
Show HN: SocialVault – Decentralized and encrypted storage for Facebook data - dbrereton
https://socialvault.io/
======
noxToken
What is the use case for this? If I download all of my data from Facebook, why
would I want to upload it to another product or service elsewhere?

If your killer feature is allowing me to browse my data with a user-friendly
interface (instead of a clob of data on local disk), I think you need a demo,
video, or even a .gif showcasing it. You have an image that hints at it, but
you never actually sell it. Someone who quickly scrolls down your main page
might miss the "browse" portion of your product in its entirety.

~~~
dbrereton
The use case is that if you're leaving Facebook, you can keep all your
data/memories. And you would upload it for the same reason that you upload
your photos to google photos, because it's a large amount of files to store
locally, and also harder to browse.

I think you're right, the landing page does not do a good job of explaining
that. Will work on improving it.

~~~
Canada
Unless there's a client I can run locally, it's not decentralized in any
meaningful way. Needs a link to the means I can sign up, login, and use this
without relying on your web server at all.

~~~
dbrereton
It is entirely decentralized using Blockstack, which you may read about here:
[https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html](https://docs.blockstack.org/storage/overview.html).

The only part that isn't decentralized is the front end which is hosted on
Netlify.

However, if you want to do everything without relying on me at all, you can
also clone the repo and run it locally and everything should work the same:
[https://github.com/dkb868/socialvault](https://github.com/dkb868/socialvault)

~~~
Canada
I'm aware of what blockstack is. I want to see decentralized apps succeed, but
asking anyone to entrust their sensitive social media data to some random
website is a stretch. However little the average person trusts Facebook, they
trust your site even less.

Nobody is going to clone the repo and run it locally. Anyone willing and able
to do that has no need for this tool. You've gotta pack this thing up and make
it like a regular application, or at least a browser plugin. No localhost web
servers or anything like that. It has to look like a trustworthy and
professional app like Slack, Dropbox, or Lastpass.

~~~
blechinger
For mass appeal? Sure. But you said "nobody" would clone the repo and host it
locally. I intend to!

I'm not sure mass appeal matters much here anyway. I could get behind the
"sell yourself better" comment but this is such a niche application I'm not
sure packaging it more neatly would net appreciably more users running it
locally.

------
rakoo
Perkeep ([https://perkeep.org/](https://perkeep.org/)) has a similar but
broader goal: store all the data you would typically store on social networks
or in a backup service and be able to access/search it from any browser:
tweets, Pinterest locations, photos, files, docs, whatever

------
magnamerc
Why use PoW in combination with PoB (proof of burn) instead of using a dBFT
style PoS like tendermint for the blockstack chain?

------
personjerry
Or I could just save my data to my computer?

~~~
dbrereton
Yes, but if you have a large amount of data then it may take up a good chunk
of your hard drive space. SocialVault allows you to store these files online,
and also provides a specialized file explorer for Facebook data.

~~~
JetSpiegel
So, you are competing with Google Drive?

Apparently not Nextcloud, since it doesn't seem you can self-host this.

~~~
dbrereton
Not really, Google Drive is centralized and google can always touch your data.
But more importantly, if you dump your JSON file on Google, it will just be a
JSON file. With SocialVault you can actually browse through the data in a
meaningful way.

------
fuckyougoogle
This website does not load on Firefox Android, just a blank white screen and a
chat box. Maybe not requiring me to use a Google product would be a good
start.

~~~
dang
Please don't use trollish usernames. That means trolling every thread the
account posts to.

