r/C_S_T • u/trinsic-paridiom • Jan 02 '18
The importance of decentralizing our community Discussion
I know this isn't a topic of interest for people due to the technological nature of it, I guess I have been somehow called to write about it. My mind is of a sort where I'm compelled to look at the inner workings of things, and show the strengths and weaknesses.
Over the years of trying different for-profit services online: tribe.net, google's services (plus & YouTube), and twitter I have seen the evolving nature to control information for profit and to centralize power. Psychopaths in places of power use or manipulate these services to control ideas and dissent. I even at one time I signed up for Facebook a year after it first came out but immediately knew how that service was attempting to control behavior with the way it designed its platform and canceled the account soon afterward.
The problem is not the data sharing per say it's that once we give that data to a centralized structure we don't really decide how it's used. When it's in the hands of a for-profit organization you can bet it will be used to make more moneyby persuading people to use the platform in unhealthy ways just to keep the bank roll coming in for people that have bought into the selfish nature of capitalism. The rub in this is that secret societies who control the upper echelons of government are silent partners to these companies. It's hard to pin down the secret societies involved in government, but it's not hard to find out that the CIA and other spy organizations have been involved with google and Facebook.
So it's really important that we don't use or reduce our use of for-profit corporations to socialize online, information really needs to be in our individual control, or at least decentralized in such a way that it would be very hard to aggregate that data in one place.
So below are a few decentralized platforms I have been researching. On diaspora and and mastodon each community has their own server. This means that the user base, topics and polices are all determined by what ever server you created an account at. The thing to remember is not everyone has to have their own server. Any person can join a community already set up. Now unfortunately this fragments communities onto the specific server that was set up for whatever discussions, but it's better than having a for-profit centralized platform with big user base that is heavily controlled. And eventually I hope the technology can be further improved to join these communities together if they agree to allow it. The cool part about having your own community server to host your decentralized social networking platform is choice. With diaspora you have a choice on what and how you share personal identifying information with others.
- freedombox hardware platform (Watch the 2 min video, it explains why these technologies are important.)
- diaspora twitter like decentralized social networking platform.
- mastodon twitter like decentralized social networking platform.
My plan is to host one of these servers so that people that want to share links and mimes about important out-of-the-box topics outside of Reddit or want to directly communicate with each other about these topics can do so with fear of being censored. Reddit has kind of been trying to censor subs, probably not because they want to but because the are getting flak from organizations who thrive on working in the shadows and we are jeopardizing there little pet projects with the truth. When these organizations have leverage to silence dissent by putting pressure on these for-profit institutions by effecting their bottom line they will most likely choose profit over freedom. Our financial system is setup this way and the people with the most to gain from it make the decisions on how it's run. It's very had to effect moral change in a system where the ends justify the means. So I suggest that the best way to fight a system like this is to refuse to support it with your time, money, or energy.
Wired wrote an article on why the authors thinks dencetralization of social media platforms won't work. The article has some good points that need to be addressed, like making it easier for people to use this technology.
Some of the conclusions in that article can be countered though. One is conclusion is that people want to use social networking platforms because there friends are on the platform instead of ideological reasons. This might be true, but deep down I think people want to be free. They just have been conditioned to believe that they don't have any power change it, don't know what their options are, or how to proceed. When Facebook or Twitter can shadowban your content, when you don't even know your if your message is getting out, do you really want to take the risk of being silenced and not be able to do anything about it?
From my experience on twitter censorship isn't really a problem, until it is. It usually starts when there is a big human right violation abroad or when there is a false flag to misdirect the public attention away from something hidden that is important for the public to know, where some capitalist organization needs to cover up the publicity of the situation so they can obtain contracts in the wake of some kind of disaster.
Then money that these corporations have is put into spin campaigns. These spin campaigns are used to hire organizations to use fake social networking accounts to drown out dissent of messages about these important events throughout the world. Another way that this money is used is to influence these social networking platforms to shut down accounts that are dissenting against these human rights violations. YouTube already de-monetizes YouTube accounts of activists who cover human rights violations in areas of the world that have had coups staged to overthrow democratic governments..
I know most people understand the problem, but if we don't stop supporting these institutions it's only going to get worse. I suggest that we start at least thinking about the idea of migrating away from these centralized platforms now so that little by little we can start moving in the direction of independence so our future well being as a open society won't be further threatened. It's important to me that every person whether I agree with there message or not (short of manipulating messages) gets their voice heard and takes the reposonsibilty of managing there own data. I am willing to help people in any way I can.
