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Torrent based Social Network -- Looking for Web Developers/Designers #78

Open nikunjbhatt opened 4 years ago

nikunjbhatt commented 4 years ago

Project Name: Torrent based Social Network

I am NOT exactly looking for web developers/designers, I am just giving an idea. I don't know I will work on this project or not. But I will be ready to help if required.

Basic idea of the project The idea is to build a social network app like Facebook based on the torrent structure. You should ask: Why torrent? The torrent is a distributed network where anybody can store any kind of details. It can not be controlled easily. It can allow people to speak and share info freely.

The structure of the app Whenever a user uploads a media (text/audio/video/image/...) through the app, it is distributed and stored with encryption in multiple users' devices. When a user opens his timeline, the posts appear from the online users' devices according to the people/interests/groups/... the user follows. Most of all the features can be same as of Facebook or other social network apps. There can be likes, comments too on the posts all stored with encryption in multiple users' devices. There will be multiple servers on the internet in sync with each other to keep track on posted content and registered users.

-- I don't know whether this project is practically possible or not. Anyone interested to make this project can take ownership of it, I don't mind.

My Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikunjbhatt/

muditporwal commented 4 years ago

Hi Nikunj, Are there any such products in this space that have already been developed? Could you refer to the below and share if that is the case Self Hosted Social Networking Tools

Also maybe one more thought to think about is storage and how would you maintain content availability over torrents which rely on seeding of data.

Trying to help with the thought chain. I hope for a successful implementation.

nikunjbhatt commented 4 years ago

@muditporwal Thank you so much for the big list of such open source software.

As the link text suggest, most of them are "Self Hosted" which are not what I was looking for, but there is one Twister which is exactly what my idea is about. I read all the pages on its website. From the details on their website, it seems it still needs many improvements and features. First step should be easy to install/use/open/register the app/website which seemed lacking in Twister.

Similar to the interface in torrent clients to manage seeding, Twister will also need such interface if there isn't yet.

cabalamat commented 4 years ago

Hi Nikunj,

How about using IPFS rather than Torrent? They are similar projects, but IPFS seems morer aligned towards making copies when a web site/page suddenly gets lots of users so it doesn't go down.

Anyway, my MeowCat project is a Fediverse/ActivityPub based blogging and wiki platform and I'm aiming to add IPFS to it. It owuld be particularly useful to store large attachments (pictures, videos, etc) on IPFS.

nikunjbhatt commented 4 years ago

@cabalamat IPFS also seems promising. Although I haven't much read documentation and never used it, I haven't seen anywhere what you are saying:

IPFS seems morer aligned towards making copies when a web site/page suddenly gets lots of users so it doesn't go down

Instead, I read in the docs of IPFS that unlike torrent which creates multiple copies of content blocks on peers, the IPFS creates only single copy and avoids duplication. So, please be sure about it.

Another thing to consider is the maturity of the technologies. Torrent is very old and mature while IPFS is presently in development phase, not even full first version is ready yet, which means it could be unstable, the technology and API may change.