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Fleeting idea that could be combined with that: a web-of-trust social network where you can only "friend" people in real life, by tapping phones. When you do s

Fleeting idea that could be combined with that: a web-of-trust social network where you can only "friend" people in real life, by tapping phones. When you do so, the app might say, "The person you just met claims to be Joe Schmoe, do you want to vouch for them?" If you approve them, they can message you and vice versa. A friend of Joe's can see you in his friend list, and try to message you, and you can accept it if you trust Joe, but they won't be a first-tier friend until you meet them. Your tweet-like posts can be seen by anyone, or your friends only, or people within N connections of you, as you prefer. I think it could be implemented in a distributed way, with no central server, if some proportion of the users are willing to serve their traffic from a VPS rather than just their phone. If someone cheats (uses a fork of the app that lets them "friend" people they haven't met, create fake identities, lie about their friends graph, etc), it wouldn't affect you unless you trust them. Over enough time and with enough use, this might be good enough to figure out whether someone distant from you (e.g. someone you're about to make an Ebay purchase from) is using their real identity or not, as the "main" part of the overall friend graph that a real user with a lot of friends is connected to would be structurally distinguishable from the subnets created by cheaters. (This is not a cherished idea I've been working on for years and am prepared to defend, just a random idea I thought I'd post in case it sparks an idea for someone, so be polite in ripping it to shreds pls)

