already, and the servers just need to start making a distinction between the identities from its users and the "federation": https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825107786781891 https://mastodon.communick.com/@raphael/106825107786781891

pat2man 4y ago
Its interesting that DNS doesn't come up more often as the solution here. Owning a domain (or subdomain) seems a whole lot easier than most of the other "decentralized" solutions that get discussed. And if DNS is too centralized for you then something like ENS can replace it without needing very many changes to the rest of the stack.
- rglullis 4y ago
  Exactly. That's the approach defended and promoted by the indieweb thinking heads: start with identity and structure things bottom-up. Machines are quite good at translating between the different protocols. If I want to publish my content using RSS and you want to consume it using ActivityPub, it is easy to write software that makes the bridge, provided your identity doesn't change.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago

What you describe is essentially Tim Berners-Lee's vision for Solid: https://solidproject.org/ https://solidproject.org/ The idea is that every individual person has a container for their own data, and then platforms interact with that data using methods built on the Semantic Web. I frankly don't think it has a hope in hell of succeeding, but I love the concept!

bduerst 4y ago
I haven't dived into the specs, but how does solid solve bad actors getting access to your pod? Usually today your data is fragmented across platforms (so damage is reduced) which have centralized authorities who can step in and fix bad actor issues.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  Honestly, I'm gonna be super lazy and just quote the front page of the site: > Anyone or anything that accesses data in a Solid Pod uses a unique ID, authenticated by a decentralized extension of OpenID Connect. Solid's access control system uses these IDs to determine whether a person or application has access to a resource in a Pod. Of course, as a data owner, you could accidentally grant a bad actor access to your data, but presumably you can also revoke that access as well.
  - bduerst 4y ago
    But that's just it though - if bad actors gain control, you lose the ability to reject OAuth creds (which is what OpenID is). Things like social engineering or phishing of credentials, which happens at scale today. They need a way to handle situations when bad actors take over, because other solutions handle this with centralized authorities who step in and rectify the issue.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
      I'm now confused by what you mean when you say "gain control". Are you talking about literally exploiting a bug and hacking the underlying service that is providing access to the pod? In that case, it's a question of who owns and operates the pod. Solid is conceived as a set of standards that can be implemented by either individuals, or by companies on behalf of individuals. Think "data ownership as a service". So you can still have centralized entities that implement the spec and provide support and other services for users, including dealing with security incidents.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

grenran 4y ago

I think this was the premise of the original World Wide Web (minus the cryptographic part) before everything was centralised. Essentially people would have their own personal web pages and readers subscribe via RSS.

leephillips 4y ago
That’s, to a large extent, what the WWW is today. I have my own personal site, and a collection of RSS/Atom feeds that I check to see what’s happening on other people’s personal sites. It’s surely an exaggeration to say that “everything” is centralized, despite the rise of the huge monoliths such as Twitter.

dharma1 4y ago

Try https://lens.dev https://lens.dev if you’re interested in portable data/social graph that is onchain (disclaimer - I work on this)

emptysongglass 4y ago
What does this solve that Urbit doesn't?

k__ 4y ago

Permissionless decentralized platforms. This includes Radicle, IPFS, Skynet, SSB, Arweave, Ethererum, and many more.

ianopolous 4y ago

You might be interested in Peergos - https://peergos.org https://peergos.org (co-founder here) Properties: * fully self-authenticating protocol independent of DNS and the TLS certificate authorities * self sovereign identity * you can migrate to a different host and keep all your data, and social graph, and old links continue to work. * You can authorize and run live mirrors of your data which help provide bandwidth * you only see things from or via people you follow