What does HackerNews think of patchwork?
A decentralized messaging and sharing app built on top of Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB).
And the message is “other clients should take it from here”.
https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
However it’s still the first and recommended one at the website.
https://scuttlebutt.nz/get-started/
I don’t think I have time for this.
I'm a bit split about spreading the word about Scuttlebutt, I don't want to ruin it since it's already so great. But felt it was very related to what you were writing, so here goes nothing :)
In case you wanna join: https://scuttlebutt.nz/
The client I'm using is https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
The ID is tied to a host, so every time you lose your host, there's a lot of work to do, because you don't own your account - your host do. You basically have to start from scratch every time, so what's the point? Better to use Twitter, at least there's some chance they will not dissapear out of the blue.
Identities should be self-generated, and independent of any hosting. Fediverse hosting should just facilitate passing stuff when peers are offline. Then it wouldn't matter if you're on one server or other, because it wouldn't be even visible in the UI.
https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork had some more interesting ideas, but AFAIK execution was rather poor.
Only a few of us run servers, most people just run Scuttlebutt on their device so that they can their data as well as their friends' data:
- Windows, macOS, and Linux: https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
- Android: https://gitlab.com/staltz/manyverse/
- iOS: WIP
- https://gitter.im/solid/chat (Tim Berners-Lee system)
- https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
- https://gitter.im/datproject/discussions
etc.
The difference in outcome may be due to less economic incentive. It's easy to share photos on instagram and it's much more difficult to, say, download 20 academic papers without emptying one's bank account. There is a cost to the user to sharing photos with instagram. The cost hasn't been realized by the average user.
It seems like very early times for most people even considering the downsides of centralized 'social media,' and it will take time and hand-holding to demonstrate the alternative possibilities. A great client app that could unify the user experience, but offer power-user features could go a long way. Most people that I know (older) are not overtly interested in participating in any public social network (i.e. Twitter).
I wonder if one could build a more closed, private, white-list-default (triple opt-in!) type of social network on top of SSB with the right client software?
[0] "A decentralized messaging and sharing app built on top of Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB)." https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
[1] "A database of unforgeable append-only feeds, optimized for efficient replication for peer to peer protocols" https://github.com/ssbc/secure-scuttlebutt
2. IPFS and the distributed offline web [1]
3. WebAssembly and the coming revolution of web applications. [2]
[0] https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
[1] https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmNhFJjGcMPqpuYfxL62VVB9528NXqDNMFXiqN5...
[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Concept...
I use patchwork everyday, just like FaceBook or Twitter. Content quality is excellent. https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork
That is, if Dapps can be taken to mean distributed apps - instead of just apps on blockchain with consensus.
There is a project to build a Facebook replacement that federates with ActivityPub[2], which would make it to Facebook what Mastodon[3] is to Twitter. However, I don't want to link it because it's in too early a stage to face HN levels of scrutiny.
There is also Patchwork[4], a peer-to-peer social application built on top of the Secure Scuttlebutt Protocol. It doesn't have all the features you'd want yet, but ticks off the boxes some people care about.
[0]: https://diasporafoundation.org/
[1]: https://project.hubzilla.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project
[2]: https://activitypub.rocks/
Also remember that a message being in the feed doesn't mean it is displayed. Scuttlebutt is quite flexible, there are clients that have support for "chess messages" so their users can play chess, patchwork doesn't support those messages so I don't even see them. There is git-ssb[2] which allows people to host and contribute to code directly inside the feed, not all clients show these messages but they are all there.
New messages could be added for flagging a message id as deleted and clients could honor them and not display that message anymore, they would still be on the feed, much like in version control systems we still have access to deleted files (if no one rewrites history).
I enjoy how permanent things are there because as a side-effect it causes people to care more about the ecosystem and culture as those are permanent stuff you're putting out there. Check out this essay "the future will be technical"[3] about the culture on scuttlebutt, you'll see it is quite different than other social networks, but I agree with you, your experience may vary and what I consider an advantage, others may see as a reason not to use.
[1]: https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork/ [2]: https://github.com/noffle/git-ssb-intro [3]: https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical...
Right now, the patchwork app[1] is really fun to play with, but still a toy, in my mind.
https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork >You have to follow somebody to get messages from them, so you won't get spammed.
Doesn't that make it completely pointless because updates are still centralised? It merely shifted trusting a single provider to trusting each user which is not a scalable solution. The value add is so low you might as well just use IPNS and make people subscribe to IPNS addresses.
The blockchain itself will only be needed for certain types of transactions, for instance those around identity (e.g. name registration), and reputation/spam prevention (forum moderators).
1. https://github.com/ssbc/patchwork 2. https://github.com/dominictarr/scuttlebutt