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I would like to talk about the lesser-known parts of the internet. Primarily, the decentralized web. What is it? The decentralized internet is based on the idea that one company/person should not be the sole provider of communication for entire networks of people (think Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc). It puts all the power in one entity and what they say more or less goes, and they are often so big that nobody is entirely satisfied with how they handle things. The decentralized web, on the other hand, consists of a base protocol (or set of protocols) that anyone can write software to communicate via. What this means is that there can be several different social networks all using the same program. They can communicate with each other or not. And if you want to, you can spin up your own community and decide the rules. If one network goes down, the others are mostly unaffected. Who does this? There are a couple of examples. The biggest player, in my opinion, is Mastodon, which is just like Twitter. Mastodon is part of a larger organization of networks called the Fediverse ("Federation" and "universe"), which also includes Diaspora and Friendica, among others. Another one that kind of enchants me is called Scuttlebutt, which was created with the idea of a social network that could only communicate with others when you were both connected to the same wireless network. In this way, people live their lives and their networks update when they meet with others in real life. After this, all the messages they had received will copy over to the next person, sort of like gossip travelling from person to person. The idea has since expanded somewhat to also allow for communication over the internet, but you both have to be connected to the same "pub" online, which is just a network that will propogate your messages for you. Does anyone really use this stuff? It's tough to tell sheer numbers on a lot of this because by nature some of these networks aren't as plugged in to the greater internet as something like Facebook. Mastodon is quite popular as it's a lot more nazi-free than Twitter (although who knows what's coming on that one). People have found it much easier to create smaller communities focused around specific topics (LGBTQ+, creative arts, programming, etc) while being able to have strong moderation to keep the riff-raff out. Personally, I don't think I can see this kind of stuff taking off the same way a Facebook or Twitter has. It requires some basic understanding of how this all works which is probably enough to scare most of the population away. However, being small doesn't mean it's not any good. What do you think? Do you use any of this stuff?
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Aug 19, 2019 16:44
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What impact would stuff like this have on poo poo like child porn rings and efforts to catch/bust them up? I'm a moron and don't know how this poo poo works, but wouldn't something that only updates when folks are near-ish to each other make that harder?
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Aug 19, 2019 16:48
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Knowing internet, I bet this decentralized web is full of loving creeps.
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Aug 19, 2019 16:54
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How can I monetize this?
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Aug 19, 2019 16:58
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Colonel Cancer posted:Knowing internet, I bet this decentralized web is full of loving creeps. Yeah, how much of this decentralized web is just people looking for child pornography?
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Aug 19, 2019 17:01
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Honky Dong Country posted:What impact would stuff like this have on poo poo like child porn rings and efforts to catch/bust them up? That's a good question, and a good point. By it's nature, someone like the creator of the software that runs Mastodon does not have the power to completely nuke a network, since you can just take the code for a server and deploy it at any moment, or just write your own software to work with the networking protocol. A similar problem is happening now that Gab has migrated to Mastodon, on their own instance. Mastodon instances can share with other Mastodon instances, but the host of the instance can choose individual servers to either follow or block (this is not always malicious - an instance for general use may block NSFW instances, for example). Most instances of Mastodon (of course, hard to verify) seem to have blocked Gab's instance outright, and many developers for Mastodon apps have also hard-coded blocks for users to use Gab's instance on their phone. Since Mastodon is hosted over the internet (unlike Scuttlebutt's original design), you could feasibly still "see" the network, and any criminal activity there would be treated like anywhere else (which is to say, probably nothing will happen). However, something like that happening on Scuttlebutt... That's an interesting question.
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Aug 19, 2019 17:08
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Biohazard posted:Yeah, how much of this decentralized web is just people looking for child pornography? 105% Margin of error: 5%
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Aug 19, 2019 17:09
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This is good for bitcoin?
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Aug 19, 2019 17:15
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yes
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Aug 19, 2019 17:16
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I remember first learning about mastodon and saying how it sounds like a huge security risk because you're trusting a single person or a group of people with things like your chats as opposed to a large scale organization, where at least you were protected by large scale obscurity. I got yelled at for 20 minutes for it by a person who swore mastodon was the next big thing. I didn't believe it. Then again the internet started off as decentralized before google came to town, and we grew up mostly fine? But what is your take on the higher chance of bad faith agents mucking up these smaller communities?
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Aug 19, 2019 17:32
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remember in the 90s where you'd have buy a book with all of the best websites listed?
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Aug 19, 2019 17:37
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Are you talking about individual members, or instance hosts? I think, at least with Mastodon, part of the idea is that the community should be moderated. Each instance typically has a set of rules that they adhere to, typically extending from the server covenant. If a different instance becomes toxic, it gets blocked. If a user is toxic, they get banned (or silenced, or whatever).
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Aug 19, 2019 17:38
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BONESAWWWWWW posted:Are you talking about individual members, or instance hosts? So in the case of Mastodon it's basically twitter subreddits in the sense that each is its own little fiefdom?
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Aug 19, 2019 18:01
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I always sorta meant to look into Mastodon and kept putting it off; I just appreciate the moxie of a social media platform naming itself after an extinct relic of a bygone age
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Aug 19, 2019 18:28
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Hasn't Disapora been "the next big thing" since even before one of the lead developers killed himself about a decade ago? Wouldn't hold my breath that it is just around the corner.
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Aug 19, 2019 18:35
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Honky Dong Country posted:So in the case of Mastodon it's basically twitter subreddits in the sense that each is its own little fiefdom? This is more or less correct, but they may also selectively open their gates to peasents from other fiefdoms. I think most "themed" instances aren't specifically ONLY about a single topic, like a subreddit, but they may host users who are collectively interested in at least that topic. If that makes any sense. Users may also select an instance based on their moderation quality and rules, not the subject. Like SA, which covers many topics but under the same moderation umbrella.
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Aug 19, 2019 18:38
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i was gonna make a mastodon account but i was afraid a hacker would steal my nudes on the dark web Actually, the real reason I never did is I couldn’t figure out which node to join, which seemed like an important choice since it was right around the time some big one shut down - witches.town maybe? Then I forgot about it. Maybe this thread is the reminder I needed to post my wrong thoughts on social media again.
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Aug 19, 2019 20:05
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The problem with "shared" internet sites (using software like Zeronet) that use connected clients to relay traffic, is that you might go to some site that contains illegal material (i.e. child porn, stolen credit card / personal information, etc.) somewhere on the site that isn't obvious on the front page, you might never even see it, but because you are connected to the site, you might relay the illegal content for other clients.
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Aug 20, 2019 00:38
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yeah that’s exactly why I stick to traditional media run by established media brands, tech billionaires, and governments — to steer clear of enabling pedos and human traffickers
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Aug 20, 2019 01:01
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I miss the days when you had your own "space" online, but the main thing holding me (and probably most other people) back is that we've all had a taste of being instantly accessible to everyone, everywhere. Having your own blog feels like yelling into a void now
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Aug 20, 2019 01:13
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