
Peer-to-Peer Based Social Networks: A Comprehensive Survey - infodocket
https://arxiv.org/abs/2001.02611
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thosmos
I haven't read the whole paper yet so I might be missing the reason for this,
but I'm surprised that the most significant P2P social networks I'm familiar
with and actually use aren't included: Patchwork & Firechat. After a quick
scan of the paper, the ones included have some various attributes that are
presumably interesting from an academic research point of view, but I'm
naturally curious to hear an academic's view of the above _more actually
useful_ (personal value judgment) apps, especially in comparison with the ones
they included ....

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ChristianBundy
Yeah, it seems like they're using "P2P" to mean "federated", which is
backward. I'm surprised that they didn't think to include Secure Scuttlebutt
in their paper.

Disclaimer: I work on Patchwork and SSB in general. :~)

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rolleiflex
Yup, SSB is a major one missing. Admittedly I was looking for my own network,
Aether, which has more users and nodes than some of those listed — but if SSB
is missing, then all bets are off.

I've honestly never heard of most of the things in that list and I spend a lot
of time in P2P circles. Interesting.

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kick
Aether has such a compelling pitch that I was going to install it despite the
Electron bloat it'd introduce on my system, but then saw that you used snaps,
which was really unfortunate.

Have you considered something like AppImage instead? While not ideal, it
minimizes your effort _while also_ being compatible with every other
distribution without requiring your users to install a large, complicated
piece of software/package manager like Snap.

~~~
rolleiflex
Aether is a Go app, we use Electron just for the GUI. We do no processing in
it - we do the processing in the go backend daemon. It’s pretty snappy and
light.

I tried AppImage first, it didn’t work.

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0xff00ffee
Is anyone here a fan of Darius Kazemi? He's one of the people who I believe
has a pulse on the future of the internet. He has a great document on how to
roll your own federated social network:

[https://runyourown.social/](https://runyourown.social/)

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ChristianBundy
Darius is great! I love to see that recommended.

One of my favorite visions for the future of the internet, Zach Mandeville's
modular essay The Future Will be Technical:
[https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-
technical...](https://coolguy.website/writing/the-future-will-be-technical/)

~~~
0xff00ffee
Interesting way of framing it. I need to reread this at the beginning of the
week, instead of Friday at 5:11PM!

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marknadal
Notice:

This is about FEDERATED networks, not P2P.

Mastodon, Diaspora, etc.

Also, it is not comprehensive:

Matrix (9M users), SOLID, D.Tube, etc. not mentioned

Examples of P2P:

WebTorrent, GUN (11M+ users), SSB, etc.

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0xff00ffee
What's the difference? Is it that P2P lacks a central server but federated is
distributed servers (i.e. no single central server, just a bunch that can
authenticate against each other)?

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EuAndreh
Federated: there's a distinction between clients and servers.

P2P: there are only nodes.

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eeZah7Ux
No.

P2P: leaf nodes can communicate directly to each other. The network can be
flat or structured. There can be more important nodes or not.

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onebot
Can someone list all the p2p social networks that we know about?

Honestly, have been trying to find ones that are truly p2p and not federated.

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lota-putty
Has anyone used Utopia : [https://u.is/en/](https://u.is/en/) ?

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onebot
Wow what is this? It is so cyberpunk! Is this legit?

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mutant
They misspelled "Pleroma" in that main table.

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pasttense01
No one wants to talk about IRC?

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rambojazz
IRC is not P2P.

