7 ms·

Democratizing social media, with the freedom of moving around platforms freely

50 points by Lws803 4y ago

Lws803 4y ago
"With Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, I began to question if transferring ownership of a centralized platform to another is really the solution to true freedom of speech. Mastodon was a platform that came to mind where each instance is run individually by a person or an organization and each instance gets to decide how they want to moderate it. Although users get to choose which instance to join depending on their tastes, they have to sign up for a new account each time on each instance and potentially lose their followers if their account get’s banned in any of these instances. So I’ve decided to build Soul, which is an external OAuth-based identity provider built specifically for social media in mind. It comes with several user management and user connections management features that can allow one’s “digital soul” to exist in various platforms as long as they integrate with Soul. Soul is still in a really early stage of development but it is open source and constantly looking for new opportunities to improve. Please give it a shot and try building a social media platform on top of Soul to tap on it’s existing users (though not a lot at the moment, but I hope it’ll grow)." Check out our site here: https://www.soul-network.com/ https://www.soul-network.com/ and main Github repo here: https://github.com/soul-project/soul https://github.com/soul-project/soul
- dustymcp 4y ago
  Unless you already have a partnership with some platform using it, i think its a hard sell.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago
  Doesn't that just change the point of failure? Can't soul still ban an account?
  - Lws803 4y ago
    That's a really good question, yes it can but we can remain impartial as we have no visibility to content or anything our users do. Platforms can still ban users on their side or through our API but that would not limit our users from joining other platforms or creating their own.
    - orangepurple 4y ago
      What this really means is that the mob will need to pressure Soul into cancelling undesirable account holders through 3rd party site communication.
      - mozman 4y ago
        Not to mention oauth is very hard to get right.. it’s a huge undertaking with pentesting, fraud detection etc. I leave it to the big guys do auth.
        orangepurple 4y ago
        And if Soul doesn't cave to the mob they will go for their ISP. Look no further than what happened to Kiwifarms if you piss off the mob.
        Lws803 4y ago
        It is a challenging position to be in for sure but I want to fight for freedom of speech and democratizing social media. If no one does anything nothing would change. Its takes 100 failures to make a pivotal change may soul could be that trigger for change
        mozman 4y ago
        I applaud your efforts and wish you much success. A lot of people talk, few take action.
    - cowsup 4y ago
      Lots of similar sites start up the same way, I know from experience. Let individual communities self-govern, and stay out of it. Then you get spambots attacking your service, so you set up checks on your end to alleviate the burden your individual community moderators have to undertake. Then people sending illegal/shocking content. More changes on your end. Then your government sends you notice that copyrighted content is being shared on your platform. Oops, gotta moderate that, too. Death threats, alternate accounts, you name it, these are the things that will either make your community moderators & users leave (thus no service), or things you have to crack down on yourself. Before long, you have a full-time team dedicated to moderating content. Not saying this to just discourage you or belittle you, but, if you tell communities that you will be "impartial" 100% of the time, then that might come back to bite you later when you have to take action.
- PinguTS 4y ago
  Why should I trust some arbitrary third-party OAuth provider? Why? Either I don't need this single point of failure and create an account on each and every service independently. Each and every service then stands for its own. If someone is able to infiltrate a service, it is impossible to infiltrate my whole personalty. That is different with a single third-party OAuth provide. First it needs a lot of trust, especially in terms of (cyber) security. Second: Kus why?
mg 4y ago
Is there already a Fediverse mechanism to let people log into 3rd party sites? Like "Log in with Twitter/Google/Facebook" but "Log in with ActivityPub"? That would be pretty cool. I like the aspect of ActivityPub that you can own your identity to the same degree to which you can own a domain. It would be cool if it would be possible to log in to third parties as @you@yourdomain.com via the ActivityPub protocol. Thinking about how to implement it technically .. one simple way would be to just send a magic link to @you@yourdomain.com via DM. Hmm... that could actually work. Your username on - say - Hacker News would then simply be your Fediverse handle: @you@yourdomain.com The same would work with emails of course. Most people don't want their email publicly visible though. But they would probably not mind using their Fediverse handle as their username.
- echelon 4y ago
  In my humble opinion the double asperand is a visually atrocious abomination and wholly redundant. I hope this pattern dies quickly.
  - seydor 4y ago
    needs to be differntiated from email (or maybe not, i would prefer it if SMTP was just extended to be social) what would be a better format?
  - mg 4y ago
    I had the same reaction at first. But after some contemplation, I changed my mind. It's not so easy to say if there is a better alternative. We need way to say "This is a Fediverse users. Their instance is xyz.com and their username is abc". A way that easy to grok visually and also by software. abc@xyz.com - is alread taken for emails. xyz.com/abc - would be a link xyz.com@abc - is the wrong way round. abc*xyz.com - would work. But is it good? Hmm...
    - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
      These are definitely better: @xyz.com/abc @abc.xyz.com
4b11b4 4y ago
Feels like an opportunity to just collect emails...
illuminerdy 4y ago
Ian Crossland is that you?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mynameismonkey 4y ago
I run three services (Mastodon, Pixelfed, WriteFreely) and would like to have my community use one set of credentials on all three (and any other service they would like to) - is this what I'm understanding is the intent here? I want to run more services but I simply cannot stomach yet more credentials.
- Lws803 4y ago
  That is right :) one credential / account for all instances, we function as third party OAuth provider, it's possible to integrate as long as your platform can integrate allows authenticating through OAuth. We offer a few other features as well but they're not readily supported by Mastodon yet atm, ideally we'd love to centralize user relationships as well so that you won't have to rebuild your friends and followers list on every platform.
  - ISL 4y ago
    Centralizing the decentralized... what's old is new again? Seems like the centralization of relationships and credentials ought to be client-side, or a portable protocol all its own, so we don't repeat the mistake of centralizing the most-important data.
    - Lws803 4y ago
      > Centralizing the decentralized... what's old is new again? haha you're not wrong, but imo this is a critical part to centralize though. I haven't seen an easy to use (wallet not required) and trusted solution yet for decentralizing auth. Maybe it's underway and I'd be happy to adopt that once it's good.
      - mawise 4y ago
        IndieAuth[1] is a slick DNS-based approach. Maybe offering that as a service would be a nice alternative. I point my DNS to you, and you handle authentication for everything that uses IndieAuth. If you go away or I don't like what you're doing then I can point my DNS to someone else offering that service and I retain the same DNS identity, and ability to use it to login anywhere I've set it up as my identity. IndieAuth.com[2] sort of does this already, but it delegates to a "social" login (Facebook/Twitter/Github/Google/etc). [1]: https://indieweb.org/IndieAuth https://indieweb.org/IndieAuth [2]: https://indieauth.com/ https://indieauth.com/
flanked-evergl 4y ago
How does this differ from https://solidproject.org/about https://solidproject.org/about
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- remram 4y ago
  Or Bluesky, AT, ... hard to keep track.
newaccount2021 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
marban 4y ago
What happened to OpenID — Haven't we already been through this?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
phailhaus 4y ago
The vast majority of people don't want to deal with multiple platforms. They want to be on the same platform as their friends, and the content creators that they like. That's it. Does Soul abstract away the platforms entirely, and make it feel like you're only on one?
- Lws803 4y ago
  It kinda does actually, I'd say this gives you an experience close to having a Facebook with groups but each of these groups are self managed and self hosted in whatever way you want. You still end up having a single account at the end of the day and a single friend's list. You don't really have to deal with multiple platforms if you don't want to, but if you have to, it'll be as seamless as something like a "login with Google". It might also be good for content creators cause you'll be able to follow them across different platforms (e.g. instagram, tiktok, twitter, youtube) without actually having to sign up on every single one of them. And content creators won't have to lose their subscribers / followers on new platforms.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > The vast majority of people don't want to deal with multiple platforms. They want to be on the same platform as their friends, and the content creators that they like. That's it. Statements like this make me feel like I'm living on another planet. I socialize with my friends almost entirely over IM (iMessages, SMS, Signal, etc.). Social media is just the huge content pile that we sometimes discuss and link. In that sense there are already few barriers to switching platforms because "engaging" with any content on social media seems like a foreign concept.
  - phailhaus 4y ago
    Same, but: how do you know what to link on social media? You have to browse one first. I'm fairly online, so I do end up browsing several different social media sites, but most people aren't. They have the one or two that they like, and they use those. Nobody wants to manage ten different platforms, a successful solution has to make it seem like you're only on one.
  - 4y ago
deafpolygon 4y ago
The issue is why would a social media platform choose to use this? They jealously guard their user count and engagement, and would not want to share.
commandlinefan 4y ago
Truly democratizing social media would mean getting rid of social media completely. The only reason we need Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. is because they store our conversations for us and help us find each other. The problem is, they have to (want to) monetize their position as the middleman and end up mediating our conversations, even when we ask them not to.
- harryvederci 4y ago
  This resonates with a ranty post I just submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33506914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33506914
  - dreamlessfate 4y ago
    You're just describing RSS feeds.
Eumenes 4y ago
My least favorite corporate tech buzzword: democratizing something

