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[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Nice sub.

I've been looking in to options and I'm starting to think IPFS plus a torrent-like sharing network using WebRTC (similar to bitchute.com) may be the way to decentralize saidit. I wish we had another programmer to help with that project, it's a ton of work for something as complex as saidit.

[–]JasonCarswellDAT Mod[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (6 children)

I wish I could help. I really do. I'm a computer animator and when pushed can write some expressions and build custom rigs and limited tools, and I can do the Wikipedia code - but I don't know much else. I once knew some basic Linux 20 years ago and am actually considering going as FLOSS as possible for my new projects (switching to Mint, getting used to GIMP, and learning Blender 3D and other apps) but I just don't code. I can't even fix a FreeNAS I set up a few years ago.

But I am a fan of technology and freedom and know where the wind is blowing and where it could blow. My talents are better utilized to develop counter propaganda and promote alternative solutions to corporatocracy enslavement.

Over a year ago I was drafting an article for Steemit and to pitch at James Corbett. I was/am pissed at the misleading promise and overselling of BitChute with huge drawbacks. Also, I feel ZeroNet is oversold too. I even shelved a project with Zoon Politikon to finish it, but I never did finish that article or that project - because then I learned about IPFS. It was the thing I'd been waiting for. I was ashamed I only found out about it then. Ironically I only recently found out about Holochain and feel embarrassed (illogically, like why should I have to be in the know, as if) that I'd not heard about it sooner.

IPFS and Holochain and so far as I know BitTorrent and WebTorrent could all potentially cooperate together. (WebTorrent Desktop and Vuse can already do BT and WT simultaneously while most others can't.) But Protocol Labs' IPFS and Holochain still have much development and developers to embrace and build on it before it takes off. I now think Holochain might be the better place to start for you to integrate and IPFS and torrenting would be for the file sharing and file management. At least so far as my basic understanding goes.

I want it all now. But we have to wait. But we can't. I'd like to tell you to relax and not worry but there's so much to be legit concerned about. And yet the tech isn't ready. I don't know what to say. Damned if you do or don't. And now Microsoft owns GitHub, out of the pan...

All I know for sure is that I'll help if I can. I don't know how. One thing I can recommend... Do daily backups. As you see fit, you could share open or encrypted archive torrents from time to time in case "they" pull some shit and so folks like me could be your extended backup - or just a waste of time. I dunno. I currently don't have the upwards bandwidth to host anything but will be getting fiber within a year. I'm not interested in hosting/mirroring/managing/curating/etc but could potentially set up a box for you to remote control should you need backup here in humble Windsor Canada. Perhaps down the road when Holochain and their currencies are established as well as distributed hosting services. Beyond this rudimentary I.T. stuff or management I'm not interested as I already waste too much time learning about all the lies of history and conspiracies to screw us over that I don't spend close to as much time on my animation as I ought to.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Your experience sounds interesting, thanks for etl

I was/am pissed at the misleading promise and overselling of BitChute with huge drawbacks

Can you tell me more about what's wrong with Bitchute? I've been thinking of using their WebRTS torrenting protocol to share the data for the site. (Instead of just the video data, ALL the data)

And then IPFS gives us a static IP that's on the cloud so a URL can be tied to it. Then we use that to create a static html frame landing page, and inside of that has a way to bootstrap in to our WebRTS network, which then shares all the other data, from the html to the javascript to the database. That's my current game plan, anyway.

I haven't read much about Holochain, but I'll read about it. Another thing I was hearing about was Ethereum has the ability to do computations as well as data-hosting, so theoretically we could port the code to an ethereum server, but in the end I think we'd have to port too much code and it wouldn't be fast enough. We kind of need it to be a box we can just drop all our code in to and it runs like a normal server, but is distributed. That'd be the ideal, anyway.

We are constantly doing backups, thanks for the advice. We're ready at the drop of a hat to move to a new server if this one gets shut down, and we could pick up right where we left off. We are super prepared for this, if it were to happen.

You said you're good at spreading the word... that's really what saidit needs right now. We could use a few more quality people who are interested in the deep kind of content saidit tries to regularly offer. I am basically our PR department, and I'm not super great at it tbh... I've gone on a few podcasts that got like 25k listens each and plugged the website, and I try to post about it on reddit whenever I can, but it's just hard going tbh. If you could help in this area that would be greatly appreciated...

