@alexonit@twtxt.alessandrocutolo.it Well we have to really use the same spec or threading doesn’t really work in a truly decentralized manner 😉

My Hypothesis for why registries didn’t work and why they still won’t really work today is because the bend the rules of “true” decentralization a bit. Users have to pick one or more registries to “register” to. Why would they want to do this? What is their incentive to do so? Then on the other hand, users need a client that has registry support, but now which registry or sets of registries do you choose?

I asked ChatGPT what it knows about Twtxt 😂 And surprisingly it’s rather accurate:

Twtxt is a minimalist, decentralized microblogging format introduced by John Downey in 2016. It uses plain text files served over HTTP—no accounts, databases, or APIs.
In 2020, James Mills (@prologic@twtxt.net) launched Yarn.social, an extended, federated implementation with user discovery, threads, mentions, and a full web UI.
Both share the same .twtxt.txt format but differ in complexity and social features.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz ngircd is nice: https://ngircd.barton.de/ You can absolutely host this on your server for you and your friends (I’ve been doing that for a very long time). Actually peering with something like libera is hard, though, because they have strict requirements and a lot of traffic. Then again, there’s no real benefit in peering, actually. IRC is pretty “decentralized” anyway and people are usually used to connecting to several networks, so joining another one isn’t a big deal, imho. 🙃

Yes you were right. It was technically a failure. It is very difficult to reconcile the differences between a distributed network and one that’s truly decentralized.

Thanks @prologic@twtxt.net, I also just manage to get my own version of webmentions working. Please have a read at Webmentions vs. Custom Mentions Spec for Twtxt/Yarn - HedgeDoc and User Lookup for Twtxt/Yarn - Webfinger or Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) - HedgeDoc for how it sorta works

Did another write up on #webfinger and DIDs for twtxt/yarn that you can read and edit/comment in: User lookup for twtxt/yarn - Webfinger or Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) - HedgeDoc

Keyword: Decentralization - Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure

Figured you’d be interested in this @prologic@twtxt.net

@prologic@twtxt.net when will we have Y coin, the decentralized crypto money of yarn social???

I’ve seen BlueSky referred to as BS (as in Blue Sky, but you know…), which seems apt.

CEO is a cryptocurrency fool, as is Jack Dorsey, so I don’t expect much from it. Then again I’m old and refuse to join any new hotness so take my curmudgeonly opinions with a grain of salt.

I read somewhere or another that the “decentralization” is only going to be there so that they can push content moderation onto users. They will happily welcome Nazis and fascists, leaving it up to end users to block those instances.

I wonder how they plan to handle the 4chan-level stuff, since that will surely come.

BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization

I say “ostensibly decentralized”, because BlueSky’s (henceforth referred to as “BS” here) decentralization is a similar kind of decentralization as with cryptocurrencies: sure, you can run your own node (in BS case: “personal data servers”), but that does not give you basically any meaningful agency in the system.

I don’t know why anyone would want to use this crap. It’s the same old same old and it’ll end up the same old way.

@prologic@twtxt.net That was exactly my thought at first too. but what do we put as the rel for salty account? since it is decentralized we dont have a set URL for machines to key off. so for example take the standard response from okta:

# http GET https://example.okta.com/.well-known/webfinger  resource==acct:bob
{
    "links": [
        {
            "href": "https://example.okta.com/sso/idps/OKTA?login_hint=bob#",
            "properties": {
                "okta:idp:type": "OKTA"
            },
            "rel": "http://openid.net/specs/connect/1.0/issuer",
            "titles": {
                "und": "example"
            }
        }
    ],
    "subject": "acct:bob"
}

It gives one link that follows the OpenID login. So the details are specific to the subject acct:bob.

Mastodons response:

{
  "subject": "acct:xuu@chaos.social",
  "aliases": [
    "https://chaos.social/@xuu",
    "https://chaos.social/users/xuu"
  ],
  "links": [
    {
      "rel": "http://webfinger.net/rel/profile-page",
      "type": "text/html",
      "href": "https://chaos.social/@xuu"
    },
    {
      "rel": "self",
      "type": "application/activity+json",
      "href": "https://chaos.social/users/xuu"
    },
    {
      "rel": "http://ostatus.org/schema/1.0/subscribe"
    }
  ]
}

it supplies a profile page and a self which are both specific to that account.

Any of y’all seen https://briarproject.org? It’s another fledgling decentralized chat like session but minus the weird blockchain.. it has group chat, forums, and blogs. Also can work via Bluetooth or tor.

briar://aaeutr6pvvr5pgachwlajy5x372xxjvs6btsmmk5kr4ygzps3k3eu

@prologic@twtxt.net it is some interesting work to decentralize all the things.. tricky part is finding tooling. i am using a self hacked version of the go openpgp library. A tool to add and remove notations would need to be local since it needs your private key.

@prologic@twtxt.net this is a go version of Keyoxide.org that runs all server side. which is based on work from https://metacode.biz/openpgp/

OpenPGP has a part of the self signature reserved for notatinal data. which is basically a bunch of key/values.

this site tries to emulate the identity proofs of keybase but in a more decentralized/federation way.

my next steps are to have this project host WKD keys which is kinda like a self hosting of your pgp key that are also discoverable with http requests.

then to add a new notation for following other keys. where you can do a kind of web of trust.

Posted to Entropy Arbitrage: Distributed Community Curation https://john.colagioia.net/blog/programming/2020/04/25/distribmod.html #programming #decentralization #socialmedia #moderation #community #cultivation #curation #socialshowdown