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

https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/append-only-social.html

by cristoperb • 3 years ago

159 126 3 years ago

ctrl.blog

wmf• 3 years ago

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

csdvrx• 3 years ago

So you mean, like Hacker News past 2 hours?

genpfault• 3 years ago

(2022)

dang• 3 years ago

Added. Thanks!

koch2• 3 years ago

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/remove from whenever, and re-post the whole thing[0]. Literally HTTP POST it.

Edit, amend, add, delete, schedule, etc., all from a single text file. I haven't worked on it in a few weeks but I intend to get back to it soon.

[0] https://post.mw

tenebrisalietum• 3 years ago

Somewhat of a precedent exists: classic UNIX mbox files.

I guess it would be fine if indexed separately. Edits to data past a certain age are fairly rare.

jdfellow• 3 years ago

Another old UNIX prior art is finger.

dddw• 3 years ago

Cool stuff

hgsgm4• 3 years ago

Any example public user sites?

koch2• 3 years ago

https://post.mw/rob

Haven't been posting as much as I want to yet, I'm working on the editor from https://markwhen.com to hopefully port it over to https://post.mw as well

kfrzcode3• 3 years ago

sigh I'm now old enough to watch yet another wave of "reinventing 2005 web dev again"

Did you know HTML and CSS are basically text files with some special organization that allow you to make really snazzy colors and marquees and stuff?

It's just a text file you can POST, too!

Super simple, use the same tools you use now.

Well, you'll need a browser to make it look pretty, but that's not the point right?

MrGilbert• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure, OP is aware of that. Someone found a passion project for themselves. Nothing to be snarky about, right? People do stuff for the sake of doing stuff all the time.

klabb32• 3 years ago

Mostly agree. You can have strong cryptography even with mutability/overwritability. You can simply issue soft deletes by issuing a tombstone write.

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”.

roundandround2• 3 years ago

I'd generally consider that different because whatever people scrape could be randomly reassembled but its not forming a canonical proof. A social platform that digitally signed content to have irrefutable proof of what you scraped would be closer and that would probably be adding the anti pattern they criticize for little reason.

klabb32• 3 years ago

It sounds right, but would you mind spelling out the full conclusion? The level of indirection is a bit high for my lazy brain.

To me public communication has the trade off between trusting the communications platform (like most social platforms today) vs trusting the end user (signed messages). If you have trusted end users, scraping a third party repo of “forever history” becomes more plausible, as they can both prove that you(ish) signed it and are unlikely to respect your request to delete their copy. Is this different from what you’re saying?

thinkmassive4• 3 years ago

It can be archived by something like the Wayback Machine.

For the strongest guarantee of non-repudiation, there’s OpenTimestamps:

https://opentimestamps.org/

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

"The internet never forgets."

hgsgm4• 3 years ago

Best you can get is “I promise you I deleted my copy and thus wont distribute it further”.

"Promise" as in committed somehow or wishful?

hgsgm4• 3 years ago

You can have strong cryptography even with mutability/overwritability. You can simply issue soft deletes by issuing a tombstone write.

It sounds like you are describing a UI for simuating mutablity (like declarativd photo edits in Google Photos) , not actual data mutability.

amadeuspagel• 3 years ago

Worth considering, but the conclusion that permanency is "definitely not what you should look for in your social network" goes way too far. People use different social networks for different purposes.

There are certain privacy features like self-deleting messages that you can only get in a closed ecosystem. Does this mean you shouldn'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?

patrakov• 3 years ago

Unfortunately lawyers at least in Russia would have an opinion here.

Let's suppose that you posted something publicly to an append-only social network, and it was completely OK at that time. Then, laws changed (and you could not predict this), and this post is no longer legal according to the new rules. What the lawyers say is that the very fact that the message is still online is now a crime. Yes, there is a universal notion that laws do not apply backwards in time (retroactively), but here they indeed don't: the message is still online AFTER the law got into existence, and so this is a lasting crime that started when the law was enacted.

Normally you would be required to delete the post between the moments when the new law is announced and enacted, but you can't, and it is still yours for others to find and read, so you go to jail.

