PeerTweet – Decentralized feeds using BitTorrent's DHT network

[autoreleasepool]

I think it's clear that, in light of what's been going on, we need a more diverse ecosystem of P2P networks in order to protect the integrity of our private communications. So I support any effort to experiment in this area

[panic]

What we need most is something easy to set up and use. The whole point of a social network is that other people are on it. Too many of these P2P networks need you to know how to use a command line, install a bunch of auxiliary packages, manually generate keys, or hunt down an active server in a federated network.

[supergreg]

Is there any library/framework that helps build p2p things? That could help the ecosystem the same way web frameworks have helped build websites faster and more secure than ever.

[PuercoPop]

http://twister.net.co/

A more mature similar open source implementation of the same idea.

[sktrdie]

Totally appreciate Miguel's work and I've been following them for a long time. I think what they're doing is awesome and people should definitely check Twister out. I should probably have a related work section on the README. Anyway the approaches differ in some areas even though they seem to have the same goal in mind.

First off Twister is its own network. They use libtorrent and therefore most of BitTorrent's tech (with some alterations). PeerTweet on the other hand actually uses BitTorrent's mainline DHT network. Then they also include ability to assign names to your feeds based on blockchain mining - again this is their own blockchain. PeerTweet doesn't do that and instead perhaps relies on others to build that functionality on top of it (hint namecoin).

I'm not saying that having your own network for everything is bad, I'm just stating the differences :)

Also I think we need different tools that try to do the same thing (ex. Twitter) using different methods.

[metasean]

DHT - Distributed Hash Table https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table

[jimktrains2]

> "d": <unsigned int of minutes passed from epoch until when item was created>,

I know it's a simple /60, but why change from the more-or-less standard seconds from epoch? To try to squeeze more time out of a 32bit unsigned integer? Since there is no discussion of what size this integer is, I'm expecting you're just defaulting to the json standard, which would support a 53-bit signed integer, iirc.

[sktrdie]

Yeah it's just a matter of saving space. Here's the actual code: https://github.com/lmatteis/peer-tweet/blob/master/app/compo...

I'm really bad at binary arithmetic so I might have done something wrong, but essentially I calculate how many bytes I need to use for the integer, and I store it in a buffer.

I might change this if the space required is the same for seconds. I just figured I'd save some space, and I only need minute precision really.

[Franciscouzo]

Actually JSON doesn't mentions a limit on numbers http://stackoverflow.com/a/13502497/1192111

[levemi]

> PeerTweet

Since it's not actually using Twitter and you're not turning into a little bird to share a song can we call writing short messages something other than "tweets"? You might also run into trademark issues with Twitter, but that doesn't bother me as much as grown adults referring to general status updates and conversating as "tweeting", especially when Twitter isn't even involved. We just like need to draw a line in the sand somewhere.

[Klathmon]

Do we? Is it really that big of a problem?

If someone says they read a "Tweet", I instantly know that it was a very short message most likely made with very little thought or planning behind it.

It's a word, just like any other. This whole idea that we should stick to more vague words because they are "more adult" is silly to me.

[patrickaljord]

One of the top feature of twitter is search, trending topics, easy discoverability etc. In other words, all the goodness brought by centralization (which also comes with all the bad which is censorship, no open/free data etc). The first one to crack this thing (offer both great search and discoverability) and decentralization will win the internet. But it just seems super hard, people tend to concentrate and group no matter how decentralize they start, same thing is happening with bitcoin right now. Not saying it is impossible, but not coming in the near future I think. I sure hope I could be proven wrong though.

[rasengan]

I think a twitter-decentralized-blockchain could solve this?

[zbyte64]

"Trending" in a p2p sense is whatever has the largest swarm size. The more your peers know of that magnet link, the more that thing is trending.

[EGreg]

I'd say we are on our way:

http://qbix.com/platform/features/distributed

[jorgecurio]

what's really holding back the explosion of trustless, decentralized, secure, p2p applications is the very people using the internet. Most people don't give a rats ass or even have the capacity to appreciate something like this and what's going on in the background and why it matters.

All it takes is some teeny boppers like a snapchat demographic to adopt new technology. Facebook, twitter, all worked because we were all young once and so was everyone around us.

Some applications by nature will not be possible such as Google but one can dream right? A decentralized, distributed Google that's as good as the real thing but without any of the inherent creepiness? Duckduckgo is a real market reaction to the ongoing battle between politics and technology, but it just isn't good enough as the real thing.

