Slashdot Mirror
Twister: The Fully Decentralized P2P Microblogging Platform
New submitter miguelfreitas writes "I'd like to offer for discussion with Slashdot readers this new proposal: twister is the fully decentralized P2P microblogging platform leveraging from the free software implementations of Bitcoin and BitTorrent protocols. This is not being pushed by any company or organization, it is the work of a single Brazilian researcher (me). The idea is to provide a scalable platform for censor-resistant public posting together with private messaging with end-to-end encryption. The basic concepts are described in FAQ while more in-depth technical details are available from the white paper. The twister network is running already: the client can be compiled for Linux, Mac, and Android. 2500 usernames were registered in the first 6 days."
Tech bubble anyone?
Twister, the not so intersting story of some researchers and a tornado. You can't fool me again!
2500 users is impressive. That's about half the size of all Linux desktop users, right?
The more you try to hide what you do, the tighter the noose will get.
This seems like something I've heard of before, wasn't it called UseNet? I believe it was. This seems like a great theory that will result in a new platform for pirating among other things.
And yes, I know it's for distributing information without the iron heel of an oppressive government digging into you. And in all fairness, it could be used for that. In reality though, the people most likely to use this aren't actual freedom crusaders.
How do you register a username in a fully decentralized environment?
Secure, auditable, and distributed or downright personal servers should be the way of the future after we seen the abuses (from governments and companies) that enables to have everything centralized in few places. Of course, is pretty hard to get that for big numbers of people, as they are as group easily manipulable, but at least for the people that want security and privacy, must exist some options.
Hey Miguel
thanks for such creation!
BR
SteP
I'm sorry such initiative got so stupid comment ...
That 's a nice idea, like BitMessage ...
If only there was a protocol for replicating posts across multiple servers & providers.
So how does this improve on the dominant "darknet" technologies? What about all the lesser (failed?) p2p darknets like Antz, Mute or GnuNet? /.
TD;DR of course. This is
The blockchain will soon grow disproportionally large. Right now it's probably managable, but you know what? I'm not downloading tens of gigabytes of blockchain just for the plessure of reading lols on decentralized blogs.
Nice idea though...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This is neat. But, I'll be honest, I don't want to compile anything. At the very least give me an android APK or better yet get it on the play store.
How do you register a username in a fully decentralized environment?
In like manner of BitCoin registering a transaction in a fully decentralized way.
1) You make the claim to a username with a set of encryption keys.
2) The daemons accept the transaction and insert it into the block chain.
From then on, the only person who can claim to be that username must present credentials based on the encryption keys. Keep those safe, and no one cal masquerade as you on the system.
Mmm... social networking and telecommunications on a decentralised network with no way of inserting advertising, profiling users, and no easy way of monitoring their communications (Yeah, that was meant for you, NSA, GCHQ, et al). Let's hope it'll work over Tor. And may it be the first of many...
Hopefully, it'll use interoperable messaging and encryption protocols so that other projects can join the same network easily... and an easy way to generate and exchange public keys. If encryption is controlled by the user, then 3rd parties or service providers (That one's for you Facebook) can't change your privacy settings; you have control. Clients for all operating systems would be cool too.
Does this have support from EFF? Anyone else?
As soon as this thing gets big enough for people to start using it, Twitter is going to throw a pile of lawyers at this guy. Twister clearly infringes on Twitter's trademark, as it does the same thing and has a name intended to cause confusion.
Yes, but your counter-troll failed harder. A company I was working for got bought out by IBM, and I was really excited about it, because from the outside they looked like they were making a huge push towards using linux as their primary OS, and open source software in general. (I ended up working for them for about 5 years.)They managed to get Notes, their primary communication tool, working almost as well on Linux as it worked on Windows... which is not particularly well... but they haven't even ported over many of their basic tools, such as their ticket tracking systems, which are used to track development as well, to Linux. As of a few years ago, they said that they were going to stop attempting to port those tools over. For server operating systems, in many applications, they're still relentlessly pushing their developers to concentrate on coding for AIX over linux.
They've got a bright shiny image put forth from their marketing department as one big unified force pushing for workplace innovation, but the way the company actually works is much more like the government Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil.' Their linux workstation project was an underfunded, disorganized yet highly publicized project put together during their big linux marketing push. I don't even think 25% of the company directly touches linux on a daily basis, let alone the absolutely laughable assertion that 90% of the company uses linux as a primary desktop OS.
I understand this is Slashdot, but I find the the lack of a Windows client for a project like this pretty ridiculous.
The two rules for success are:
1) Never tell them everything you know.
It's dead to me. Like my health insurance.
How does this compare to tent.io?
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
There are alternatives like Askemos. Developed for a long time already. Older than bit-coin/torrent. Working, proofen.
Maybe we should ride the wave. But why?
Two years ago maybe. No longer. Either people "get the idea" or they will eventually develop it again.
then how do you stop some bot taking many usernames every second? (doesn't say in the FAQ, and it could be a real problem if multiple bots try to generate many usernames each)
That's an interesting and insightful point.
I'm going to forward it to Miguel and the people over at the Twister forum (unless you'd like to do it - I'll hold off for a couple of hours in case you do).
This is exactly what they need. A nascent project looking for feedback from smart, informed, and motivated users.
A while ago I said Twitter should be an RFC, not a company. Nice to see that somebody is doing that kind of thing. The catch is adoption. If most people don't adopt, it doesn't work. An in-browser client written in JavaScript would help that, if it's possible. In the 21st century, people have gotten used to the idea that you don't have to download a client for each protocol. Yeah, it sucks to have everything in the browser sometimes; but that's reality.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
For distributed, peer-to-peer solutions to work well, many users MUST allow significant storage on their own machines. Without such storage, P2P solutions will lack a 'history', making them unsuitable for anything BUT instantaneous services like file transfer and Instant Messaging.
