Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?

277 points by InInteraction 5 years ago | 226 comments

Once upon a time Jack said that Twitter initially was very open in its early stages but eventually became much more centralized, and the scale of supporting such a centralized network in the future could be unsustainable. “Blockchain points to a series of decentralized solutions for open and durable hosting, governance, and even monetization,” he added. “Much work to be done, but the fundamentals are there.” Are there any truly decentralized social communication tools/protocols to look at?

ignoranceprior 5 years ago |

Mastodon, GNU Social, and the Fediverse:

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:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)

cydactyl 5 years ago | |

I host a Mastodon instance and have posted below if anyone would like to learn/discuss more about both my instance, and Mastodon as a whole, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697231

systemvoltage 5 years ago | |

GNU Social is exactly how I imagined it to be.

scarmig 5 years ago | | |

That prompted me to imagine what a parody of a GNU-style Twitter would look like, and yes, the connection works from the opposite direction.

74d-fe6-2c6 5 years ago | | |

Sadly, it seems to be dead.

runjake 5 years ago | | |

I hear that it hosts a relatively vibrant Hurd community.

Spivak 5 years ago | | |

It’s not exactly modern design but it does work and is super easy to set up.

app4soft 5 years ago | |

> Mastodon

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.

viraptor 5 years ago | | |

I think you're mixing decentralised and unmoderated here. You're free to run those accounts from another instance or provision your own. But you can't force someone else to carry that account, just as I can't force your Mastodon instance to carry mine.

r721 5 years ago | | |

gargron (Mastodon dev)'s reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697378

thebigspacefuck 5 years ago |

Every time I go looking for one of these open alternatives it’s filled with fringe conspiracy theorists, actual racists, etc. Example is LBRY. Bryan Lunduke says he’s switching off YouTube for LBRY, so I go there to check it out. Top trending video is some white supremacist thing why I shouldn’t forget my ancestry. Search for “how to repair furnace”, second result is video how Epstein is alive. Even Lunduke is taking the opportunity to start his red-pilled politics channel. I have similar story with Mastodon.

The fundamentals are there but the big challenge is no censorship actually makes these smaller platforms something that people don’t want to use.

VoxPelli 5 years ago |

There are two approaches:

* 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)

jb775 5 years ago | |

For the indie approach, you would need to automate the self-hosting setup to gain realistic traction with the masses. What about somehow utilizing wireless router hardware for the local hosting? Pretty much everyone has a similar router/modem setup that's always connected to the internet. Could create a script that sets up a file structure directly on the router (or a usb stick plugged into the router) that stores/hosts that person's data (and maybe even stores/hosts misc data of others to backup other people's data)

VoxPelli 5 years ago | | |

I myself don't think it's necessary to host it locally at home. The most key thing to me is to control the domain name so that I can move from one provider to another.

civilized 5 years ago | |

> just like it was in the blogosphere days

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?

VoxPelli 5 years ago | | |

It's different because the blogosphere was all about posting blog posts whereas social media, which started out being called "microblogs", is about posting other types of material and doing other kinds of social interaction.

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.

BlueTemplar 5 years ago |

While somewhat offtopic, an important question is why would you want one ?

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.

mumblemumble 5 years ago | |

There's this sort of thing, definitely, but I'll note that Facebook lacks many of these features, and is still a toxic environment, although perhaps less overtly so.

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.

jeffreyrogers 5 years ago | |

There's a lot of toxicity on twitter, but also some interesting discussion that I have not found anywhere else online. I routinely block people who get too political or are gratuitously mean. It makes twitter much more pleasant.

clairity 5 years ago | |

for better discussion, 280 would be a minimum rather than a maximum, but twitter doesn't want better discussion as that also depresses engagement.

mumblemumble 5 years ago | | |

Maybe? But, on the other hand, even at 147 characters, your comment seems like a complete and well-composed observation. I don't see how requiring it to be 90% longer would improve it.