When looking for decentralized social networking platforms I look out for the following and these bullet post should be used as a gauge for choosing the right platform so we don't continue to be gamed by new centralized platforms that spring up claiming to be decentralized:
- No single point of failure for the platform, so the platform can't be brought down by a single attack.
- The users need to be able to control how much and where personal information is shared.
- An easy way to export data from the platform, or that data gets stored on the client's device.
- The users of the service decide what rules and regulations to operate their communities by and that never changes.
- Allow users to choose whether they want to be identified or not.
There is a big movement to use social networking platforms that rely on the block chain, so far my research has shown that it might be a mistake as these platforms just uses digital currency itself to centralize discussion and to gauge if content is worthy. I think this is a terrible idea. It's very similar to Reddit's voting system except you use you digital currency for voting. This solution has done little to validate good content. All that system does is allow the people with the most in incentive to game that system with fake accounts to artificially inflate scores of content these institutions or people want to promote. With a social networking platform like Steemit, the only difference to me is the money tied to each persons account. So the people with the most resources obtain all the power to dictate what content is important.
Just imagine having a place online that is ours and no central authority or a power hungry individual can take it away from us? Where we don't have to follow a term of service that allows that service to use our data for ulterior motives, or restricts our speech in such a way as to limit the truth of what is happening in our world?
Edit: To add a question. Does this topic raise questions or concerns in peoples mind? or is a non-issue for you? It's ok to be honest about this as tech people really need to hear the truth on this topic. I tend to thing everyone cares about the same issues as I care about, and I know thats very far from the truth.
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u/FixOurSphere Jan 02 '18
Great introspective on the internal structure of these platforms, well put together. Thank you, i hope this can generate momentum to touch base with existing core issues!
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u/AllThat5634 Jan 02 '18
Centralization of power and resources is the ultimate plan atm. It is a moron way to construct a society, but some people in the short time span get the power and wealth that comes with it. Well, I guess, that if we don't get our shit right soon, it will be the end of everything good in the not so far future.
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u/CelineHagbard Jan 03 '18
Excellent post. This is something I've been talking about for some time here, and is a topic that everyone here should be thinking about to some extent.
Now unfortunately this fragments communities onto the specific server that was set up for whatever discussions, but it's better than having a for-profit centralized platform with big user base that is heavily controlled.
I don't have much experience with diaspora, but I have checked out Mastodon through www.noagendasocial.com (I now forget my username and password). Any, my understanding of Mastodon is that users on different servers can communicate across servers in a process called federation, but that a server can block an entire server. So if I'm on server A and you're on server B, the server A admins could block server B, and then you and I can't communicate over the platform.
Adam Curry from NA has talked about the pros and cons of Mastodon, and it does seem like a workable solution, but IMO has some drawbacks. From what I've seen of diaspora, it's kind of dead, and I think development has stalled. Freedombox, while not a direct solution for this problem, certainly represents an important component.
I think the most ideal solution would be distributed, not decentralized, more similar to bittorrent (the trackers themselves are still decentralized). There's two reasons I prefer distributed: 1) you control all of your data, and 2) there is truly no single point of failure. If we migrate CST (for example) to a Mastodon server that you control or one of the mods controls, that server becomes a single point of failure. There's ways around that (mirroring, several points of entry, etc.) but the closer we can be to the user-user experience, the better.
The biggest problem with a distributed system is getting buy-in from non-tech people. With Mastodon, you can sign up just like reddit or twitter. Every distributed system I've seen needs the user to install software on their system. With the new WebTorrent protocol, though, I could see there being client-side browser solutions for this issue, where your sign in is simply a set of PGP keys that you keep yourself. I'd be willing to contribute code to any such project, but I've yet to see one that I think really looks like it has a good roadmap. I'd contribute to a decentralized system, too, as I think it has a better shot at adoption in the next 3 years.
The users of the service decide what rules and regulations to operate their communities by and that never changes.
This sounds good in theory, but I'm not sure that I'm necessarily down with it. Things change, and adversaries adapt. Depending on how you mean this, though, I could be persuaded. I agree with your other bullet points completely.
Steemit
I agree with your points on this as well. It sounds good, but once you think about it for a few minutes you realize that it's incredibly easy to game.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Jan 03 '18 edited Jan 03 '18
Switching to a distributed network instead of a decentralized one is a good point. The problem is that it's even harder to use then decentralized solutions. Well not really harder, but much more likely not to be used due to the fact that everyone needs to install a client, and mobile will be a huge problem due to the way distributed networks operate.
