I'm interested in how you would approach implementing a BitTorrent-like social network. It might have a central server, but it must be able to run in a peer-to-peer manner, without communication to it: If a whole region's network is disconnected from the internet, it should be able to pass updates from users inside the region to each other However, if some computer gets the posts from the central server, it should be able to pass them around. There is some reasonable level of identification; some computers might be dissipating incomplete/incorrect posts or performing DOS attacks. It should be able to describe some information as coming from more trusted computers and some from less trusted. It should be able to theoretically use any computer as a server, however, optimizing dynamically the network so that typically only fast computers with ample internet work as seeders. The network should be able to scale to hundreds of millions of users; however, each particular person is interested in less than a thousand feeds. It should include some Tor-like privacy features. Purely theoretical question, though inspired by recent events :) I do hope somebody implements it.

Reputation: 18816

How to implement a secure distributed social network?

I'm interested in how you would approach implementing a BitTorrent-like social network. It might have a central server, but it must be able to run in a peer-to-peer manner, without communication to it:

If a whole region's network is disconnected from the internet, it should be able to pass updates from users inside the region to each other
However, if some computer gets the posts from the central server, it should be able to pass them around.
There is some reasonable level of identification; some computers might be dissipating incomplete/incorrect posts or performing DOS attacks. It should be able to describe some information as coming from more trusted computers and some from less trusted.
It should be able to theoretically use any computer as a server, however, optimizing dynamically the network so that typically only fast computers with ample internet work as seeders.
The network should be able to scale to hundreds of millions of users; however, each particular person is interested in less than a thousand feeds.
It should include some Tor-like privacy features.

Purely theoretical question, though inspired by recent events :) I do hope somebody implements it.

Upvotes: 2

Answers (3)

asyncwait

Reputation: 4537

Diaspora claims to be such one thing.

Upvotes: 0

monksy

Reputation: 14234

Interesting, the rendezvous protocol does something similar to this (it grabs "buddies" in the local network)

Bittorrent is a mean of transfering static information, its not intended to have everyone become producers of new content. Also, bittorrent requires that the producer is a dedicated server until all of the clients are able to grab the information.

Upvotes: 1

merkuro

Reputation: 6177

Interesting question. With the use of already existing tor, p2p, darknet features and by using some public/private key infrastructure, you possibly could come up with some great things. It would be nice to see something like this in action. However I see a major problem. Not by some people using it for file sharing, BUT by flooding the network with useless information. I therefore would suggest using a twitter like approach where you can ban and subscribe to certain people and start with a very reduced set of functions at the beginning.

Incidentally we programmers could make a good start to accomplish that goal by NOT saving and analyzing to much information about the users and use safe ways for storing and accessing user related data!

Upvotes: 1

How to implement a secure distributed social network?

Answers (3)

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