P.S. It would be interesting to know the opinion of lawyers from other countries.

i-use-nixos-btw• 3 years ago

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?

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.

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?

joemi• 3 years ago

What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve?

I think the problem it's trying to solve is: "How can we mix social networking with blockchain?"

carlmr• 3 years ago

Maybe betting? Both sides are usually interested in recording the bet.

an_ko• 3 years ago

To my understanding, it allows messages on the network to have a total order, even when fully decentralised. Without a hash chain, clients could not tell what order events happened in, and might display them ordered differently, which would change a conversation's meaning.

The traditional alternative is logical clocks, but a malicious participant could forge those, so they're not suitable for a fully distributed system run by random users.

aftbit• 3 years ago

AFAIK it was intended to support the use case of being occasionally connected to the internet (one author spent a lot of time on a small sailboat in the south Pacific), while maintaining an order of messages.

nradov• 3 years ago

Lotus Notes solved that problem over 30 years ago.

grey_earthling3• 3 years ago

What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve? Proof of origin?

(SSB is blockchain in the strict sense, but there's no proof of work or anything like that. Each feed is its own append-only chain with its own private key.)

For SSB, the aim was to be able to gossip feeds via untrusted intermediaries, with patchy network connections all round, and be sure that the intermediaries haven't added, changed or removed any posts in the feed.

The protocol's designer lives on a boat in New Zealand, and other collaborators live in remote areas in different time zones.

One adjustment to the protocol that seems to me like a quick win (but presumably has some technical hitch I can't see, since I don't recall anyone suggesting this) would be to not include the post's body in the “block” (in the message itself that gets hashed and signed by the next message), but rather as a “blob” (essentially an attachment) which others don't need to download in order to verify the feed. That way old messages could be effectively forgotten if all peers co-operate (and no-one took a screenshot, etc).

rinor• 3 years ago

I'm working on something in this space, though god knows if I'll ever finish it. And that's one of two approaches I considered to that problem. Another is to have a signed deletion marker saying something to the effect of "there was a block here with hash d9841a, but now there isn't anymore, and I'm its replacement".

evbogue• 3 years ago

One adjustment to the protocol that seems to me like a quick win (but presumably has some technical hitch I can't see, since I don't recall anyone suggesting this) would be to not include the post's body in the “block” (in the message itself that gets hashed and signed by the next message), but rather as a “blob” (essentially an attachment) which others don't need to download in order to verify the feed.

There's nothing to prevent you from taking this route, you just sign a blob hash instead of an entire message object.

I work on an experimental SSB-like-protocol in my spare time that does exactly what you've suggested: https://github.com/evbogue/bogbook

I don't know if this makes the network forget more, but the aim is to reduce the time it takes to sync and get started.

EntrePrescott2• 3 years ago

For SSB, the aim was to be able to gossip feeds via untrusted intermediaries, with patchy network connections all round, and be sure that the intermediaries haven't added, changed or removed any posts in the feed.

why would that need a blockchain (even without proof of work), as opposed to simple signed, timestamped, indexed posts and having the reading client app check the signature and post indices?

Vendan• 3 years ago

It's about as much blockchain as git is blockchain, so... not really blockchain at all...

this_user• 3 years ago

What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve?

The problem of justifying the existence of blockchains.

ilyt3• 3 years ago

Same problem every problem using blockchain tries to solve.

Getting funded by people thinking it will be next big thing.

fardo• 3 years ago

Where would that even apply?

That sounds like it could be useful in legal and policing contexts. One complaint I’ve often heard about body cameras in policing is the possibility of footage that was created and did indeed exist being “lost”, with the implication being that legal entities intentionally destroyed evidence of either the footage existing, or its contents.

To the extent that this centralized authority issue applies to textual data or metadata, decentralized records of messaging times and contents would potentially be an invaluable tool of transparency and promoting systemic confidence in a visible shared audit trail.

blackshaw2• 3 years ago

What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve?

The same as every other blockchain application: the problem that no-one has found a practical use for Blockchain despite 14 years of effort, but that blockchainers continually need the next wave of hype so that their coins don't lose value.

seanhunter• 3 years ago

What problem, exactly, is a blockchain based social network trying to solve? Proof of origin? A conversational paper trail?