But why not a P2P, distributed forum, for instance. The forum database itself would be distributed (with a statistically appropriate level of redundancy/duplication) across storage on individual users machines. HDD storage has never been cheaper- and better, a user could set some of his/her personal cloud storage space to this use.
But, BUT, there is a real problem lurking out there. Led by Tony Blair's British government (and be in no doubt, Blair has the same iron grip over the UK as Putin does over Russia, regardless of 'official' title), most nations have modified their laws to allow individuals to be prosecuted under almost ANY circumstance when they 'process' the data of another. A 'user' of a P2P distributed forum in the UK would immediately become legally responsible for ANY data from ANY source on that forum. The law has always used the concept of "shared legal responsibility" or "conspiracy" or "common purpose" to prosecute any member of a group the government would like to see destroyed.
Tor node maintainers have suffered exactly this fate, although the fact that tor is an intelligence resource of the West means that the full weight of the police-state has not fallen on those responsible for helping maintain the Tor network. In the UK, police raids on people and companies that 'control' servers used in a general sense by a wide community are so common-place, they aren't even reported today.
It gets worse. The owners of Twitter are partners with the NSA. Anything that encourages the sheeple to use a distributed service instead will cause the Twitter bosses to use their unthinkable financial clout to demand political action against any initiative that confounds NSA full surveillance projects. Zionist owned mainstream media outlets will happily run any number of stories demonising 'people power' facilities on the Internet as "hot-beds of terrorist activity enabled by criminally negligent developers".
Look how many nations allow bit-torrent users to be prosecuted with massive fines and jail time, simply for being a 'member' of a swarm, even if no data actually moves either to or from their machine. No nation requires proof that the user either successfully 'uploaded' or 'downloaded' even one copy of the file in question, if that nation has anti-torrent laws.
So, if as a user of a distributed P2P system, your machine UNWITTINGLY participates in an action that is in any sense considered 'illegal' in your nation, you are now considered fully responsible for that act. So, for instance, you 'help' the 'wrong' people engage in a conversation in the UK, Germany, or most Middle-East nations, you are going to prison. Much moreso if you are 'Muslim'. The UK has imprisoned many British Muslims for simply posting videos showing violence in nations destroyed by Tony Blair. The BBC, on the other hand, is still free to show videos of schools, hospitals and churches being bombed by the RAF in Blair's target nations while the studio guests roar with laughter, and praise those responsible for the slaughter.
NSA full surveillance projects, as praised and promoted by the owners of Slashdot, go hand-in-hand with the actual persecution of those who propose or use practical methods to circumvent such evil abuses of Mankind.
Nothing is ever "fully decentralized" until the internet itself is a giant mesh network.
Well, not exactly
I'm expecting something like this to topple Facebook.
With a terabyte of storage on a handheld device and a local application, you could replicate FB's service without the ads, limitations and privacy issues.
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Nice work dude ;-)
Better compare it with Diaspora or Movim, that are more in the same league, descentralized social networks. at least for the upper layer. If you want to go to the transport protocol, is afaik the bitcoin network protocol, so no darknets or i.e. Tor implied there. And as based on bitcoin, should imply no anonimity neither (what is a good thing in a social network)
i just threw up a bit in my mouth
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Last time I checked, /. comments could be rated
by randomly selected [registered] readers,
I hope you've got a similar scheme i Twister...?
He used to write kernel code before his brain got injured, and now he's an app designer for it instead :D
Technical issues aside, there are people who want to see Windows become less popular. Operating systems are only interesting to people insofar as the software available to run on them. If developers stop supporting Windows, users will stop using it.
There is no username and password, it's a public key and a private key but yes if you lose your private key someone can post under your identity. Just like if you lose your PGP private key, someone can send an email and pretend to be you.
My phone is about to catch on fire! It is actually uncomfortably hot to the touch running the twister server -- some sort of CPU usage regulation would be nice. Love the idea.
who's moderating the meta-moderators?
a good thing in a social network
What if you instead called it a "publishing platform"?
Whoops, the OP relies on using usernames. BIG MISTAKE, this is why existing messaging platforms are such a mess.
They should have assigned an pseudo-anonymous username(random numbers and letters) and then have signed aliases derived from it. So I could be bozozozo and mojojojo using the same pseudo-anonymous key, buts gone else who wants to be bozozozo or mojojojo can also be it, but they will have different keys.
RTFM, installed. Message me at the_scourge
somewhere, on a Big Red Sign:
if(color==blue){speed--;}
To encourage adoption, you could have a website front end where anyone can visit to view posts/search and such, and perhaps even follow users without loging in. Only to make posts do people need to download. I suppose you could even manage that much on behalf of users, if they want that, since the private option is always available. They trust you with their keys if they want to, and post via website, so that you can encourage wider markets, with the secure option available for those who choose.
Usenet is a full discussion platform where people could express their thoughts at any length and have ongoing conversations lasting days, weeks or longer -- it's not limited to soundbites as microblogging or most social networking is. "Twister" is far more like the decentralized social-networking platform Diaspora with character limits.
The tech community concerned about government censorship/spying should be putting its efforts into repopulating Usenet, rather than engaging in endless attempts to reinvent the wheel that all stall out in the octagonal stage due to lack of participation or burnout. It has no central owner, servers all over the planet (so if one engages in censorship or is shut down, users can easily switch), proxies (for anonymous access/posting) and existing client software.
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
and then we're never gonna stop.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAH
Its full of spam names like @apple, @ladygaga, @wellsfargo and etc... here is a list from when it came in another thread a week ago: http://pastie.org/private/rkuws8thrzdkl1wumoo2vw its has a few users generating lists of top twitter handles to squat on.