It seems like this is an oversight, as I cannot imagine someone intentionally choosing to make a distributed network with this sort of dependency and few to no open-to-the-public general-purpose pub / room servers to join.
Now, they're using (usually limited topic) "rooms", and most of the pubs are gone. The public rooms list is small.
It makes it unattractive, because the only way for most people to participate is to host a room / pub server. As a result, I deleted Manyverse from my devices.
The author used to work on #SecureScuttlebutt and this is an incompatible SSB-like:
There is no gossip network and no local backend component; All your local data lives in the browser and the sync happens on the pub you connect to. Currently public messages only.
I know one of Secure ScuttleButt’s features is not needing Internet at all, but if you’re not connecting via LAN occasionally, you need a way for #peer-to-peer software to bootstrap a pool of connections into the network overlay over the Internet. I think pubs (and the new implementation that is just getting started) are a sign that a P2P project is not designed for real life usage.
I realize that many “Butts”, including the developers, are leftish anarchists, so when things work, they are able to discuss the dream world they hope to implement. But the majority of people are not breathing such rarified air, and #Secure_ScuttleButt needs to just work for regular people also.
Probably needs some concepts from Jami … and to be implementable without using Node.js … which I’ve seen people saying is not currently possible.
An aside: I do wonder whether it depends on peculiarities of #JavaScript or of #Node.JS itself. If the first is true, one may be able to implement SSB with #Deno or #JSI / #JSISH.
Copying a 'pub' invite and pasting it into the client is not easy. It took several tries on the Apple iPad, and was only possible by learning to trick the text selection function. On Android, there are some characters in the pub invite that can only be selected if you select all (grabs way more than what you want, leaving you to edit after pasting). I eventually resorted to copying the portion that selected easily, and manually entering the rest.
Each device / installation gets its own individual identity hash. In your profile, you can attach a friendly name, which is displayed to others instead of the full identity hash. Don't try restoring a hash from one device onto another, because the #Secure_Scuttlebutt network seems to deliver everything to the first device and leave the second one alone.
There seems to be a smallish set of users, many of whom are building SSB software, hosting pubs, and building similar #peer-to-peer ( #p2p ) networks.
I am nowhere near an expert with it, and I generally only open the client about once per week. It usually takes a while to update, so at first, the old posts from a week before are all you see.
I’ll have to read more about #Secure_Scuttlebutt to see whether #SSB is meant to allow the same userID across multiple devices. If I get a contact or join a ‘pub’ on one device, is that connection also available on the other?
@wyatwerp > The #SecureScuttleButt people talk about an analoguous freedom to listen. Being able to filter out people.
There's an important difference between choosing not to listen to someone - which I agree is a basic right (freedom of association) - and the Canadian government making laws that you have to say this and not that. The latter is what Peterson became infamous for criticizing, and quite frankly, as an anarchist, I think it would be hypocritical not to agree with him. @Coffee