14 ms·
Don’t record your social life on an append-only social network (2022)
- wmf 3y agoBluesky's AT Protocol has made some progress on using Merkle trees while still allowing content to be deleted.
- csdvrx 3y agoSo you mean, like Hacker News past 2 hours?
- genpfault 3y ago(2022)
- dang 3y agoAdded. Thanks!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- koch 3y agoWhile not anything blockchain-based, I had a similar thought of just doing social media through a single text file that you can add to/remove from whenever, and re-post the whole thing[0]. Literally HTTP POST it. Edit, amend, add, delete, schedule, etc., all from a single text file. I haven't worked on it in a few weeks but I intend to get back to it soon. [0] https://post.mw https://post.mw
- tenebrisalietum 3y agoSomewhat of a precedent exists: classic UNIX mbox files. I guess it would be fine if indexed separately. Edits to data past a certain age are fairly rare.
- jdfellow 3y agoAnother old UNIX prior art is finger.
- dddw 3y agoCool stuff
- hgsgm 3y agoAny example public user sites?
- koch 3y agohttps://post.mw/rob https://post.mw/rob Haven't been posting as much as I want to yet, I'm working on the editor from https://markwhen.com https://markwhen.com to hopefully port it over to https://post.mw https://post.mw as well
- kfrzcode 3y agosigh I'm now old enough to watch yet another wave of "reinventing 2005 web dev again" Did you know HTML and CSS are basically text files with some special organization that allow you to make really snazzy colors and marquees and stuff? It's just a text file you can POST, too! Super simple, use the same tools you use now. Well, you'll need a browser to make it look pretty, but that's not the point right?
- klabb3 3y agoMostly agree. You can have strong cryptography even with mutability/overwritability. You can simply issue soft deletes by issuing a tombstone write. However, you always risk someone else (like a scraper) storing messages including your signature forever. Deleting is virtually impossible for practical communication purposes. Best you can get is “I promise you I deleted my copy and thus wont distribute it further”.
- roundandround 3y agoI'd generally consider that different because whatever people scrape could be randomly reassembled but its not forming a canonical proof. A social platform that digitally signed content to have irrefutable proof of what you scraped would be closer and that would probably be adding the anti pattern they criticize for little reason.
- klabb3 3y agoIt sounds right, but would you mind spelling out the full conclusion? The level of indirection is a bit high for my lazy brain. To me public communication has the trade off between trusting the communications platform (like most social platforms today) vs trusting the end user (signed messages). If you have trusted end users, scraping a third party repo of “forever history” becomes more plausible, as they can both prove that you(ish) signed it and are unlikely to respect your request to delete their copy. Is this different from what you’re saying?
- roundandround 3y agoIf you post something public it can be attested to by whoever that it once looked like X which is almost as irrefutable as it being self proving like a block chain. Scuttlebutt is trying to help you obscure your identity in posting and one could be sending encrypted content to particular other parties (maybe in its protocols but certainly just using it for the medium) where those parties could reveal irrefutably that content and that you made that content as that identity in that historical context. Take instead the example of sending content encrypted with shared session keys over a live mesh network, where you send session keys to your specific friends to decrypt instead of revealing an identity to them. Any "friend" could prove that they had some content at a specific time, but they could never prove that they didn't just make it themself since you gave them the symmetric key that let's either of you make shared content. This is a simple way to fail to achieve irrefutable though other properties as well.. If for example you are accused of a crime with no statute of limitations and a friend has since died, there should be a distinction between whether their hard drives prove something or their hard drives are hearsay without something else, like their testimony that they didn't tamper with contents in some long forgotten practical joke.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoWorth considering, but the conclusion that permanency is "definitely not what you should look for in your social network" goes way too far. People use different social networks for different purposes. There are certain privacy features like self-deleting messages that you can only get in a closed ecosystem. Does this mean you shouldn't use any kind of web-based social media, since everyone you communicate with can easily and automatically archive everything using a browser extension or userscript?
