
Diaspora: Hello and a big welcome to everyone arriving from Google+ - mariuz
https://joindiaspora.com/posts/12865334
======
deanclatworthy
For a website called JoinDiaspora, I'm surprised I can't find out how to join
Diaspora from the homepage.

~~~
ashelmire
Diaspora has been a comedy of such errors for the decade it's existed.

~~~
gaius
_Diaspora has been a comedy of such errors for the decade it 's existed_

I think I had a Diaspora account in like 2011... Then they announced they were
blowing away everyone's account to redesign the database or something... Never
bothered with it again.

~~~
ohwaitnvm
I wish I had been able to convince the guys to use a relational DB from the
beginning instead of Mongo. Turns out a social network is full of relational
data - but my buddies were too excited by new tech, and made a decision based
on “cool”ness that hurt themselves in the long run.

However, it’s still impressive what four guys at the end of their college
careers were able to build with no professional experience whatsoever. (Though
it took me a full week to convince them to use a framework, Rails, instead of
hand-rolling everything around a custom EventMachine loop... The loop never
even worked, but it was “cool”. Give me boring and powerful any day.)

I think the biggest missed opportunity here was that an advisor of my own
suggested to me that they really should leverage SMTP and build a better
experience on top of that. An advanced mail client with social network-style
features and presentation, and an obfuscation of the “pod” concept (do users
really care which one you’re on?) could have been a smash hit and could have
had fallback design to allow non-network-members to still be included as leaf
modes in the Diaspora social graph. I couldn’t wrap my head around any of this
at the time, so they never heard even a whisper of the idea. My bad!

~~~
jlg23
> Though it took me a full week to convince them to use a framework, Rails,
> instead of hand-rolling everything around a custom EventMachine loop... The
> loop never even worked, but it was “cool”. Give me boring and powerful any
> day.

Funnily exactly that choice was what made me reject the request to help with
development early on.

Not building on SMTP was a wise choice in hindsight, given that it turned into
a pretty monopolized protocol since then - most people have a hard time to get
their mails delivered from a private server nowadays.

~~~
ohwaitnvm
That’s too bad. Their situation was that they were working in Pivotal’s
office, surrounded by extremely high quality Rails devs who were happy to give
free help and advice.

Like I said, the EM loop never worked, and instead of spending weeks banging
their heads on it, Rails allowed them to move forward onto their actual
problem, instead of having to invent everything themselves.

I guess I don’t know that much about SMTP still :)

------
9712263
The most successful decentralized communication system - email as it turned
out, people would concentrated to large free provider like Google.
Decentralized server does not protect privacy for normal user because not most
people could handle owning their server.

The most success decentralized service is BitTorrent. It is decentralized and
it is decentralized in client level. Though it also caused uncontrollable
piracy, since it is too easy to spread any data using Bittorrent. I think a
true decentralized social network to protect privacy should be a p2p app, not
server to server federation.

~~~
optimuspaul
Playing devils advocate here, but I also kind of believe this... There is no
such thing as privacy in the social network. It is foolhardy to assume it is
even possible. Even a real life social network relies on trust, trust that can
be broken very easily and totally outside of your control. Maybe the answer is
to accept that privacy isn't a real thing and stop sharing things, even in
what you assume is a protected environment, that you don't wish to be public.
I don't think there is a technical solution to "people can't keep secrets"

~~~
dkn
Sure but the real-life equivalent of that would be God telling Nike what kind
of shoes you and your friend were talking about in secret.

~~~
greensoap
No; the real life equivalent would be the the kid in class sitting between you
and your friend opening the note and telling class what you said.

You asked the kid in class to pass the note. He did so freely. You assumed he
wouldn't open the note, but guess what... he totally opened that note. And now
he wants to profit off the information.

------
kelukelugames
What are the technical challenges of handling an influx of dozens of new
users?

~~~
BeetleB
I'm assuming your use of the word "dozens" is a joke, but if not, Diaspora can
handle it very well. Their population doubled after Cambridge Analytica hit
the news - and within a month or so they lost all those new users:
[https://nerdpol.ch/posts/e8532ca04b2f013617bf52540061b601](https://nerdpol.ch/posts/e8532ca04b2f013617bf52540061b601)

Let's see if they can hold on to the current batch. Diaspora is actually quite
usable and stable. I haven't dealt with any issues since I began using it. The
docs and non-existent API suck, though.

~~~
erikb
Have you also checked other distributed/decentralized social networks? Curious
about your experiences.

