On a fault-tolerant social media platform.

[loop101]

A few years ago, I had an idea for a fault-tolerant social-media platform. No one has built it yet, though Jack Dorsey hinted at it. When "jack" was asked how Twitter could become "censorship free", he said that the content of messages would have to be stored on a 3rd party server. Twitter didn't want to be responsible for the messages themselves. My idea was to store all the social media posts as digitally signed Usenet posts.

Users would use a type of browser (cross between a web-browser and a Usenet reader), to scan dedicated Usenet subgroups for new posts. The posts would be (optionally) anonymous but signed, so Users would know the post was authenticate. You could subscribe to posts made by a person/group that you liked, and your browser would show them prioritized. User could also create "subscription lists" they could share, to help other people find the posters they liked. Not too different than from anti-spam lists and recipes.

Companies would pop up to create aggregation-sites that users could create accounts on. A User wouldn't have time to scan all the Usenet groups, so paid services could that for them. These service companies could also curate messages, block spam, etc. They could also provide other account-level services, like direct messages, user info, etc. They would act as a user's "home", but the user could always get a new one if needed.

Messages would be digitally signed by the posters. One poster might be a social-media influencer, another might be an anonymous political dissident, or a TV news channel. You would always know you were getting a message from the correct source, though you may not know who they were. Subscribe and block lists would be made up of these signatures.

Posters could embed text-based advertisements in to their messages. If they spammed their readers, people would un-subscribe or block them. No need for Google Adwords.

As is already done today, typical ISP Usenet servers would carry their own curated messages, and 3rd party commercial Usenet servers would carry the more spicy messages. There is already a lot anti-spam technology available on Usenet servers, as people have been dealing with it for decades.

Basically, anonymous and digitally signed posts to Usenet, with a few levels of services companies built on top, could provide a "censorship free" social media experience. The goal is to have multiple options at each level. Many Usenet servers, many aggregation servers, and many browsing technologies.

There are a lot of weird bridge technologies, like email-to-Usenet services, that could allow for more levels of privacy protection, if that is what a User wanted.

If Twitter stored their messages on Usenet, and their website acted as an aggregator and browser, it would be similar to what I was thinking of. I expect someone will eventually do this.

 

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[Johnny boy]

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