unsupp0rted 4y ago
I would hate this because I’m physically nowhere near any HNers I’d trust, and vanishingly few HNers at all.
- ineptech 4y ago
  You wouldn't be first-tier friends with people you only know from the internet. You'd be first-tier friends with neighbors and cousins and the other parents at your kids' school. Then when I prove (keybase style) that I, HN user ineptech, am also "ineptech" on this social network, you would know that I really am a 48-year-old guy in Portland and not some other person because I have also friended all my irl friends, and our friends-of-friends-of-friends eventually overlap. Maybe "friend" is the wrong term. Maybe "vouch". You could still message me, but you wouldn't vouch for me, because you don't know from HN whether I am who I say I am.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    But why ? Why would you expose your entire real life social circle to the internet?
    - ineptech 4y ago
      If you don't want people to know that you're friends with Dave, don't friend Dave, or don't use it at all. This isn't supposed to replace pseudo-anonymous networks like Twitter, this is more like Facebook without all the bullshit. The use case is "I know Dave, and I don't care who knows that I'm friends with Dave, and I'd like to let him know I won't make it to the PTA meeting without involving an enormous advertising corporation".
    - redler 4y ago
      The fact of the "vouch" could provide the validation without identifying the people from whose circle overlap it was derived.
    - xapata 4y ago
      I think the point is that you wouldn't be. The network, from your perspective, will be quite small.
  - some_furry 4y ago
    I don't speak to my neighbors. My blood family consists of violent homophobes that would shoot my house up if they ever learned I'm gay (or where I live). I have a dedicated online persona (fursona, really) that I keep compartmentalized from people I distruat. Some of my friends are trans. Some of my friends have abusive ex-partners and stalkers. Some of my friends are sex workers who need social media to find customers but don't want their real names leaked. How would your proposal serve any of these use cases? From where I stand, it'd be more of a hindrance.
    - benji-york 4y ago
      This idea may not fulfill every use case.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  Around here, I'm pretty unwelcome at things like tech meetups. I stopped going, after experiencing the "circle of avoidance" thing, a few times. New York ageism is even worse than Silicon Valley. No one wants to know me, and I'm OK with that, as I get a lot done, anyway, and the people that matter to me (all over the world) are part of my circle.
  - shanebellone 4y ago
    I can relate to this. Most people don't like me. The problem is they don't like me for the things I love about myself. Minimizing social friction produces lubricant, not "quality" humans.
    - tayo42 4y ago
      What is a quality that turns people off to you but you don't think is worth changing?
      - shanebellone 4y ago
        I am extremely direct, often play devil's advocate, and rarely react with emotional equivalence.
        svnt 4y ago
        Excuse me for being direct, but do you mean to say you don’t care about other people, only whether what they say is accurate and whether they can communicate it without emotional reaction?
        shanebellone 4y ago
        I view all interactions as transactional. Some interactions are net-positives, but most are net-negatives. I value those who reciprocate and avoid those who do not. From my perspective, your question is quite nuanced. I do not value people (in general) because I place no value on life. We are born, we live, and then we die. In time, we will all be forgotten. The outcome is absolute.
shanebellone 4y ago
This is actually really interesting. Marrying digital with physical is an interesting approach. The problem of proximity is a unique point of friction which might also temper digital communication. If the application "lived" on cellphones and communicated with a P2P protocol, users could truly own their data (excluding the data they share with their network).
- ineptech 4y ago
  I imagine that some subset of users (1/10th?) would need to aggregate and serve their own and first-tier friends' content from a cheap VPS, and the Kardashians and Elons of the world might need a CDN of some kind, but if it's limited to short text posts I imagine it would be a tractable problem.
- aliqot 4y ago
  I dont use telephones. Nice knowing you guys, I guess. We can still think of the good times.
addrian27 4y ago
Interesting, but how do we know if friend of a friend is real or not? I think it's also vulnerable to bots or malicious infiltration
- shanebellone 4y ago
  An invitation model would inherently link bad actors. With that being said, I dislike the approach.
- ineptech 4y ago
  You only "friend" people in real life who you trust not to act maliciously. If you unwisely trust someone who is malicious, you encounter various problems, just like in real life. But it would be very difficult for a malicious person to construct a realistic-looking subnet of sockpuppets because that would require getting lots of real people to make that unwise decision. Not saying this is perfect, but I predict that the vast majority of users who "friend" 20+ people irl who also have friends will be fine, and borderline cases will be borderline.
- grom117 4y ago
  One thing that might be valuable on this is to do sms contact syncing where people can provide soft proof that they share the same social circles. In essence, if both parties have John Doe in their phone as 123-456-7890 , we can extrapolate that they both know him. Extend this across many contacts and it might be possible to see how much their direct networks overlap. One way of proving a person is indeed who they claim to be is by using a service like authillo.com
uxamanda 4y ago
Reminds me a bit of PGP and a key signing party. In that case the goal is to verify government docs to help someone verify they are who they say they are, but you can also give greater trust levels to the people you actually know.
wylie39 4y ago
scuttlebutt[0] is like this. 0:https://scuttlebutt.nz/about/ https://scuttlebutt.nz/about/
- olah_1 4y ago
  You can add someone on SSB just by adding their public key though. That's not what the comment above is talking about
kayodelycaon 4y ago
The first problem I see is separating my online identity with my real identity. I really don't want anyone at my job finding out which dog I am on the internet. My coworkers and family really wouldn't appreciate my shit posting. :) The second is friends of friends can get really awkward. There are some people who are friends with me that are also friends with people who never want to see me again.