Anyway, thanks for the exchange, I appreciate the decentralization information!

[–]JasonCarswellDAT Mod[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Aesthetic design and ergonomics aside BitChute is good but not great. Maybe it can become great, maybe not.

It's nice, even wonderful, that there are alternatives, but they are not strong and while we don't want to discourage supporting young tech, I don't think over selling it as a "solution" is honest, much less any exaggerated or false claims.

For example, saying the BitChute is decentralized is WAAAY overselling it. It's fantastic that they let/encourage you download the media. I think WebTorrent is fantastic so far as I know (I haven't used it much). But the BitTorrent had only worked for me about 2/18 of my attempts (last year, perhaps this is fixed) and videos were no longer seeded, even recent ones. Furthermore I couldn't even download direct at that time. If it doesn't work then it's not a solution. And that's not even my biggest gripe because that could potentially be fixed.

I don't know if BitChute now has a direct download or not. I haven't bothered following up as I've since discovered YouTube-DLG to download everything, including BitChute.

Like Steemit, BitChute is NOT decentralized. There is one central website you go to, regardless of what technology they use (Steemit uses private blockchain, and BitChute uses janky WebTorrents). THIS IS HUGE FALSE ADVERTISING.

KickAssTorrents took a huge hit when they got shut down. Since then they opened a bunch of mirror sites under similar domain names and extensions, possibly in several countries and they developed some (proprietary?) way of mirroring the data and functionality. Unfortunately their reputation took quite a beating and I don't know if they've recovered. Furthermore they now had more sites and more overhead to deal with, though it may have brought them greater security against a single point attack.

Furthermore, if it hasen't already, BitChute could embrace ZeroNet, IPFS, Holochain, among several others which may or may not be legit ( https://infogalactic.com/info/InterPlanetary_File_System#See_also ) for authentic decentralization. Even D-Tube which actually utilizes IPFS is oversold, under performs, and is underwhelming. Building nice websites isn't that hard so I really don't know why they fail that, though the back end volume hosting is another thing. I don't know why they don't cleave their site in two - one part player to embed, and a nicer social media site to embed into.

Ultimately those sites aren't terrible but they aren't our salvation yet either.

My knowledge of WebTorrent is limited to what's in the Wikipedia article I wrote about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebTorrent I think it's fantastic if you can use it somehow.

I've been considering test driving IPFS for a year now but have yet to. Your description of how you'd use it is different than my limited understanding of its application.

Holochain has two currencies, one (or both?) is Ethereum based. I know almost nothing of Ethereum beyond it being another crypto, becoming more popular than ever.

Good but short: "Holochain vs Blockchain" (2:10) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV8QZsNpFok

Okay but not new: "What are Distributed Hash Tables" (1:50) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhF_kvgfEZM

Slow and could be better: "Holochain Explained" (8:24) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyCtYrHJebs

Long but okay, maybe skip the first 5th: "AMA No. 17 w_ Matt Schutte" (58:47) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIx7_lENd2I

Glad to hear you've got your ducks in a row, backup wise.

I don't know if I'm good at spreading the word but I'll do my best. I'll certainly push SaidIt as much as possible in my day to day, like I do with InfoGalactic. I'm new to Reddit-style and like my wiki stuff but the alt-right isn't my scene and InfoGalactic has no community. Trutherism is my thing and my projects should do well utilizing both IG and SaidIt. Hopefully this little meme-like comicstrip-ish Trutherism 101 animated short series will become a hit among our crowd and beyond. I have many ideas about open sourcing and expanding the development in stages. I also intend for every episode to feature prominent closing (promotional) credits for InfoGalactic, SaidIt and whatever other indispensable resources deserve mention, as well as new recommendations for each episode (ie. "truther of the week", "book of the week", "solution of the week", "concept of the week", "spycraft jargon of the week", and/or "quote of the week") to promote alternative critical thinking and some of the better more legit folks around. More on this forthcoming.

