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The only real alternative would be an open protocol that allows free message broadcasting and redistribution, such that the server becomes a dumb relay, not the

The only real alternative would be an open protocol that allows free message broadcasting and redistribution, such that the server becomes a dumb relay, not the arbiter of truth. Kind of like email, but everybody can look at your mailbox. Some form of cryptographic identities would be required, so that multiple servers can host and distribute messages and it's the user that controls the keys. Mastodon to me goes in the completely wrong direction, as it still keeps user identities locked to a server and gives the server admins way too much control. It's a bad copy of Twitter with even more censorship. That said, I have little hope in this ever happening. All the money is made in controlling the user, so any protocol that actively works against that is pretty much doomed to fail.

rikroots 4y ago
Do you mean something like Deja News (before its mad pivot in 1999)? Maybe somebody could build a service that offers users an interface to create/consume content shared over a dedicated NNTP-based Usenet discussion group, archiving all those messages (respecting the 'X-No_Archive' message header!) and adding in some sort of 'blue tick' crypto id to messages from validated humans. Build in some message character limits, alongside # and @ functionality - not forgetting image/audio/video capabilities - to mimic current Twitter behaviours and this mythical somebody might have a "twitter clone" on their hands? Of course moderation would remain a nightmare...
- grumbel 4y ago
  > Do you mean something like Deja News (before its mad pivot in 1999)? Yep, the nice thing about Usenet was that you could refer to any message by a unique message-id. So the where and how you downloaded those messages was of no importance, the Usenet groups were held together by their message-id and a few other headers. The rest was just federated servers mirroring the content among each other. There was however a lack of security, so nothing would stop you from generating duplicate message-id, faking identities and such. > Of course moderation would remain a nightmare... What I would like to see is moderation made optional and transparent. Just give me a list of message-ids that a moderator deemed filter worthy, but leave it to me if I want to use that filter list or not. Such an approach would also allow third parties to do the filtering.

rikroots 4y ago

Do you mean something like Deja News (before its mad pivot in 1999)? Maybe somebody could build a service that offers users an interface to create/consume content shared over a dedicated NNTP-based Usenet discussion group, archiving all those messages (respecting the 'X-No_Archive' message header!) and adding in some sort of 'blue tick' crypto id to messages from validated humans. Build in some message character limits, alongside # and @ functionality - not forgetting image/audio/video capabilities - to mimic current Twitter behaviours and this mythical somebody might have a "twitter clone" on their hands? Of course moderation would remain a nightmare...

grumbel 4y ago
> Do you mean something like Deja News (before its mad pivot in 1999)? Yep, the nice thing about Usenet was that you could refer to any message by a unique message-id. So the where and how you downloaded those messages was of no importance, the Usenet groups were held together by their message-id and a few other headers. The rest was just federated servers mirroring the content among each other. There was however a lack of security, so nothing would stop you from generating duplicate message-id, faking identities and such. > Of course moderation would remain a nightmare... What I would like to see is moderation made optional and transparent. Just give me a list of message-ids that a moderator deemed filter worthy, but leave it to me if I want to use that filter list or not. Such an approach would also allow third parties to do the filtering.