
$1M to build decentralized social networks - muneeb
https://www.requestforsocialnetworks.com/
======
godelski
Why use blockchain? Doesn't that actually give you less control?

Isn't the point of a blockchain to keep a ledger of the changes? So how can
you delete anything without rebuilding the entire chain? Being decentralized
in this case just means that now everyone has my data. Sure, it is encrypted,
but are we just going to say what is secure today will be secure tomorrow?

My understanding of blockchain is that it is meant to be tamper proof. Which
is nice for things like tracking votes or ensuring the integrity of things,
but with my personal data I WANT to have the power to tamper with it. These
two ideas seem to be at odds.

If I'm misunderstanding, maybe somebody can educate me.

~~~
orthecreedence
I had the same thoughts. I'm really getting sick of seeing applications move
to the blockchain that have absolutely no business being there. Sure, a ledger
makes sense...you never want to remove or change the records.

The blockchain is a really terrible medium for a social network. Maybe some
kind of hybrid where the blockchain entries point/link to a centralized (or
federated) location, but, then, why not just build your own protocol that
doesn't use the blockchain? Just build it over Matrix or something.

What does the blockchain provide, other than a buzzword?

~~~
godelski
> Maybe some kind of hybrid where the blockchain entries point/link to a
> centralized (or federated) location...

Well what makes me uncomfortable about this type of data being decentralized
is that I want to guarantee a delete or edit. To do that on a decentralized
network you need to have a way to guarantee that those edits propagate to
machines that you do not control. Is there a way to ensure this?

~~~
empath75
You can’t guarsntee that with any service. Even if you trust the website to
delete it, it can still be cached elsewhere.

~~~
godelski
I'm not saying that the data can't exists anywhere. You can't prevent a state
actor from caching the entire internet or a stalker from saving all your
content. BUT you can prevent someone who has not done that already. Which is
more common.

------
a-dub
So first I would suggest some sort of global service for translating user
friendly names to internet addresses. Something that might have a bit of
centralization at the top, but ultimately a decentralized network of authority
of sub-namespaces and protocols for building servers that can translate these
names to addresses. This system should also support attaching small bits of
metadata to these names.

On top of this I propose building a protocol for store and forward messaging.
Something where it is possible for anyone to develop a server that speaks this
protocol. Instances of these servers can be registered in the namespace above
and this is how these servers can find each other to push data around. Anyone
should be able to run these servers, providing service just for themselves,
small communities or even large organizations, businesses, institutions or
resold commercial services.

Lastly I propose an application layer on top of this. This application layer
has two components:

1) A suite of standard protocols for user agents to contact these servers and
download user data 2) A suite of standard protocols for rich content,
encryption or group distribution

From these pieces, it would be totally possible to build a giant decentralized
social network that could present the same sort of data we see on social
networks. While things could start with simple messaging, similar features to
what we find on social networks could be built.

Of course there's the problem of bad actors and abuse, but it seems this could
be solved by merely blocking all communication except for that from a list of
known senders... We could call this the friends list.

It would be a lot of work to build and get right, it's a shame nothing like
this exists today.

~~~
kodablah
> So first I would suggest some sort of global service for translating user
> friendly names to internet addresses.

You can't do this without having a central authority (which people don't want
to be beholden to), making names cost money (or be otherwise difficult), or
accepting squatters. People aren't going to pay for names and you've gained
nothing if you centralize the name store. People aren't going to accept the
immobility of federation like they do with email (and it still gravitates
towards centralized authorities).

I think we're just going to have to accept large hard-to-gen and hard-to-read
identities (e.g. base32'd pub keys like onion service names) and we each "tag"
friendly names to them locally as we choose.

~~~
jessaustin
If you can share those tags (and why not?), now you have decentralized
"authorities" for names. "Squatting" is only a problem if someone else can
take an identity after I've used it within the service. Squatting on
previously-unused-in-the-service IRL identities doesn't matter at all.

~~~
kodablah
> If you can share those tags (and why not?), now you have decentralized
> "authorities" for names.

Until an indexing service becomes a defacto standard, once again making it
centralized. This is what I meant about federation (i.e. sharing your name
lists) gravitating towards centralization.

> Squatting on previously-unused-in-the-service IRL identities doesn't matter
> at all.

It does when I can register thousands and thousands of names. This is why it
must be too difficult for squatters and not too difficult for users.

~~~
jessaustin
There isn't a point to generating thousands and thousands of UUIDs, but it's
only the UUIDs that need to be reserved after use. The human-readable names
needn't be universal. If too many of your tags point to squatters, then no one
will want to share them.

