As a long-time user (and writer) of static site generators, I welcome these ideas, as I think these would allow us to organize static sites into some kind of decentralized social networks. Think of this as a bulkier version of RSS, because - for most practical cases - it is relative cheap to just fetch everything from a source and present it in a consistent way.
Even if people were using centralized git repositories, a separate naming service could allow easy (and cheap/free) redirects, so data migration wouldn't be an issue.
Can this be done with mastadon? Of course. But it requires a database server and other moving parts that need occasional maintenance. Treating the social network as a network of static sites makes operations (and federation) so much easier.
Would this be this specific project that wins us over? Maybe not, we shall see. But I think the concept could evolve into something useful.
I wanted to know the design decisions behind how Kademlia worked in detail.
Glad to see this… wondering why we need it if we have Dat/Hypercore and beaker browser, which already uses Secure Kademlia DHT for swarming and follows up with SLEEP protocol instead of Git. It is encrypted and secure, to boot.
But those saying this is federated are wrong. It is peer to peer, just like Git is. Email is federated (the domain part is even a centrally controlled database). Having said that, git can be hosted even on your own computer!
It also doesn't do much to address the reasons users in federated systems tend to congregate around large(r) servers, like discoverability and reliability.
It's a neat PoC but I think the communication needs some work.
There is a big exception here. You sign commits, so each update comes with some proof of the identity of the author. I like how simple this is, and generally prefer it over the way Mastodon and other federated services handle identity.
Maybe some illustration would help to explain data and/or control flow?
The number of pilot users would still deserve growing: https://github.com/social4git/social4git/blob/main/doc/direc...
- Managing data (push/pull/etc) in a common, widely-supported protocol (git)
- which has a large, stable, and free-as-in-beer implementation (GitHub)
- as well as some major competitors (Bitbucket/GitLab)
- and is possible to self-host (gitea, OSS GitLab)
What I'd love to see:
- posts are currently in JSON format. Make it something more readable (like Markdown+YAML), at least optionally. That way people can interact _directly_ in GitHub, instead of using a janky client
- The main problem with decentralized frameworks is always "search and discoverability". Someone needs to aggregate all the data in a centralized database and make it easy for others to pick through
Nostr is another one that is more lightweight without the Merkel tree but is seeing some traction.
* You're still either hosting your own, or at the whim of whomever hosts your repository. Mastodon.social or GitHub.
* Hosting your own Git is not particularly easier than hosting your own GoTo Social or Akkoma.
* What if you end up with either a big following, or a big follower list? Aren't you going to be rate limited by GitHub?
* Is signing up for GitHub easier than signing up for mastodon.social, especially if Mastodon et al already have good mobile clients?
* What about moderation?
* What about media?
And I mean... Isn't Git federated by nature? Multiple machines store multiple copies of the data. That's defederation isn't it?
But OK, let's put the federated social networks we do have aside for a moment.
The site says: Every user stores their application state in a git repo they own and control.
But you don't do that if you're on GitHub, right? Not really, anyway. What is the benefit from doing this over git? What if I want to delete something? What is the overhead of the git protocol?
If it's just a toy, then that's totally cool with me. But it says that Microsoft Research is involved. I'm a bit confused. What is this?