I would say the main interesting problem to solve is how to have a social network with a shared state without requiring a all-powerful central party like the existing solutions. Blockchain solutions allow a consensus about what is in the network without this.

If you don't care about the social network state diverging endlessly that's not a problem, but part of the "social" part of social networking is that users expect to see broadly the same messages or at least that all messages are drawing from a common well in the sense that I can choose not to follow a particular person or conversation, but if I do follow them/it then I see the same set of messages as others who are following. This is how we have a shared conversation.

Edit: Not saying this is the only or best way to do this, but it is one way and I believe this to be the problem blockchain social networks are trying to solve. eg these guys are building a blockchain social network and it's explicitly one of their goals https://www.projectliberty.io/

mwattsun2• 3 years ago

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's funny is that you can'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's a few things that didn't get deleted.

mixmastamyk2• 3 years ago

Do they really get deleted or just hidden? Guessing the latter.

mwattsun2• 3 years ago

I think they are supposed to delete them by law, but they could ignore that. Assuming they do delete them, it seems to me they miss a few that show up as the DBs around the world sync up

jfax• 3 years ago

Your identity isn’t a username and doesn’t depend on a domain name or service provide

Like a tripcode?

Instead, your username is a meaningless cryptographic hash that consists of random-looking numbers and letters.

grey_earthling3• 3 years ago

In SSB it's a public key. Most users announce their own display names (which needn't be unique) and some clients let you set a pet name for other users (like a phone's contacts list).

squiggy22• 3 years ago

I went to try this out only to read the words 'download the software'.

Good luck with that. Even the Firefox plugin requires some additional setup. Frictionless it ain't. By a long stretch.

Sigh.

bee_rider2• 3 years ago

Sounds like the goal of the article was achieved? You didn’t record your social life on an append-only social network.

sharperguy• 3 years ago

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.

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 "blockchain"-like structure.

The result is a fairly simple protocol which is fairly low latency and seamless for many applications compared to other decentralized solutions.

[1]. https://nostr.com/

canadiantim• 3 years ago

Isn't nostr still an append-only solution?

thinkmassive4• 3 years ago

Yes, you delete by appending a delete event:

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/7d792055372ce1af...

Then clients and relays SHOULD act as if the referenced event is deleted. This is different than MUST, probably because there’s no way to guarantee it happens. It’s also possible the delete event doesn’t make it to everywhere that received the initial event.

fortuna863• 3 years ago

Users don't use protocols they use websites. Or more specifically, apps.

muppetman• 3 years ago

Exactly! It's amazing how few people understand this. Signal is the perfect example, there's a lot of technical magic wrapped up it, but my Dad can use it.

numpad04• 3 years ago

This is 100% true. And all apps goes through App Store approval process, which makes all the censorship talk kind of moot.

Sideloading has to become a default, somehow without us returning to antivirus era. Problem is that no one knows how to make that happen.

senkora• 3 years ago

Seems neat. Has anyone written an ActivityPub bridge for nostr?

thinkmassive4• 3 years ago

Yes, there’s one called Mostr

_heimdall3• 3 years ago

Learn about Nostr: A simple, open protocol that enables a truly censorship-resistant and global social network.
Relays are like the backend servers for Nostr. They allow Nostr clients to send them messages, and they may (or may not) store those messages and broadcast those messages to all other connected clients.

I still haven't wrapped my head around these two words from the nostr site. How can it be truly censorship-resistant when used are entirely dependant on what their relays decide to store and share?

numpad04• 3 years ago

Messages are signed locally with entirely local private key, so relays can censor or ban all they like following local laws, without harm to your identity or social graph.

Hopefully someone, like a Raspberry Pi cluster on a derelict Soviet military space station on an international orbit, will take your message and relay it, :shrug:, and those messages can still be authenticated by the key.

That’s how I understand that part; Nostr uses DNS for blue badges and relay connections so “truly” indeed sound a bit of crypto talk though.

qwery• 3 years ago

I'm not particularly familiar with the project, but:

The claim is that it enables social network/s that are resistant to censorship. It doesn't say that it is a social network that's impossible to censor.

