Scuttlebutt

Scuttlebutt in slang usage means rumor or gossip, deriving from the nautical term for the cask used to serve water (or, later, a water fountain)
A decentralized friend network
Decentralization is an attempt to rewrite the rules of networks so that our communities and infrastructure can be collectively owned
Paul Frazee
A centralized social network

SSB

  • Feeds are chains of immutable messages
  • No global ledger consensus
  • Public and private messages
  • Data is gossipped between peers and stored locally
  • Larger files stored as blobs

Gossipping

  1. Replication over local network
  2. Pubs
  3. Onion hidden service
  4. Sneakernet

Spam?

Moderation?

  1. Pull based userbase
  2. Free listening
  3. Block feed / user

The above is subjective

Algoritmic Sovereignty?

Status quo

  • Controlled by the few
  • No algorithmic transparancy
  • Almost no data transparency
  • Data you willingly provide
  • Data they collect in secret

SSB

  • Everything open source
  • Data stored locally
  • Read and change any code or algorithm
  • UI - multiple clients and philosophies

Demo: interesting posts

Digital high modernism

  • Global surveillance
  • Chinese social credit system
  • NSA - Snowden
  • Silicon Valley - Google, facebook, twitter etc.
  • Same as during the industrial revolution

Summary

  • System with humans as an essencial part
  • Trust is delegated and fluid
  • Possible to build systems with subjectivity built in

Thank you!


www.scuttlebutt.nz

Background reading

  • Infocivics - Paul Frazee
  • The Future Will Be Technical - Zach Mandeville
  • Seeing Like a State - James C. Scott
  • Debt: The First 5,000 Years - David Graeber
  • Walkway - Cory Doctorow
  • The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin