https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_(software)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_social
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse
The two software systems are compatible (both comply with the OStatus standard) so you can interact with content on servers that use the system.
Diaspora also exists, but it's arguably more like Facebook:
How decentralized alternative to Twitter works IRL:
Never exists account - https://mastodon.social/@1234567890examplecom2021
> The page you are looking for isn't here.
Suspended account - https://mastodon.social/@realDonaldTrump
> The page you were looking for doesn't exist here anymore.
The fundamentals are there but the big challenge is no censorship actually makes these smaller platforms something that people don’t want to use.
> no censorship actually makes these smaller platforms something that people don’t want to use
Invert that sentence and you see why it's happening on the major platforms; deplatforming the deplorables is necessary or they drive normal people and advertisers away.
A decentralized Twitter would need decentralized moderation.
So what’s the analogue for social networks? Tim Berners Lee’s pods? Would it be an app that pulls from and pushes to Twitter/insta/fb in addition to its own servers? That’s how apple’s iMessage has done so well. It falls back to SMS if the other person isn’t an adopter of their system.
New systems that can take advantage of existing network effects seem so much more likely to gain popularity. And we really need more of the open interop with social media.
I have an idea of creating a plugin to a decentralized social network that acts as a moderator. The plugin will work on behalf of the user, compared to current moderation which acts on behalf of the platform. Different users can select either different moderators or different settings for the same moderators. Moderating could be a mix of AI and human flagging. Moderating could also include more editorial work such as suggesting people to follow.
I have an idea for an app whose primary motivation is offering a comment section for websites that don't normally have comments or have them disabled (yes, this idea is old as dirt and has been tried many times).
The part I'm really struggling with is how one would market such an app without targeting free speech absolutists and nutters, despite it being really useful for everyone. It seems like the moment you start highlighting free speech as a feature you become a magnet for the absolute worst kind of people.
I think that any attempt to produce something that works like the comments section of a newspaper website will invariably produce something that works like the comments section of a newspaper website.
Yes, I am aware of the irony of saying this in the comments section of a website called Hacker News.
What the people who actually value free speech want is sensible, non-political moderation where the free speech absolutists and nutters are muzzled but the minorities complaining about oppression are not.
Disqus has done this to a fairly wide extent. They allow site maintainers to moderate comments IIRC.
And/or use an algorithm to classify posts, and allow users to pick and choose what kinds of stuff they want filtered.
Then by default have most of these filters on, but you can disable some of them if they go too far.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
>The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
>...
>The equilibrium is basically what we see now. The neutral gatekeeper institutions lean very liberal, though with a minority of conservative elites who are good at keeping their heads down and too mainstream/prestigious to settle for anything less. The ghettos contain a combination of seven zillion witches and a few decent conservatives who are increasingly uncomfortable but know there’s no place for them in the mainstream.
And the worst thing is that Twitter is based in Silicon Valley, with many of its key employees belonging to the same herd.
There must be an alternative platform.
1. What would make someone “disown their families for supporting Trump”? What are their motivations? How are they arriving at the conclusion they need to do this? Does the disowned family member supporting trump play any responsibility in this engagement? What values do you hold dear to yourself that might make you disown another family member if violated?
2. When you call someone a “moronic sheep…” Do you think that person feels like a sheep? Do you think they might see you as a sheep for being apart of a different “herd”? I would encourage you to explain why they are moronic sheep rather than taking the mental shortcut of calling them a moronic sheep and therefore unworthy of having valid opinions.
3. You summarize behavior as: “‘orange man baaad’ chants.” Why do you think they see him as bad? Why do you think they “chant” it? Is there anything you say, that they might characterize as a chant?
Your post pretty much says “I want a place that doesn’t have people that think differently,” “I want a place where I won’t be challenged,” “I want a place without sheep,” “I want a place with people that think the same as me.”
Do you think what you’re actually looking for is an echo chamber?
* The federated approach, where many Twitter like sites can interconnect and exchange messages. One current example of this is Mastodon, older examples are Status.net/Identi.ca
* An indie approach, where everyone basically hosts their own profile and there are no Twitter like sites at all, one instead uses readers that are completely separate from ones hosted profile, just like it was in the blogosphere days. One example of this is https://indieweb.org/
I favor the indie approach as the federated approach seems to in practice often end up with interoperability issues and mono-cultures, at least historically. + there’s still central providers, just a few more than in the case of Twitter, whereas in the indie world everyone is basically a provider themselves and one can eg. put up a static site and use that (through various Micropub tricks and such)
so if it's just like the blogosphere days, how exactly is this different from just advocating for a return to the blogosphere, which hasn't happened for many years and hence probably isn't happening for a reason?
