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So here's an idea that's been forming in my head over the last few days - a distributed version of twitter. The problem with twitter as it currently stands is

So here's an idea that's been forming in my head over the last few days - a distributed version of twitter. The problem with twitter as it currently stands is that it relies on a centralised server (well, servers). That's easy to block, or legally compel to remove content. Imagine instead that every user on twitter had their own "stream" replicated on both their own computer and those of all of their followers. If you choose to follow someone, you get access to their stream either directly from the person themselves, or any of their other followers. This would partition the system according to popularity. The more followed a person is, the more replicas of their tweet stream available. When someone retweets something, it appears in their own stream, so retweets benefit from this replication. Any tweets that are particularly important and popular would be virtually impossible to suppress. To prove that tweets had originated from a particular user, every user would have a public/private key pair generated when they first begin using the system, and all tweets would carry an associated cryptographic signature. "Registering" for the system would be a matter of generating an identity using a key pair and a username. Clashes and impersonation of usernames is something I haven't yet thought of a solution to, though usernames would be for display purposes only; the real identity would be the public key. Replica discovery is another challenge, but there's much in the existing P2P literature and practice (esp bittorrent) that could possibly be of help here. As far as business models are concerned, Twitter's current one wouldn't work, as it relies on the centralised nature of the system. However it would be possible for developers of individual clients to make money by providing various value-adds, and these could co-exist with open source clients. Thoughts? Side note: There seems to be a bug in the comments system where the last paragraph is omitted. Is anyone else experiencing this? Extra last paragraph

nknighthb 13y ago
The first time you have to say "key" to an end-user, you have lost. Key management (including, critically, movement between devices) is the primary reason email encryption is rare. (And if the solution to key management involves letting a website deal with it, you've just invited re-centralization of the system, since users are going to gravitate to the service everyone else uses, not set up their own server.)
- etherael 13y ago
  That doesn't necessarily mean you've lost, take cryptocurrencies for example. Yes you can manage your own keys as an end user for your cryptocurrency holdings, but as you say most end users will prefer to work through a third party that will handle the complexities of key management for them. The trick is though that there can be an infinite amount of third parties all engaged in competition with each other and the end users just participate in that market like they would any other. OP's suggestion may well work the same way, certain end users could choose to handle their own key management, and there could be third parties that handle it for those that prefer not to. As long as the space for those third parties is infinite and end users can opt to handle key management themselves, it's still a decentralised solution.
  - nknighthb 13y ago
    This is not a technical problem. It is a human problem, and humans don't act like you want them to. There would emerge a handful of large, popular, simple, easy-to-use central sites. A rogue regime can block them just as easily as it just blocked Twitter. When it takes hours, days, or weeks for new moles to pop up, and they necessarily stay up, Whack-A-Mole is easy. And as sites keep getting whacked, people will lose the motivation to move on to yet another new site, learn its quirks, and rebuild their network. Twitter is a powerful tool of dissent precisely because everyone uses it. It's not limited to the technically sophisticated and/or motivated activists. Activists need access to regular people, and they won't have it on a network that's painful and annoying to use.
    - etherael 13y ago
      A competitive market of third party providers on a peer to peer based social media platform can be both easy to use and impossible to censor. Censorship resistance becomes just another thing on the shopping list for third party providers, those that can do it best get the largest amount of users. The more censorship becomes a problem, the more value there is in services that resist it.
      - 13y ago
yukichan 13y ago
> Thoughts? Yes, one: this idea has no chance. Also it's been tried. App.net, diaspora, etc. If there aren't any people there there's no reason to join. If you think your engineering buddies will be the catalyst, look how well that's turned out for Google+, and Google+ is made by Google and they forced it down millions of people's throats and it's still not being used by normal people. You think selling it as "it can't be banned in Turkey" is going to be appealing to many people? This is how it's going to go down, you're going to make some minimal app, a few people will use it once and never check it again, then you get burned out and go back to fixing some problem in your day job.
- peterkelly 13y ago
  > You think selling it as "it can't be banned in Turkey" is going to be appealing to many people? It might in Turkey :) I'm aware these things are really, really hard to get off the ground. But if what you said was entirely true, there would be no new social networking services appear, ever. Among the thousands of efforts, every now and then one manages to become successful. Additional paragraph which seems to be cut off from all comments.
  - yukichan 13y ago
    > But if what you said was entirely true, there would be no new social networking services appear, ever. I never said that. Obviously new social networks are being created through mobile apps, like whatsapp, because they fill a need that has nothing to do with your approach. There are already thousands of whatsapp, snapchat, etc clones so attempting to copy the first mover is going to be about as effective as you might imagine.
joyofdata 13y ago
thoughts -> TWISTER -> http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/
puppetmaster3 13y ago
I had similar ideas.im working ona different project but canwe pleasechat? @puppetmaster3
_glass 13y ago
I had the same idea coming up again and again. There is http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ but it is not ready yet. Even Wired thought about it: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/twister/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/twister/. It is definitely something worth investigating. Maybe Diaspora was just too early. https://joindiaspora.com/ https://joindiaspora.com/