------
franzpeterstein
Nobody needs a social network anymore, whether it is decentralized (Mastodon,
Diaspora) or centralized (Facebook, Twitter). I think the social media bubble
burst a long time ago and we just didn't realize it. I also have a Mastodon
account, but used it only for a short time. I speak now only for myself
personally, social networks bore me quite and I have no more interest to sign
up somewhere.

~~~
onion2k
_Nobody needs a social network anymore_

This sort of comment is why people in tech are very often seen as being
incredibly bad at solving non-trivial social problems by people outside of our
industry. Somewhere between a third and a half of _all the people on Earth_
see enough value in social networks to use one regularly. There are plenty of
problems with the way networks work, and what they do to our mental health,
but the notion that no one should use them any more is plain stupid.

~~~
swsieber
Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth see enough
value in social networks to _have signed up for one at some point_.

Somewhere between a third and a half of all the people on Earth _use a product
designed to addict them_.

I agree in general though - they can be useful, and they can fill a real
purpose.

~~~
mayniac
I think a better argument is that between a third and a half of all people on
Earth see enough value in some elements of social networks to sign up for
them.

A lot of people I know only use Facebook for messenger. Some only use it for
private groups. Some for events. Some for the newsfeed. Those people use
twitter, instagram, whatsapp, snapchat, or discord for the features they don't
use on Facebook.

IMO instead of looking for a service which could distribute the back-end
servers of a single social network we should be encouraging the distribution
of features, and make sure they can interact with each other smoothly.

------
overcast
If I had the money, I'd pledge $1B to erase social networks from our lives.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
If you feel that strongly, stop using them. I stopped using Facebook a year
ago, and now my most social sites are YouTube and reddit. Neither are as toxic
for me as Facebook was. You won’t save others, but it’s easy to save yourself.

~~~
overcast
I did stop using them, years ago. YouTube I tolerate because I disable
comments. Reddit is a cesspool.

~~~
hunter2_
There are several valid places to draw the line between what is and isn't a
social network, but aren't there enough similarities between Reddit and HN to
not draw it between the two? Subreddits is the main difference I think, but
that sort of thing can't be a requirement because Twitter doesn't have
something similar.

~~~
overcast
Sure, but HN is civilized, Reddit is not.

------
wesleytodd
Just stop now and give your money to Beaker Browser

[https://beakerbrowser.com/](https://beakerbrowser.com/)

~~~
isaiahg
That's a really interesting project. Are there any plans to incorporate more
human readable addresses? I can see how this could be misused by forking a
financial institution website and imperceptibly change one letter.

~~~
pfraze
The spec for using DNS is in the process of being written up. Beaker is
already using the .well-known part of the spec. See
[https://github.com/pfrazee/DEPs/blob/e391a04d9a96ddaf3e5a6fd...](https://github.com/pfrazee/DEPs/blob/e391a04d9a96ddaf3e5a6fdb894aff64a7f6e946/proposals/0000-dns.md)

------
Robin_Message
One of the questions is: "describe your social network in 50 _characters_ or
less."

"Facebook but decentralised" is already 26 characters so that seems like a bit
of a tight limit. I suppose it'll help find people who have any marketing
nouse, which is the actual challenge for a project like this, not technology.

~~~
gitgud
Last question:

"Please implement the social network in 5 weeks or less, GitHub link to code
too please"

~~~
DeadSuperHero
That's super ridiculous. You wouldn't want to use a decentralized social
platform in a production environment that's only got 5 weeks of development
work in it.

As an aside, do the submissions _have_ to use the Blockchain? There are
already a ton of good decentralized social platforms that make no use of a
blockchain whatsoever, and the majority of them inter-federate with one
another.

~~~
gitgud
Sorry if it wasn't clear that it was a joke.

A lot of these ICOs want developers to invest their money AND build the
product for free.

I agree, there are a lot of good non-blockchain solutions to this... like most
ICOs

------
livestyle
Blockchains are good for one thing and one thing only. Censorship resistant
money exchanges. That's it.

These guys launched the same concept last year. For $25m and they literly have
nobody using the platform.

[https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockstack-partners-
vcs...](https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/blockstack-partners-vcs-
launch-25-million-blockstack-signature-fund/)

------
staticvar
How does blockstack compare to alternatives like Dat
([https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/)) and IPFS
([https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/))?