- shanebellone 4y ago
  That's exactly the point of small social circles. You can segment your audience as a broadcaster based on shared interests, language, and understanding. The vast majority of the Internet doesn't need to read your shit posting. However, a small group of friends might find that appealing. If no one finds that content useful, amusing, or interesting... you'd be screaming at a wall. Isn't that exactly how it should be?
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    That's... not relevant? OP was talking about a system that requires tapping phones to connect and using friends of friends to form secondary connections. This is why I have a burner sim for online accounts requiring a phone number. (Looking at you Telegram...)
    - shanebellone 4y ago
      Whoops, my bad. I also maintain two phone numbers but for different reasons. I hate spam.
- ineptech 4y ago
  I mean, nothing would stop you from making a fake identity, and friending other anonymous people, and posting spicy memes. But you can do that on mastodon today, right? This is for the cases where you want to prove your identity. If most people use it that way, then the anonymous people would be little subnets that are either separate from the main graph or connected by only a few nodes. Typical users would* have dozens of people vouching for them, who each have dozens of people vouching for them, etc, which is strong evidence that they're who they say they are. * in some hypothetical future where this gets made and is wildly successful
sdwr 4y ago
To shreds you say? And his wife? Hearing a lot on this thread about folding real life back into social networks, making the system designed to keep people on the happy, healthy, human-scaled social path. Today's SMBC lines up pretty neatly - https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted
birdman3131 4y ago
You seem to be under the impression that real life access is the indicator of closeness of relationship. It is usually not. Out of my set of close friends the vast majority I have never met in person. Most family I might add are in entirely separate states. Most of my IRL friends no longer live near me.
- ineptech 4y ago
  > You seem to be under the impression that real life access is the indicator of closeness of relationship. No, just the hardest part to fake. You can copy my photo, hack my email, mimic my prose style, and steal my credit card, but you can't get the people in my school's PTA to say, "Yeah that's him" in real life.
  - shanebellone 4y ago
    This resonated with me. Well said.
- throwaway22032 4y ago
  This marks you as a tremendous outlier.
  - yencabulator 4y ago
    Imagine moving to a different country/state just before this app becomes popular. All your friends & family are now far away. Most of the people I've become friends with since my 30s have moved long distances to be where I happened to meet them. Melting pot cities like Los Angeles consist largely of people who moved there from other states! This seems like a silly design, adding a huge barrier to getting started.
olah_1 4y ago
Threema has a concept of "levels" for contacts: > Level 1 (red): The ID and public key have been obtained from the server because you received a message from this contact for the first time or added the ID manually. No matching contact was found in your address book (by phone number or email), and therefore you cannot be sure that the person is who they claim to be in their messages. > Level 2 (orange): The ID has been matched with a contact in your address book (by phone number or email). Since the server verifies phone numbers and email addresses (via an SMS or email with the activation link), you can be reasonably sure that the person is who they claim to be. > Level 3 (green): You have personally verified the ID and public key of the person by scanning their QR code. Assuming their device has not been hijacked, you can be very sure that messages from this contact were really written by the person that they indicate.
kyleyeats 4y ago
I've always liked this idea! I think it should be device-level too, and not have a separate ephemeral identity. In other words if you get a new phone you have to start over.
- shanebellone 4y ago
  This is an interesting concept. The biggest disadvantage would be losing a digital archive every two years (or as necessary).
  - kyleyeats 4y ago
    Its sister idea is holding on to phones for longer. The big drawback would be losing the phone, I think.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  So does the person who finds the phone inherits the identity? Can we have influencers selling off their circles? When I get robbed is my mugger now friends with my grandma?
  - kyleyeats 4y ago
    Isn't he already, right now?
    - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
      Well, right now they would need to unlock it and I can sign out of the app somewhere else.
      - kyleyeats 4y ago
        The phone would have the same physical security features. But 'signing out' would be more of an ostracism thing.
vmc_7645 4y ago
Currently working on implementing a similar feature, where instead of direct interaction it's location based relative to that users recent posts. That way if you don't want to be "found" you don't post and vice-versa.
nixpulvis 4y ago
On the subject of "tapping phones". I had the idea that you could generate a nice pairing key by using the aligned inertial measurements to validate identity over a public channel (like some wireless protocol). Think of it like Bump 2.0. You could then share contact information, messages, whatever... In practice it might be a little bit more than a instantaneous bump, and more of a quick shake. Like a handshake, but with phones. Weird, but kinda cool... maybe.
100001_100011 4y ago
> I think it could be implemented in a distributed way, with no central server, Fixed by Bison Relay released yesterday.
paxys 4y ago
One of the primary utilities of a social network is being able to connect with people who aren't around you. If everyone on my Twitter was within shouting distance why would I need to Tweet at all?
mcv 4y ago
I'm not sure that would work for me. One of the things I like is actually making new friends. Google Plus was absolutely perfect for that: I got to know a lot of people with similar interests (hobbies, politics) to mine. In fact, I'm not even connected to my real life friends on any social media, as far as I'm aware. Maybe they're not even on it. They may be wiser than I.
tmaly 4y ago
I still think there is an issue of trust. What happens when you meet a bad actor vs someone you have known your entire life?