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hguhghuff
I think product names matter, and diaspora seems misnamed to me.

~~~
mbrock
It's a bit of a downer.

> A diaspora (/daɪˈæspərə/) is a scattered population whose origin lies in a
> separate geographic locale. In particular, diaspora has come to refer to
> involuntary mass dispersions of a population from its indigenous
> territories, most notably the expulsion of Jews from Israel (known as the
> Jewish diaspora) and the fleeing of Greeks after the fall of Constantinople.
> Other examples are the African Trans-Atlantic slave trade, the southern
> Chinese or Indians during the coolie trade, the Irish during and after the
> Irish Famine, the Romani from India, the Italian diaspora, the exile and
> deportation of Circassians, and the emigration of Anglo-Saxon warriors and
> their families after the Norman Conquest of England.

~~~
brobdingnagians
I agree that is would be nice if they had a more positive sounding name. But
at least for the moment it seems to be quite fitting for the G+ users...

~~~
Pamar
Note - I asked there a few weeks ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18173269](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18173269)

Currently I am using MeWe which is not federated etc. but is close enough to
G+ (also, most of the communities I was following on G+ are there).

As expected, "normal people" who were apathetically following me on G+ like
friends etc. (I refuse to use FB) have bern less than thrilled.

I suspect that Diaspora would have not improved the situation, but maybe I am
wrong.

------
ForHackernews
How does Diaspora compare to Mastodon?

My naive impression is that Mastodon is a decentralized Twitter clone and
Diaspora tries to be a nonprofit Facebook. Is that correct?

~~~
JimGuns
Mastodon is when you can't handle any one having an alternative option than
you, so you log on to a twitter clone where you are the only person using it
and are always right.

~~~
jklinger410
Or you don't want to be harassed by someone taking your conversations out of
context then doxxing you and trying to ruin your life.

~~~
BeetleB
As was recently demonstrated, online mob harassment is very doable on
Mastodon:

[http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-
place-...](http://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-
now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/)

~~~
jklinger410
Beyond the fact that I don't really believe Wil is entirely innocent in his
complaints, he simply had to change instances.

He also used his real name. In fact, he didn't really take any steps to
protect himself besides moving to mastadon. Large instances, after all, simply
function like an unmonetized twitter.

~~~
AgentME
> He also used his real name. In fact, he didn't really take any steps to
> protect himself

I kind of think that's the point for a celebrity on Twitter or a similar site.

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jdeibele
The thing that Diaspora and Mastodon get wrong is their insistence on putting
the instance in the username.

If I'm jim1234@mastodon.org because somebody else gets my preferred username,
that's fine. I don't have to worry about the @somehost.somewhere site shutting
down because the host got bored or lost their job or moved. So
jim1234@somehost.somewhere is the last thing I want.

Whatsapp started with the idea of $1/year for an account. If I'm paying
$1/year to mastodon.org so I don't have to worry about reinventing the people
I follow, etc. that seems like a good deal.

Then instances can compete on features and/or price. If my friend Bob is
running a server for his friends for free, maybe I use him. Or if instance A
has spam-filtering while instance B accepts absolutely all federations and
instance C translates everything into pirate-speak, well, I can pick from
those.

If Bob's system is down a lot or he doesn't do spam-filtering or whatever,
it'd be nice to have the option to pay $10/year or $25/year or whatever to be
on another instance where it's a business relationship. Or maybe the instance
does fund-raising twice a year because the site owner wants it less
businesslike.

Running the central registry becomes a big responsibility but it also lends
itself well to being replicated. And at some point 100,000 or 1 million users
becomes $100,000 or $1,000,000 in actual revenue. Minus credit card
processing, colo fees, etc. But still, there's a business there.

~~~
fwn
Centralized user names would also mean a single point of failure and authority
which would defeat the main idea behind federation. It doesn't even solve the
problem of owning you identifier as it is still externally controlled.

Censorship, surveillance even de-platforming are all back in the game then.

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mbs348
Ha, well if you can’t beat em, you can just outlast em. :)

------
erikb
Scuttlebutt, Gnu/Social and Mastodon are also worth checking out.

Comparison of many distributed (and some even decentralized) social networks:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_pro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking)

------
edhelas
It's funny because we also saw a slight increase in the pace of account
creation on Movim as well [https://movim.eu/](https://movim.eu/), but I'm not
sure if there is a real correlation.

But I'm really happy to see that more and more people are joining federated
solutions better than proprietary centralized ones like Google+ :)

~~~
erikb
I was quite surprised after studying your main page that movim looks much more
like a chat app than a social network. How comes you advertise it as social
network? And assuming it is in fact a social network, what brought you to use
the XMPP standard for that?