~~~
ranfdev
Dat and IPFS are decentralized file systems. Instead, blockstack is a network
for decentralized application. It offers identity, storage and a way to
transfer tokens. With blockstack you can easily create apps where users can
sign-in in seconds and store all their data where they want.

~~~
lgierth
Dat and IPFS can be used to build applications too -- checkout out e.g.
[https://peerpad.net](https://peerpad.net) and the things on
[https://hashbase.io](https://hashbase.io)

~~~
tbv
To add to that, here's a whole list of websites and apps built with Dat

[https://github.com/beakerbrowser/explore](https://github.com/beakerbrowser/explore)

~~~
diggan
Similar list for IPFS projects: [https://github.com/ipfs/awesome-
ipfs](https://github.com/ipfs/awesome-ipfs)

------
acconrad
So why not just throw the $1M at Diaspora or Mastodon?

~~~
Xeoncross
They use their own auth/storage systems. Browserstack is simply giving a tiny
amount of the money they raised to build their own platform.

If I was browser stack I'd be offering a lot more than $1 million considering
how important this is to their platform.

------
rplst8
They want it built on their tech here:
[https://blockstack.org/](https://blockstack.org/). "New Internet" aye? Is
this an based on an episode of _Silicon Valley_?

~~~
muneeb
Muneeb Ali, Blockstack co-founder here. I'm a technical consultant to the
Silicon Valley show (season 5) along with my co-founder Ryan. So yes there is
a link to the show but the project is not based on the show :-)

Blockstack was in the R&D phase until early 2017 (building the core tech &
infrastructure), we launched our browser last summer and now have
decentralized apps built on the platform that are live. These apps can scale
to millions of users today. We're excited about enabling developers to build
new apps like decentralized social networks.

~~~
folex
Quick question, do you really think $100k is enough money to build a social
network? If so, how much time and people is needed for such task?

P.S. I'm convinced it's not enough money. It will take over a year just to
have something working and usable and it will take more than 5 people to do
that.

~~~
daveid
I built Mastodon alone for a year for like $600/mo until it got popular. Now
I'm getting more ($3k/mo from Patreon) but I don't think I'm even anywhere
close to hitting $100k. So it's possible :P

------
LinuxBender
I still believe this approach is not optimal in the practical sense. I believe
the issue is having a common and standard source of truth for user metadata.
Social platforms are secondary to this problem.

I would suggest we come up with an authentication system that can scale across
several small technical groups of people, perhaps something like OpenLDAP.
Then lets put a few gateways in front of it like SAML2/OAuth/whatever. Set up
replication between a few technical folks in a small circle of trust. If a
friend leaves the circle, exclude their node from replication.

Now put whatever trendy web app, chat app, misc app in front of that
authentication. The apps can come and go, but the authentication data, email
contacts, phone numbers, all maintained in one authentication system and
highly replicated.

Each application should be coded in such a way that users own their data and
are prompted to download backups. Data retention policies should be very
obvious to the end user and they should know this is not a long term archive
for their binary data.

Each small group of technical folks share their platform with their circle of
technical and non technical friends. Each geek pulls a copy of the backups in
the even a friend wants to leave the circle. Different geeks in the circle can
manage different pieces of the platform or different applications.

At least, that is how I would approach this problem. YMMV.

------
kodablah
Like everyone else, I'm building one. But I'm not hung up on distributed
storage or any of that. It's just a simple way for people to host social
network rooms from their always-on home computers if they want. The gist: app
w/ statically compiled Tor (separate lib started at [0]), room config flexible
enough to build different social network types, communicate via gRPC over Tor
onion services (protos at [1]), and make it so dead simple that it just works
(mobile remotes to home onion service).

I think people are worrying so much about network and storage and uptime for
ephemeral machines that they are missing the forest for the trees here. Just
get a decent platform and iterate from there. At first, you don't have to
federate, conform to a protocol, distribute data, etc. But if you are building
these things, why not at least offer anonymity?

0 - [https://github.com/cretz/bine](https://github.com/cretz/bine) 1 -
[https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto](https://github.com/cretz/yukup/tree/master/yukup/pb/proto)

------
sethev
The big problems in social media are already decentralized. Tribalism (also
termed as filter bubbles), the spread of false information, and outrage as a
mechanism of virality all originate with people in a distributed fashion.

Facebook selling ads based on demographics is centralized but it seems to me
like a small part of what's messed up about social networks.

------
haolez
There is an interesting experiment in the Bitcoin (Cash) camp called
Memo.cash, which mimics early Twitter using Bitcoin's blockchain. Posts need
to spend a few satoshis to be posted and you cal also tip others. Pretty neat!

~~~
skorbenko
Didn’t Siraj Raval make something like this in his book on dApps?

------
EGreg
It exists now, today. Use it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1O_gmPneI)

It is simply a platform on top of the Web same as Wordpress, that anyone can
install. It can even run on local wireless mesh networks.