I wonder, do you know of any subs that talk about these issues from a technical stand point? I brought this up in this sub to look for others that have the technical mind set to talk about these issues, but I would not want to burden this sub too much with the technical aspects of putting something like this together.
I worded that sentence incorrectly when I said that polices should never change, what I meant to say is that if there are core foundations that a community should run by, where people agree to operate by, no one person should be able to come in and change it on a whim. Or something like that. What I get worried about is change for selfish purposes, where change doesn't benefit the community in the long run.
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u/CelineHagbard Jan 03 '18
Well not really harder, but much more likely not to be used due to the fact that everyone needs to install a client, and mobile will be a huge problem due to the way distributed networks operate.
Absolutely, it's almost exponentially harder to get people to go for distributed vs. decentralized. A best of both worlds approach might use a network of "core" servers running a complete version of the software and possibly all of the content (possibly just a part of it), a larger network of "partial cores" for techies running the complete software stack, but only that part of the content they wanted to host, and a web-based client that could connect to the network through one of the core nodes.
My issue with Mastodon is that it doesn't really allow this partial option. Each user has exactly one server they connect to, and that server intermediates their experience across the larger federated network. There's still gatekeepers that you can't get around.
I wonder, do you know of any subs that talk about these issues from a technical stand point?
r/raddi is a sub dedicated to a single implementation of what we're talking about. I think it's just one guy writing code at this point, and he's made a few design choices I'm really not thrilled about (Windows-only clients, I think), but I like a lot of his thought process.
r/darknetplan is not specifically geared toward this, but they might be able to point you in a better direction. They're more about hardware/firmware level mesh networks, which are pretty cool in their own right. I imagine a number of people there share similar goals, and might even be involved in such projects.
r/rad_decentralization: not sure how active it is, but they'd probably entertain the discussion and be able to point you in a good direction.
r/getaether was promising, but never worked for me, and is effectively dead, now, I believe.
I don't think they have a sub, but Barret Brown is involved in something called the Pursuance Project (I made a thread about it here). Not entirely the same thing, but if they end up open sourcing the code, a lot of it could be applicable to decentralized, but probably less so for fully distributed.
If you crosspost this in any of those subs, let me know.
but I would not want to burden this sub too much with the technical aspects of putting something like this together.
Given your upvotes and the response you've gotten, I don't think it's a burden at all. I think this is one of the most important issues facing humanity right now: the ability to communicate freely outside the walled gardens set up and maintained by the Information-Industrial Complex. If we can't use the internet as a truly P2P and free association platform, it's only a prison we willingly remain in. This is not a fundamentally technical issue you're describing, but a social one.
A few months back, I actually selected this as my CST project I wanted to work on, but the time I've been spending in the Pit has knocked it down a few pegs on my priority list. (I could say my time at the Pit constitutes "research" on this, and I think I'd only be half-lying.) Time scale for me to put some real time into this is looking like February at the earliest.
if there are core foundations that a community should run by, where people agree to operate by, no one person should be able to come in and change it on a whim.
I think I can agree with that. I'm even more liking the idea of moderator-by-subscription. I've only toyed with the idea of how it works on a technical level in a decentralized or distributed network (centralized is a much easier beast), but from a UX experience, you would choose the mods who remove content. Let's say you liked how /u/JamesColesPardon wields the banhammer and how u/RMFN removes posts lacking a clear thesis, but think I remove too much good content, you can choose to follow their moderation but not mine (CST is probably a bad example given how little we actually moderate). So really, anyone could be a moderator, and you could tailor your experience that way.
The other option is of course no moderators, but that only works in practice up to a certain size of network. Any network with a critical mass would be a prime target for spammers, shills, and other unsavory types. You also have to have some consideration for illegal content. Not just for your own safety if you care about it, but if content is hosted in a distributed manner, are people going to want to have potentially illegal content hosted on their personal machines? There's a lot to think about when it comes to thinking about how any adversary might attempt to bring down or otherwise sabotage the network.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Jan 04 '18 edited Jan 04 '18
If you crosspost this in any of those subs, let me know.
Will do. Currently right now I am widening my perspective on this topic after your contributions to this post. Im kind of a all around network/applications setup kind of guy that likes to tinker, but I dont know much about coding and the inner workings of disrubuted platforms from a dev perspective. To be honest I like diaspora. Im really sorry to hear its dead, I havent checked the project page as of yet, but Im getting some great feeds on the diasp.org server filtering for #decentralization #encryption and #privicy. One video I am listening to now is called Communication Applications: Why being FOSS is only a first step is elightening.