nknighthb 13y ago

The first time you have to say "key" to an end-user, you have lost. Key management (including, critically, movement between devices) is the primary reason email encryption is rare. (And if the solution to key management involves letting a website deal with it, you've just invited re-centralization of the system, since users are going to gravitate to the service everyone else uses, not set up their own server.)

etherael 13y ago
That doesn't necessarily mean you've lost, take cryptocurrencies for example. Yes you can manage your own keys as an end user for your cryptocurrency holdings, but as you say most end users will prefer to work through a third party that will handle the complexities of key management for them. The trick is though that there can be an infinite amount of third parties all engaged in competition with each other and the end users just participate in that market like they would any other. OP's suggestion may well work the same way, certain end users could choose to handle their own key management, and there could be third parties that handle it for those that prefer not to. As long as the space for those third parties is infinite and end users can opt to handle key management themselves, it's still a decentralised solution.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  This is not a technical problem. It is a human problem, and humans don't act like you want them to. There would emerge a handful of large, popular, simple, easy-to-use central sites. A rogue regime can block them just as easily as it just blocked Twitter. When it takes hours, days, or weeks for new moles to pop up, and they necessarily stay up, Whack-A-Mole is easy. And as sites keep getting whacked, people will lose the motivation to move on to yet another new site, learn its quirks, and rebuild their network. Twitter is a powerful tool of dissent precisely because everyone uses it. It's not limited to the technically sophisticated and/or motivated activists. Activists need access to regular people, and they won't have it on a network that's painful and annoying to use.
  - etherael 13y ago
    A competitive market of third party providers on a peer to peer based social media platform can be both easy to use and impossible to censor. Censorship resistance becomes just another thing on the shopping list for third party providers, those that can do it best get the largest amount of users. The more censorship becomes a problem, the more value there is in services that resist it.
    - 13y ago

yukichan 13y ago

> Thoughts? Yes, one: this idea has no chance. Also it's been tried. App.net, diaspora, etc. If there aren't any people there there's no reason to join. If you think your engineering buddies will be the catalyst, look how well that's turned out for Google+, and Google+ is made by Google and they forced it down millions of people's throats and it's still not being used by normal people. You think selling it as "it can't be banned in Turkey" is going to be appealing to many people? This is how it's going to go down, you're going to make some minimal app, a few people will use it once and never check it again, then you get burned out and go back to fixing some problem in your day job.

peterkelly 13y ago
> You think selling it as "it can't be banned in Turkey" is going to be appealing to many people? It might in Turkey :) I'm aware these things are really, really hard to get off the ground. But if what you said was entirely true, there would be no new social networking services appear, ever. Among the thousands of efforts, every now and then one manages to become successful. Additional paragraph which seems to be cut off from all comments.
- yukichan 13y ago
  > But if what you said was entirely true, there would be no new social networking services appear, ever. I never said that. Obviously new social networks are being created through mobile apps, like whatsapp, because they fill a need that has nothing to do with your approach. There are already thousands of whatsapp, snapchat, etc clones so attempting to copy the first mover is going to be about as effective as you might imagine.

joyofdata 13y ago

thoughts -> TWISTER -> http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/

puppetmaster3 13y ago

I had similar ideas.im working ona different project but canwe pleasechat? @puppetmaster3

_glass 13y ago

I had the same idea coming up again and again. There is http://twister.net.co/ http://twister.net.co/ but it is not ready yet. Even Wired thought about it: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/twister/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/01/twister/. It is definitely something worth investigating. Maybe Diaspora was just too early. https://joindiaspora.com/ https://joindiaspora.com/