<story><title>ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol</title><url>https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-activitypub-20180123/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jeswin</author><text>From my quick read of the spec, server-to-server federation assumes that servers can be trusted. That need not be the case; unless a message is signed it should not be assumed to have come from a specific user. I don&amp;#x27;t know if there&amp;#x27;s an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that&amp;#x27;d be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe).&lt;p&gt;The other question is whether we want server-to-server federation at all instead of a P2P network like bittorrent. With the decreasing cost of compute, I am also optimistic of everyone being able to run a little sandbox on the cloud to exchange data with others, instead of routing it via FB&amp;#x2F;Twitter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rakoo</author><text>&amp;gt; I don&amp;#x27;t know if there&amp;#x27;s an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that&amp;#x27;d be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe).&lt;p&gt;This is exactly what namecoin tried to solve. Buy an identifier, put whatever you want in it. Example: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nameid.org&amp;#x2F;?name=rakoo&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;nameid.org&amp;#x2F;?name=rakoo&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The other question is whether we want server-to-server federation at all instead of a P2P network like bittorrent.&lt;p&gt;We want something in between. The best model I know is the one of scuttlebutt (&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;scuttlebot.io&amp;#x2F;more&amp;#x2F;protocols&amp;#x2F;secure-scuttlebutt.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;scuttlebot.io&amp;#x2F;more&amp;#x2F;protocols&amp;#x2F;secure-scuttlebutt.html&lt;/a&gt;): Each peer is identified by an asymetric keypair, and writes posts&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;photos to a local ledger. Everything is signed and potentially encrypted if the message is to be read only by select people. Diffusion follows the peers&amp;#x27; connections: stuff is sent from peer to peer as they connect together, friends can be used as a third leg (ie a common friend can carry stuff even if it&amp;#x27;s not for them), and you also have pubs where more people can connect and get more stuff faster. This system is different from bittorrent in that everything depends on the human connections: information spreads along human acquaintances, names aren&amp;#x27;t globally unique, they depend on how your friends agree to name you, etc...&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s better than naive server-to-server federation because pubs can be simple, stupid message forwarders yet still have all the advantages of being always-up servers.</text></comment>
<story><title>ActivityPub: decentralized social networking protocol</title><url>https://www.w3.org/TR/2018/REC-activitypub-20180123/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jeswin</author><text>From my quick read of the spec, server-to-server federation assumes that servers can be trusted. That need not be the case; unless a message is signed it should not be assumed to have come from a specific user. I don&amp;#x27;t know if there&amp;#x27;s an easy way to share keys in a decentralized way, but that&amp;#x27;d be an interesting problem to solve (some blockchain maybe).&lt;p&gt;The other question is whether we want server-to-server federation at all instead of a P2P network like bittorrent. With the decreasing cost of compute, I am also optimistic of everyone being able to run a little sandbox on the cloud to exchange data with others, instead of routing it via FB&amp;#x2F;Twitter.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ocdtrekkie</author><text>I think there&amp;#x27;s a few major reasons servers is still the way to go, albeit numerous much smaller servers.&lt;p&gt;- Mobile users content should remain available when they are disconnected.&lt;p&gt;- Participating in a federated environment still contains plenty of technical challenges, if we want non-tech-savvy users to participate, we need admins.&lt;p&gt;I personally would like to see servers for web applications, be they Sandstorm.io-type app platforms or Mastodon-type social networks, in a family-and-friends scale operation. I&amp;#x27;d happily host resources for family and friends, for instance. While most people may not be able to run their own server, almost everyone is either family or friends with someone who can, and corporate offerings will fill in the gaps.</text></comment>