Oh and it’s totally Free and Open Source and any community or startup can use
it to build apps to put in the store.

[https://github.com/Qbix/Platform](https://github.com/Qbix/Platform)

Contact me if you’re interested to be involved, or just have a question about
how to get started. (Greg+hn, the at sign, then qbix.com)

------
intrasight
Is it public discourse or private discourse?. If public, then you have no
right to anonymity or to be forgotten. Anyone can record what you say in
public, and that is reasonable and expected. Myself, I would like to have both
- just as I do in the non-digital world. I don't expect that one platform can
serve both purposes.

Private communication is not possible. Humans have been striving to achieve it
for all of history. I guess that the rich and powerful can achieve it to a
certain degree. The analog hole is the problem. Why is there not more
technical discussion about plugging the analog hole?

------
rixrax
I sound like a broken record, but in my humble view decentralized social
network is even worse than centralized one.

Key feature of any social network should be 'right to be forgotten' (e.g.
delete content), and ability of network to moderate and update content (due to
legal requirements, or due to users requests for their own content or for
other reasons).

How do you manage that in a system such as proposed here? How do you enforce
content to be removed due to court order? How do you take down a revenge this
or that after your account gets hijacked and your password/keys are gone?

~~~
dcbadacd
> Key feature of any social network should be 'right to be forgotten'

I've said this before, the only data an user should have the right to remove
should have no value to someone else. I absolutely hate reddit threads filled
with "[deleted]", people deleting their Mediafire accounts, picture hosts
removing infrequently fetched images and so on and on. It's so hard to avoid
"digital Alzheimer's" it's infuriating and we should curb it rather than
encourage it. I do myself want to delete old FB Messenger conversations, but
I'd be seriously pissed seeing some old chat containing only my incoherent
ramblings. I think one-sided deletion isn't the solution, fine-tuned privacy
settings (and thus hiding and possible recovery) is.

It's important that we don't forget to deal with this before we actually do
start to notice that "f __* shouldn 't have deleted that".

~~~
krapp
>I've said this before, the only data an user should have the right to remove
should have no value to someone else. >I absolutely hate reddit threads filled
with "[deleted]", people deleting their Mediafire accounts, picture hosts
removing infrequently fetched images and so on and on.

I disagree - the right of users to assert control over their identity and data
supersedes your desire to control or use that data for your own purposes, or
your desire to have the web act as an immutable historical record, which it
was never designed or intended to do.

I agree that Reddit threads with deleted content are annoying, but that's an
implementation detail Reddit chooses to have and could likewise choose not to
have (the way Hacker News chooses to make it impossible to delete user
accounts, change usernames or delete comments after a certain time.) But the
premise that people should be _allowed_ to delete content from the web at all
shouldn't be up for debate.

>I think one-sided deletion isn't the solution, fine-tuned privacy settings
(and thus hiding and possible recovery) is.

Both can be solutions, but I believe the former is a necessity.

~~~
dcbadacd
> the right of users to assert control over their identity and data supersedes
> your desire to control or use that data for your own purposes

The right of users to assert control over their identity is different from the
control over all of the data the user put online. Your right to your data
should end with my right to my data. As I said, data deletion is so often
damaging it's ridiculous.

> or your desire to have the web act as an immutable historical record

Please don't twist my words, I never said that.

> But the premise that people should be allowed to delete content from the web
> at all shouldn't be up for debate.

I think that exactly has to be up for debate, especially with "social
networks", noone is social alone thus the data shouldn't belong to that one
person. I'm not saying it should be new "Facebook" that should have the
control, not at all, the users should get to decide. Over time I've
accumulated access to various collections of images of for example events that
have happened in the past. I made those pictures, I shared them, I have
control over them, do you think it's right I now go around and wipe them?

~~~
krapp
>The right of users to assert control over their identity is different from
the control over all of the data the user put online.

I don't believe it is - the data you put online _is_ your online identity, for
better or worse. Control of one is control of the other, especially when it
comes to social media, which often has the mediation and sale of that identity
as part of its business model.

>Please don't twist my words, I never said that.

To me, that's implied in the belief that deletion is harmful and needs to be
managed. If that misrepresents your views, I apologize.

But a lot of people do seem to have the concern lately that things like the
"right to be forgotten" are a threat to data archiving and the public record,
and they're right, but... that doesn't matter. That's the web working as
intended, it's meant to be stateless and ephemeral by design. Link rot,
unfortunate as it is, is a feature, not a bug.

>Over time I've accumulated access to various collections of images of for
example events that have happened in the past. I made those pictures, I shared
them, I have control over them, do you think it's right I now go around and
wipe them?