- patrakov 3y agoUnfortunately lawyers at least in Russia would have an opinion here. Let's suppose that you posted something publicly to an append-only social network, and it was completely OK at that time. Then, laws changed (and you could not predict this), and this post is no longer legal according to the new rules. What the lawyers say is that the very fact that the message is still online is now a crime. Yes, there is a universal notion that laws do not apply backwards in time (retroactively), but here they indeed don't: the message is still online AFTER the law got into existence, and so this is a lasting crime that started when the law was enacted. Normally you would be required to delete the post between the moments when the new law is announced and enacted, but you can't, and it is still yours for others to find and read, so you go to jail. P.S. It would be interesting to know the opinion of lawyers from other countries.
- i-use-nixos-btw 3y agoCompletely unaware of this social network. What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve? Proof of origin? A conversational paper trail? The latter would be interesting for areas where conversations should be on the record, however in cases that people want their conversations off the record they’d just use a side channel. The UK govt communicates using WhatsApp for Christ’s sake. So it’d need to be something where both parties fundamentally benefit from the ability to verify that a post, or a conversation, took place. Where would that even apply?
- joemi 3y ago> What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve? I think the problem it's trying to solve is: "How can we mix social networking with blockchain?"
- carlmr 3y agoMaybe betting? Both sides are usually interested in recording the bet.
- an_ko 3y agoTo my understanding, it allows messages on the network to have a total order, even when fully decentralised. Without a hash chain, clients could not tell what order events happened in, and might display them ordered differently, which would change a conversation's meaning. The traditional alternative is logical clocks, but a malicious participant could forge those, so they're not suitable for a fully distributed system run by random users.
- aftbit 3y agoAFAIK it was intended to support the use case of being occasionally connected to the internet (one author spent a lot of time on a small sailboat in the south Pacific), while maintaining an order of messages.
- nradov 3y agoLotus Notes solved that problem over 30 years ago.
- mwattsun 3y agoI deleted 12 years of Facebook posts after downloading a backup one by one. This was before they had multiple deletes. It took me a few weeks so I did it when I was bored. What's funny is that you can't actually delete everything, because something from the past will show up again. Just one or two things. I assume when databases located around the world sync up there's a few things that didn't get deleted.
- mixmastamyk 3y agoDo they really get deleted or just hidden? Guessing the latter.
- mwattsun 3y agoI think they are supposed to delete them by law, but they could ignore that. Assuming they do delete them, it seems to me they miss a few that show up as the DBs around the world sync up
- mixmastamyk 3y agoMaybe in EU, but I don't think so in other places.
- jfax 3y ago>Your identity isn’t a username and doesn’t depend on a domain name or service provide Like a tripcode? >Instead, your username is a meaningless cryptographic hash that consists of random-looking numbers and letters. Ah
- grey_earthling 3y agoIn SSB it's a public key. Most users announce their own display names (which needn't be unique) and some clients let you set a pet name for other users (like a phone's contacts list).
- squiggy22 3y agoI went to try this out only to read the words 'download the software'. Good luck with that. Even the Firefox plugin requires some additional setup. Frictionless it ain't. By a long stretch. Sigh.
- bee_rider 3y agoSounds like the goal of the article was achieved? You didn’t record your social life on an append-only social network.
- sharperguy 3y agoI find the nostr[1] protocol to be a nice alternative here. The core idea is the separation of message content from the relays which transport them. So you sign a message and publish it to several relays, and then anyone can retrieve your message from any of the relays where it is published. As opposed to Mastadon, your identity is tied to your pubkey rather than the instance that you created your account on. The difference to Scuttlebutt is the differentiation of relays vs clients, and the lack of chaining messages together in the "blockchain"-like structure. The result is a fairly simple protocol which is fairly low latency and seamless for many applications compared to other decentralized solutions. [1]. https://nostr.com/ https://nostr.com/
- api 3y agoI tried nostr but found it hard to find anything except people sending micro transactions to each other and posting memes about Bitcoin.
- anonporridge 3y agoThat's because bitcoiners created it and Jack Dorsey boosted it and abandoned Twitter for it. He's been extremely active there, https://primal.net/jack https://primal.net/jack And the idea of using nano transactions for upvotes has long been an attractive approach in this community for mitigating bot swarms from influencing conversations. In fact, the proof of work system that bitcoin was based on was originally proposed in the 90s as a solution to fight email spam. A micro cost of computation power (or a nano transaction) is neglegible to most legitimate users, but adds up quickly for spammers who depend on sending out thousands of emails for a single hit.
- canadiantim 3y agoIsn't nostr still an append-only solution?
