6 ms·

> won't result in a renaissance for peer to peer This horribly written law can easily be interpreted to apply to ISP's as well - so if the ISP is allowing thes

> won't result in a renaissance for peer to peer This horribly written law can easily be interpreted to apply to ISP's as well - so if the ISP is allowing these peer-to-peer systems that allow "unsafe" content to be shared, they're liable for it too, or they have to shut down the peer-to-peer systems. Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV that they already understand.

cowtools 4y ago
Sure, but there is some limitation to what they could feasibly restrict. Tor with WebRTC bridges?
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  You could conceivably implement a fully encrypted p2p social network over WebRTC within the browser. You would obtain the app by simply visiting a website that hosts it making it nearly unblockable since anyone could stand up a page. Public key crypto could allow you to verify your identity or send private messages across the network. The hardest part is establishing the initial connection but since this can be done with a variety of methods I'm sure a sufficiently creative person could come up with something fun and easy for people to use. Maybe some form of steganography where you post an image to your social feed and others can point their phone's camera at it and get the SDP offer and then post the answer as a reply or something. A more automated method would probably be better but that's left as an exercise to the reader.
  - cowtools 4y ago
    I've looked into this the other month. There are a number of obfuscation networks that have tried this to some extent (including IPFS and GNUnet), but I am yet to find a network that works exactly as you've described: where you can just access a "tor web portal" in your browser or something. I think an obstacle would be preventing fingerprinting inside a non-fingerprint-proof browser. You might be able to do this if you ported something like tor's fingerprint-proof browser to emscripten and have it render to an HTML canvas! So far Tor has implemented WebRTC[0], but that's just for bridging to their main network. [0] https://snowflake.torproject.org/ https://snowflake.torproject.org/ P.S. I've also considered the "decentralized p2p social media" idea myself, but mostly because I believe the ideas we have currently behind online voting, ranking and moderation are completely at odds with IRL discussions which are P2P and based on "forwarding" ideas to known peers (friends, family, community members, countrymen) rather than posting and ranking content with anonymous peers (which are susceptible to Sybil attacks). The fact that so much discussion takes place on corporate-owned forums (Including this one, regardless of how benevolent ycombinator may be) presents a major threat to democracy in general. Instead of "liking" or "upvoting" a post on a centralized forum, why not "rehost" or "forward" a post on a decentralized forum: essentially seeding it like in BitTorrent or "pinning" it in IPFS. "Followers" of a user donate their storage and bandwidth to them, combating bureaucratic attacks like delisting and DDoS against popular users. If you could port IPFS to run completely in a browser you would have this complete "pseudo-social-media" functionality. They have something called "IPNS" where instead of giving someone the hash of a file like in BitTorrent's DHT, you could give them a public key which you use to sign the latest version of a file that is to be fetched. The Public/Private keypair could represent a user's identity, and the file in this case could be a blog or account page which is updated with new links to the user's posts, or links to other user's posts. So if you ported IPFS to work within a web browser, it would just be a matter of implementing a user-interface. Boom, social media solved. You could maintain parity between desktop and web versions by using libraries like libdatachannel[1] and datachannel-wasm[2] [1] https://github.com/paullouisageneau/libdatachannel https://github.com/paullouisageneau/libdatachannel [2] https://github.com/paullouisageneau/datachannel-wasm https://github.com/paullouisageneau/datachannel-wasm
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      > The Public/Private keypair could represent a user's identity, and the file in this case could be a blog or account page which is updated with new links to the user's posts, or links to other user's posts. I built a small proof of concept along these lines a while back. The implementation was similar to what you're describing with peers seeding and forwarding messages. I didn't get as far as name resolution since that's a tough nut to crack in p2p but building off of IPNS would probably be the way to go. The prototype worked but it wasn't very attractive to use since it was only good for passing notes and there are better services out there with more features. I think something like it would only be worthwhile building if there really was a concerted effort to lock down all social media in a fairly heavy handed way.
zarzavat 4y ago
> Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV that they already understand. Unless the UK significantly increases its military capacity and sets up world government, they will not be able to shut down the internet. The internet will still exist. The best they can hope for is a great firewall / North Korea type situation which would require a much more authoritarian (moreover functioning) government than even the UK can muster.
- sbierwagen 4y ago
  1) The point isn't to regulate the internet, it's to regulate what UK citizens can see. 2) The great firewall was complicated by the design goal of accessing some, but not all, foreign websites. The UK could accomplish their goals in a day or two by just cutting all the underwater cables. That sounds like an impossible crazy thing, but so did Brexit a couple years ago.
  - olivermarks 4y ago
    'Cutting' is extreme but the spooky filtering that is almost certainly already in place certainly isn't, as Chinese citizens are all too aware
  - worldofmatthew 4y ago
    The EU might see that as an act of war...... A large amount (if not the vast majority) of fibre optics from Europe to Americas, go though the UK and cutting them off cuts off the biggest parts of the world from each other.
    - BurningFrog 4y ago
      The EU might also see the UK as an inspiration!
      - 1991g 4y ago
        I do not think the European perception of the UK could accurately be described as "inspirational" at the moment.
tgv 4y ago
> Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV It's a tad more nefarious. Say what you want about cable tv, but it doesn't track your every move.
- metadat 4y ago
  Actually the cable providers can and do track everything about what you watch. There are also no rules or regulations about how they can use the data they harvest from you. https://www.quora.com/Does-the-cable-company-know-what-I-am-viewing-on-my-TV-What-do-they-do-with-that-information https://www.quora.com/Does-the-cable-company-know-what-I-am-...
2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
I keep hearing this but there is a big difference between the public facing platform and the pipe to my house. Where is the law vague? Your ISP is not a platform. I feel like this is a scare tactic.
- cowtools 4y ago
  The law could create a precedent that leads to greater censorship in the future.