In essence the indieweb enables posting all of those types of content, and making all of those interactions, through ones own site, in a way that can give a user experience comparable to eg. Twitter.
It's the classic pendulum of innovation – Twitter and friends spearheaded new interactions and UX that once proven can be standardized and implemented in the open, just like the blogosphere was an open implementation of the pattern of news sites.
IMHO the main issue of Twitter is not even the way how it's now a walled garden (and since recently, effectively outside of the Web).
It's how the combination of a ~~140~~ 280† character limit, personal walls, hashtags, likes and an horribly hard to navigate comment system has resulted in a medium where constructive debate is almost impossible, while feelings-driven mobs rule.
†While moving to a 280 character limit probably made Twitter better, I'm wondering about the loss of compatibility with texts. One actually remarkable way in how Twitter was good is for post-disaster communication, which is the very situation where Internet might be down while basic cellphone communication still up.
My own guess is that the most fundamental problem is that Dunbar's number is real, and bad things happen if you blow past it. Large scale human communication works best when it is not modeled as an endless, 24/7 masquerade ball where the theme of the party is bullhorns.
I only got past 280 by counting just 185 characters, and deciding to add this sentence as filler.
2. Twitter provides a platform for cancel culture
3. I don’t like Jack Dorsey
Posts: Blog. [XML-RPC if you wanna email from your phone to your blog. Different post-type or tag for 'like' vs 'post' (heck, invent any 'like' 'like' you like).]
Follow: RSS.
It's all there and decentralised for years, just not in a polished package of a 140 character comment, and likely requires more than 15 seconds of thinking. Actually really straightforward.
Only tricky thing would be SMS but that's... 'depreciated' as a popular feature today.
See also Webmention for a way to have likes and replies on a blog that behave more like what you see on Twitter.
Is there no way to make a Twitter-like broadcast messaging app work on top of a Signal backbone? It'd take a smarter programmer than me to figure out the details, but it's got to be possible, right?
I mean, right now we have several well-accepted cryptocurrencies that I can use to send an uncensorable, untraceable payment anywhere in the world for about $5 in fees. It's a bit clunky, but it basically works. Why can't I post an uncensorable tweet for $5, too?
It is on BCH, so cost is more like a fraction of a cent, but same idea.
None of the options presented here have that.
"Hey dude, did you see that mastodon post?"
"I'll add you on GNU Social"
"Fediverse is getting popular, wanna fediverse?"
"Nmd'ed you!"
"Totally Aaether that!"
"Breaking News: The Prime Minister of Australia just diaspored"
And I think that is the primary reason why GNU/Linux never caught on and everybody just called it Linux. "What OS do you use?" "GNU/Linux" "Wait, I didn't know there was a New Linux!".
Even with Twitter, I think there are probably thousands of words that would sound as natural as "tweet" if people were constantly saying it (and shouldn't it be "twit" anyway?).
The average person doesn't want the hassle of self-hosting their own social media server. Not when they can join Twitter and be tweeting at the world within seconds without ever worrying about the technicals.
That means the kind of people you'll be talking to on these platforms will most be techno-libertarian types. A plus for some, a strong negative for others.
Also, I don't see how decentralized service can live without decentralization of control and ownership of nodes. Without the latter, you just get a multi-DC centralized service. So there's no alternative to a certain degree of self-hosting. Either you yield control to a central authority, or you care enough to maintain a node under your control.
OTOH self-hosting should be made as simple as possible for an average user. Much like running a Skype node, or a torrent node did not feel like hosting, and felt like just running an app. This is ruined by the need to run on mobile clients (can't be reasonable servers) and exacerbated by the widespread NATting of home networks, so your desktop can't easily be a server, too.
On Twitter you can easily reach thousands of people, in person you only talk to a handful
Medium: https://thetimtempleton.medium.com/what-is-sav3-d31ccb979ea1
Testnet: https://testnet.sav3.org/
Website: https://sav3.org/
but you specifically asked about twitter, so I would recommend mastodon
I use Facebook and Stories every day (Stories seem lame but are too useful for, say, meeting women, to dismiss) but if you went to my profile you’d think I haven’t used Facebook in seven years.