Yes, if you want to, I think it's entirely your right. Why should you have the
right to add data to a service, but not to delete it if you choose?
Particularly when those services claim an arbitrary right to do so themselves?

Mind you, I'm not saying you have the right to delete it _everywhere,_ because
that's infeasible, but you should have the right to delete what you published
from whatever service you published to.

~~~
dcbadacd
> Why should you have the right to add data to a service, but not to delete it
> if you choose? Particularly when those services claim an arbitrary right to
> do so themselves?

Why should I have the right to delete content that relates to other people, if
I might even say important to other people? Simply because I was the first
should mean that I get to say what happens to the content?

> Link rot, unfortunate as it is, is a feature, not a bug.

Really curious, how is it a feature, not a bug?

------
money_talks
Users must own and control their data, using open standards, so that apps can
come and go and people aren’t locked into them.

The biggest obstacle to this is browsers. Browsers must implement decent
identity and authentication with pluggable encrypted data storage. Without
that there simply can’t be a decentralized social network on the web.

Beaker browser is the only active project attempting to move in that
direction, even though it might not be the right solution. They deserve the $1
million, not some idiot blockchain bikeshedders.

------
douglaswlance
Decentralized search please too.

~~~
douglaswlance
And ecommerce while we're at it.

~~~
ibdf
This is on producthunt today: [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/public-
market](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/public-market)

------
faizshah
This blockstack architecture is pretty interesting, but I wish it didn't have
a Token attached:
[https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf](https://blockstack.org/whitepaper.pdf)

Anyone know of a similar decentralized DNS platform and allows users to 'own'
their personal data without an attached ICO?

~~~
cponeill
Not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for but I just stumbled upon
the Dat project myself.

[https://datproject.org/](https://datproject.org/)

~~~
faizshah
Thanks! A system after my own heart, it even uses a Merkle tree instead of a
blockchain <3

Does this have a system that allows users to keep ownership of their personal
data?

~~~
wesleytodd
Yes, the data is owned by you and signed for ownership attribution. AFAIK
there is no "remove my data from the network", as it is a public network.

------
pcmaffey
Lots of anti in this thread, so I don't mean to pile it on. But... a new
browser is the wrong UX to develop an ecosystem of apps.

It needs to be an API, that developers can use existing platforms (current
browsers, mobile and native apps) to build their apps. Users aren't going to
care enough about decentralized data to change their behavior.

------
snissn
It's unclear if they're giving the money without taking equity, or if they're
expecting to get a cut.

------
lyra_comms
Decentralised social networks are a bad idea. Communication tools need to be
inclusive and open to everyone, especially laypeople. Decentralised tools and
blockchain turn off non-techies, and are overkill for the social networking
problem.

~~~
hunter2_
People use decentralized things all the time without a problem. Email, for
example. They can use a shim like Gmail, decide one day they hate it, switch
to something else, and still email everyone in roughly the same way without
convincing all those people to migrate somewhere simultaneously.

------
bluetwo
Can anyone show me a use case for the end user with a clearly defined benefit?

------
vasilipupkin
how would this work? if users own their own data, do you have to query them
for data every time? would this be horribly inefficient ? I mean this as a
technical question about how blockstack works. if you start caching or storing
users data, then there is nothing stopping you from mischief with it, right?

------
colordrops
Seems that 1 million to 1 group or even 333k to 3 groups would be more
effective than 100k to 10 groups.

------
folex
Like $100k is enough to build social network, lol. You can't even hire 3
developers for that money.

------
tw1010
It's interesting to personally experience the rise of politically motivated
technology like this.

------
neumann
Best joke on hn today. Keep dreaming, dreamer.

------
projectramo
There is a documentary on HBO about this effort called "Silicon Valley". It is
in the 5th season.

The basic challenge is that smart people keep making really poor choices which
are very funny but also counter productive.

~~~
xnyanta
LOL

------
debt
Holy shit, why? This "decentralized social network" concept has been around
literally since the beginning of Facebook. Apparently, people are failing to
grasp that centralization isn't the problem and will never be a selling point
to 2 billion people.

The problem is making something as engaging and entertaining and interesting
as Facebook. Good luck.

------
momentmaker
If anyone is looking to learn how to build a DApp on a smart contract
platform, check out Nebulas.

It uses Javascript or Typescript as its language.

You can learn to how to build a simple DApp in a day and get paid to do so
(100 NAS for just submitting one or win up to 20,000 NAS for winning DApp of
the month).

Check it out here:
[https://incentive.nebulas.io/signup.html?invite=xDhnG](https://incentive.nebulas.io/signup.html?invite=xDhnG)

