I downloaded Patchwork after someone talked about Scuttlebutt on HN, but when I tried to join any pub servers on their Github repo, none of them worked/connected. 30 minutes later, I uninstalled the thing.
The idea was interesting, the UI was pleasant, and I could see this working at some tech conference where people connect with each-other and there's a common pub server so people can keep in touch afterward, but I don't see uncle Joe or grandma using this thing over FB.
I joined a pub but 90% of the messages in my feed were other people joining the pub and subscribing to topics. 9% were people introducing themselves as new to Scuttlebutt. 0.9% were either talking about Scuttlebutt or unreachable, and 0.1% were actual content.
Sounds like you joined during a wave of new people and were only getting posts from your shared pubs. Did you contribute any content yourself and build out a network and thus increase your feed? I've been on for a year now and there is a ridiculous amount of information to read.
I was held back from using Scuttlebutt because of how convoluted it seems. I browsed the website for 30 minutes and I couldn't find a concise, written explanation of how the protocol works. And now this? If I subscribe to a pub I see all crap everyone is posting? What's the point? I'm better using twitter
I really like the idea of a distributed social network, but it needs a simpler, straightforward protocol. And it needs to be free of clutter.
That's just now. It's evolving fast, and two new developments will improve the onboarding problem: WebRTC-based invites, and connecting p2p to friends through a DHT (Kademlia).
Public servers were a temporary hack and nowadays most of the community is putting their public servers down. It's not a good idea for scaling, but above all, public servers connect you with strangers, which is basically undesired for a social network with a similar use case as Facebook.
There should be a pub server for each real community. I know it's not the most user friendly, but it suffices that one person in a real community of friends is techy enough to set it up, and it's not that hard: http://butt.nz/install?url=https://github.com/ahdinosaur/ssb... (this tool enables you to install your own server with a few clicks)
Intersections are allowed. It's not like you need strictly one server per community, because servers are just mirrors of each community member. In fact, when a server goes down, no data is lost and it's easy to put a new one up.
hey, have you tried contacting a private pub? i'm Mikey, owner of `one.butt.nz`, happy to give you an invite if you send me an email! mikey@rootsystems.nz
if you want to setup your own pub, i made an automated Digital Ocean installer (also a detailed manual) for a Docker-based pub: http://github.com/ahdinosaur/ssb-pub.
i'm also working (with funding from #ssbc-grants) on a hosted pub-as-a-service product: http://buttcloud.org.
i am interested to know about usage characteristics for running a Pub (bandwidth, storage, CPU) to be able to gauge what it will cost me to host one myself.
The idea was interesting, the UI was pleasant, and I could see this working at some tech conference where people connect with each-other and there's a common pub server so people can keep in touch afterward, but I don't see uncle Joe or grandma using this thing over FB.