------
ocdtrekkie
I have some former G+ friends who went to MeWe, some to Mastodon, and some to
Twitter. I found Diaspora a pretty poor experience last time I was there, so
I'm not really following the group that ended up there

~~~
technofiend
My wife wasn't happy with the idea that friends of friends could see photos of
her on Facebook and Facebook was regularly tweaking privacy settings (read:
undoing my changes) so I punted and deleted my profile.

Frankly Google+'s circles seemed like the perfect solution by giving you
explicit control over who sees what and further letting you tailor what you
post to each circle.

Although I'm sorry to see it go at the end I only used G+ to keep in touch
with fellow Ingress players. Between the fact that my Diaspora experience was
similar to yours, slack is the go to for my tech interaction with k8s users
and discord for gamers I'm not sure I really need another time waster anyway.
I can't help but think some portion of the population will like me choose to
replace Google+ with nothing at all.

~~~
welly
I've taken myself off all social media (for a couple of years now) and feel
better for it but do miss a bit of the social interaction with some of the
groups I was a member of.

I have been tempted to start an anonymous (in as far as a made up name)
Facebook profile to take part in those groups again but have resisted against
it because one thing leads to another and you end up on the platform fully.

So for my tech interests, also using slack but I'd be keen to find some non-
tech slack channels. They're a bit tricky to find.

------
jammygit
I've been using mewe for a year now and it has a really nice tech community.
Great privacy focus too. Its nice that communities like these are able to
sustain themselves lately

------
fredgrott
I like it thus far, unsure if mobile is supported yet but if I can get the
page on my android chrome browser than it should work

~~~
Nerdfest
There are several Android clients, including Dandelion, found in the F-Droid
repository. I think there's one in the Google Play store as well. No iOS
clients, but the mobile site works quite nicely.

------
znaji
What's the stance of Diaspora on free speech?

Edit: I guess it's horrible, since the owner is based in Germany. Ouch.

~~~
thiago_fm
What does it have to do with living in Germany?

I live in Berlin and we have the most vibrant community of privacy, security
etc I've ever seen.

~~~
znaji
I am not happy with these new services because they are all hosted in the EU
where there is no right to free speech, so to me they are not an improvement
over what they are supposed to replace.

~~~
DandyDev
“where there is no right to free speech“

Yes, there is. At least in my experience as a happy EU citizen.

So want to cut the hyperbole and substantiate your claim?

~~~
throwaway8879
Are you allowed to deny the Holocaust?

~~~
DandyDev
No, most EU countries have laws in some form that prohibit Holocaust denial.
But as with any country that has the rights to freedom of speech, these rights
are inevitably balanced and restricted by other laws.

This is a good thing, because while freedom of speech is important, the
general wellbeing of the population and preventing people getting hurt is
important as well. It is my belief for example that allowing racist remark
under the banner of free speech, hurts more than it helps. It leads to an
overall negative impact in the wellbeing of the population. I think the same
balance was considered when prohibiting holocaust denial.

Question: why use a throwaway account?

~~~
throwaway8879
I'm aware of this. You may think it's a good thing, and I'm inclined to agree
that for a peaceful and civilized society, this balance is definitely a
necessity. However, there may be many amongst us who think it's not a good
thing. I don't prefer one over another anyway, but just pointing out that
absolute free speech isn't a thing anywhere. I suppose the US comes as close
to it as possible. This is my regular HN account.

~~~
Certhas
I disagree, the US has plenty of restrictions on free speech, and the
constitutional guarantees are no stronger there than in other places.

It's an image of itself that the US likes to project though.

~~~
dlwiest
There's very little speech that's actually illegal in the US. You can't tell
outright lies about someone with the intention of hurting them professionally
(although it's still a civil matter, and when I say "lies", I mean specifics,
e.g. you can't claim in an article that someone dropped out of college if they
didn't) and you can't say anything that has a high probability of causing
immediate physical harm (e.g. you can't order somebody to shoot someone).
That's basically it. When you start talking about publishing photographs or
recorded audio, things get a bit more complicated because of copyright laws,
and obviously CP is illegal, but strictly in terms of speech, online or off,
there are almost no restrictions here.