50 points by Lws803 4y ago

"With Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, I began to question if transferring ownership of a centralized platform to another is really the solution to true freedom of speech. Mastodon was a platform that came to mind where each instance is run individually by a person or an organization and each instance gets to decide how they want to moderate it. Although users get to choose which instance to join depending on their tastes, they have to sign up for a new account each time on each instance and potentially lose their followers if their account get’s banned in any of these instances. So I’ve decided to build Soul, which is an external OAuth-based identity provider built specifically for social media in mind. It comes with several user management and user connections management features that can allow one’s “digital soul” to exist in various platforms as long as they integrate with Soul. Soul is still in a really early stage of development but it is open source and constantly looking for new opportunities to improve. Please give it a shot and try building a social media platform on top of Soul to tap on it’s existing users (though not a lot at the moment, but I hope it’ll grow)." Check out our site here: https://www.soul-network.com/ https://www.soul-network.com/ and main Github repo here: https://github.com/soul-project/soul https://github.com/soul-project/soul

dustymcp 4y ago
Unless you already have a partnership with some platform using it, i think its a hard sell.
amadeuspagel 4y ago
Doesn't that just change the point of failure? Can't soul still ban an account?
- Lws803 4y ago
  That's a really good question, yes it can but we can remain impartial as we have no visibility to content or anything our users do. Platforms can still ban users on their side or through our API but that would not limit our users from joining other platforms or creating their own.
  - orangepurple 4y ago
    What this really means is that the mob will need to pressure Soul into cancelling undesirable account holders through 3rd party site communication.
    - mozman 4y ago
      Not to mention oauth is very hard to get right.. it’s a huge undertaking with pentesting, fraud detection etc. I leave it to the big guys do auth.
      - orangepurple 4y ago
        And if Soul doesn't cave to the mob they will go for their ISP. Look no further than what happened to Kiwifarms if you piss off the mob.
        Lws803 4y ago
        It is a challenging position to be in for sure but I want to fight for freedom of speech and democratizing social media. If no one does anything nothing would change. Its takes 100 failures to make a pivotal change may soul could be that trigger for change
        mozman 4y ago
        I applaud your efforts and wish you much success. A lot of people talk, few take action.
  - cowsup 4y ago
    Lots of similar sites start up the same way, I know from experience. Let individual communities self-govern, and stay out of it. Then you get spambots attacking your service, so you set up checks on your end to alleviate the burden your individual community moderators have to undertake. Then people sending illegal/shocking content. More changes on your end. Then your government sends you notice that copyrighted content is being shared on your platform. Oops, gotta moderate that, too. Death threats, alternate accounts, you name it, these are the things that will either make your community moderators & users leave (thus no service), or things you have to crack down on yourself. Before long, you have a full-time team dedicated to moderating content. Not saying this to just discourage you or belittle you, but, if you tell communities that you will be "impartial" 100% of the time, then that might come back to bite you later when you have to take action.
PinguTS 4y ago
Why should I trust some arbitrary third-party OAuth provider? Why? Either I don't need this single point of failure and create an account on each and every service independently. Each and every service then stands for its own. If someone is able to infiltrate a service, it is impossible to infiltrate my whole personalty. That is different with a single third-party OAuth provide. First it needs a lot of trust, especially in terms of (cyber) security. Second: Kus why?

mg 4y ago

Is there already a Fediverse mechanism to let people log into 3rd party sites? Like "Log in with Twitter/Google/Facebook" but "Log in with ActivityPub"? That would be pretty cool. I like the aspect of ActivityPub that you can own your identity to the same degree to which you can own a domain. It would be cool if it would be possible to log in to third parties as @you@yourdomain.com via the ActivityPub protocol. Thinking about how to implement it technically .. one simple way would be to just send a magic link to @you@yourdomain.com via DM. Hmm... that could actually work. Your username on - say - Hacker News would then simply be your Fediverse handle: @you@yourdomain.com The same would work with emails of course. Most people don't want their email publicly visible though. But they would probably not mind using their Fediverse handle as their username.

echelon 4y ago
In my humble opinion the double asperand is a visually atrocious abomination and wholly redundant. I hope this pattern dies quickly.
- seydor 4y ago
  needs to be differntiated from email (or maybe not, i would prefer it if SMTP was just extended to be social) what would be a better format?
- mg 4y ago
  I had the same reaction at first. But after some contemplation, I changed my mind. It's not so easy to say if there is a better alternative. We need way to say "This is a Fediverse users. Their instance is xyz.com and their username is abc". A way that easy to grok visually and also by software. abc@xyz.com - is alread taken for emails. xyz.com/abc - would be a link xyz.com@abc - is the wrong way round. abc*xyz.com - would work. But is it good? Hmm...
  - YetAnotherNick 4y ago
    These are definitely better: @xyz.com/abc @abc.xyz.com

4b11b4 4y ago

Feels like an opportunity to just collect emails...

illuminerdy 4y ago

Ian Crossland is that you?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

mynameismonkey 4y ago

I run three services (Mastodon, Pixelfed, WriteFreely) and would like to have my community use one set of credentials on all three (and any other service they would like to) - is this what I'm understanding is the intent here? I want to run more services but I simply cannot stomach yet more credentials.