unsupp0rted 4y ago

I would hate this because I’m physically nowhere near any HNers I’d trust, and vanishingly few HNers at all.

ineptech 4y ago
You wouldn't be first-tier friends with people you only know from the internet. You'd be first-tier friends with neighbors and cousins and the other parents at your kids' school. Then when I prove (keybase style) that I, HN user ineptech, am also "ineptech" on this social network, you would know that I really am a 48-year-old guy in Portland and not some other person because I have also friended all my irl friends, and our friends-of-friends-of-friends eventually overlap. Maybe "friend" is the wrong term. Maybe "vouch". You could still message me, but you wouldn't vouch for me, because you don't know from HN whether I am who I say I am.
- jacooper 4y ago
  But why ? Why would you expose your entire real life social circle to the internet?
  - ineptech 4y ago
    If you don't want people to know that you're friends with Dave, don't friend Dave, or don't use it at all. This isn't supposed to replace pseudo-anonymous networks like Twitter, this is more like Facebook without all the bullshit. The use case is "I know Dave, and I don't care who knows that I'm friends with Dave, and I'd like to let him know I won't make it to the PTA meeting without involving an enormous advertising corporation".
  - redler 4y ago
    The fact of the "vouch" could provide the validation without identifying the people from whose circle overlap it was derived.
  - xapata 4y ago
    I think the point is that you wouldn't be. The network, from your perspective, will be quite small.
- some_furry 4y ago
  I don't speak to my neighbors. My blood family consists of violent homophobes that would shoot my house up if they ever learned I'm gay (or where I live). I have a dedicated online persona (fursona, really) that I keep compartmentalized from people I distruat. Some of my friends are trans. Some of my friends have abusive ex-partners and stalkers. Some of my friends are sex workers who need social media to find customers but don't want their real names leaked. How would your proposal serve any of these use cases? From where I stand, it'd be more of a hindrance.
  - benji-york 4y ago
    This idea may not fulfill every use case.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
Around here, I'm pretty unwelcome at things like tech meetups. I stopped going, after experiencing the "circle of avoidance" thing, a few times. New York ageism is even worse than Silicon Valley. No one wants to know me, and I'm OK with that, as I get a lot done, anyway, and the people that matter to me (all over the world) are part of my circle.
- shanebellone 4y ago
  I can relate to this. Most people don't like me. The problem is they don't like me for the things I love about myself. Minimizing social friction produces lubricant, not "quality" humans.
  - tayo42 4y ago
    What is a quality that turns people off to you but you don't think is worth changing?
    - shanebellone 4y ago
      I am extremely direct, often play devil's advocate, and rarely react with emotional equivalence.
      - svnt 4y ago
        Excuse me for being direct, but do you mean to say you don’t care about other people, only whether what they say is accurate and whether they can communicate it without emotional reaction?
        shanebellone 4y ago
        I view all interactions as transactional. Some interactions are net-positives, but most are net-negatives. I value those who reciprocate and avoid those who do not. From my perspective, your question is quite nuanced. I do not value people (in general) because I place no value on life. We are born, we live, and then we die. In time, we will all be forgotten. The outcome is absolute.

shanebellone 4y ago

This is actually really interesting. Marrying digital with physical is an interesting approach. The problem of proximity is a unique point of friction which might also temper digital communication. If the application "lived" on cellphones and communicated with a P2P protocol, users could truly own their data (excluding the data they share with their network).

ineptech 4y ago
I imagine that some subset of users (1/10th?) would need to aggregate and serve their own and first-tier friends' content from a cheap VPS, and the Kardashians and Elons of the world might need a CDN of some kind, but if it's limited to short text posts I imagine it would be a tractable problem.
aliqot 4y ago
I dont use telephones. Nice knowing you guys, I guess. We can still think of the good times.

addrian27 4y ago

Interesting, but how do we know if friend of a friend is real or not? I think it's also vulnerable to bots or malicious infiltration

shanebellone 4y ago
An invitation model would inherently link bad actors. With that being said, I dislike the approach.
ineptech 4y ago
You only "friend" people in real life who you trust not to act maliciously. If you unwisely trust someone who is malicious, you encounter various problems, just like in real life. But it would be very difficult for a malicious person to construct a realistic-looking subnet of sockpuppets because that would require getting lots of real people to make that unwise decision. Not saying this is perfect, but I predict that the vast majority of users who "friend" 20+ people irl who also have friends will be fine, and borderline cases will be borderline.
grom117 4y ago
One thing that might be valuable on this is to do sms contact syncing where people can provide soft proof that they share the same social circles. In essence, if both parties have John Doe in their phone as 123-456-7890 , we can extrapolate that they both know him. Extend this across many contacts and it might be possible to see how much their direct networks overlap. One way of proving a person is indeed who they claim to be is by using a service like authillo.com

uxamanda 4y ago

Reminds me a bit of PGP and a key signing party. In that case the goal is to verify government docs to help someone verify they are who they say they are, but you can also give greater trust levels to the people you actually know.

wylie39 4y ago

scuttlebutt[0] is like this. 0:https://scuttlebutt.nz/about/ https://scuttlebutt.nz/about/

olah_1 4y ago
You can add someone on SSB just by adding their public key though. That's not what the comment above is talking about

kayodelycaon 4y ago

The first problem I see is separating my online identity with my real identity. I really don't want anyone at my job finding out which dog I am on the internet. My coworkers and family really wouldn't appreciate my shit posting. :) The second is friends of friends can get really awkward. There are some people who are friends with me that are also friends with people who never want to see me again.

