• an instance of [[distributed press]]
  • [[2021 05 19]]
• [[benedict lau]]
  • [[hypha]]
    • interested in building a tool that publishes through many different protocols
      • sharing social messages seamlessly
    • [[flancian]]
    • [[paul frazee]]
      • [[secure scuttlebut]]
      • [[beaker browser]]
      • [[hypercore protocol]]
        • [[ctzn]]
    • [[guo]]
      • matters.news
      • serving mostly chinese communities
      • looking at [[ipfs]], [[hypercore]]
      • working on a protocol similar to [[unwalled garden]], but also thinking of integrating [[rss]]
        • also interested on [[webmentions]]
    • [[vera]]
      • working on [[agora]]
      • background in distributed social systems, worked on (sp?) status, before mastodon
    • [[fauno]]
      • (mic incoming) :)
• [[paul frazee]]
  • [[distributed vs federated]]
    • a bit stuck here currently
    • the way to conceptualize
    • [[federated]] ~ [[mastodon]]
    • [[distributed]] ~ [[ipfs]] mesh
      • completely open system, if you're in the mesh you're in
      • technologically, user experience wise is great
      • trying to figure out how to deal with the [[cost]] structure
      • in the case of social media, you're making your own twitter
      • how do you get economies of scale worked in there?
        • [[filecoin]]?
        • [[gateway model]]
          • ipfs gateway: there is more than one of them
        • if your mesh contains social data, you get a social network
      • [[ben]] what are the costs involved?
        • [[paul]] unsure but they all seem associated to a side business so far
      • advantages
        • ?
        • serverless clients are possible
      • [[ben]]
        • less well maintained gateways become issues for user experience
        • censorship
        • [[guo]] yes, gateways become a centralized point
          • gateway should be a backup after serverless client
        • [[paul frazee]]
          • spent 6-8 months working on a social network back in [[beaker]]
          • some stuff that stops you:
            • links that are a new protocol are an issue
            • ux killer on stuff like twitter
          • didn't have a push messaging system back then
            • didn't want to have to deal with spam
            • ux killer: no notifications unless mutual follow
              • [[aggregator]]
          • try to bring in positive properties of the system
        • [[flancian]]
          • [[metcalfe's law]]
        • [[ben]]
          • [[web mentions]]
• [[guo]]
  • content feed + social graph as a distributed publication and social network
  • people can store their content feed and social graph anywhere
  • user control their data
  • search
  • separating storage and aggregation
• [[paul frazee]]
  • database vs datamesh
  • federation puts application logic in the wire protocol
• [[flancian]]
  • [[datamesh]] should probably be treated as a commons
• [[guo]]
  • we could avoid many governance issues at the [[database]] layer
  • [[ben]] this sounds like the [[scuttlebutt]] and [[hypercore model]]?
    • [[paul]] when last involved there was no global entrypoint, it was [[gossip protocol]]
    • [[pubs]] were [[store and forward relays]]
    • information would flow 100% on the basis of the social graph
    • led to complexities; people could give you keys and still be unreachable
• [[flancian]]
  • [[paul]]
    • how do you end up in a situation in which governance is required?
  • [[guo]]
    • datamesh seems like it does not require governance, but the aggregator does
    • (interlay vs overlay?)
    • [[ben]] aether (sp?)
      • distributed reddit
      • distributed moderation
      • liquid democracy-like
    • [[ben]]
      • we need to agree on:
        • schemas
        • distribution protocol
        • aggregator censorship
      • what happens when your computer ends up hosting hate speech?
        • you can stop the flow in the mesh and that applies negative evolutionary pressure
      • [[paul]] aether does [[default allow]], I do [[default deny]]
    • [[flancian]]
      • minimum exchange format
    • [[guo]]
      • choice of markdown vs html
      • chose html over markdown, it supports arbitrary media
      • [[encryption]]
        • exclusive content
        • hard to define protocol-level encryption standard
        • bake the encryption message into the html
          • [[mdx]]
    • [[ben]] decided to first publish/store things as html
      • most people want to have something ready-to-publish
      • but a consumption pattern arises: you copy/paste whole articles
      • on the dweb there is an opportunity for this as we can publish different formats of the same concept
      • get content in more than one format
    • [[paul]]
      • [[schemas]] in general
      • I would describe what you were discussing as "rich text format"
      • orthogonal to schemas
        • fighting with schemas since [[secure scuttlebutt]]
        • pissed off [[rdf]] people
        • reached https://ctzn.network/comment
        • scuttlebutt: did not impose any schema obligations; disastrous approach
        • [[unwalled gardens]]: enforced types
        • [[ctzn network]]: urls identifying the schemas with a machine readable format
          • rejects messages that don't comply with the schema
          • believe in this approach
            • if you don't, you end up in the tragedy of the commons or failure in collective action (scuttlebutt)
              • compatibility with the schema dictates everything you can do
              • you have a feature, you add a dependency
              • had a post type
                • would be nice if you have a topic
                • if you are not subscribed to [[cats]], you won't see it
                • but you can't rely on it as many clients won't support it
                • you might end up spamming old clients
                • [[fatal ambiguity]]
                • once you see this, schemas start seeming risky to change
                • you can do extension points, but would suggest against
              • current approach:
                • well defined schemas
                • people can determine their own schemas
                • control the [[ctzn network]] schemas
                • can have extension tables
              • [[ben]]
                • feel like [[scuttlebutt]] has a schema, otherwise you couldn't have more than one client
                • what it lacked, it seems, is versioning?
                • how do you manage upgrades?
              • [[paul]] the problem is multiple clients controlled by different devs
              • [[flancian]] what do you really need for features -- usually you'd want to have the minimum minimum schema requirements?
              • [[paul frazee]]
                • [[web mentions]]: exploring now
                • [[unwalled garden]]
                  • difference between it and [[ctzn network]]
                • suppose you want to have the ability to have mentions in your comments
                  • you have to keep parsing for entities if you store text or text-like
                  • using [[hyperbee]] in [[ctzn]]
                    • it can list directories or keyspaces in order
                    • more like a database technology
                • for distributed press/unwalled garden: file oriented approach can work over http
            • [[guo]] in the comments problem, who owns the post data?
              • the post it's on could 'own' it
              • the [[comment]] writer could own it
                • this seems safer?
            • [[fauno]]
              • if we allow for comments, who is responsible for keeping them? hateful comments/censorship/etc
              • [[webmentions]]: fascist websites pinging you
              • people don't have time to moderate
            • [[ben]] same thing is seen in wordpress
            • [[fauno]] web mentions and how to keep bad parties out
            • [[flancian]] how will moderation work in [[ctzn network]]?
              • [[paul]] would like to have a great answer :)
                • [[reputation systems]]
                  • no one size fits all
                  • this lets you scale the work
                  • reputational graph approach
                • [[subjective moderation]]
                  • elected moderators

