alt Hacker NewsThis suffers from the same problem that so so so many alternative social, federated, self-hosted ideas suffer from. Matrix, keybase, pgp, etc.
It’s too dependant on encryption. Yes, it’s a cool technical feat that stuff can be in the open but also private - but:
1. I want to be able to follow my freinds if my phone dies and i have to get a new one.
2. I am very technical, and idk exactly what a X25519 keypair is.
I would like for people to come up with more stuff like this that is designed for small communities but not for very secure communication. Like I want something where it’s secured by a username and password, that i give to a server i am registered with - and that server handles the encryption business. If the server rotates keys, that’s for the admin to figure out and exchange keys with sibling servers.
Idk I’m just making up specifics but this is the kind of ethos i think is needed to make things that can be successful with non-technical people in a way that can unseat big tech.
In case i sound too critical - this is cool. It just isn’t something i can use with family and friends to replace facebook or even email.
Replies
1. Right after initialization you'll be prompted to export the private key and store it somewhere safe, e.g. your password manager
2. You don't need to know unless you want to implement the protocol! To use (the very barebones) implementation all you need to do is fork the repo & give access, which I admit can be too much for family/friends so you might have to set it up for them (and I bet they'd be stoked to have a website of their own!)
Many years ago, I had an idea to use specially formatted emails as a transport layer for a social network. Predictably, it too, went nowhere: https://medium.com/@hliyan/email-re-skinned-as-a-social-netw...
Cloudflare tunnels are an interesting alternative, self hosted but with external security
Fully agree.
Who's gonna sniff your traffic from home? NSA, your ISP?
They already do.
Same as in corporate networks: your data is MITM anyway.
Fun should be unencrypted. It's not shopping or ssh into server.
I could see myself making similar comments. On a practical level, they're valid. But maybe...
If we are ever going to free ourselves of rent-seeking middle men, we simply have to make a cultural change where non-technical people do more for themselves. I don't even think it's about technical difficulty (most of the time). I think people just want someone else to take care of their shit.