New decentralized social network, specialized in sharing public and Creative Common content

Thank you @aschrijver for these links !
Individious looks great ! however for what I understand we are still relying on deployed instances of indivious. It is decentralized in the sense that it does not belong to a big corporate entity, and you can have multiple instances, but still centralized in the sense that each instance of individious is a classical centralized client server application (I might be wrong… I haven’t gone in too much exploration but feels like it , please tell me if I am wrong…)

This is as I was sharing about mastodonde and each mastodonde instance being a classic client server application.

I think that with Solid we can go for a truly decentralized approach. Actualy, JoinPeerTube is decentralized since following a peer to peer approach. However I am wondering if with Solid we can invente a new way to decentralized.

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Indeed. I added Invidious not as a full project example, but because you mentioned also sharing links to existing YT videos, so there’s probably parts of the codebase interesting for closer examination.

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You can do that in parallel with HTTP. With HTTP/2 even the performance is good.

Exactly. Therefore you you can just load, let’s say a batch of 10 comments in parallel using HTTP, and further batches continuously while the user navigates through the comment list.

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I agree with you on this. In my opinion this is a weaknesses in the current Solid approach, it is not completely decentralized, you still have servers and location dependency, it is a kind of compromise. My feeling is that we should keep the strengths of Solid, RDF and the standards around it (WAC for example) as universal data format for the Web, but combine them with pure decentralized approaches like IPFS or SAFE network to get rid of servers.

I would aim for a serverless Solid, but I’m not sure whether we still need an intermediate server-based approach and switch over later. This is my current dilema.

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Yes @rodant , with what I am proposing however, there would large replication of all public / shared content, through the idea that when you share some content from others, you get a copy of this content on your own POD. Therefore there is decentralization AND resilience of the data, provided that …. You have many POD servers ! because if all PODs are hosted by only an handful set of POD servers, then it is not so much decentralized….

Also see my comment here : New decentralized social network, specialized in sharing public and Creative Common content , comment on @aveltens’s docker :

In the extreme case scenario : if we could all self-host our own POD server on our own local machine, with the intend to only host our own POD (and maybe the ones from our family / close friends), then we would actually have a fully decentralized system, combining kind of a peer-to-peer network approach and the promise of Solid for keeping ownership of data. Our POD becomes indeed a replicated container for publicly shared data (replication of shared content into multiple PODs) and as well for your own private data, with control on who can see.

I still think we would need a central server for consolidation / indexing capability and ensuring that we can build high performing systems. But this server would not hold data, just pointers to data. And if this server fails, it does not affect the data itself, just the raw performance of the applications, which will get back to normal when the central server is restored.

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I don’t exclude this possibility, applications could need some optimizations or additional processing implemented in an external service, which could also be high available. But I also don’t exclude that we find new decentralized solutions for those problems, the time will show that. Though, this is from my point of view the next step, first we must solve the central use cases in the best possible way.

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Oh yes completely agree ! there are solutions for everything. It is a matter of being clear about where we want to go, state the intention, and then create with full trust that together we will get there :slight_smile:

Also fully agreeing on the step by step approach : let’s start the ball rolling without waiting for everything to be perfect and we will improve with time. What we need now is to have a real world, production application, make it scale to many users and then iterate. We know this : the important matter is to get traction and wide adoption first.

I have the intention to build this decentralized social network we are talking about here, and do it fast, and do it together, so everyone is welcome to join to co-create ! I am 100% dedicated to this.

For those interested, please check the event I am proposing to host : Creation of Solid applications with low-code development platform Generative Objects , I plan to demonstrate how we can build very fast this social network with Generative Objects low-code technology. Please comment on the post for the event to say what is your time-zone if you are interested to participate

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@walter.almeida I just want to share with you this repo from Redecentralize.org , where you can find different decentralized projects that might be of your interest (like D.Tube) or could give you more ideas around your app :wink:

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Great ! Thank you @alexcorvis84

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Yes, and awesome peer-to-peer is also a good one.

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This conversation continues in Deploying solid in kubernetes, anyone has experience and can help us?

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This seems even more interesting with considering the video data static, and having to be duplicated easily between machines. Pinning to IPFS pods and sharing the videos’ metadata via a simple Solid application sounds even more approachable, than turning Solid into a (fault-tolerant, duplicating) CDN. Eventually one could even reuse concepts or experiments with https://ipld.io/ ?

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Ok I will really study this, see what route we take. I am definitively open to suggestion and leveraging existing open source projects !

It would be more than a =basic CDN, it would be a contextual CDN with access ruled by your personal connections => you access the resource from the friend who shares it, and you yourself become a node for your own friends.

But indeed, I am not familiar with IPFS, I really need to check it !

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Hi Walter, It seems my use case would be a nice test of your network. It is a meaningfull use case to share one’s medical dossier. If you want more information drop me a note. Thanks!

Hans

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Hi Walter,

these are good starting points to get into the depths of IPFS:

This is where it basically started ~ 2014/15:

It’s like torrent, https://cobox.cloud/ or http://dat.foundation/, but slightly different.

You’ll see how it’s useful for immutable data. IPLD then is a metadata language used in IPFS for itself and to bridge to other networks. https://ipld.io/

With it we get nice things, such as:

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Why not support copyrighted material too? Independent artists could create scarcity (and thus value appreciation) by limiting the number of copies that are distributed. In fact, their work could be tokenized and thus commoditized. This platform could enforce that using a blockchain such as ethereum.

About IPFS, indeed it could be used to shard high traffic content for a modical fee paid by the author.

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For those who are interested, it is not specfic to Solid, but I am doing a full technical presentation of Generative Objects next 9th of june, check here : https://www.eventbrite.com/e/technical-presentation-of-the-low-code-platform-generative-objects-tickets-107617552998

Also here is an article about my motivations to open source Generative Objects, it includes reference to the Solid project and what we are discussing here : https://modeling-languages.com/low-code-open-source-platform-generative-objects/

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@timbl, if you want to know more about Generative Objects, I just wrote this post : https://modeling-languages.com/low-code-open-source-platform-generative-objects/

Primer:
“I want to empower people to co-create the world we want to live in and to build new businesses from scratch, that could actually be sustainable, fair, and of service for our growth as humanity”

“Low-code development technology must become a common good, as it is essential for unleashing the creativity and ingenuity of all individuals”

“I believe we are primed for the next leap forward [on Internet]: making all of us the creators of the very services we are actually using!”

I believe we share strong values, this is why I am so interested in integrating Solid and Generative Objects. I believe Generative Objects could be the right tool to gain momentum for Solid, because it could empower non-technical people to create applications, especially applications on Solid, very fast, and reach the critical mass of Solid applications to make it the new normal.

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Dear @timbl, following your feedback on this post, and Generative Objects : I have finalized a full integration of SOLID on the open source low code platform GO-Lowcode. We can now create fully working SOLID applications using GO-Lowcode with 100% code generation, no manual code to write. I am looking forward to feedback from the SOLID community to see if it brings value to SOLID and if it makes sense to go further. Here for a full demonstration video : Demonstration of creating a full SOLID application using low-code technology
We could for instance this way develop the social network described here. Or develop any other user case that would make sense, as a proof of concept. Looking for ideas !

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