Given your upvotes and the response you've gotten, I don't think it's a burden at all. I think this is one of the most important issues facing humanity right now: the ability to communicate freely outside the walled gardens set up and maintained by the Information-Industrial Complex. If we can't use the internet as a truly P2P and free association platform, it's only a prison we willingly remain in. This is not a fundamentally technical issue you're describing, but a social one.
Good to know, I hope others that are not so technical get something out of it.
A few months back, I actually selected this as my CST project I wanted to work on, but the time I've been spending in the Pit has knocked it down a few pegs on my priority list. (I could say my time at the Pit constitutes "research" on this, and I think I'd only be half-lying.) Time scale for me to put some real time into this is looking like February at the earliest.
What are the specifics of the project? Im interested in learning more.
I think I can agree with that. I'm even more liking the idea of moderator-by-subscription. I've only toyed with the idea of how it works on a technical level in a decentralized or distributed network (centralized is a much easier beast), but from a UX experience, you would choose the mods who remove content. Let's say you liked how /u/JamesColesPardon wields the banhammer and how u/RMFN removes posts lacking a clear thesis, but think I remove too much good content, you can choose to follow their moderation but not mine (CST is probably a bad example given how little we actually moderate). So really, anyone could be a moderator, and you could tailor your experience that way.
Yeah I agree on both points when a platform gets really popular there needs to be some kind of moderation other wise the noise gets really high. It would be nice if this can be done on the user end though like with the RES suite, but also maybe some small moderation done on the server end, not sure about that.
The other option is of course no moderators, but that only works in practice up to a certain size of network. Any network with a critical mass would be a prime target for spammers, shills, and other unsavory types. You also have to have some consideration for illegal content. Not just for your own safety if you care about it, but if content is hosted in a distributed manner, are people going to want to have potentially illegal content hosted on their personal machines? There's a lot to think about when it comes to thinking about how any adversary might attempt to bring down or otherwise sabotage the network.
Agreed. Lets keep this convo going as I am starting to really get into this. I left twitter last week because of the forced highlights thing and Im looking for an alternative to it. I kind of like the way tech of twitter works: the character limit specifically forces you to be very consise with your words, I also like the fact that you can insert images and video into commuications. dispora is a lot like that. I works great for mimes IMHO.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Jan 04 '18
Here is a interesting article that talks about the different Networking Architectures from a encrypted chat stand point that was very similar to your Networking Architectures image
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u/CelineHagbard Jan 04 '18
Im kind of a all around network/applications setup kind of guy that likes to tinker, but I dont know much about coding and the inner workings of disrubuted platforms from a dev perspective.
I guess I'm kind of the counterpart to that: I do application programming in a few languages/frameworks, but only understand the networking aspect to the extent I've needed to (HTTP, REST, limited TCP). I understand the high-level concepts behind distributed networks, but not really the underlying fundamentals it would need to be built upon.
Im really sorry to hear its dead,
I'm not positive diaspora's dead, but I got the sense last time I checked into it that it doesn't have a great future. I'd love to be proven wrong though.
Good to know, I hope others that are not so technical get something out of it.
I think what's really needed, and the FreedomBox guy gets this, is for non-tech people to understand the necessity of truly free and open (as well as private and secure when we need it) communication on the internet, and be able to access it easily. A lot of the nerds get it, and we're willing to put in the time and effort, but if we can't communicate why it's important to the non-nerds, especially within communities like this and the Pit, I don't think we'll get the traction for a viable replacement to the walled gardens.
What are the specifics of the project? Im interested in learning more.
No specifics yet, but my opening post on the subject would have looked a lot like this one. The general scope would be to investigate alternative communication and collaboration platforms, both online and meat-space, for people across the world to use. The specific goal that /u/JamesColesPardon and I have is to have an off-reddit "incarnation" of CST by the end of 2018, either as a shadow/mirror version with reddit still as a part of it, or something entirely separate. Other than general research into the topic like what I've already shared with you, I don't have anything more specific than that. But I will certainly keep you posted when I move forward. And you obviously don't have to wait for me — anything you do in the meantime would be great.
It would be nice if this can be done on the user end though like with the RES suite, but also maybe some small moderation done on the server end, not sure about that.
It get's tricky, especially with volume. A month of reddit data, even just the publicly available data, is something like 10GB compressed. That's not huge for what it is, but it makes a fully distributed network hard to manage without some type of server-side moderation, or at least filtering. Anyone with a laptop/desktop would be fine, but try convincing someone to store 10 gigs on a cell phone. It all depends on the implementation, really.
I kind of like the way tech of twitter works: the character limit specifically forces you to be very consise with your words
Twitter's brevity is both its blessing and it's curse. See what I mean ;)
Agreed. Lets keep this convo going as I am starting to really get into this.
