Ask HN: What are decentralized Twitter alternatives?
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?
238 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 263 ms ] threadhttps://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)
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.
Especially since Mastodon seems to have (from my limited understanding) a "if you dare to talk to the Bad People you're also a Bad Person and getting dropped" mentality, effectively meaning that you cannot run an instance that is federating with both the mainstream fediverse and anything the mainstream fediverse doesn't like.
100% more freedom right there. Freedom doesn't mean you can force me to listen to you. It means I can't force you to stop. What Mastodon enables people to do is a very direct way of stopping conversation with people that can't behave.
We really need to move beyond this mindset where we think anyone will use an exact replica of an incumbent with some silver bullet tweak nobody actually cares about. It’s like thinking “Twitter but built with Rust” is compelling and getting mad at the sheeple when they couldn’t care less.
> Especially since Mastodon seems to have (from my limited understanding) a "if you dare to talk to the Bad People you're also a Bad Person and getting dropped" mentality, effectively meaning that you cannot run an instance that is federating with both the mainstream fediverse and anything the mainstream fediverse doesn't like.
The toxic part here isn't someone banning/defederating you, but someone who didn't ban/defederate you getting threatened by others that they'd better do that or else everyone else will defederate them.
How do you fix that, just force everyone to federate with each other? How do you stop people from forking their own clients to remove the forced federation?
What both 'tgsovlerkhgsel and I are trying to say is that there is this kind of realpolitik going on at Mastodon, of which you should be aware before considering to join. You start going against the "party line", you risk getting defederated or, if you're an user on someone else's instance, having your instance's admins pressured to ban you on the threat of the whole instance getting defederated by others. And it's a significant threat, because as much as Mastodon is distributed, people still want to stay connected to the major instances.
I myself moved from Twitter to Mastodon a while ago and very much enjoy it, but I also try to not say anything there that would attract interest of the defederationists.
Maybe a blockchain? A public and unalterable ledger (which is what a blockchain is, of course). But being completely unmoderated users will use tools to moderate for them, tools that can block content they don't like. Indeed, users would coalesce and build lists of who to listen to, and who to not, and they'd keep that list on the unalterable and uncensorable blockchain.
At some point, people learn that their lives are better without this or that group constantly coming in and will take protective/separatists measures. Which is exactly what you are seeing.
Now individual networks are private companies and might chose to have stricter moderation, but 1) that should place them in a different legal category, and 2) there should be enough competition to provide valid alternatives to the people being blocked from such networks, otherwise it risks abuse of dominant position, given the monopoly of access.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gab_(social_network)
(I think that the client-based filtering, although with default settings provided by the server (which the user can choose to use, customize, or ignore), might be better, but server-based could be used if needed, e.g. to avoid flooding the bandwidth. If you are using NNTP, then you can filter by From header, References header, Injection-Info header, Newsgroups header, etc. The server probably could still ban users who misuse those headers for ban evasion, I suppose, but if those headers are not misused, and the connection does not waste too much memory/disk space/bandwidth, then a hard ban is not needed and the filtering can be used instead.)
How many instances left?
How many also suspended `@realDonaldTrump`?
It doesn't matter how many instances block him - nobody can be forced to listen to him.
Yeah, something like Hillary Clinton's private email server, right?
- Trump family also using private email server for gov communication
- Implying that a random Mastodon instance on the internet would be more trusted than his own
- Implying that it matters at all for posting public messages or is similar in any way to private messages
I'm not trying to say, I'm just saying!
vim is not GNU, emacs is.
That means it would actually be <M-t> Hello World! <C-x> <C-s>, and the documentation would have a lengthy section on what the "Meta" key is and why not just call it "Alt".
EMACS dates back to 1976 (David Moon & Guy Steele); vi also dates back to 1976 (Bill Joy).
GNU Project dates back "only" to 1983, with GNU Emacs soon after: 1984.
(not actually the op)
GNU Social was called StatusNet and Laconica before that, but no, they still chose a deliberately uncool name in one of the most extreme popularity-driven markets. Not that we ought to drop our standards, but why choose such a petty hill to die on?
Working on another site and I have contemplated whether using blockchain for some of the data would have any advantages.
[1] https://nmd.co
[2] https://github.com/kyokan/footnote/
but you specifically asked about twitter, so I would recommend mastodon
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)
https://member.cash
https://foundrydao.com/smokesignal/
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!
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 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].
[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2008.05300.pdf
[1] https://brightid.gitbook.io/brightid/
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.
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.
Hopefully we have mathematics and physics on our side.
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.
That's an issue, not a feature.
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...
[0] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Other decentralized services don't allow free speech.
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".
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"
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.
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?).
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!".
Rhymes with kazoo.
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.
On Twitter you can easily reach thousands of people, in person you only talk to a handful
And a public instance at: http://twtxt.net/