Project Idea - Decentralized Twatter

[zeuner]

Are there any projects like this?

Taking into account that using a blockchain for to microblogging seems to add rather large overhead, you might want to consider to what extent the Mastodon/Fediverse ecosystem can already achieve what you're looking for. Anyone who fears being censored on other instances can always setup their own instance.

[1714161267]

1714161267

[Kakmakr]

The question is..... If Twitter and other Social media platforms are FREE to use, why would people want to use a new platform, where you have to pay to send messages? The decentralized nature of this idea, will make it harder for "authorities" to take it down and also for hackers to hack it, but some centralized platform has to be created to collect the data and to make it easier for recipients to receive it. (This will once again defeat the purpose of decentralizing this platform, because the centralized data collectors will be targeted)

How will you monetize this to pay for expenses to run these centralized platforms? Will this come as donations or advertising.....?

[dkbit98]

One more decentralized alternative for Twitter would be Nostr, simple open protocol created to be censorship-resistant global social network.
There is no central servers, and you start using it with generating BIP39 seed words similar like for bitcoin, there are clients and relays (anyone can run a relay).
It's still early stages so I don't know what's going to happen in future but I am starting to following development on github and reddit:
https://github.com/fiatjaf/nostr
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostr/

Check out latest progress for interface and chat messages, and try some of their clients (branle, noscl, chastr...):

https://twitter.com/melvincarvalho/status/1480267474897670158

[IadixDev]

It could be possible, im working on system like this, it would have many advantage, but it needs an efficient way to prune the data in sort that each node can filter the data it want to host, some spv client, the data not used is not hosted by any node anymore, each nodes only download the data it uses, maybe from contact list or groups.

But twitter is also fat, for this to work smoothly it would need something that discourage low value content to clog the network, everyone know the buisness model of big social network is not on the value of the content. It works with data selling, targetted advertising etc

Maybe for micro blogging it would be more possible.

[goosethegoat]

Bump

How do we get this in front of Elon? A memo.cash version of Twitter on ethereum blockchain is exactly what he’s looking for. If all twitter posts were posted on the ethereum blockchain instead of twitter, no one could be censored, and every user could moderate to their own liking. There could be hundreds of websites people use to read the posts and if the user so desired, they could build their own. Similar to running your own node. This also prevents any one website from having total control of the conversation.

[goosethegoat]

It's not a coincidence that I posted this the day Elon's 13-F filing came out, so yes I am (was) aware he now has a 9.2% stake in twitter. This is why I bumped the post.

Musk has been known for listening to normies with ideas that interest him, so I'm asking for help in showing this idea to him.  I know he wants to make twitter work but if the requirement for a software/server/company to remain honest could be removed, the issue of censorship goes away.

As far as other social media, nothing I have seen is as simple and clean as the idea I am describing. I want to piggyback on ETH and use it's already secure network.

[DreadKnight]

Are there any projects like this?

Taking into account that using a blockchain for to microblogging seems to add rather large overhead, you might want to consider to what extent the Mastodon/Fediverse ecosystem can already achieve what you're looking for. Anyone who fears being censored on other instances can always setup their own instance.

Totally, fully agree. There's Mastodon already.

[riskyron]

We all definitely need a decentralized version of the current Twitter.

In the meantime, some changes are coming to the existing one. I'm pretty sure things won't remain as they are after Elon Musk bought a share of Twitter. The question is: what kind of changes is coming? Will it be aimed at decreasing the amount of censorship? What do you think?

[goosethegoat]

I hope he follows through with it and we see changes.  Free speech is critical to a functioning society.

[goldkingcoiner]

As pooya87 said, there isn't such thing, because of lack of incentive. In block chains, the users verify every single information they receive. How will this work in a “Decentralized Twitter”? Will they download every single message, image, video, podcast etc.? I hope you understand how impractical this is.

Either the users download the whole social platform in their hard drive or they have to use a third party. It's that simple.

Exactly this.

It seems unrealistic and not to mention expensive. The miners need a good incentive to keep mining and the amount of data being downloaded by everyone would be astronomical! So I doubt anyone could make a decentralised Twitter in this form without demanding some kind of fee, at least in the very beginning.

Perhaps the idea might become more do-able if you cross out the options of posting pictures or anything that needs a lot of storage space. Maybe limiting it to 80-100 Characters as some kind of simplistic Twitter version? But even then, at some point in the future, the amount of data becomes too huge.
 
And then you still have the issue of incentivizing the miners. Would they accept token payment if there is nothing generating value behind it?