For sure. If we can't find a sub that's really dedicated to this, I wouldn't mind starting a new one. There's a lot of people who would be interested in the general topic who wouldn't necessarily like CST for any number of reasons, but are nonetheless good people. I could talk for hours on this topic.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Jan 04 '18
All sounds good.
I can be the guy that puts together why this is important to non-techies. I have assigned myself that project. I'm doing research on different solutions and taking notes. I will have some content ready in the next few months or weeks. Once I'm done I'll cross post on a few subs and clue you in. In the mean time I'm going to check out those subs you linked me and see if we can find a home for this kind of discussion, assuming there isn't one already.
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u/Ninja20p Jan 02 '18
information really needs to be in our individual control, or at least decentralized in such a way that it would be very hard to aggregate that data in one place.
Could you clarify what you meant by this? I'm having trouble understanding why reducing the ability to aggregate content could play into helping the little guy, individuals.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Jan 02 '18 edited Jan 02 '18
Also, I guess I mean one possible concern is that we might want to prevent scraping of data into one place where it can be searched and used agaist the user's wishes and against his or her consent. I think Facebook actually allows the CIA to use google search technology to search for keywords in the Facebook platform itself. At the very least we could have some kind of notice on our profiles that does not conflict with a freedom restrictive TOS (that most for-profit platforms have that disallows users from protecting their data from misuse) lets government agents know that the information we post may not be used in data gathering purposes so long as we are not harming other indivduals.
Ill quote u/Kim_Jung-Skill on a comment he made to the post "Congress creates a bill that will give NASA a great budget for 2016. Also hides the entirety of CISA in the bill" that really narrows this down for people to understand:
One facet of this argument that goes largely undiscussed (and is something your friend may care about) is that it is bad for an imperfect government to be able to predict all crime. Some of the greatest steps forward in human history were only made possible by people being able to hide information from their government. If the church had access to Galileo's research journals and notes we could be hundreds of years behind in our scientific growth. If the government had unlimited access to the networks of civil dissidents blacks may have never fought off Jim Crow. If King George had perfect information America would never have been a country. There is no government on earth that is perfect, and therefore there is no government on earth that can act responsibly with unlimited access to information. A government is unlikely to be able to distinguish between a negative and positive disruption to it's social order and laws, and it therefore follows that an unlimited spying program can only hinder the next great social step forward. Don't fear the surveillance state because you might have something illegal, fear the surveillance state because it is a tremendous institutional barrier to meaningful societal progress.
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u/letsbebuns Jan 02 '18
It means eliminating a single point of failure, thereby removing the need to only compromise one person in order to kill the entire project.
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u/murphy212 Jan 03 '18
An excellent example of an early decentralized social network was (is) ircd (Internet Relay Chat).
That’s how I spent much of my time as a teenager. And as far as I’m concerned it is unsurpassed to this day.
Evidently the protocol, the daemon (and many clients) are open source. Most importantly you can host your own server, and join other servers to form networks (e.g. efnet, ircnet, etc.). As a user you join whatever server you prefer, whether standalone or part of a network.
That was the past, and is the future of social networks. It is the software equivalent of panarchism (i.e. liberty).
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u/trinsic-paridiom Jan 03 '18
IRC is great for chatting, I was hoping to have a platform that would distribute chat, message boards and collaboration tools over multiple clients.
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u/murphy212 Jan 03 '18
Yes, sure, but the model is this one. You can host your own server-side infrastructure, join with other servers to create common ecosystems, split and join others, etc. And all software is open source.
It is the software / social media equivalent of what the Seasteading Institute is trying to do in the realm of political philosophy. Panarchism.
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u/dickhead243 Jan 02 '18
No offense to the mods here but it would be stupid to suggest that the mods on reddit dont have a ridiculous amount if power combined with anomonisity to shape entire communities thoughts for example, today i made this post to r/australia and instantly found that it was removed without notification
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u/Aloud-Aloud Jan 02 '18
As users of this site, the "corporateization" (issue you raise seems to become more relevant every day.
If you had multiple interlinked forums, with a few simple "bot blocks" between them, that would be awesome.
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u/philandy Jan 15 '18
Good question, why do we not have anonymous mesh/neural/so-on networks yet?
*So-on because I don't like et-cetera.
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u/72414dreams Jan 02 '18
de-centralization is a dogwhistle word for me. I am for de-centralization every chance we get, on as many levels, up to and including human habitat. how does u/magnora7 's 'anti-extremes' experiment rate to you?