In case you don’t know, the Stories system replicated on every social media platform including Youtube and Twitter most recently lets you post ephemeral images/video/text and anyone who responds to it is sending a private 1:1 message.
It’s a surprisingly healthy direction away from the awful default public posts with public comments and likes. It’s liberating to post stuff as a story where nobody can know if 0 or 100 of your friends engaged with it.
Just throwing this out there since most HNers aren’t really hip with how social media is used these days.
In others words, people are on Twitter quibbling in public because, like HN arguments, we actually like doing it. Not because there aren’t alternatives.
Even something like IPFS relies on unrestricted access to the internet. I’m against most government intervention, but requiring certain services to refrain from censorship seems like the only real path to an open web.
And memory is lost when you do "garbage collect".
However, as an example, if there was a tool that would post my video to youtube, dailymotion, and however other many video sites are out there I'd gladly do it. You could still maintain a preferred network to help consolidate likes and subscribers, but you are less beholden to any one company if your content has existed many places for years.
It could be difficult in mediums like twitter where there is a real two way interaction, perhaps a comment consolidator within the tool?
If it doesn't exist I think government should atleast build the tool for themselves. There's no reason for communication from the government to exist first on a private platform. It should be put out on a .gov platform that then goes to whatever popular platforms of the day exist.
There are many other sites that can provide an overview/intro. Plus, the following is a sample of alternatives:
Blogging => Plume, Write.as/WriteFreely => Comparable to Blogger.com, Medium, Tumblr
Image Hosting => PixelFed, MediaGoblin => Comprable to Instagram
Microbloging => Gnu social, Mastodon, Microblog.pub, Pleroma, postActiv, pump.io, etc. => Comparable to twitter
Pastebin => distbin => Comparable to Pastbin.com, ~GitHub
Social networking => Diaspora, Friendica, Honk, Hubzilla => Comparable to Facebook
Audio/Video hosting => PeerTube, funkwhale, NodeTube => Comprable to Youtube, SoundCloud, vimeo
Events => Mobilizon => Comparable to Facebook, Meetup.com
Forum/Link Aggregator => Lemmy => Comparable to Hacker News, Lobste.rs, Reddit
Good luck!!!
I just checked on opensea.io; you can get a planet for 0.04 ETH--around $50.
Urbit is the Next Big Thing--I haven't seen anything like it in 40 years; it's a "computing platform" blank slate! I don't think it'll ever go away because there are enough tech people to keep it going. I can also see academia using it.
Setting up your own planet is a real hassle. Soon, you will be able to "rent" your own planet for a monthly fee (like paying for an ISP), and the provider will take care of all hardware and software. On the other hand, you can put your planet on a server for $10-$20/month.
Look into it; it's going to be a wild ride!
PeakD is one of the most popular and user-friendly ways to connect, and they have a bunch of links on their front page that have a lot more information:
Direct link:
These protocols were initially developed for Bitcoin but after it dropped the ball on scaling everything was ported over to Bitcoin Cash.
The website is a window to the platform, but anyone can host a mirror or a personal version, all it requires is a Bitcoin Cash node.
Its fully decentralised, with self-sovereign identity and is uncensorable.
[1] https://nmd.co
[0] https://peepeth.com/welcome [1] https://www.vox.com/2014/10/21/11632070/new-social-network-t...
While some may not be interested because isn't decentralized, I'm a firm believer that we need more options, more competition.
https://sqwok.im/p/QBKItu9bkEPXfA (cross posted this page)
Don’t get sucked into the blockchain buzzword. Blockchain is a solution to a very specific problem / set of requirements.
The real problem is that so many people joined a single service in the first place, but that’s up to them and has pros/cons. Federated services have a rough history - see XMPP.
Follow this: https://medium.com/@jasonrigden/how-to-host-a-site-on-the-da...
But projects such as Mastodon put control in the hands of site or node administrators, and at least on Mastodon, there's an exceedingly healthy culture of blocking sites which themselves advocate oppressive practices.
So those looking for an uncensored microphone may be somewhat disappointed.
I welcome their tears.
Oppressive, but defined by whom? I've seen arbitrary blocks of instances simply because they run Pleroma or Soapbox. In fact, my own instance was briefly on fediblock.org's list because my bio says "I care about freedom—both in software, and in speech"; the reason stated was "free-speech". That's absurd!
