
Planetary: An open and humane alternative to Facebook - yarapavan
https://planetary.social/
======
dang
This looks like just a sign-up page, which falls into the 'announcement of an
announcement' category. That's off topic here.

On HN, there's no harm in waiting until a thing exists. Once it exists, we can
have a nice thread about it.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20announcement%20of%20an%20announcement&sort=byDate&type=comment)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

~~~
masukomi
it's still in beta testing. It works well but there is still more work to be
done before it is released.

~~~
dang
That's great, and I wish you well getting it to release. It's just that HN
threads need to have something substantial to go on, such as an initial
release, in order to have a solid discussion. If you email us when the release
is ready, we can give you some tips about how to present it on Hacker News.

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mikece
Lofty goals but I don’t see how free and private expression will be humane and
free from harassment. People believe different things and whether we consider
that humane and harassing is totally subjective. Let’s tale HN as an example:
someone promoting the MIT license to the detriment of the GPL is a reason to
fight in this space. What about moral and political issues on which we
disagree?

I like the spirit but it just doesn’t seem realistic. (Though if it threatens
Facebook and Twitter I’m in favor of it.)

~~~
mc32
You give people tools to handle issues.

You let them follow or block people. You allow them to join open or closed
groups, groups which are okay with adult language or groups which encourage
manners, some groups might be invite only, etc.

In most instances given those kinds of options people can manage their
interactions.

You don’t have to shutdown people you don’t like on the platform, so long as
they are not engaging in criminal activity.

~~~
sprayk
> You don’t have to shutdown people you don’t like on the platform

Unfortunately it's never framed as such. It's usually of the form "this
person's words/ideas are objectively bad and your platform is bad by allowing
them to post at all"

~~~
panarky
Some words and ideas are objectively, universally bad.

Other words and ideas may not be universally bad, but I don't want to host
them on my platform. My platform, my rules.

Still other words and ideas are not universally bad, and I don't have a
problem with them on my platform, but some of my users will. So my users need
the ability to define their own rules and control who they interact with.

------
jph
Great goal! I'm a big fan of social networks for social good, including
empowering users, reducing spam, and improving communications.

The Planetary project uses the Scuttlebutt protocol. I've looked at the
protocol a bit, and I love its strengths - such as distributed replication in
offline peer to peer settings.

But I don't have a clear understanding of how Scuttlebutt will handle some
typical use cases. For example, how to handle accountability, or compliance,
or anti-spam training across instances, or stopping mass-spidering across
instances. Social networks at scale have tremendous pressures due to
attackers, harassers, spammers, etc. and it's non-trivial to stop these, even
more so with Scuttlebutt because it would need new kinds of distributed tools
and new kinds of user awareness.

If someone here is able to engage with these questions, and ones like them, I
would be very happy to provide more info and specifics. I keep my notes in
progress at
[https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan](https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/social_network_plan)

------
beardedman
These posts are starting to bug me. There was another new social network post
the other day, also slating FB.

As much as it sucks, people aren't on FB for superior encryption or privacy
controls - they're on there because their friends are on there. Solve that
first.

~~~
masukomi
I get the frustration but the only real "solution" to the network effect is to
steal the "friend graph" from the other sites and give people an account
without them asking for one.

It's not realistic. It's not a problem we can "solve". People just have to be
provided with compelling enough alternatives, and enough reasons to bother
leaving.

That being said Planetary isn't really another social network. It's just an
iOS client for Scuttlebutt, which is an existing network, with thousands of
users and an incredible community.

~~~
ysavir
> I get the frustration but the only real "solution" to the network effect is
> to steal the "friend graph" from the other sites and give people an account
> without them asking for one.

If this were true, then Facebook would have never taken out MySpace. Facebook
got its foot in the door by being a social network designed for a specific
niche of people (college students). It tapped into what that audience wanted
and wasn't getting elsewhere, and only expanded after being _the_ platform for
college students.

The problem with most of the social networks today is that they want to start
off as an everybody social network. I say "most" because I'm sure there are
social networks out there succeeding with their target niche, but haven't yet
expanded beyond that niche to a more visible entity. When they're ready, I'm
sure we'll slowly hear of them more and more until they become commonplace,
without having a dramatic entrance.

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lee101
Nit: I don't like the logo at the bottom near the link to the scuttle project,
it is like a big red centralised node of power in the middle with a big target
on it, what your trying to get us away from, probably just a me thing

~~~
masukomi
that's not a logo.

Those concentric rings are a depiction of network hops. It's a smaller version
of a section of an infographic that I can't find at the moment.

I agree it's not obvious.

In ssb, by default, you get content from friends, and friends of friends. You
don't follow the tree of connections indefinitely.

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faitswulff
Is there anything like self-hosted Facebook "wall?" Something that's like
Wordpress in that I can post updates to it and like Facebook in that people
can find my updates and comment?

~~~
toomuchtodo
Wordpress itself. Have seen several families use it as a Facebook wall
replacement with email updates if you subscribe.

~~~
arkitaip
This. Wordpress is incredibly flexible and you can do all kinds of neat stuff
without having to deal with the CMS aspect of it.

------
joshspankit
Is it intentional that the Scuttlebutt graphic looks like an anus?

------
protomyth
_Planetary only downloads content from your friends and their friends - it’s
impossible for people to spam you_

How does the look / work in practice?

~~~
masukomi
If you are not connected to me as a friend, and you are not a friend of one of
my friends, I literally won't see your content.

Scuttlebutt is a distributed peer to peer network so we only gather content
from other peers we connect to. Some of those peers are centralized "pubs" but
functionally they're just another user (somewhat oversimplified). we ask our
peers "hey do you have any info on person x whome i follow" and then follow
that person's connections out one more hop.

so, if you are too many hops away from me I won't see you content.

If you ARE within range of me and you message me i will see it, BUT if you
spam me I will block you and you'll stop seeing me, receiving my content, and
receiving the content from any friend of mine whose content you got through
me. You could get their content via another person/pub but I likely cut you
off from something by blocking you. I will stop seeing your content completely
because my client will stop asking for it.

Because blocks have a follow-on effect enough people blocking you will act
like an immune system defense and cut you off from the main body of the
network.

Bad actors are rapidly flushed from the system in my experience.

~~~
protomyth
So, A is a friend of B and B is a friend of C, then A will see all of C's
content?