cowtools 4y ago

Sure, but there is some limitation to what they could feasibly restrict. Tor with WebRTC bridges?

throwaway4aday 4y ago
You could conceivably implement a fully encrypted p2p social network over WebRTC within the browser. You would obtain the app by simply visiting a website that hosts it making it nearly unblockable since anyone could stand up a page. Public key crypto could allow you to verify your identity or send private messages across the network. The hardest part is establishing the initial connection but since this can be done with a variety of methods I'm sure a sufficiently creative person could come up with something fun and easy for people to use. Maybe some form of steganography where you post an image to your social feed and others can point their phone's camera at it and get the SDP offer and then post the answer as a reply or something. A more automated method would probably be better but that's left as an exercise to the reader.
- cowtools 4y ago
  I've looked into this the other month. There are a number of obfuscation networks that have tried this to some extent (including IPFS and GNUnet), but I am yet to find a network that works exactly as you've described: where you can just access a "tor web portal" in your browser or something. I think an obstacle would be preventing fingerprinting inside a non-fingerprint-proof browser. You might be able to do this if you ported something like tor's fingerprint-proof browser to emscripten and have it render to an HTML canvas! So far Tor has implemented WebRTC[0], but that's just for bridging to their main network. [0] https://snowflake.torproject.org/ https://snowflake.torproject.org/ P.S. I've also considered the "decentralized p2p social media" idea myself, but mostly because I believe the ideas we have currently behind online voting, ranking and moderation are completely at odds with IRL discussions which are P2P and based on "forwarding" ideas to known peers (friends, family, community members, countrymen) rather than posting and ranking content with anonymous peers (which are susceptible to Sybil attacks). The fact that so much discussion takes place on corporate-owned forums (Including this one, regardless of how benevolent ycombinator may be) presents a major threat to democracy in general. Instead of "liking" or "upvoting" a post on a centralized forum, why not "rehost" or "forward" a post on a decentralized forum: essentially seeding it like in BitTorrent or "pinning" it in IPFS. "Followers" of a user donate their storage and bandwidth to them, combating bureaucratic attacks like delisting and DDoS against popular users. If you could port IPFS to run completely in a browser you would have this complete "pseudo-social-media" functionality. They have something called "IPNS" where instead of giving someone the hash of a file like in BitTorrent's DHT, you could give them a public key which you use to sign the latest version of a file that is to be fetched. The Public/Private keypair could represent a user's identity, and the file in this case could be a blog or account page which is updated with new links to the user's posts, or links to other user's posts. So if you ported IPFS to work within a web browser, it would just be a matter of implementing a user-interface. Boom, social media solved. You could maintain parity between desktop and web versions by using libraries like libdatachannel[1] and datachannel-wasm[2] [1] https://github.com/paullouisageneau/libdatachannel https://github.com/paullouisageneau/libdatachannel [2] https://github.com/paullouisageneau/datachannel-wasm https://github.com/paullouisageneau/datachannel-wasm
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    > The Public/Private keypair could represent a user's identity, and the file in this case could be a blog or account page which is updated with new links to the user's posts, or links to other user's posts. I built a small proof of concept along these lines a while back. The implementation was similar to what you're describing with peers seeding and forwarding messages. I didn't get as far as name resolution since that's a tough nut to crack in p2p but building off of IPNS would probably be the way to go. The prototype worked but it wasn't very attractive to use since it was only good for passing notes and there are better services out there with more features. I think something like it would only be worthwhile building if there really was a concerted effort to lock down all social media in a fairly heavy handed way.

zarzavat 4y ago

> Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV that they already understand. Unless the UK significantly increases its military capacity and sets up world government, they will not be able to shut down the internet. The internet will still exist. The best they can hope for is a great firewall / North Korea type situation which would require a much more authoritarian (moreover functioning) government than even the UK can muster.

sbierwagen 4y ago
1) The point isn't to regulate the internet, it's to regulate what UK citizens can see. 2) The great firewall was complicated by the design goal of accessing some, but not all, foreign websites. The UK could accomplish their goals in a day or two by just cutting all the underwater cables. That sounds like an impossible crazy thing, but so did Brexit a couple years ago.
- olivermarks 4y ago
  'Cutting' is extreme but the spooky filtering that is almost certainly already in place certainly isn't, as Chinese citizens are all too aware
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  The EU might see that as an act of war...... A large amount (if not the vast majority) of fibre optics from Europe to Americas, go though the UK and cutting them off cuts off the biggest parts of the world from each other.
  - BurningFrog 4y ago
    The EU might also see the UK as an inspiration!
    - 1991g 4y ago
      I do not think the European perception of the UK could accurately be described as "inspirational" at the moment.

tgv 4y ago

> Which again, is the point - to turn the internet into the easily regulable cable TV It's a tad more nefarious. Say what you want about cable tv, but it doesn't track your every move.

metadat 4y ago
Actually the cable providers can and do track everything about what you watch. There are also no rules or regulations about how they can use the data they harvest from you. https://www.quora.com/Does-the-cable-company-know-what-I-am-viewing-on-my-TV-What-do-they-do-with-that-information https://www.quora.com/Does-the-cable-company-know-what-I-am-...

2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago

I keep hearing this but there is a big difference between the public facing platform and the pipe to my house. Where is the law vague? Your ISP is not a platform. I feel like this is a scare tactic.

cowtools 4y ago
The law could create a precedent that leads to greater censorship in the future.