Don’t record your social life on an append-only social network (2022)

I find the nostr[1] protocol to be a nice alternative here. The core idea is the separation of message content from the relays which transport them. So you sign a message and publish it to several relays, and then anyone can retrieve your message from any of the relays where it is published.<p>As opposed to Mastadon, your identity is tied to your pubkey rather than the instance that you created your account on. The difference to Scuttlebutt is the differentiation of relays vs clients, and the lack of chaining messages together in the &quot;blockchain&quot;-like structure.<p>The result is a fairly simple protocol which is fairly low latency and seamless for many applications compared to other decentralized solutions.<p>[1]. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nostr.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nostr.com&#x2F;</a>

&gt; Append-only databases are acceptable for financial ledgers, contracts, and things we want to be persistent and immutable.<p>Neither financial ledgers nor contracts are things we should want to be persistent and immutable - as the crypto and smart contract folks have repreatedly demonstrated

Completely unaware of this social network. What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve? Proof of origin? A conversational paper trail?<p>The latter would be interesting for areas where conversations should be on the record, however in cases that people want their conversations off the record they’d just use a side channel. The UK govt communicates using WhatsApp for Christ’s sake.<p>So it’d need to be something where both parties fundamentally benefit from the ability to verify that a post, or a conversation, took place. Where would that even apply?

While not anything blockchain-based, I had a similar thought of just doing social media through a single text file that you can add to&#x2F;remove from whenever, and re-post the whole thing[0]. Literally HTTP POST it.<p>Edit, amend, add, delete, schedule, etc., all from a single text file. I haven&#x27;t worked on it in a few weeks but I intend to get back to it soon.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;post.mw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;post.mw</a>

Worth considering, but the conclusion that permanency is &quot;definitely not what you should look for in your social network&quot; goes way too far. People use different social networks for different purposes.<p>There are certain privacy features like self-deleting messages that you can only get in a closed ecosystem. Does this mean you shouldn&#x27;t use any kind of web-based social media, since everyone you communicate with can easily and automatically archive everything using a browser extension or userscript?

Mostly agree. You can have strong cryptography even with mutability&#x2F;overwritability. You can simply issue soft deletes by issuing a tombstone write.<p>However, you always risk someone else (like a scraper) storing messages including your signature forever. Deleting is virtually impossible for practical communication purposes. Best you can get is “I promise you I deleted my copy and thus wont distribute it further”.

This article like many others claims a mass exodus from Twitter, but Musk claims usage is at an all time high. I wonder which is true? I’d be inclined to think Musk is lying. He has clear motive to do so. But on the other hand, he has access to the actual numbers unlike any of these writers who are relying on anecdotal evidence. The writers also say hate speech is more common, but my anecdotal evidence says the opposite is true. Genuinely torn on this one.

I deleted 12 years of Facebook posts after downloading a backup one by one. This was before they had multiple deletes. It took me a few weeks so I did it when I was bored. What&#x27;s funny is that you can&#x27;t actually delete everything, because something from the past will show up again. Just one or two things. I assume when databases located around the world sync up there&#x27;s a few things that didn&#x27;t get deleted.

Mastodon and SSB have terrible user interfaces. Centralization still makes the user experience way better and smoother, a necessary condition for a network effect and mass user adoption. I don&#x27;t see these products going mainstream.

- Your identity isn’t a username and doesn’t depend on a domain name or service provider. Instead, your username is a meaningless cryptographic hash that consists of random-looking numbers and letters. Your friends only need to know your hash to follow you, and you can keep it as public or private as you want.<p>Yeah, that sounds like a really positive user experience. Hard pass.

&gt; The technology that powers SSB is entirely different from Twitter and Mastodon. You don’t need to register an account anywhere to get started. Your identity isn’t a username and doesn’t depend on a domain name or service provider. Instead, your username is a meaningless cryptographic hash that consists of random-looking numbers and letters. Your friends only need to know your hash to follow you, and you can keep it as public or private as you want.<p>I&#x27;m not familiar with SSB. And, to me, this article&#x27;s headline is five words too long (harumph)<p>Question though: Does this imply that I can follow someone without them knowing about it if their address hash gets leaked? If so, in what way could it meaningfully be described as being private? I assume there&#x27;s some way to control who you broadcast to, or approve someone who follows you, and this description is just not mentioning it.

Bluesky&#x27;s AT Protocol has made some progress on using Merkle trees while still allowing content to be deleted.

I treat all of the web as being an append-only store and so should you. With storage being as cheap as it is (and it&#x27;s still getting cheaper), your published information is going to be stored somewhere. Make decisions about posting something as if unpublishing it were impossible.

Methinks any social network that prioritizes its tech over user experience will not take off. It doesn&#x27;t mean that new tech is automatic grounds for failure, but if that&#x27;s all you have to show for it right now you barely have anything.

&gt;Your identity isn’t a username and doesn’t depend on a domain name or service provide<p>Like a tripcode?<p>&gt;Instead, your username is a meaningless cryptographic hash that consists of random-looking numbers and letters.<p>Ah

Hey how can I delete this message in future?

So you mean, like Hacker News past 2 hours?

Why would you want your social life recorded anywhere? I love that my social life isn&#x27;t recorded.

Is there a logical way to interpret this other than &quot;don&#x27;t use the internet&quot;?

After hard-avoiding social networks, I spent some time thinking about this problem when I wanted to share pictures of my kids. One of my requirements was privacy, another was _not inventing a protocol_. I landed on RSS and built Haven[1], but I made the rookie mistake of putting my principles above usability. I want it to be hard-decentralized so everyone runs their own server--but nobody wants to run their own server.<p>I still have vision for what Haven could be, and supporting self-hosting remains important but I think I&#x27;ll end up with something like the Matrix&#x2F;Element model where there is a (free?) centralized server you can use, or you can host your own with full interoperability.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;havenweb.org" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;havenweb.org</a>

I went to try this out only to read the words &#x27;download the software&#x27;.<p>Good luck with that. Even the Firefox plugin requires some additional setup. Frictionless it ain&#x27;t. By a long stretch.<p>Sigh.

On top of the issues that append only doesn’t seem to fit social graphs, having to exchange hashes sounds terrible for discovery.

Lol, we&#x27;re about 30 years late. Everything, all the bits, are slurped by the NSA. ECHELON started in 1970s with the big five brothers.<p>Here&#x27;s some fun keywords to whet your whistles if you wanna:<p>Camp Williams Boundless Informant ICREACH MAINWAY DCSNet BULLRUN&#x2F;Edgehill - NSA breaking encryption by intentionally weakening encryption schemes and stealing master keys.

Exodus = 0.2%

&quot;Blockchains are useless, more at 5&quot;

don&#x27;t record your social life.

(2022)

also, wash your hands after using the toilet.

twetch uses the bie1 encryption protocol on a plaintext blockchain to allow for append only data that can be retracted from view.<p>twetch.com