Animation is a slow process. I think it's fair to say that we both would like this done yesterday. If you don't already see some value in my extremely limited partial outline above, I hope you'll see it sooner than later. If/when you do, I hope you might do me a kindness and try to keep me from being distracted too much here on SaidIt, and maybe even apply some friendly pressure to make progress towards producing results. The sooner I get some done, the sooner we'll reap the benefits of our fledgling labours. I don't intend the first series or few to be remotely as "extreme" in truth as it can and should get, but I do expect there will be pros and cons from more attention. We'll have lots of time to discuss this and line up ducks in the open development of it before it's released into the wild.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I have a PeerTube instance going... it's BitChute/web torrent technology but federated. I like it because no one can DMCA takedown videos from my instance that I'm running (aside from my web host pulling the plug on me). I came across PeerTube because I was frustrated with BitChute's search results. I can't weight in on IPFS vs. WebTorrent too much, but I personally like the federated model so far. It's similar to Mastodon and has some integrations with that site I guess.

https://tube.4aem.com

https://joinpeertube.org/en/

[–]JasonCarswellDAT Mod[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I had not checked out PeerTube much. You've now peaked my interest.

I'm not a fan of the GUI. The page you linked to was full of smut and truther stuff. I embrace both, but not together. It is not a good first impression. I didn't know what I was looking at. It's called PeerTube but it says "Down The Memory Hole". Is that the name of your channel or a PeerTube slogan or what? Whatever it is fine but the lack of clarity is not. So I clicked on "Down The Memory Hole" and it took me to all truther vids and it changed from "Trending" to "Local videos". This doesn't make sense to me. Yet. But it shouldn't have to have a learning curve to be a good web design. Also, what is 4aem in tube.4aem.com? Why not Peer.tube.com or something? Is 4aem your user designation? I don't get it.

One thing I like about the GUI is that off the bat I see it's better than BitChute and DTube. If it were my project I'd put EVEN MOAR information under each video.

Anyways, I love alternatives and will certainly get around to using and supporting Peer Tube when I actually have something to share eventually.

It looks like you've curated a fine collection of A+ to A+++ content.

Here's the problem with alt-video, as I see it. Besides the YouTube monopoly why go elsewhere. Vimeo has/had better quality and more resolution options, but YouTube has improved. InternetArchive is also good but it's one of the last stops when you're actually desperate enough to search outside YouTube. There are 4 reasons that I would go elsewhere: 1) To find original or expired media found no where else. Whether it's personal, professional, original, or ancient BBC stuff not found anywhere else, the best option is still central YouTube. Searching elsewhere is a hassle, though hosting elsewhere may not be. 2) To find media that cannot be downloaded. YouTube is always doing something to foil my browser addons and my more recent discovery YouTube-DLG app (I love it, but it can't get everything). 3) To find media that was censored for copyright violations, "legitimate" or otherwise. 4) To find media that was censored for it's "objectionable" content.

So to my point. I've seen Adam Curtis' work on YouTube or torrented or eMule or whatever. Having to sift through stuff like that to find the rare gems on alt-video is another chore on top of having to sift through media to separate the lies from the half truths from the truths from the layered multiple meanings and obscure historical references, etc etc etc.

So that's my beef with alt-video. I hope it can be addressed somehow, but I'm not the person to fight that battle.

Besides being alternative, decentralizing, reward systems, etc. I love the idea of alt-video projects and resources. The YouTube "social media" aspect is better than some but still shitty. I hate the YouTube notifications system, especially for large quantities. Sure you can get email notifications assuming they send them but managing YouTube from your email app or tab seems stupid when they could have a YouTubeMail or something. The YouTube playlist management is marginally better but still sucks balls. Why do I mention this? Because alt-video has a golden chance to profoundly improve the user experience on many levels. Whether YouTube would bother to copy them is another thing but I think it's a lumbering giant slow to change anything. Further a glorious interface isn't going to suck users away from YouTube quickly either.