It's a protocol that everyone is free to implement. Valid implementations of the protocol should be compatible with each other. Meaning you don't have to go to soshl.com or use the Soshl app. Relays can choose whether or not to store/broadcast your messages, yes. But they can't stop you from sending them and they can't fake or modify your messages. They also can't revoke your identity. I assume a relay can't force other relays to delete things, but I'm not sure of the details.

A relay choosing to retransmit your message or not could be considered censorship, but it is not the same censorship as a court ordering Youtube to take a video down, which is not the same as Twitter silently burying your posts, which is not the same as the police arresting protestors, etc...

Joeri2• 3 years ago

Users publish their messages to multiple relays, and they can be followed by others on multiple relays. The idea is that if a relay starts censoring, then users and their followers can choose different relays, so the system as a whole “routes around censorship”. At least in theory.

api• 3 years ago

I tried nostr but found it hard to find anything except people sending micro transactions to each other and posting memes about Bitcoin.

anonporridge• 3 years ago

That's because bitcoiners created it and Jack Dorsey boosted it and abandoned Twitter for it. He's been extremely active there, https://primal.net/jack

And the idea of using nano transactions for upvotes has long been an attractive approach in this community for mitigating bot swarms from influencing conversations. In fact, the proof of work system that bitcoin was based on was originally proposed in the 90s as a solution to fight email spam. A micro cost of computation power (or a nano transaction) is neglegible to most legitimate users, but adds up quickly for spammers who depend on sending out thousands of emails for a single hit.

EGreg• 3 years ago

How is it different from Secure Scuttlebutt?

jcarrano• 3 years ago

I don't get why there is no inter-relay communication. From what I read it would just work but it is not allowed for some reason.

gropo• 3 years ago

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

twetch.com

iLoveOncall• 3 years ago

"Blockchains are useless, more at 5"

123sereusername• 3 years ago

also, wash your hands after using the toilet.

Mizoguchi• 3 years ago

Exodus = 0.2%

karaterobot• 3 years ago

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.

I'm not familiar with SSB. And, to me, this article's headline is five words too long (harumph)

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's some way to control who you broadcast to, or approve someone who follows you, and this description is just not mentioning it.

robryk• 3 years ago

in what way could it meaningfully be described as being private?

You can broadcast encrypted statements: https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/#private-m...

~Everyone can tell how many of these you sent, when, and how large were they, but not to whom (incl. how many recipients they had unless there were too many and you had to send multiple copies[1]) or what was in them.

[1] The copies will still be unlinkable, but if someone sends 5 messages of ~same size within a second, it's a pretty good guess that they're sending 5 copies of the same message.

natural219• 3 years ago

Is there a logical way to interpret this other than "don't use the internet"?

beebmam• 3 years ago

Why would you want your social life recorded anywhere? I love that my social life isn't recorded.

v0idzer0• 3 years ago

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.

rvba• 3 years ago

Didnt they allow all the banned users to come back + removed the systems that automatically ban bots? If you let the bots come back, then you will have much more "users".

blackshaw2• 3 years ago

They unbanned some controversial accounts (Trump being the most famous by far, although he hasn't posted anything since being unbanned), but it's pretty hyperbolic to say they allowed "all the banned users to come back"

dhosek2• 3 years ago

I rejoined Twitter mostly to hang with writer friends, but I’ve noticed that their engagement has gone down a lot since Musk took over and with it mine as well. It used to be that I would pop into Twitter several times a day, now I’ll go days.

I can’t speak to hate speech (other than seeing reactions to it showing up a lot in trending topics) as I’m liberal with my use of block to keep Twitter as non-toxic as possible.

nirui• 3 years ago

The third option is that the mass exodus is limited, and Twitter usage dipped just a bit. Mr Musk has obvious reasons to lie, but his users or people who don't like him can also lie.