I think that all in all, decentralizing applications mean a completely new paradigm change in how we value the end user. No longer is a browser fingerprint of some schmuck an exploitable piece of data by advertisers, government bodies.

I believe decentralization movement is happening now things are moving far far faster than what I had expected, really underestimated how quickly adoption is measured on the internet...in months if not a year, people's habit drastically change, suddenly a new monster appears and everyone loses it.

[arahant7]

Every event like the lavabit shutdown, the sybil attack on Tor and even the current Apple issue will add further push to the decentralization movement. Hopefully in the next year or two we will see many completely surveillance proof systems come up.

[nyan4]

What's the threat model here? Is the potential adversary able to do MITM?

- The DHT does not anonymize the poster ipaddr, the post contents, posting time and other metadata

- same for the reader ipaddr, what was reading, and when

[fiatmoney]

Based on the timing, I would imagine the threat model is ad purveyors taking over a previously relatively open application provider and engaging in soft-to-hard censorship of controversial topics until the only acceptable content is tweeting about how happy you are about #brands and #socialjustice.

[lisowski]

Very Cool! I've been thinking a lot about decentralized social networks and the value that they could bring. With companies I love like Soundcloud so far in the red, it is only time until they go under or change fundamentally. I think this idea of decentralized feeds fits very well with the current state of music, many different artists, collectives, and labels that basically only exist on the internet. If anyone wants to explore the idea with me I am very open to it!

[rakoo]

> "a": <utf8 http url of an image to render as your avatar>,

HTTP, again ? Ah, if only there was a decentralized way to exchange content without the need for any central authority, all while being sure of the authenticity.

[sktrdie]

HTTP is easy and well supported. Why not mix centralized solutions with decentralized ones? The important part is that you can edit your tweet with different URLs if they go down.

[hartator]

Yeah, they could have distributed via BT, but that's just an alpha and it's "just" the avatar, the actual tweet contents matter a bit more.

[im_dario]

I did a decentralized Twitter in 2010 with a very similar design: https://github.com/imdario/qantiqa

[TheAndruu]

Reminds me of https://github.com/TrsstProject/trsst and others like it before, like App.net.

This isn't a new idea and I'm 100% behind a more decentralized and free interwebs. The question is what will it take to gain traction. Ease of use is helpful, but there must be something compelling for people to adopt it.

[yazriel]

Does this create a new DHT entry per tweet or per user ?

I think the DHT itself can quickly become overloaded/slow - DHT does impose some b/w overhead for each node

[sktrdie]

One DHT entry per tweet. I do agree that it does create overload on the DHT. Initially in fact I was looking at implementing it as such: https://github.com/bittorrent/bittorrent.org/issues/19#issue...

Problem is that you don't get the "hosting" effect that you get with the DHT so you always need a peer seeding your feed or else it won't be reachable.

Anyway, I hope others take on the challenge of implementing alternatives looking at different methods.

[flashman]

Call me cynical but a decentralized alternative to Twitter (or the domain name system for that matter) won't work unless:

a) there's a mechanism for brands to get their associated nickname, and

b) spammers can't create millions of accounts, or doing so is worthless.

Even BitTorrent only really works because central authorities (torrent sites) confer some level of authority on the contents of particular torrents.

[sktrdie]

BitTorrent's DHT is constantly being spammed and has been so since its inception several years ago.

The whole point of DHT feeds is to actually filter out spam by only trusting specific feeds. Torrent site owners can publish their torrents on PeerTweet and avoid having to change their DNS every week or so (therefore having to rebuild their reputation).

[cm3]

Do browsers prompt like for mic and camera before opening p2p connections? Nobody wants a letter from the MPAA because a random website's javascript starts downloading/seeding stuff in the background without the user's knowledge.

[uptown]

P2P isn't always mic and camera.

Here's an example: (WARNING: Don't open this link if you're on mobile, or on a capped data connection)

https://webtorrent.io/

[ilostmykeys]

For security: this should be combined with something like CertCoin. HTTPS is Evil™ 8)

[reitanqild]

Very interesting, wanted to install and try until I read npm.

I do not feel very dumb, but dealing with node takes more energy than I think I have right now.

So summarized: still very interested but won't try unless someone explain how to like node.js.

[mrmondo]

I see you've been down voted, however I felt the same way, I loved the idea - then saw that it was in nodejs and while I don't discount it's merits I can't bring myself to try it out if it requires nodejs & friends.

[Humjob]

Super cool idea - I'll try this out today.