I only got past 280 by counting just 185 characters, and deciding to add this sentence as filler.

squidlogic 5 years ago | |

While I agree that the medium Twitter enforces is antithetical to reasonable discourse, I think this question is being asked because recently twitter and facebook deleted Trump's account (as well as some other prominent accounts). If you are ideologically aligned with one of those deleted accounts then it's a natural human response to think, "ok what if I'm next?" or "how can I still discuss my views?" and then look for alternatives.

bra-ket 5 years ago | |

1. Twitter bans people based on their political beliefs

2. Twitter provides a platform for cancel culture

3. I don’t like Jack Dorsey

zhte415 5 years ago |

PMs: Email.

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.

74d-fe6-2c6 5 years ago | |

With RSS you have to follow explicitely. I like the non-linear composition of the suggested tweets.

onpointed 5 years ago | | |

That's a good point! Could someone (or many someones) provide 'suggested' blogs/posts as a service on top of the existing infrastructure?

VoxPelli 5 years ago | |

Micropub is a more recent alternative to XML-RPC: https://indieweb.org/Micropub

zhte415 5 years ago | |

Hate to reply to myself, but if a webhost could do the above on a 1-click install managed service with a nice UI, it might be a winning ticket for this, Tumblr but better. An ansible or puppet script. UI make very smooth and nice looking, I think that would be a go-er. Where do I apply for funding (/s)?

thenanyu 5 years ago | | |

I fiddled with a toy project that was basically RSS-powered Tumblr. Seems like now might be a good time to pick it back up

avian 5 years ago | |

> Blog [...] Different post-type or tag for 'like' vs 'post'

See also Webmention for a way to have likes and replies on a blog that behave more like what you see on Twitter.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmention

Meekro 5 years ago |

Any company that can censor will eventually be pressured by governments (or its own employees) to do so. Therefore, I see Signal as a model for how everything should operate in the future: your "account" in the company's database is just an encrypted blob that they can't read.

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?

FreeTrade 5 years ago | |

You can, http://member.cash

It is on BCH, so cost is more like a fraction of a cent, but same idea.

systemvoltage 5 years ago |

Part of the genius of Twitter is the name and its brand. Twitter, tweet, tweeting, tweeted, etc. Even if Twitter had no goodwill, it's an excellent name for such a service.

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"

wombatmobile 5 years ago |

This likely isn't what the op had in mind, but if you're open to it, the best alternative to both reading and authoring on Twitter is to get up from your desk and exercise outside for 10 or 15 minutes. If you see other people, start a friendly, civil conversation. The skills you develop once you get the hang of doing this, and the information you'll stumble upon outclass Twitter, which is merely an interaction between human and keyboard.

InInteraction 5 years ago | |

This is what op practices every day :) And thank you for posting this reminder here.

benibela 5 years ago | |

The audience is too small

On Twitter you can easily reach thousands of people, in person you only talk to a handful

FinalDestiny 5 years ago |

There is a crypto project by the imfamous Tim called SAV3 launching soon. It aims to be a decentralized, uncensorable Twitter alternative. Definitely worth a look:

Medium: https://thetimtempleton.medium.com/what-is-sav3-d31ccb979ea1

Testnet: https://testnet.sav3.org/

Website: https://sav3.org/

bigphishy 5 years ago |

Secure scuttlebutt comes to mind, https://scuttlebutt.nz/

but you specifically asked about twitter, so I would recommend mastodon

pokstad 5 years ago |

Forget Twitter alternatives. How about a social network that mirrors real world social interactions? Only adding people you actually know. Keeping conversations private. Encryption to prevent censorship. What is the social media equivalent of signal?

hombre_fatal 5 years ago | |

This is already how people use social media like Instagram and features like Stories only viewable to your list of special friends. It’s pretty old hat by now.

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.

pokstad 5 years ago | | |

That’s not encrypted and free from censorship.

InInteraction 5 years ago | |

You can create Signal group chat (up to 150 members) https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007319331-Gr...

robertheadley 5 years ago | |

This is what Google thought Google+ would be, but users were more about connecting to anyone and everyone and it became too messy for Google to want to deal with.

ZguideZ 5 years ago | | |

G+ was glorious in the beginning days. With no qualms it was the best social network I've experienced yet. IMO, what killed it was Google requiring the real names - which I still believe was a good idea - but then the death knell was when they waffled on that. If they would have stood firm on the real names policy, I'm convinced they would still be here today and there is a very good chance they would have surpassed both Facebook and Twitter.

davidhq 5 years ago | |

https://uniqpath.com !

ryanSrich 5 years ago |

Isn’t everything effectively centralized in so far as a server host can cut your service? Or an ISP? Or even a payment processor? It seems the systems we built are too complex and rely on the judgment of too many humans. Humans that are easily influenced.

