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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."
2500 users is impressive. That's about half the size of all Linux desktop users, right?
How do you register a username in a fully decentralized environment?
Tech bubble anyone?
From the twister FAQ:
The architecture is designed so that other users can’t know if you are online or not, what your IP address is, or which users’ posts you might be reading.
also:
Q: How do you make money out of this? A: I don't.
I like your definition of "Tech bubble" - we can use it as a label to beat down or promote all sorts of extreme views on the internets.
Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
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.
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.
A genuine, bona-fide, copyright cartel internet shill. Bingo - Got one!
Yes people, let's not support this because we all know what sorts of unsavoury activities will be found there! It just kills me that someone might be doing something I don't like on the internet, and there will be no way to stop it!!!
There's no value in any of the other activities that might go on - none whatsoever.
My definition of Tech Bubble: Your business doesn't have to generate revenue in order to grab an investment for a few billion. All you need to do is combine some popular buzzwords ("MicroBlogging", "Scalable" and "BitCoin").
This guy can sell himself as the next generation of Twitter: "We use BitCoin technologies to enable Scalable Microblogging" :)
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
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.
Not only that, it says "can be compiled for Linux, Mac, and Android". What about Windows? I'm all for using free software, but putting out a product like this and then ignoring the most popular operating system in the world by a long shot seems to be like they're asking for it to fail. It's like like they're only targeting free operating systems, as Mac somehow made the list.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Give him bitcoins instead :D /. article this year so far.
This is definitely my favorite
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.
APK is already available from download page.
Not only that, it says "can be compiled for Linux, Mac, and Android". What about Windows? I'm all for using free software, but putting out a product like this and then ignoring the most popular operating system in the world by a long shot seems to be like they're asking for it to fail. It's like like they're only targeting free operating systems, as Mac somehow made the list.
You have a good point, but I think it is important to understand that Windows is probably only the third most popular OS after Android and iOS at this point if we count installations where the end user has the right and ability to install new software.
Linux, Mac and Android are all UNIX-based. Writing something for Linux is relatively easily portable to Mac or Android. Porting to Windows is another venture alltogether.
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.
Mmm... social networking and telecommunications on a decentralised network with no way of inserting advertising
Actually, it does. From the FAQ:
Can I mine Bitcoins with twister?
Not exactly. The same mechanism used in Bitcoin for mining is also used in twister but for a different purpose, ensuring the order in which user registrations took place (the nickname belongs to whoever registered it first). twister network must incentive users to mine, so block chain may keep advancing. However, unlike Bitcoin, there is no monetary value involved. The twister incentive is: whoever finds the hash collision to validate a new block of transactions will be awarded with the right to send a promoted message. Promoted messages have a certain probability of being displayed by twister client.
Promoted messages? Am I going to be flooded with SPAM?
No, I hope not. I don’t like promoted message any more than you do, but I believe that a fair balance between the allowed volume of promoted messages will not upset the users while providing a good incentive for people to run the twister infrastructure.
Currently there is a maximum of one promoted message to be shown every 8 hours for every client, but the exact policy to be used is meant to be decided by the community.
The mechanism is actually quite democratic. Anyone can start generating blocks to send promoted messages, so this is effectively an advertising mechanism reaching the entire population of twister users. While an entrepreneur may invest in a mining rig to announce his product, a non-profit organization may ask his supporters to use their own personal computers to increase the probability of spreading their message.
Visit the
Last time I checked, /. comments could be rated
by randomly selected [registered] readers,
I hope you've got a similar scheme i Twister...?