Decentralizing SaidIt

submitted by JasonCarswell from infogalactic.com

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[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

To clarify, you said "blockchain" which can be used for a lot of non-currency purposes.

If you're talking strictly about currencies, than I'd generally agree. It might be possible to develop currencies that are less easy to buy into. I don't trust Steemit but they do have some weird things going on good and bad with their three tolken systems - in part to stop a bank run. The best thing about them and Filecoin are that you can earn them.

I don't know how practical a closed system might be but it's something to think about.

[–]wizzwizz4 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Blockchains with POW are all susceptible to 51% attacks, no matter whether they're currency-based.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (11 children)

I suppose folks like Steemit manage their proof of work problems by not opening up their proof of work process to submission, much less publishing them publicly, besides on their website apparently somehow.

The nice thing about it is that the work is there and could potentially be reversed in an archival situation, unlike a currency where some transactions might not be.

If you don't openly offer access to just anyone then that would decrease the risks. Figuring out the system for the circle of trust is a whole other can of worms.

[–]wizzwizz4 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Doesn't that defeat the whole point of decentralisation? There's still a central authority controlling content in your case.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

Depends. You still have moderators and admins for decentralized things right?

If one person is controlling something on a thousand machines - is that decentralized or not? Yes it's on several boxes but no if you mean it's got a gatekeeper.

One domain name, ie. SaidIt.net may be hosted by one server or many. Maybe folks who prove their moxy earn the right to co-host. This might keep the bots and trolls and impatient infiltrators at bay.

[–]wizzwizz4 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

One domain name, i.e. SaidIt.net may be hosted by one server or many.

But there's only one entity in charge of it. One entity that says who stays, who goes, who's in that group...

If many subs are on different domains (you can access all subs through all domains with the accessor's authentication, but their "home" locations are on different domains) like Mastodon does it, that's decentralised enough whilst still allowing moderation by the sub owners.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Now I'm a little confused.

[–]wizzwizz4 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Having a gatekeeper means that the owners of saidit.net control the entire network, even if it has multiple hosts. Each host should be identical and equivalently able to act as the authenticator (obviously with different accounts!) and gatekeeper.

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I understand that and other stuff. Are we agreeing or debating, were we ever debating, or just discussing details from different directions leading to the same point quibbling over semantics, at least until we reached the limit of my awareness on how it works?

And I still don't understand - are you in favour of the SaidIt admins controlling the entire network, even it has multiple hosts? Would you call that decentralized? Or would it be more precise to call it decentralized hosting with centralized governance?, for a cheeky lack of a better term.

Or are you saying alternative to that last paragraph's model a new model for SaidIt might be implemented where all hosts are equal and act as moderators, equally.

Wherein, do I have this right?...

All hosts would host their accounts and co-host the content and share the content - but don't share the accounts, rather allow accounts of them and others in the Fediverse to interact across all the various co-hosted servers.

So when a bad apple rears its head, who is responsible for dealing with it?

Also if one host goes down do all of it's accounts (list of users) go down too?

[–]wizzwizz4 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

All hosts are equal ≠ all users are hosts. When a bad user appears, the owning host deals with it. When a bad host appears, everybody just ignores it.