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.

nanomonkey 5 years ago | |

Scuttlebutt works quite well gossiping over a wifi router, doesn't even need to be connected to the internet. One could easily set up a mesh network in your home town and "socialize" over scuttlebutt without any further services.

zoobab 5 years ago | |

IPFS sucks big time, not censorship resistant.

And memory is lost when you do "garbage collect".

Larrikin 5 years ago |

Are there any tools out there that will posts your content to multiple platforms simultaneously? The current fringe sites are worthless to me since currently they are mostly created and used by people who were kicked off the top sites.

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.

selfishgene 5 years ago | |

Maybe the Matrix project will eventually offer something like this:

https://matrix.org/bridges/

prologic 5 years ago |

This is a question I had been asking for several years until I came across Twtxt (the spec/format originally created by Felix, @buckket, read about it at https://twtxt.readthedocs.org) -- When I came across it I saw a bit more potential so I created (what is effectively) a multi-user client also called Twtxt over at https://twtxt.net (launched in Aug 2020). Since then we've also created a Mobile App (Goryon) available in the App Store (iOS) and Play Store (Android), we also offer free (at this time) hosting of pods (individual instances) at https://twt.social/ -- Today we have a dozen pods/instances and some ~300 users. My own pod (twtxt.net) sees around ~4M hits/month :O

vimy 5 years ago |

https://getaether.net is decentralized reddit.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5 years ago | |

I've used it and unfortunately nobody is on it. Not even for boring discussions. Imo your best bet nowadays is to find obscure discord servers. it has wide adoption and doesn't have mass appeal since each server casts its net only as wide as it's admins can reach.

icy 5 years ago | | |

Discord is neither decentralized nor censorship resistant. Discord (the company) has full control over what is allowed to be discussed on there.

mxuribe 5 years ago |

Oh wow, @InInteraction there are plenty of federated twitter (and facebook, and youtube, and instagram, etc.) alternatives...The key term to search for is "fediverse" (sort of a portmaneau of federated univers of social networks). The following info site might help with a brief overview: https://the-federation.info/

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!!!

DenisM 5 years ago |

I always wondered if one could start "tweeting" by dropping messages directly into the Bitcoin blockchain. Lots of people are very invested in it, and forking the blockchain is a lot of work and is unlikely to happen causally for the purpose of censorship.

Retric 5 years ago | |

Sure, it would cost something like 50$ a tweet and nobody would read em, but the protocol allows it.

Sargos 5 years ago | |

Smoke Signal on Ethereum does this. Uncensorable messages.

https://foundrydao.com/smokesignal/

FreeTrade 5 years ago | |

Here you go.

https://member.cash

suyash 5 years ago |

How about having one's own news/update feed on your website that people can follow/subscribe to using something like RSS ? I'm looking to build something like this and open source it, will you use ? any suggestions ?

nameless_noob 5 years ago |

There's Urbit and Twetch. First uses some of ethereum, and calling a twitter replacement is 1% of it's story. Twetch uses a bitcoin fork as a db and users have to pay to post, but get impression revenue directly

ekam 5 years ago | |

Urbit is interesting but $120 for a planet is egregious

gw666 5 years ago | | |

That's what I said about Bitcoin at $1 (groan).... I'm heavy into Urbit now, learning their programming language, Hoon (more mindbending than Brainfuck).

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!

chc4 5 years ago | | |

Urbit using Ethereum as a global consistent PKI store seemed like a perfectly fine idea, until transaction costs for distributing those keys bloomed 11,000% in a year :(

riffic 5 years ago | |

urbit: because templeOS wasn't nutty enough.

StanislavPetrov 5 years ago |

Hive is a decentralized, blockchain based alternative, though the layout resembles Reddit a bit more than Hive. There are a variety of front ends people use to connect to the Hive blockchain (and you can create your own, if you're so inclined).

