
ZeroMe – Decentralized Microblogging on ZeroNet - doublec
https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2017/10/12/zerome-decentralized-microblogging-on-zeronet.html
======
j_s
An off-grid social network |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14050049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14050049)
(Apr 2017, 366 comments)

[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/#other-
projects](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/#other-projects)

------
reacharavindh
How nice would it be if humanity united together and formed a non-profit
organisation like ICANN that would run an IDentity+social network service with
ability for people to plugin their extra features (like photo album, blog,
things/services they sell etc)... As a central body it can still retain the
ability to shutdown ID of non-acceptable content like child porn and dangerous
propaganda. I’d happily donate to have such an unbiased body.

~~~
bobcallme
> As a central body it can still retain the ability to shutdown ID of non-
> acceptable content like ...

The problem with that is who gets to choose what is acceptable and what is
not? If I make criticisms about something or someone's actions, is that "non-
acceptable" content? During these discussions, the lowest common denominator
is used, but the reality is that definitions change or people try to expand
the definition to include what one does not like or agree with. The price for
free speech and expression comes a great price with many risks, but it is
worth it. We have seen centralization fail time and time again with platforms
like Facebook and Youtube censoring (demonetizing) unfavorable opinions or
ideas.

> I’d happily donate to have such an unbiased body.

As soon as you start picking, choosing and expanding what is acceptable and
what is not, it is no longer unbiased.

------
feelin_googley
I am not very familiar with this project but I see it uses UPnP. Does it rely
on UPnP or is it only opportunistic use? If the former, what happens if the
user's custom router does not run a UPnP daemon, or if the user prefers to
disable UPnP in her consumer router?

~~~
doublec
It does rely on being able to communicate through that port - UPnP is one of
the options it uses to ensure it can receive external requests. If you run
using the tor option it evades firewalls via tor.

------
marknadal
It has been really exciting to see ZeroNet grow, we need this!

Curious, does it still use git to push a JSON record change in a large blob to
a remote bot that then commits it? Are you working to re-architect this? I'm
hoping I can convince you guys to partner up with us, we just got a prototype
of end-to-end encrypted P2P data structures working (
[https://youtu.be/ik_dqXBMBHw](https://youtu.be/ik_dqXBMBHw) ) that is
storage/network efficient (syncing diffs) and fully decentralized using CRDTs.
Shoot me an email (check profile) if you see this. I've been keeping an eye on
ZeroNet for the last year or year and a half-ish (?), and really excited about
its growth.

~~~
doublec
It does not use git internally - other than for source code control - and it
does not push to a remote bot. There used to be a demo app called ZeroBoard
that used an external service that it did an HTTP POST too, back in the days
when ZeroNet had not other way to do that type of thing. The app is still
around but it's superceded by other things.

~~~
marknadal
Huh, then how do you handle dynamic content versus pages?

~~~
doublec
I'm not the author of ZeroNet btw, just in case you think I am.

Each site has an area for user content. That is content not generated by the
site owner. Users of the site that generate content (posts in a forum or
comments on a blog for example) write their content into that area which is a
directory for them based on the public key of their pseudo-anonymous identity.
The user then signs the data with their private key and this gets sent to
other site users through the seeding mechanism. All this is hidden by the API
so the user of a site doesn't see the public/private key signing, etc.

------
627467
I love Zeronet project. the only problem I have is, within my corporate
network I can't run my node.

I also have a hard problem understanding how to use ZeroMe from different
devices... I use the same masterseed (maintaining my ID) but my ZeroMe profile
does not seem to move between my devices. I find the hub concept difficult to
understand...

------
Dowwie
Wait a second-- ZeroNet was written in Python and hasn't iterated to a lower
level, popular systems programming language yet? Hold the presses! Before I
get too excited, though-- would someone involved with the project share what's
the reason?

------
corobo
The trouble with every decentralised anything I've seen is that the on-
boarding is so.damn.complicated. Peer to peer doesn't work if there are no
peers.

You can almost tell that a service is going to fail to adopt any sort of
critical mass by the size of your scrollbar in articles about them.

Additional:

> Uncensored

> Sites are served by visitors

Technically, decent idea. Realistically, you're hosting the stuff people don't
want to pay to host.

~~~
dogruck
Speaking of onboading -- why doesn't someone build "Just like Twitter minus
everything everyone dislikes about Twitter"?

Is it due to the challenge of building critical mass?

~~~
yjchen
Does Mastodon ([https://joinmastodon.org](https://joinmastodon.org)) fit what
you just described?

~~~
dogruck
I suppose my question is illformed. And perhaps it's not possible to make my
question properly-formed.

I mean very similar to Twitter, in that it's a centralized service.

But, they'd do a better job of protecting users when threads go hostile.
Perhaps I'm too focused on today's boycott.

~~~
mxuribe
Right away, i will state that i am biased in favor of
decentralized/distributed/federated styles of platforms, such as mastodon gnu
social, etc. Having said that, i still think your needs might be best met by
one or some of these non-centralized platforms (and not twitter)...Here's one
way you can test this quite easily and painlessly (using mastodon as an easy-
to-onboard example):

1\. Visit [https://instances.social](https://instances.social) and walk
through the choices. This will help you choose a mastodon "instance" which
would be most relevant to you.

2\. Then join and use/play around with that recommended mastodon server.

The beauty of mastodon - and other similar platforms - is that you are not
stuck to that server only. Mastodon does not have a single, central server
like twitter; each of its numerous servers can however connect with each
other. (Apologies, i don't know your level of tech literacy, so am
purposefully keeping this high-level for ease of explanation.) You can join
any peer server/instance and still connect with friends/acquaintances from
other mastodon servers. Some of these other mastodon servers focus around a
specific community, some do not. You could join one of these servers - maybe
the one that helps protect its users to be yes open in their opinion but
shielded from hostiles, trolls, a$$holes, etc. I can't say for sure because i
don't know, but there certainly could be such a mastodon server out there. (We
must remember that there often are people thinking and feeling the same as us
at times.) Think of it like email: anyone can send a message to anyone else
(provided they know their recipient's address) but each person can have an
email address from different domains! Alice's address might be
alice@whatever.com, and she can can send a message to bob@bobshop.net...and
neither of them "reside" on the same email server...And email - as far as
delivery is concerned - has worked pretty ok for several decades. This tech
philosophy can work for social networks as well.

I may be missing the mark on what you really want, since i'm only going off of
minimal notes...but i really believe in non-centralized platforms. I myself am
a fan of Gnu Social, but Mastodon is simply such a powerful platform because
the on-boarding is so very simple. (And, by the way mastodon servers CAN
connect with Gnu Social servers, so good benefits all around!) There's a
reason that mastodon is so extremely popular. Even if you don't believe in or
agree with what I (or others) have stated about non-central platforms, I
encourage you to try it out and see for yourself, if it meets your needs. Good
luck!!!

------
lostmsu
How exactly did they solve cross-site scripting? It looks like all pages run
under same hostname:port pair.

------
philfrasty
Is ZeroNet built on ipfs or a standalone implementation?

~~~
doublec
It is not built on ipfs. It uses the bittorrent DHT to associate site
addresses with IP addresses (or tor onion addresses if configured to use tor).
Actual transfer of data is done via a custom p2p service implemented within
ZeroNet.

------
sitepodmatt
Didnt Opera do something like this years ago? Opera Unite

------
thatzerodude
> Peer to peer doesn't work if there are no peers.

Thankfully there's thousands of peers, and quite a few of those are people
escaping the GFW of mainland China.

~~~
z3t4
How does peer-to-peer get pass the firewall ? They can host stuff anonymously
inside the country though.