Lws803 4y ago
That is right :) one credential / account for all instances, we function as third party OAuth provider, it's possible to integrate as long as your platform can integrate allows authenticating through OAuth. We offer a few other features as well but they're not readily supported by Mastodon yet atm, ideally we'd love to centralize user relationships as well so that you won't have to rebuild your friends and followers list on every platform.
- ISL 4y ago
  Centralizing the decentralized... what's old is new again? Seems like the centralization of relationships and credentials ought to be client-side, or a portable protocol all its own, so we don't repeat the mistake of centralizing the most-important data.
  - Lws803 4y ago
    > Centralizing the decentralized... what's old is new again? haha you're not wrong, but imo this is a critical part to centralize though. I haven't seen an easy to use (wallet not required) and trusted solution yet for decentralizing auth. Maybe it's underway and I'd be happy to adopt that once it's good.
    - mawise 4y ago
      IndieAuth[1] is a slick DNS-based approach. Maybe offering that as a service would be a nice alternative. I point my DNS to you, and you handle authentication for everything that uses IndieAuth. If you go away or I don't like what you're doing then I can point my DNS to someone else offering that service and I retain the same DNS identity, and ability to use it to login anywhere I've set it up as my identity. IndieAuth.com[2] sort of does this already, but it delegates to a "social" login (Facebook/Twitter/Github/Google/etc). [1]: https://indieweb.org/IndieAuth https://indieweb.org/IndieAuth [2]: https://indieauth.com/ https://indieauth.com/

flanked-evergl 4y ago

How does this differ from https://solidproject.org/about https://solidproject.org/about

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
remram 4y ago
Or Bluesky, AT, ... hard to keep track.

newaccount2021 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

marban 4y ago

What happened to OpenID — Haven't we already been through this?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

phailhaus 4y ago

The vast majority of people don't want to deal with multiple platforms. They want to be on the same platform as their friends, and the content creators that they like. That's it. Does Soul abstract away the platforms entirely, and make it feel like you're only on one?

Lws803 4y ago
It kinda does actually, I'd say this gives you an experience close to having a Facebook with groups but each of these groups are self managed and self hosted in whatever way you want. You still end up having a single account at the end of the day and a single friend's list. You don't really have to deal with multiple platforms if you don't want to, but if you have to, it'll be as seamless as something like a "login with Google". It might also be good for content creators cause you'll be able to follow them across different platforms (e.g. instagram, tiktok, twitter, youtube) without actually having to sign up on every single one of them. And content creators won't have to lose their subscribers / followers on new platforms.
AlexandrB 4y ago
> The vast majority of people don't want to deal with multiple platforms. They want to be on the same platform as their friends, and the content creators that they like. That's it. Statements like this make me feel like I'm living on another planet. I socialize with my friends almost entirely over IM (iMessages, SMS, Signal, etc.). Social media is just the huge content pile that we sometimes discuss and link. In that sense there are already few barriers to switching platforms because "engaging" with any content on social media seems like a foreign concept.
- phailhaus 4y ago
  Same, but: how do you know what to link on social media? You have to browse one first. I'm fairly online, so I do end up browsing several different social media sites, but most people aren't. They have the one or two that they like, and they use those. Nobody wants to manage ten different platforms, a successful solution has to make it seem like you're only on one.
- 4y ago

deafpolygon 4y ago

The issue is why would a social media platform choose to use this? They jealously guard their user count and engagement, and would not want to share.

commandlinefan 4y ago

Truly democratizing social media would mean getting rid of social media completely. The only reason we need Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc. is because they store our conversations for us and help us find each other. The problem is, they have to (want to) monetize their position as the middleman and end up mediating our conversations, even when we ask them not to.

harryvederci 4y ago
This resonates with a ranty post I just submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33506914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33506914
- dreamlessfate 4y ago
  You're just describing RSS feeds.

Eumenes 4y ago

My least favorite corporate tech buzzword: democratizing something