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:

https://peakd.com/

Direct link:

https://hive.blog/

StanislavPetrov 5 years ago | |

Edit: *..resembles Reddit a bit more than Twitter.

kain_niak 5 years ago |

I use a protocol on the Bitcoin Cash blockchain, through my software wallet. It also has a bunch of portal sites like memo.cash and member.cash

These protocols were initially developed for Bitcoin but after it dropped the ball on scaling everything was ported over to Bitcoin Cash.

FreeTrade 5 years ago |

https://member.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.

rasengan 5 years ago |

There's Nomad [1] based on the footnote [2] protocol.

[1] https://nmd.co

[2] https://github.com/kyokan/footnote/

jonas_kgomo 5 years ago |

i remember once peepeth[0] was trending in the ethereum ecosystem. There used to be something called tsu[1] a few years ago, that paid fiat for its users.

[0] https://peepeth.com/welcome [1] https://www.vox.com/2014/10/21/11632070/new-social-network-t...

holler 5 years ago |

It isn't decentralized but I'm working on a new alternative and you're welcome to check it out. It's focused on low-friction, open, live discussion (messaging meets news aggregator).

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)

trixie_ 5 years ago |

The web is already decentralized, you are free to setup your own new Twitter website and tell people about it. Want it to be hidden or hard to shutdown? Put it on the dark web.

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.

lenkite 5 years ago | |

How do you put something on the "dark web" ? Is it something other than hosting on your PC ?

wolco5 5 years ago | | |

You host anywhere.

Follow this: https://medium.com/@jasonrigden/how-to-host-a-site-on-the-da...

dredmorbius 5 years ago |

There are federated networks which don't allow for centralised access restrictions as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al, are evidencing today.

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.

icy 5 years ago | |

> there's an exceedingly healthy culture of blocking sites which themselves advocate oppressive practices

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.

jamesgeck0 5 years ago | | |

“Free speech” servers are sort of infamous for nazis and brigading, unfortunately. There have been enough incidents that some moderators block first and ask questions later.

cesarvarela 5 years ago | |

Don’t you think the tears might be yours someday? Will you always be on the “right” side? Will the people with the power to censor you always be “good”?

I think censorship is a game where everybody loses eventually.

hpcjoe 5 years ago | | |

This. Precisely.

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.

zoobab 5 years ago | |

"I welcome their tears."

Hopefully we have mathematics and physics on our side.

eclipseo76 5 years ago | |

> there's an exceedingly healthy culture of blocking sites which themselves advocate oppressive practices

That's an issue, not a feature.

username3 5 years ago |

You can choose your own moderators on Aether. https://getaether.net/

lgats 5 years ago |

If you’re looking to browse twitter with less of the privacy invasive tracking mechanisms ,

https://github.com/zedeus/nitter

Public instances: https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/wiki/Instances

kain_niak 5 years ago |

I use a protocol for a decentralised message board that builds on top of the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Initially it was developed for Bitcoin but it can only work on Bitcoin if transactions under 1 cent are possible.

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!

jeffreyrogers 5 years ago |

>...and the scale of supporting such a centralized network in the future could be unsustainable.

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.

iFire 5 years ago |

Most of the decentralized Twitter alternative systems required AGPL to join. Are there any MIT licensed social protocols?

wut42 5 years ago | |

Protocols aren't licensed. You're totally free to implement an ActivityPub server with any license you like. AGPL is preferred by the community, but it's not mandatory. Honk uses ISC, Smithereen is unlicense, pubgate is BSD-3-Clauses, ….

iFire 5 years ago | | |

I appreciate listing some non-AGPL ActivityPub servers! Thanks.

Finnucane 5 years ago |

How much of a hive of scum and villainy are you willing to tolerate? If you were on Twitter, I’d assume at least some.

turblety 5 years ago |

Does federated count? There is the opensource project here: https://github.com/jointwt/twtxt

And a public instance at: http://twtxt.net/

alexmingoia 5 years ago |

Blogs and RSS/microformats. Use your own feed reader of choice, send webmentions for notifications or cross-blog comments. See https://indieweb.org

It’s decentralized, and more importantly it’s based on web standards. It works today.

endori97 5 years ago |

http://twister.net.co/

billylindeman 5 years ago |

https://voice.com is blockchain based

Finnucane 5 years ago | |

How is blockchain a useful feature?

pluc 5 years ago | | |

Immutable, attributable, verifiable/secure? Can't see anything else really

holler 5 years ago | |

Nice, hadn't heard of this. Is it similar to steemit? Also how do you delineate being "decentralized" versus using blockchain to store data?

