[Terr_]

[Edit: Moved paragraph to top] I agree, too many people throw around "blockchain" as if it was a magic incantation.

However, focusing on the "decentralized" part of social networks, here are some possible goals/benefits:

1. You control your own content, in the sense of having a "walk away with my photos and posts" primary copy at all times.

2. Users can publish -- and subscribe -- without a single-point-of-censorship owned by a corporate or governmental gatekeeper.

3. More direct control over your "feed" of information so you can get what you want/need and be done, as opposed to Facebook's algorithms which put a higher priority on keeping you hooked into a stream of advertising.

4. Less "one platform to rule them all" lock in. Fundamentally Facebook doesn't want you to ever click out to another site with content. They want to do their best to force you to re-publish the same content in their own framework for their own ads.

[dogma1138]

1) your content and posts are online it doesn't prevent anyone from copying them, not to mention that while you can design a blockchain and that allows you to permanently delete content it doesn't prevent anyone from storing revisions of the blockchain that had that content or republishing that content again; sure it won't be signed with your key but those drunk photos you took during spring break will still be there.

2) There is still a single point of censorship; distributed internet isn't distributed unless you control the physical infrastructure a government can simply shut your blockchain down.

3) RSS

4) What does this has to do with a blockchain?

Again nothing here requires a blockchain, some of it might actually be harder to implement in the manner you speak off with one.

[Terr_]

> Again nothing here requires a blockchain

Yes. That's intentional. Did you read my post fully before replying?

[delinka]

I read you both and I didn't see you address the primary question:

Why do you need a block chain for a decentralized social network?

[Terr_]

You seem to be having problem following the conversation. Please look at the first two sentences of Dogma1138's post, which contain two questions: (A) Why blockchain (B) Why decentralized.

My reply can be summarized as: (A) I agree, blockchain isn't needed (B) ...but decentralization can help in these areas.

[kristianov]

But how is it different from hosting my own homepage (on tor or freenet)? It does everything you described without the blockchain fanciness.

[Terr_]

> But how is it different from hosting my own homepage

How is a "distributed social network" different from "a homepage"? ...Really?

It implies a hell of a lot more than a static website. Subscriptions. Message-passing between nodes. Establishing (and breaking) bidirectional friends-links. Protocols for content-types, privacy restrictions, and metadata...

> without the blockchain fanciness

Yes, that is intentional. Like I said in my post, I'm very cynical about how much "blockchain" actually brings to the table. I'm focusing purely on the "decentralized" part.

[drdeca]

I think people might have been interpreting your comment about blockchains as being along the lines of "people try to apply blockchains to /other/ things that they don't help much with", rather than meaning that they don't seem to do much for social networking sites.

Also, while I like blockchains for some stuff, I agree with much of what you are saying here.