[micropresident]

This is a step in the right direction. Federated protocols that aren't moderated or controlled by private organizations is critical for free speech -- but I wonder how moderation will be handled on systems like this... It seems inevitable that it will still centralize around hubs which are efficient at keeping spam off, and that inevitably leads to other types of censorship.

I think they're spot on with needing control over your identity, and them being transferable. Being locked into <username>@host.com is a big pitfall of email.

I've been working on a similar federated protocol awhile which integrates Hal Finney's RPoW concept. Moderation isn't federated which is where it diverges from things like mastodon and bluesky.

Instead, you're paid in messaging tokens by the sender to keep spam off the platform. Tokens are free, assuming you don't need mass amounts of them to spam.

I'm hoping to find some other engineers that might be interested to help work on it. Can contact me Stamp at lotus_16PSJPAVocAM5behRWxqwQnpEVRPJrV4XxbthBhJR. (Human readable handles using DIDs are something we need to get working.)

https://web.stampchat.io

[abdullahkhalids]

> I think they're spot on with needing control over your identity, and them being transferable.

I guess this means you need to store some sort of key that can be used to create a persistent id across servers. Which is great. But we need an explicit mechanism to avoid people having to trust a centralized authority to store that key. Storing on their own devices is going to inevitably result in people losing that key.

I don't know if secret sharing can ever be dumbed down and simplified that the average non-tech person can use without getting confused.

[micropresident]

Yup. The UX is going to be tricky. In the system I'm building there's a shared-everything KV store that your client publishes to similar to their system. I've got a system worked out for recovering your account in a decentralized way if a trojan exposes your key. However, I think there will be a need for services that help with this.

[busterarm]

No offense, but I think all of these federation protocols are a massive waste of time. Everything is building on top of the existing. At the end of the day, nation states still control the links.

Also lack of free speech isn't the problem with Twitter, nor do federated services solve it (control over your identity is meaningless if noone will let you distribute your content). The problem with Twitter/social media is that it amplifies all of the negative aspects of social power.

Moving that to a federated protocol won't make the environment less toxic. There won't suddenly be less misinformation (on one side) or less censorship (on the other). Social media is rotten at its core and just shouldn't have a place in polite society.

The fact that Twitter is so popular/necessary among journalists is a feature -- the profession moved from working class to being a tool/playground of billionaires decades ago and the combination of publications and social media is how they enforce their worldview on masses. The most social-media savvy journalists (e.g. Carlos Maza, Taylor Lorenz, etc) come from ultra-wealthy families.

Jack Dorsey either fundamentally misunderstands that or is complicit and doesn't care.

If people really want "internet freedom", then we're going to have to fully embrace balkanization and be prepared to run completely parallel networks with separate root DNS and compelling content to make people use it. It's a pipe dream.

[micropresident]

Agree with you. However, Stamp is federated only for encrypted direct messages. The twitter-ish feeds are shared everything, and anyone can spin up a node. Anyone can post anything. Good luck taking it down from all the nodes.

That's the reason for the RPoW tokens, otherwise the platform would collapse from spam/DDoS.

Also, where you accept your DMs can move relatively quickly with the way the system is designed.