Working on another site and I have contemplated whether using blockchain for some of the data would have any advantages.

RMPR 5 years ago |

Many people mentioned it already, but Mastodon. Shameless plug, I wrote an article[0] about my experience migrating

0: https://rmpr.xyz/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-Mastodon/

runjake 5 years ago |

Stick with me here: your own website connected to a webring[1].

Unfortunately, both went all but extinct when we gave up autonomy for convenience and shininess.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webring

edwnjos 5 years ago |

I'm working on one, every account is based around a bitcoin wallet and the source of truth is one the client side. Will be open to testing soon!: https://chapo.app

instakill 5 years ago |

Lots of talk about federated services in this thread. Anyone have a link to a good YouTube video running through the fundamentals + any principles required to build the "hello world" version of a federated service?

sumnole 5 years ago |

https://mas.to

davidhq 5 years ago |

https://uniqpath.com p2p search and newsfeeds (soon) join the discussion ^_^

pasttense01 5 years ago |

IRC (Internet Relay Chat):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irc

exolymph 5 years ago |

The network effects are irreplaceable, unfortunately.

cydactyl 5 years ago |

I am the admin of both a Mastodon Instance(https://zee.li), and a Peertube Instance(https://tube.zee.li), both of which are ActivityPub based federated instances.

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.

thepra 5 years ago |

I would say pleroma.social, you host your own instance and it's much lighter on computer resources than Mastodon.

companyhen 5 years ago |

https://arweave.org has some options

zoobab 5 years ago |

Bitcoin has resisted censorship.

Other decentralized services don't allow free speech.

viraptor 5 years ago | |

You can run an instance where you can post whatever you want. That's the decentralised part.

itsbits 5 years ago |

I don't think there is any social media platform that will remain decentralised/open. Remember Twitter or for that matter Facebook in the beginning were not moderated as much as now. Entities like Governments can end up forcing that.

thu2111 5 years ago | |

The problem those firms have is not government coercion but unchecked extremism in their own employee base.

015UUZn8aEvW 5 years ago |

the world wide web?

AnthonyMouse 5 years ago | |

Yes, but no.

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.

dane-pgp 5 years ago | | |

> 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].

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.05300.pdf

[1] https://brightid.gitbook.io/brightid/

rakoo 5 years ago | | |

You're describing the indieweb: your identity is decentralized and is your domain name (not at the whims of billionaires), you put up whatever content you want but typically articles, interact with other people's content (likes, retweet, comment) without the need to create an account anywhere.

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.

joseph_ven 5 years ago |

Yes!! do check out venturon.org a social media platform for good, where people can come together, create teams, volunteer and also ideate trend issues.

joseph_ven 5 years ago |

Yes! Do join Venturon.org, a social media platform for good, where we can together ideate, volunteer and build solutions.

dboreham 5 years ago |

To a first approximation: none.

probinso 5 years ago |

Paper and pencil has historically been very useful

jariel 5 years ago |

"the only winning move is not to play."

mshenfield 5 years ago |

There hasn't been a post with the words "twitter alternative" in 3 weeks [0]... but this probably has nothing to do with Twitter banning Donald Trump today.

[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

ralusek 5 years ago | |

I think it has to do with Google Play Store and Apple App Store banning Parler.

blackrock 5 years ago |

The Blockchain

ppezaris 5 years ago | |

oh please no. imagine if each tweet consumed as much energy as a current bitcoin transaction. that'd be great. /s

blackrock 5 years ago | | |

He said he wanted decentralized.

2Gkashmiri 5 years ago |

i have a question for signal users. what happens when signal will be used by teams to organise the capitol building style attacks? or a disinformation campaign by a crony government? or racial message storms that make rounds on whatsapp (why they introduced the 5 forward limit)

eplanit 5 years ago | |

They called it Springtime in Egypt.

2Gkashmiri 5 years ago | | |

Will usa see an American spring? Ala Arab spring? I dont care about that. I am asking the technology. How will it handle such stuff