- thinkmassive 3y agoYes, you delete by appending a delete event: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/7d792055372ce1af2205a1451e5e9fa110d73450/09.md https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/7d792055372ce1af... Then clients and relays SHOULD act as if the referenced event is deleted. This is different than MUST, probably because there’s no way to guarantee it happens. It’s also possible the delete event doesn’t make it to everywhere that received the initial event.
- gropo 3y agotwetch uses the bie1 encryption protocol on a plaintext blockchain to allow for append only data that can be retracted from view. twetch.com
- iLoveOncall 3y ago"Blockchains are useless, more at 5"
- 123sereusername 3y agoalso, wash your hands after using the toilet.
- Mizoguchi 3y agoExodus = 0.2%
- karaterobot 3y ago> The technology that powers SSB is entirely different from Twitter and Mastodon. You don’t need to register an account anywhere to get started. Your identity isn’t a username and doesn’t depend on a domain name or service provider. Instead, your username is a meaningless cryptographic hash that consists of random-looking numbers and letters. Your friends only need to know your hash to follow you, and you can keep it as public or private as you want. I'm not familiar with SSB. And, to me, this article's headline is five words too long (harumph) Question though: Does this imply that I can follow someone without them knowing about it if their address hash gets leaked? If so, in what way could it meaningfully be described as being private? I assume there's some way to control who you broadcast to, or approve someone who follows you, and this description is just not mentioning it.
- robryk 3y ago> in what way could it meaningfully be described as being private? You can broadcast encrypted statements: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/#private-messages https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/#private-m... ~Everyone can tell how many of these you sent, when, and how large were they, but not to whom (incl. how many recipients they had unless there were too many and you had to send multiple copies[1]) or what was in them. [1] The copies will still be unlinkable, but if someone sends 5 messages of ~same size within a second, it's a pretty good guess that they're sending 5 copies of the same message.
- natural219 3y agoIs there a logical way to interpret this other than "don't use the internet"?
- beebmam 3y agoWhy would you want your social life recorded anywhere? I love that my social life isn't recorded.
- v0idzer0 3y agoThis article like many others claims a mass exodus from Twitter, but Musk claims usage is at an all time high. I wonder which is true? I’d be inclined to think Musk is lying. He has clear motive to do so. But on the other hand, he has access to the actual numbers unlike any of these writers who are relying on anecdotal evidence. The writers also say hate speech is more common, but my anecdotal evidence says the opposite is true. Genuinely torn on this one.
- rvba 3y agoDidnt they allow all the banned users to come back + removed the systems that automatically ban bots? If you let the bots come back, then you will have much more "users".
- blackshaw 3y agoThey unbanned some controversial accounts (Trump being the most famous by far, although he hasn't posted anything since being unbanned), but it's pretty hyperbolic to say they allowed "all the banned users to come back"
- dhosek 3y agoI rejoined Twitter mostly to hang with writer friends, but I’ve noticed that their engagement has gone down a lot since Musk took over and with it mine as well. It used to be that I would pop into Twitter several times a day, now I’ll go days. I can’t speak to hate speech (other than seeing reactions to it showing up a lot in trending topics) as I’m liberal with my use of block to keep Twitter as non-toxic as possible.
- nirui 3y agoThe third option is that the mass exodus is limited, and Twitter usage dipped just a bit. Mr Musk has obvious reasons to lie, but his users or people who don't like him can also lie. If the mass exodus has caused any major user count decrease, people should be talking about "Why would you still using Twitter?" than "Hey, I've closed my Twitter account, cool uh?"
- afiori 3y ago
- anonu 3y agoMastodon and SSB have terrible user interfaces. Centralization still makes the user experience way better and smoother, a necessary condition for a network effect and mass user adoption. I don't see these products going mainstream.
- archagon 3y agoPeople will wade through all sorts of terrible UI if their friends (or people they like) are using the app. See Snapchat.
- anonu 3y agoSnapchat is centralized. Also, I wouldn't call the Snapchat UI terrible. I would call it difficult for first time users. This creates a "buy in" effect with users... Lots of powerful tools have this concept, similar to the Bloomberg terminal.
- duxup 3y agoOn top of the issues that append only doesn’t seem to fit social graphs, having to exchange hashes sounds terrible for discovery.