shanebellone 4y ago
That's exactly the point of small social circles. You can segment your audience as a broadcaster based on shared interests, language, and understanding. The vast majority of the Internet doesn't need to read your shit posting. However, a small group of friends might find that appealing. If no one finds that content useful, amusing, or interesting... you'd be screaming at a wall. Isn't that exactly how it should be?
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  That's... not relevant? OP was talking about a system that requires tapping phones to connect and using friends of friends to form secondary connections. This is why I have a burner sim for online accounts requiring a phone number. (Looking at you Telegram...)
  - shanebellone 4y ago
    Whoops, my bad. I also maintain two phone numbers but for different reasons. I hate spam.
ineptech 4y ago
I mean, nothing would stop you from making a fake identity, and friending other anonymous people, and posting spicy memes. But you can do that on mastodon today, right? This is for the cases where you want to prove your identity. If most people use it that way, then the anonymous people would be little subnets that are either separate from the main graph or connected by only a few nodes. Typical users would* have dozens of people vouching for them, who each have dozens of people vouching for them, etc, which is strong evidence that they're who they say they are. * in some hypothetical future where this gets made and is wildly successful

sdwr 4y ago

To shreds you say? And his wife? Hearing a lot on this thread about folding real life back into social networks, making the system designed to keep people on the happy, healthy, human-scaled social path. Today's SMBC lines up pretty neatly - https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/addicted

birdman3131 4y ago

You seem to be under the impression that real life access is the indicator of closeness of relationship. It is usually not. Out of my set of close friends the vast majority I have never met in person. Most family I might add are in entirely separate states. Most of my IRL friends no longer live near me.

ineptech 4y ago
> You seem to be under the impression that real life access is the indicator of closeness of relationship. No, just the hardest part to fake. You can copy my photo, hack my email, mimic my prose style, and steal my credit card, but you can't get the people in my school's PTA to say, "Yeah that's him" in real life.
- shanebellone 4y ago
  This resonated with me. Well said.
throwaway22032 4y ago
This marks you as a tremendous outlier.
- yencabulator 4y ago
  Imagine moving to a different country/state just before this app becomes popular. All your friends & family are now far away. Most of the people I've become friends with since my 30s have moved long distances to be where I happened to meet them. Melting pot cities like Los Angeles consist largely of people who moved there from other states! This seems like a silly design, adding a huge barrier to getting started.

olah_1 4y ago

Threema has a concept of "levels" for contacts: > Level 1 (red): The ID and public key have been obtained from the server because you received a message from this contact for the first time or added the ID manually. No matching contact was found in your address book (by phone number or email), and therefore you cannot be sure that the person is who they claim to be in their messages. > Level 2 (orange): The ID has been matched with a contact in your address book (by phone number or email). Since the server verifies phone numbers and email addresses (via an SMS or email with the activation link), you can be reasonably sure that the person is who they claim to be. > Level 3 (green): You have personally verified the ID and public key of the person by scanning their QR code. Assuming their device has not been hijacked, you can be very sure that messages from this contact were really written by the person that they indicate.

kyleyeats 4y ago

I've always liked this idea! I think it should be device-level too, and not have a separate ephemeral identity. In other words if you get a new phone you have to start over.

shanebellone 4y ago
This is an interesting concept. The biggest disadvantage would be losing a digital archive every two years (or as necessary).
- kyleyeats 4y ago
  Its sister idea is holding on to phones for longer. The big drawback would be losing the phone, I think.
SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
So does the person who finds the phone inherits the identity? Can we have influencers selling off their circles? When I get robbed is my mugger now friends with my grandma?
- kyleyeats 4y ago
  Isn't he already, right now?
  - SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Well, right now they would need to unlock it and I can sign out of the app somewhere else.
    - kyleyeats 4y ago
      The phone would have the same physical security features. But 'signing out' would be more of an ostracism thing.

vmc_7645 4y ago

Currently working on implementing a similar feature, where instead of direct interaction it's location based relative to that users recent posts. That way if you don't want to be "found" you don't post and vice-versa.

nixpulvis 4y ago

On the subject of "tapping phones". I had the idea that you could generate a nice pairing key by using the aligned inertial measurements to validate identity over a public channel (like some wireless protocol). Think of it like Bump 2.0. You could then share contact information, messages, whatever... In practice it might be a little bit more than a instantaneous bump, and more of a quick shake. Like a handshake, but with phones. Weird, but kinda cool... maybe.

100001_100011 4y ago

> I think it could be implemented in a distributed way, with no central server, Fixed by Bison Relay released yesterday.

paxys 4y ago

One of the primary utilities of a social network is being able to connect with people who aren't around you. If everyone on my Twitter was within shouting distance why would I need to Tweet at all?

mcv 4y ago

I'm not sure that would work for me. One of the things I like is actually making new friends. Google Plus was absolutely perfect for that: I got to know a lot of people with similar interests (hobbies, politics) to mine. In fact, I'm not even connected to my real life friends on any social media, as far as I'm aware. Maybe they're not even on it. They may be wiser than I.

tmaly 4y ago

I still think there is an issue of trust. What happens when you meet a bad actor vs someone you have known your entire life?