Attendees

• [[flancian]]
• [[vera]]
• [[Paul Frazee]]
• [[benhylau]]
  • gateways can censor content
• [[guo]]
  • looking at [[ipfs]] or [[hypercore]]
  • [[webmentions]] [[microformats]]
• [[sutty]]
• [[fauno]]

[[ipfs gateways]]

• [[Paul Frazee]]
  • say you're [[twitter]], 1000 users.
  • 1000 users only one using service but having to pay for storage/bandwidth of 1000 poor scaling properties
  • gateway not feasible model
  • what are the costs
  • magic of the mesh
  • serverless clients participate in network
• [[guo]]
  • gateways become the point of failure in a distributed network
• [[flancian]]
  • subsidies gateway not for profit

[[beaker]]

• social network on beaker
• got discouraged with social networks
  • came back
• people wanna be able to share around links
• didn't have push messaging system
• take advantage of social graph
• ux killer
  • people expect to get notifcations from people
  • people need to follow out of band
  • limited push message
  • aggregator service notifications
    • really close to running gateway, running a service
    • let's just use services
    • take your data and move to other "place"

[[minimum viable exchange format]]

• all these technologies converge into this
• [[indieweb]]
• [[microformats]]
• [[minimal social graph]]

  • [[guo]]

    • can be [[ipfs]] can be [[dat]]
    • have to have an aggregator, how do you know if there's new content
    • how do you do search
    • separate data aggregator and host

  • [[flancian]]

    • [[underlay project]]

  • [[Paul Frazee]]

    • [[data mesh]]
      • basically function like database
        • way for semantic
        • tables in there with universal ide (url based to find schema)
        • universal global data mesh, with global semantics
        • [[governance of the commons]]

  • [[guo]]

    • if we can determine ownership we can help with [[governance]] issue
    • if it's my data, there is no [[governance]] issue

[[commons mesh]]

• how do you end up in a situation where [[governance]] is required
• what are defaults
• sign up for first time, what's being suggested

[[fatal ambiguity]]