- jamilton 3y agoYou don't really need discovery for the thing SSB is trying to be. Same way you don't need discovery for email, phone numbers, discord servers, etc.
- duxup 3y agoI think social networks/ something like a social network … people want that kind of thing. Otherwise just have a blog or whatever.
- dethswatch 3y agoHey how can I delete this message in future?
- andsoitis 3y agodon't record your social life.
- amelius 3y agoother people will do it for you
- dredmorbius 3y ago"I get spied with a little help from my friends ..." To rewrite the Beatle's lyric.
- andsoitis 3y agoyou cannot control what other people do, incl. where they post it so the least you can do is to not add to the volume.
- dhosek 3y ago- Your identity isn’t a username and doesn’t depend on a domain name or service provider. Instead, your username is a meaningless cryptographic hash that consists of random-looking numbers and letters. Your friends only need to know your hash to follow you, and you can keep it as public or private as you want. Yeah, that sounds like a really positive user experience. Hard pass.
- mjevans 3y agoNo one has or owns a "true name", collisions on names are expected and natural with a set of billions. Crypto keys aren't supposed to collide, but on a set of billions this could happen. -- If it does have a contingency for replacing the PKI part of the identity. This also covers loss of key material, etc... Identity is ephemeral and in flux. An indexed web of trust, who knows who, etc might work.
- mawise 3y agoAfter hard-avoiding social networks, I spent some time thinking about this problem when I wanted to share pictures of my kids. One of my requirements was privacy, another was _not inventing a protocol_. I landed on RSS and built Haven[1], but I made the rookie mistake of putting my principles above usability. I want it to be hard-decentralized so everyone runs their own server--but nobody wants to run their own server. I still have vision for what Haven could be, and supporting self-hosting remains important but I think I'll end up with something like the Matrix/Element model where there is a (free?) centralized server you can use, or you can host your own with full interoperability. [1]: https://havenweb.org https://havenweb.org
- mjevans 3y agoAvoid building new protocols. However if it really can't even be shoehorned into an existing protocol, or if there are extremely clear problems (to the point that the existing closest option is even unsuitable as a compatibility / bootstrap interface); then go ahead and make a protocol that really covers the use case, if you can also make an open source (as in free beer) library anyone can use to talk with it.
- jupp0r 3y agoI treat all of the web as being an append-only store and so should you. With storage being as cheap as it is (and it's still getting cheaper), your published information is going to be stored somewhere. Make decisions about posting something as if unpublishing it were impossible.
- kfrzcode 3y agoLol, we're about 30 years late. Everything, all the bits, are slurped by the NSA. ECHELON started in 1970s with the big five brothers. Here's some fun keywords to whet your whistles if you wanna: Camp Williams Boundless Informant ICREACH MAINWAY DCSNet BULLRUN/Edgehill - NSA breaking encryption by intentionally weakening encryption schemes and stealing master keys.
- SPBS 3y agoMethinks any social network that prioritizes its tech over user experience will not take off. It doesn't mean that new tech is automatic grounds for failure, but if that's all you have to show for it right now you barely have anything.
- swiftcoder 3y ago> Append-only databases are acceptable for financial ledgers, contracts, and things we want to be persistent and immutable. Neither financial ledgers nor contracts are things we should want to be persistent and immutable - as the crypto and smart contract folks have repreatedly demonstrated
- rglullis 3y agoNo, it has nothing to do with immutability. This "problem" with crypto is due to the lack of a central power to reverse a transaction.
- Gordonjcp 3y ago[flagged]
- Etrnl_President 3y agoSo don't use it? But the existing banking sytstem is no different in energy consumption –more still if you figure in supporting government agencies that crypto obviates.
- rglullis 3y agoEquating "crypto" with Bitcoin? Check! Talking about power usage per transaction, instead of talking all the costs to secure a network? Check! "Crypto is only for buying drugs", when anyone serious already said numerous times that the key value proposition of blockchain is not in privacy but its permissionless aspect? Check! It looks like you just won Stupid Crypto Basher Bingo for today...
- eru 3y agoWhile I mostly agree with you (especially about the energy savings from using alternatives to proof-of-work), we do have to admit that at the moment, crypto-currencies aren't really used to buy much of anything apart from other crypto-currencies. There's not even all that much drug business going on.