{"id":98,"date":"2008-04-19T11:08:44","date_gmt":"2008-04-19T19:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=98"},"modified":"2015-07-03T02:29:02","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T10:29:02","slug":"decentralizing-social-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"Decentralizing Social Networks"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've been pondering the problems of cre\u00e4ting decentralized equivalents to social network sites such as LiveJournal<\/a>.<\/p>

A 'blog per se<\/span> comes fairly cheap. At the low end, one could form or join a syndicate, jointly register a second-level domain name (eg<\/abbr>, oursyndicate<\/span>.com<\/q>) with GoDaddy<\/a> for about $10 per year, jointly lease 500 GB<\/abbr> of housing from AN Hosting<\/a> for about $85 per year, distribute third<\/em>-level domains (eg<\/abbr>, winky<\/span>.oursyndicate.com<\/q>) amongst as many syndicate members as you might have, and install WordPress<\/a> for free. Give everybody a whole giga<\/em>byte, and we're still talking just 20<\/em>¢ per person per year<\/em>. (Let everyone have his-or-her own second-level domain, and 25 GB<\/abbr>, and we're talking about $14.25 per person per year.)<\/p>

The challenge<\/em> is in giving such 'blogs \u2014 across second<\/em>- and third-level domains \u2014 the connectivity of Friend<\/code>ships, and of Interests<\/code>.<\/p>

As a first-pass approximation, imagine each 'blog as having a link that will deliver two data: an OpenID<\/a> associated with the 'blog, and a reference (pointer) to an RSS<\/abbr> feed for the 'blog. These data allow one to distinguish the 'blog owner, and in some sense beFriend<\/code> him or her.<\/p>\r\n\r\nThe next stage is to support a Friends<\/code> page<\/q>. A question is of whether to just deliver a set of references<\/em> (presumably URI<\/abbr>s) for the 'blogs of one's Friends<\/code>, and leave aggregation to the visitor's software, or to assemble a Friends<\/code> page at one's own site. The advantage of the latter is that the visitor needn't have aggregation software; the disadvantage is that either the page will have to be aggregated on-the-fly, or it must always exclude protected entries. I'm inclined to opt for aggregation on one's own site and for aggregation on-the-fly. However, a standard could support all of these options<\/em>, leaving it to a given 'blog to decide whether to deliver just references, just Friends<\/code> pages, or both, an whether any Friends<\/code> page were aggregated on-the-fly.\r\n\r\nThe next piece is Interests<\/code>. A perfect decentralization of these is possible<\/em> but (as I think) not reasonable<\/em>; it would involve shipping copies of a large dB<\/abbr> repeatedly to each 'blog. My thinking is that, instead, we should accept there being Interests<\/code> servers, at which 'blog owners could register their 'blogs as corresponding to given Interests<\/code>. However, no 'blog need be dependent upon just one particular Interests<\/code> server; it should be possible to register with multiple servers, so that any Interest<\/code>-search censorship on the part of one server could be overcome by merely additionally<\/em> registering with another server that did not censor that Interest<\/code>. It might be possible for these servers to be supported charitably; but, frankly, I imagine them supported by advertising or by registration fees.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I've been pondering the problems of cre\u00e4ting decentralized equivalents to social network sites such as LiveJournal. A 'blog per se comes fairly cheap. At the low end, one could form or join a syndicate, jointly register a second-level domain name (eg, oursyndicate.com) with GoDaddy for about $10 per year, jointly lease 500 GB of housing from […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,4],"tags":[162,159,160,161],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-information-technology","category-public","tag-decentralization","tag-decentralizing","tag-social-networking","tag-social-networks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oeconomist.com\/blogs\/daniel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}