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An open social media network that encrypts your posts and distributes via RSS
- GregorStocks 13y agoWhen I click this link I just see a picture with no text. Is this brilliant open source twitter replacement limited to zero characters instead of 140?
- mckennr 13y agoFastCompany server seems to have f'ed up. Here is the Kickstarter link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1904431672/trsst-a-distributed-secure-blog-platform-for-the-o http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1904431672/trsst-a-distr...
- jensenbox 13y agoIt is dead for me too.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sirsar 13y agoI saw nothing but a picture of an RSS icon, and thought that was the joke: you can "follow" people by subscribing to their RSS feeds, and RSS already exists.
- AsymetricCom 13y agoI don't see what the problem is. RSS works, why reinvent the wheel?
- zanny 13y agoTwitter became popular because browsers didn't elegantly handle feeds. Tumblr blogs (or blogs in general) with post comments and following are much more open and just as usable as the Twitter platform, if you provide easy to use rss syndication and browsers support easy to use feed browsing without having to search out a google reader replacement.
- drivebyacct2 13y agoSO AMAZING! http://i1.minus.com/iib6CqQKFb2Cu.PNG http://i1.minus.com/iib6CqQKFb2Cu.PNG
- unknownian 13y agoI wonder when people will realize that Twitter is not the enemy. I do believe in decentralized social networking, but some software package you throw on your web server doesn't seem like the solution. We need a new Internet protocol. Even so, I wish this team luck and hope it to gain traction.
- intslack 13y agoDue to their centralized nature, and the result of being located in the US as one of the largest communication platforms, Twitter has become the enemy. It was probably not their intention to become the enemy, but that's the consequence of being located on US soil and being one of the largest service providers (just as Facebook and Google have.) When you decentralize, where providers are only responsible for a relative handful of the overall userbase, 'hoovering' is much more difficult.
- unknownian 13y agoI already know about its centralization and being in the US. So what? I don't put sensitive information into Twitter like I do in Google services. Do you expect your blogging service to be encrypted and private too? I guess the private messages should be secure but oh well, I've even heard Twitter demanding warrants for giving out DM info. Edit: I do wish we could expect "private messages" to be private.
- nemothekid 13y agoMaybe I'm lost on the service, but why would anyone expect privacy from Twitter? After all, any company can open their wallets and get the firehose from Twitter in realtime. Why would the NSA be barred from that?
- kintamanimatt 13y agoThe idea behind decentralization isn't that it eliminates surveillance, but that it makes indiscriminate mass surveillance less easy, especially when combined with good cryptography. Mass surveillance has existed in other societies without the help of today's technology, but technology, especially when it aggregates aggregates data in large hubs, makes it very easy. It's not the protocols that are to blame (they're just contracts for how things talk to other things) for enabling mass surveillance, but the way we've structured our software and services.
- thesteamboat 13y agoTheir whitepaper can be found here: http://www.trsst.com/paper/ http://www.trsst.com/paper/
- codezero 13y agoCan someone explain this system? I see the word decentralized thrown around, but the Kickstarter seems based around them building a server and hosting this. What is decentralized about them controlling the user ids? Basically: What am I missing here?
- james4k 13y agoYeah, I'm not sure I get it either. They call it a "syndication network" which, for me, gives the impression of a distributed network that is strictly controlled, which defeats the purpose. I hope this is just poor wording.
- troni 13y agoSigh. There are so many people doing this. I couldn't access the main article but read the Kickstarter page. From what I understand this is a plea for funding for (basic) components that are already built by other teams, but with an extra layer of encryption and a copy-cat UI. Why not just focus on encrypting content on an existing decentralized network project like pump.io or GNU social? Or any other open network? Build on some momentum that is already there rather than debug message transport for life?
- kintamanimatt 13y agoIt's cliché, but competition stimulates demand.
- burke 13y agoThe name is absolutely horrible. And they shouldn't just re-use the RSS logo, even at this stage.
- adriancooney 13y agoI think it's a play on "trust". Maybe capitalize on the current v for u trend and name it Trvst? It's slightly more legible and won't be a kick in the ego to change.
- agumonkey 13y agoSecond everything you said.
- tbirdz 13y agoI believe the name is making a portmanteau of RSS and trust, hence trsst.
- na85 13y agohttp://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tryst http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tryst
- linker3000 13y agoI won't use it - it doesn't end in .ly
- pndmnm 13y agoSide note -- in case you're curious about the origin of the RSS logo: http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/2004/09/26/2004-09-26-branch-builds/ http://www.squarefree.com/burningedge/2004/09/26/2004-09-26-... (5th item down).
- troni 13y ago"Looks and feels like Twitter" (actually uses screenshots from twitter to pitch product)
- rabino 13y agoIs there any intrinsic value in Twitter other than the plethora of people using it?
- est 13y ago> We are building the first fully-conforming trsst server, plus an open source web client including javascript libraries for core functionality like the cryptographic functions. Wait, wat? From the first glance it looks like they just patched buzz words together and decided to call it bitcoin-like decentralized syndication network on a PKI What about anonymity? Anyone who has the whole signing chain could track down the author. The anonymity of bitcoin is achieved by mixing hubs[1], you can't split a blog post in half and mix it. [1]: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity btw what happened to Open Source today? You have to hype on Kickstarter and waiting for people throwing money at you in order to start coding?
- joe_the_user 13y agoHonestly, I think it is worth skipping cryptographic anonymity for doable now. If you want anonymity, post from an Internet cafe on a laptop you bought for cash on Craiglist.
- rodolphoarruda 13y agois there any internet cafe that allows you to reach the open web without asking you for identification first?
- prawn 13y agoNever found one that does ask for ID. Is that your point?
- rodolphoarruda 13y agoHere where I live the wide majority of cafes (and other hotspots) rely internet access service to telcos which require you to fill in a form on their website identifying yourself before you hit the web. That's why I asked. Nice to know you can browse around anonymously in Starbucks though.
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- comex 13y agoI'll leave aside the comparisons to tent.io, app.net, StatusNet, and many other services... Considering that most Twitter users seem quite comfortable with publishing their posts for all to see, marketing a Twitter competitor as a post-Snowden measure seems somewhat opportunistic to me, especially when there are many other benefits to decentralized/open Twitter replacements.
- dsizzle 13y agoUh, isn't the primary purpose of Twitter to make your posts PUBLIC? Edit: I guess the focus is on the private messaging aspect, which I never use. Perhaps this is more popular than I realize.
- chatman 13y agoThese people look unprofessionals, judging by their intro video.
- miguelrochefort 13y agoWhy does this crap gets upvoted at all? Everyone and their mother can build a Twitter clone in 24h. Add a week for encryption and security. There's absolutely nothing new about this idea. Nothing. They don't even have a working prototype. All thin air. On top of that, what's the big deal with privacy nowadays? It's the opposite of what we should aim for as a society. Transparency is not only unavoidable, it's a good thing. Market this as a tool to organize protests in countries where privacy is a necessary evil, and maybe it will make more sense.
- 001sky 13y agoTransparency is not only unavoidable, it's a good thing. == No. Assymetry of information is unavoidable.
- greenyoda 13y ago"On top of that, what's the big deal with privacy nowadays? It's the opposite of what we should aim for as a society." That's what you (and Zuckerberg) think, but lots of other people disagree. For example, a journalist trying to communicate with a government whistleblower like Snowden (or any other sensitive source) requires privacy in any country. And some people just don't want the NSA/FBI/police reading everything they post to their group of friends.
- kintamanimatt 13y ago> Why does this crap gets upvoted at all? Who'd have guessed? It's an article about tech on a tech site. > What's the big deal with privacy nowadays? We found out about wholesale global surveillance. > It's the opposite of what we should aim for as a society. Just as I want to poop with the door closed, I also want to discuss private matters privately. Not everything in my life should be public and I should have the final say over that. Should every start-up be subject to absolute transparency? Kinda eliminates any competitive advantage if your competitors know what you're up to. > Transparency is not only unavoidable, it's a good thing. Transparency of government, yes. For the rest of us, mind your own damn business. > ... privacy is a necessary evil ... The good thing about having the option of privacy is that it's not forced upon you. If you're not happy with your life being private, you're free to share. When that option of privacy is eliminated, however, you're forced to share everything even if you don't want to, and that's pretty much the opposite of liberty.
- ulisesrmzroche 13y agoI'm not entirely sure I understand what's going on. I suggest changing the explainer video to at least a talking head - yes, old, but they have much better recall and have been proven to change brand preference (even with cigarretes)a and try to find a better synonym for 'encryption' - Good luck. Going against Twitter is a tall order.
- rdl 13y agoAt first glance there's stuff I like and dislike about this, but the strongest thing is probably separating out how the messages move around from how the keys move around. Moving encrypted blobs around is easy, as long as you don't care about traffic analysis. Handling keys is a bit harder. Separating those makes sense.
- zalew 13y agoDo they hope to be as successful as Diaspora? "open social media network that encrypts your posts and distributes via RSS" sounds like a great summary of a killer project that nobody will ever use.
- lucb1e 13y agoThought about this before, but there is one problem: you still leak loads of metadata just like with e-mail (whom you're communicating with, when you're communicating, how much you're communicating, and perhaps other things). Because of this, I didn't see any advantage.