As is often said on the fediverse, some switched over from Twitter due to too much censorship, others due to to little.
I think censorship is a game where everybody loses eventually.
All you need is for the definitions of various words to change over time. And then you find yourself on the wrong side of an (arbitrary) line. Then you get deplatformed.
I'd say think carefully before you open that door, and walk past that particular dangerous line, but our "platforms" seem to have driven their mobs/herds over that line, with nary a thought to what comes next.
The slope is slippery. And we are gathering speed. Whilst people cheer the actions.
Hopefully we have mathematics and physics on our side.
That's an issue, not a feature.
https://github.com/zedeus/nitter
Public instances: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances
The protocol is also used by various portal sides like memo.cash and member.cash
I prefer member.cash because it has that feel of reddit.
It's pretty cool actually, if somebody upvotes you instead of karma you get satoshis!
I don't think this is borne out in practice. Centralization seems to be the rule for large systems since networking scales O(n^2) otherwise, so decentralization has to provide pretty compelling advantages to overcome this large disadvantage.
And a public instance at: http://twtxt.net/
It’s decentralized, and more importantly it’s based on web standards. It works today.
Working on another site and I have contemplated whether using blockchain for some of the data would have any advantages.
Unfortunately, both went all but extinct when we gave up autonomy for convenience and shininess.
While individual nodes are not decentralized the federated network as a whole is. It is ultimately up to you to choose a well-federated, fast, and reliable instance that meets your criteria for information freedom and user protections. You can find an uncurated list here(https://instances.social/list) or a curated list of instances committed to "active moderation against racism, sexism and transphobia." here(https://joinmastodon.org/communities).
My instance while valuing user protection, errs on the side of information freedom as a valuable principle to protect as a whole. Both Mastodon and Peertube include pretty effective and comprehensive moderation tools to ensure you never see what you do not want to see, but that decision is not made for you on my instances.
The content policy below applies to both instances- Moderation will be minimal and limited to abusive or illegal content, ultimately we want to foster an inclusive environment without draconian, biased, puritan, or emotional moderation. Moderation is taken care of by server host & volunteers. NSFW content is allowed but must be blurred by default. Gore/Porn/Nudity = NSFW. Any content that abides by Illinois, New York City, New York State, and U.S. Law is allowed.
Server Specs: i7-9700k 512GB NVMe SSD 64GB DDR4 1Gbps
Backend Infrastructure- Hosted in NYC, Wasabi S3 storage backend, with BunnyCDN as CDN provider for both instances.
Who we are- This instance is ran voluntarily. I have been a server administrator for going on 10 years now starting with a passion for gaming private servers and evolving into running a business that offers web/service hosting for various clients & personal projects. These instances will not disappear overnight given my track record with various volunteer services(Tor Non-Exit Relay, Free VPN for my Mumble, Mumble, Various websites for musician/artist friends, that I have and still host).
Why we created this instance- Freedom of speech & information is paramount in a free society. While not legally obligated, centralized platforms have increasingly infringed on societal and moral obligations to appease advertisers & coddle the fragile.
How long we plan to maintain this instance- Indefinitely
How we will pay for this instance- Donations, Personal Funds.
More instances are in the works and I plan on hosting more instances for the community and web at large that follow the same principles, Gitlab, Pixelfed(ActivityPub), and Funkwhale(ActivityPub) instances immediately come to mind.
Other decentralized services don't allow free speech.
I think what people are really looking for is some kind of software platform that allows them to put up their own website, so nobody else can delete it out from under them, but also have some kind of interaction with other people with their own independent sites.
So that they can press a button and "retweet" something someone else said, or reply to it without creating a new account on the site of everybody you want to reply to etc.
The hard problem is probably to get some kind of a distributed user accounts database, so that you own your account based on cryptography rather than the capricious whims of billionaires, but still use it on more than your own website. Maybe something like Namecoin but for usernames.
I seriously think that solving decentralized identity (and trust) is the most important current goal in the field of online technology. Once it is solved, all future innovations become ten times easier to implement and adopt. That's probably an exaggeration, but it could certainly be a more foundational technology than cryptocurrency, for example.
Anyway, to get a sense of the state of the art, I recommend this paper[0] from late last year. To pick just one of the approaches discussed in it, let me mention BrightID which is documented here[1].
The real blocker is that in practice there is a huge step between creating an account on a commercial service and buying your domain name, setting up a website and making it reachable to the world.
[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