If the mass exodus has caused any major user count decrease, people should be talking about "Why would you still using Twitter?" than "Hey, I've closed my Twitter account, cool uh?"

afiori2• 3 years ago

The obvious response is in the form of a meme:

The entire neighborhood gather to see a fire destroy my house

Me: wow, I never had so many visitors before

Anyway it seems clear that usage has shifted and reportedly Twitter is now running low quality (and less expensive) ads.

anonu2• 3 years ago

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't see these products going mainstream.

archagon• 3 years ago

People will wade through all sorts of terrible UI if their friends (or people they like) are using the app. See Snapchat.

anonu2• 3 years ago

Snapchat is centralized.

Also, I wouldn't call the Snapchat UI terrible. I would call it difficult for first time users. This creates a "buy in" effect with users... Lots of powerful tools have this concept, similar to the Bloomberg terminal.

duxup2• 3 years ago

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

jamilton• 3 years ago

You don't really need discovery for the thing SSB is trying to be. Same way you don't need discovery for email, phone numbers, discord servers, etc.

duxup2• 3 years ago

I think social networks/ something like a social network … people want that kind of thing.

Otherwise just have a blog or whatever.

dethswatch• 3 years ago

Hey how can I delete this message in future?

andsoitis2• 3 years ago

don't record your social life.

amelius• 3 years ago

other people will do it for you

dredmorbius• 3 years ago

"I get spied with a little help from my friends ..."

To rewrite the Beatle's lyric.

andsoitis2• 3 years ago

you cannot control what other people do, incl. where they post it so the least you can do is to not add to the volume.

dhosek2• 3 years ago

- 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.

Yeah, that sounds like a really positive user experience. Hard pass.

mjevans2• 3 years ago

No one has or owns a "true name", collisions on names are expected and natural with a set of billions.

Crypto keys aren't supposed to collide, but on a set of billions this could happen. -- If it does have a contingency for replacing the PKI part of the identity. This also covers loss of key material, etc...

Identity is ephemeral and in flux.

An indexed web of trust, who knows who, etc might work.

mawise• 3 years ago

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.

I still have vision for what Haven could be, and supporting self-hosting remains important but I think I'll end up with something like the Matrix/Element model where there is a (free?) centralized server you can use, or you can host your own with full interoperability.

[1] https://havenweb.org

mjevans2• 3 years ago

Avoid building new protocols. However if it really can't even be shoehorned into an existing protocol, or if there are extremely clear problems (to the point that the existing closest option is even unsuitable as a compatibility / bootstrap interface); then go ahead and make a protocol that really covers the use case, if you can also make an open source (as in free beer) library anyone can use to talk with it.

jupp0r• 3 years ago

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's still getting cheaper), your published information is going to be stored somewhere. Make decisions about posting something as if unpublishing it were impossible.

kfrzcode3• 3 years ago

Lol, we're about 30 years late. Everything, all the bits, are slurped by the NSA. ECHELON started in 1970s with the big five brothers.

Here's some fun keywords to whet your whistles if you wanna:

Camp Williams Boundless Informant ICREACH MAINWAY DCSNet BULLRUN/Edgehill - NSA breaking encryption by intentionally weakening encryption schemes and stealing master keys.

SPBS• 3 years ago

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

swiftcoder• 3 years ago

Append-only databases are acceptable for financial ledgers, contracts, and things we want to be persistent and immutable.

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

rglullis• 3 years ago

No, it has nothing to do with immutability. This "problem" with crypto is due to the lack of a central power to reverse a transaction.

WastingMyTime892• 3 years ago

You very much do want immutable and persistent records of financial transactions. That's the whole point of having a ledger in the first place. Error corrections should appear as actual corrections and be dated appropriately.

Joeri2• 3 years ago

It depends on what the ledger does. If the ledger is tracking transactions that occur somewhere else and for some reason a transaction is entered incorrectly then immutability will prevent the ledger from being corrected to reflect reality.

I have seen way too many systems that model something that happens somewhere else and provide no way for correcting discrepancies between the system and reality, built on the assumption of either infallible humans or infallible integrations, when the truth is that all humans and all integrations will eventually fail to input data correctly and need the ability to correct anything (no field should ever become fully read-only in such a system, and no status should become fully unreachable from any other status).

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

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