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[–]JasonCarswellMental Orgy 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

/u/d3rr and /u/fschmidt, I should get responses to you tomorrow morning when I tackle my messages, meanwhile, I have an idea here that I'd love to hear your thoughts on, semi-related to the OP.

Whether you're for a forum of permanent immutable records (ie. blockchain, IPFS, Twitter, mediawiki, etc) or one you can edit and scrub, I think this could work for both.

If I'm not mistaken SaidIt is like a mediawiki in that every time you edit it keeps the old record and points to a new record. Nothing is destroyed (except by admins). From what little I know IPFS was having issues with mutable records like this years ago and I can only guess they've resolved them.

Some people object to having an open blockchain, because they don't want it all out there forever. Personally I have no problem with that, but it's not about me, and I can understand some concerns as they have families and more at stake.

To my point:

Just as there's a private key and public key for crypto, what if there was also a 3rd forum key? The blockchain could be open and public decentralized across the world - yet always encrypted and unreadable.

Each user contributes via their private key.

Each decentralized forum chooses what they decrypt and share and can turn it off for problematic content like advocating violence or child porn.

Each forum can either get forum keys from other forums OR maybe the forums never give up their forum keys but all other forums must come to them to decrypt it for them - thus they'll always get the latest updated edits and such, while also controlling what they share or shutting problems down. These both have pros and cons - so maybe both might be employed. Perhaps even a 4th crypto key might be in order so that forums would have always public AND always controlled content. And maybe the forums could put the choice in the hands of the users to flip a switch on each post to make it permanently available and never reversible.

Admittedly there are still problems with abuse. Besides loading up a blockchain/database with copious amounts of crap and/or child porn - if the keys became public and/or shared somehow then... Then I don't know what. The forum could claim they did what they could but at that point they still might be "publishing" that content on their blockchain. I don't know if they'd be responsible. So I might guess the user would need their private key to only work in combination with the forum key, OR, if the blockchain were distributed in sections via shards or torrents I suppose they could just stop sharing them and/or recompile update substitutes without the problematic content.

Thinking out loud.

Feel free to let me know if this sounds reasonable or like nonsense and/or if there are any questions, insights, or feedback.

[–]fschmidt 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I suggest starting a new thread about the ideal social forum design. I had said that I don't want to discuss this until a programmer comes forward to work on this, but maybe such a thread would inspire a programmer to come forward.

I am a reactionary programmer and I just try to make things as simple as possible. This is the basis of my views.

I see no need for a blockchain for forums. I would like to see an open source social forum that makes all data of all (non-private) forums publicly available. There is no need to encrypt anything. And nothing that needs to be hidden should be stored in the database at all. Things like email addresses and passwords can be stored as a crypto hash and then just matched when the user enters them.

For a longer discussion, start a new thread.

[–]JasonCarswellMental Orgy 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

[–]icebong[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

This is the kind of thinking that we need. Keep thinking out loud, it's productive.

I'm a front end developer, with huge interest in blockchain. At the start of the "pandemic", i created a blockchain based forum prototype that used IOTA as the DB because, transactions are free. So each post was just an address, and each comment on that post, was a transaction to that address.

[–]JasonCarswellMental Orgy 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

[–]JasonCarswellMental Orgy 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

This is a draft from Wikipedia (copied 2018-11-05) where this topic had been previously deleted (censored) between 2017-08-07 and 2018-04-23: https://infogalactic.com/info/IOTA_(technology) I know nothing more beyond that about IOTA. Looks like it's still denied an article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOTA(technology)

Feel free to join InfoGalactic and improve that article, or share it in /s/InfoGalactic (ping me) and I can update it. Also, I've been meaning to expand WikiSpooks to include alternatives and solutions, including tech.

You've planted a seed in my mind, though I'm still unclear if it's what you intended.

I've only just imagined this, so I haven't considered many ramifications, pros, cons, etc.

Imagine a forum where you pay your 2 cents to post something. Those who like or dislike it pay 2 cents. Comments are 2 cents. Obviously this excludes some and billionaires won't be limited, but there might be something to this, obviously different than what you've shared.