[goosethegoat]

I think most of you are missing the strategy on this idea.

It would not create a new blockchain but instead piggyback on an already existing one.  You can attach a message to every ethereum transaction you send.  This idea is simply using existing infrastructure to create a decentralized way to communicate.

People would then be able to create websites like https://memo.cash/posts/ranked that pull all the data. 

The cool part to me is that it would take away all the power from one site and I think you would see a sort of subreddit phonemonema happen where users could make their own sites that pull and sort the data (censor) as they see fit.

Some sites would censor all hate speech, some would censor speech from people they don't like, some would censor nothing at all.

[zeuner]

Is it possible to elaborate on what exactly a blockchain could improve upon Mastodon (being already decentralized)?

Maybe this can help coming up with a strategy.

[pooya87]

It would not create a new blockchain but instead piggyback on an already existing one.  You can attach a message to every ethereum transaction you send.  This idea is simply using existing infrastructure to create a decentralized way to communicate.

Effectively this means the choice for users are going to be to either sign up for free on centralized twitter and never pay a dime for any tweet they send or have to buy a very volatile shitcoin so that they can pay a lot of fee (up to $60) to send a single tweet! Not to mention that in order to view the tweets of other people they would have to download the entire ethereum blockchain and most importantly index it which would take up a lot more space then search for the tweets they want to see.

Nobody is going to chose the alternative!

People would then be able to create websites like https://memo.cash/posts/ranked that pull all the data. 

That would introduce centralization.

[goosethegoat]

Effectively this means the choice for users are going to be to either sign up for free on centralized twitter and never pay a dime for any tweet they send or have to buy a very volatile shitcoin so that they can pay a lot of fee (up to $60) to send a single tweet!

You are correct that Ethereum in its current state would not be a good choice, but maybe the first iteration could be using DOGE transactions? One could argue the small fee is anti-spam protection.

(HEY ELON!!!)

Not to mention that in order to view the tweets of other people they would have to download the entire ethereum blockchain and most importantly index it which would take up a lot more space then search for the tweets they want to see.

Nobody is going to chose the alternative!

You would not need to download the entire chain to view unless you wanted to verify the chain for yourself.  Most will opt to use other's sites who have done this.

That would introduce centralization.

Yes but there will be hundreds of websites serving the same purpose that twitter does now.  Most users will use a centralized page that they like. If the page starts putting up too many ads or god forbid censors someone they don't like, the user is free to host their own site or use someone else's.

[goosethegoat]

It's been awhile since I re-read my original rant and I realized it was not very clear.

I updated the original based on the discussions here. Thanks all for the input so far.

[pooya87]

Yes but there will be hundreds of websites serving the same purpose that twitter does now.  Most users will use a centralized page that they like. If the page starts putting up too many ads or god forbid censors someone they don't like, the user is free to host their own site or use someone else's.

That's the contradiction in your whole proposal. You can't both use a centralized (or multiple) website(s) and claim the project is decentralized. Also you can't not download the whole blockchain if you want decentralization.
You see this is a flaw in blockchain technology, it is not this magical tool that can solve every problem. It works fine for a payment system because of the incentive to run a full node outweighs the problems associated with downloading and verifying the whole chain but it won't work for anything else.

[goosethegoat]

That's the contradiction in your whole proposal. You can't both use a centralized (or multiple) website(s) and claim the project is decentralized. Also you can't not download the whole blockchain if you want decentralization.
You see this is a flaw in blockchain technology, it is not this magical tool that can solve every problem. It works fine for a payment system because of the incentive to run a full node outweighs the problems associated with downloading and verifying the whole chain but it won't work for anything else.

You are not wrong but you are missing the important part.  Sure the front end will be centralized but the back end (most important part) will be decentralized. This idea is not about being able to claim decentralized (misleading thread title) but it is about everyone being able to take part in the discussion.

Think of this more of a way for the future of Twitter to take the political and moral part out of censoring tweets.  If all tweets were created by a transaction on a blockchain, anyone would be able to say what they want.  Twitter may only choose to show the ones that abide by their terms of service but there would be another website which may show all tweets.

[GeorgeWinsonAlexander]

Is the project still going on 

[goosethegoat]

It was more of an idea than an ongoing project.  I think anyone (with the right technical capabilities) could set up a website with a human readable interface that reads messages from ETH or DOGE transactions similar to memo.cash.  The hard part would be getting enough users to communicate this way instead of using Twitter.

But if enough people started "tweeting" this way, it would be an easy way for those who want censorship to use sites that censor to their preference and those who don't want any censorship, to use sites that censor to their preference.