I took a look at the PeerTube FAQ and ActivityPub. ActivityPub sounds promising and exciting. I'll definitely have to return to study that more. So too with PeerTube. I've been intending to write a whole article on Wikipedia about Decentralized Web alternatives, but I keep getting distracted. I was in an edit battle over and broke the internet by improving some "open source" articles and disambiguations and need to finish a draft... It's a mess that needs sorting.

https://infogalactic.com/info/Open_source (my uncensored improvements)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source ("they" chopped it back)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Open_source (a work in progress on a BCA broad concept article)

And then I discovered SaidIt. (Another timesuck)

Before I'd started that "open source" mess, I'd written articles for WebTorrent and DTube. Surprisingly the WebTorrent article has remained uncensored but the DTube was shut down (saved on InfoGalactic). "They" really don't like IPFS and Filecoin, and cryptos. To be fair, the article stubs needed more citations and research. But to be really fair, there's a LOT of shit on Wikipedia that doesn't have adequate citations but goes unmolested.

One of the rules of Wikipedia is that you're not allowed to "organize" (ie. form a group to change the 9/11 page), meanwhile their gang of admins determine how to rig the rules and who to kick out (I was banned for a year for being "another polite truther"). Nonetheless I hope to collect citations, links, etc to help improve the above mentioned articles as well as fill out the PeerTube article more (I just did). Plus other things like DLive and IOTA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:DTube (Check it before it gets censored again, or just read the InfoGalactic article. I added a section about Persecution and resistance on InfoGalactic that I didn't bother copy pasting back into the draft I discovered someone feebly started, after my old one was RAPIDLY deleted without conversation. I knew it was flawed but I'd expected it to be built upon and improved rather than stomped. For example, it took a while and a lot of painful translating to "build" up this article that wasn't stomped: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlis_Johansons )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PeerTube

So funny thing, I started this monologue with the intention of concluding by asking for your take on the "federated" thing, because I really didn't get it from your description or their FAQ. But through all this stuff above and the Wikipedia description I actually think I get it. Perhaps it was repetition or the same thing from 3 angles.

Conclusion: I'm impressed and hopeful.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Whoa cool site man, I'm gonna have to roll up my sleeves and do some exploring on infogalactic.com

full of smut and truther stuff. I embrace both, but not together

hahahaaa amen. since PeerTube is federated and I follow as many instances as possible for the best possible search results, some smut pops up. But on the instance's/site's home page (Local Videos) it's exclusively truther and political videos. I have a no porn rule and actually had to delete my first porn video today that someone uploaded.

it says "Down The Memory Hole". Is that the name of your channel or a PeerTube slogan or what?

It's the name of my/the PeerTube instance

what is 4aem in tube.4aem.com? Why not Peer.tube.com or something?

This is just a (incredibly short and epic) domain name I had and wasn't using. I could have just been a normal PeerTube user and signed up for anyone's instance (that allows registration) and uploaded conspiracy videos there, but the typical limit is 5gb. But I wanted to put my money where my mouth is and go big to have some proper conspiracy videos on PeerTube, so I started my own instance. I choose which instances to follow (their videos show in search, on Trending, etc.) and other instances can choose to follow me (15 so far).

Edit:

anyway yeah it's one instance per url. Also my videos are always seeded because I'm responsible for the seeding which I like as well (although others can and will hopefully mirror my videos to their instances).

Yeah I agree that YouTube is still very much dominant and those are 4 good use cases for seeking out alternatives. For me it was noticing my playlist videos being slowly but consistently removed. Sifting through videos is rough for sure. I'm more focused on a given video being findable if it's mentioned somewhere else I guess.

fwiw I think ActivityPub is just a messaging standardization and isn't really anything technically new. Your wikipedia battles sound like a trip. I've never tried to add but I have seen a bunch of shady removals. Wow "another polite truther". I'm sure that would be a great story if you ever felt like writing it up.

I hope dTube can make it. I messed up by steem account and now my phone number is taken so I'm pretty much locked out. And then there's all that sketchy stuff about the launch of the steem coin. But still I hope they make it and can take some audience from YouTube.

[–]JasonCarswellDAT Mod[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

InfoGalactic is good for several reasons:

  • uncensored
  • deep encyclopedia
  • classic familiar wiki format (Other wikis change their layouts, CSS, or how they present articles - all kind of annoying)
  • pretty fast response (WikiSpooks on the other hand is sloooooow)
  • not corporate (ie Wikipedia, the sister projects, and WIKIA have the same owner)
  • all but one of the people have been decent
  • receptive to non-encyclopedia wiki-based projects

InfoGalactic is bad for several reasons:

  • the encyclopedia is a mirrored fork so a Wikipedia copy is the foundation
  • many of the mirrored articles are long out of date or haven't even been copied yet
  • the mirrors don't copy the page history or the talk page and it's history
  • A BIG ONE: there is no distinction between a mirrored WP article and an article that has been modified or an entirely new unique IG article
  • the appearance is almost identical (they could at least ad a touch of colour so you know you're not on WP)
  • there is virtually no community or use of talk pages
  • a lot of images are missing and/or go missing
  • there is virtually no tech support, though it's pretty good and stable
  • there is no roadmap or plan
  • A BIG ONE: there is no community so there is no discussion so we cannot agree on anything so there is no regulating things. Specifically, on WP there is one corporatocracy "neutra" (ha!) perspective, meanwhile on IG I've tried to get folks to come together and at least create basic labels to add to articles or sections. Sure there's a LOT of grey area, but for the most part you could easily keep the number of perspectives to a minimum (ie. Wikipedia perspective, SJW, Right, Alt-Right/Libertarian, Progressive/Green, Anarchist, Truther/Conspirophile) Let everyone have a say and use the labels as you see fit so the reader doesn't have to do further research to come back and guess your angle or game your pushing.
  • the "Galactic Boardroom" (their tearoom) is full of more of my suggestions, ignored : https://infogalactic.com/info/Infogalactic:Galactic_boardroom
  • here's how active it is : https://infogalactic.com/info/Special:RecentChanges
  • User:Froglich is a right wing asshole who can't see that we actually have waaaaaaay more in common than he can recognize. His articles are on good topics and does pretty well but there a deep bitterness caused by his blind belief in the left-right paradigm. We had some wars but then I stopped punching myself in the dick and stopped responding to his crap. And he stopped.
  • One thing we had issue with I won as you can see here: https://infogalactic.com/info/Chomsky_(disambiguation) where Froglich wanted his conservative satire slander article first and to delete the WP version. I insisted it go to the disamb page to let the reader decide what perspective they wanted.
  • They set it up so the front splash page displays alt-right news and I'm not aware of any way to submit suggestions.

This list looks lopsided but the freedom from censorship is the biggest draw followed by the ability to wiki beyond the encyclopedia.

So "Down The Memory Hole" is your local "franchise"/instance of the greater PeerTube community/project. It's starting to sound a lot like Holochain.

You said "video being findable if it's mentioned somewhere else I guess" which made me think of something, similar to your issue with loosing videos in your playlists. Most of the videos on SaidIt are on YouTube but one day may not be there, so while SaidIt is still small it'd be easier to mirror those videos onto a dedicated SaidIt>YouTube>PeerTube franchise so they'll never be lost. A bot could go through and change the code from YouTube to New.PeerTube whenever a transfer is completed. So too, it'd be MUCH smaller and likely easier to scrape all the links to other sites, PDFs, images, music, etc. and then bot recode. I don't know if this would be a copyright nightmare, but I think it'd be great not to rely on the InternetArchive, which is in San Francisco's Presidio area, which once was (and still might be in part or whole) military land. It's actually quite a pleasant place.

I wrote up my Wikipedia experience. (I think everyone at IG has had one too.) It's not very spectacular but you can read about it here: https://infogalactic.com/info/User:JasonCarswell#Censored.2Fbanned_from_Wikipedia_for_one_year Which reminds me I need to offload from RationalWiki (not very rational) where I floundered for a month or two between. They are skeptical of God but that's it. I tried telling them that the CIA created and funds ISIS. That did not go well. Also in that collapsed section are a lot of links to half started half ideas I should clean up, remove, or integrate. Don't waste your time with them, or do if want to. It's public so I don't care other than there's nothing to be proud of.

Ya, Steemit is sketchy from top to bottom. But it's something and it sort of rewards, if you're a whale. I've never been in it for the money, though I'll never say no to it. Some folks need it and some folks want it. I'm glad I don't accept and endure that burden. I hope that someone can build a Steemit alternative on IPFS with Filecoin or some other crypto and DTube can be free of Steemit if it chooses or be a cross dual platform thing.