social computing/federated

About

Federated social computing is social computing wherein multiple servers interconnect as peers without a single central directory server; it can continue to function even if some of the servers on which it is hosted are taken off the internet for any reason.

Terminology

"Distributed" is often used almost synonymously with "federated" in this context, although distributed computing can involve a central server or hierarchy.

Other near-synonyms for "federated" include "decentralized" and "peer-to-peer". "Social computing" may also be referred to as "social networking", and a social computing application may be called a "social network", although those terms have slightly different meanings; see social computing.

Goals

The primary goals of distributed social computing are:

• to prevent concentrations of arbitrary power, which is prone to abuse (see issuepedia:Google+/policy/naming)
• to ensure that the social network can survive various events:
  • server failure
  • company failure
  • domain name seizure
  • internet connectivity disruption

Given that each node in a distributed network helps satisfy these goals, we will want to maximize the number of different implementations of the network. Any design for distributed social computing software should therefore be platform-agnostic.

Software

Usable

• Diaspora (site): this software appears to be somewhat more difficult to install, so I have not yet installed it. One criticism is that it was written by inexperienced student programmers who have not built in adequate security; another is that it seems to have burned through its startup funding (obtained through startup.com) and lost momentum, so it may be on its way out -- although interest in distributed social networking has revived considerably in the wake of the Google+ "Real Names" fiasco. --Woozle 21:31, 18 August 2011 (EDT)
• Friendica appears to be fairly far along, and successfully connects to Facebook, Diaspora, and supposedly Twitter.
• Hubzilla: tentatively, a more fully-featured fork of Friendica (or possibly Red)
• software that supports the GNU Social microblogging protocol:
  • Mastodon Social (Wikipedia)
  • postActiv (official): written in PHP
• Serverless (you have to install an app):
  • Scuttlebutt (site)
    • 2017-04-06 An off-grid social network
  • ZeroNet (home page)

In Testing

These both provide a server running the software (partly as a demonstration, partly for testing, and partly as a fallback for those who don't want to install the software themselves) and also provide the software. So far, all known distributed social network services and software are provided for free, as it would be very difficult to impose a fee without driving users away.

• Synereo (official) is in closed development as of 2015-02-10, but will be open source when released.

Under Development

• FeedFerret is still in the concept stage.

Apparently Defunct

• Appleseed (site): this purports to be distributed, but after installing it and playing around with it for a few minutes, I can't see how to connect it to other nodes. This may be a feature to be added later. Other features did not seem to be working correctly. --Woozle 21:31, 18 August 2011 (EDT) Now redirects to a Wikipedia page. --Woozle (talk) 07:55, 14 January 2017 (EST)
• Safebook (site) is especially privacy/security conscious Site is a domain squatter as of 2017-01-14.
• StatusNet (site) appears to be designed for federation, and also supports OAuth/OStatus Site is a domain squatter as of 2017-01-14.

Links

• Wikipedia
• standards:
  • W3C Federated Social Web Incubator Group
  • W3C ActivityPub
• Salmon Protocol: a standard protocol for comments and annotations to swim upstream to original update sources... open, decentralized, abuse resistant, and user centric.

to file

• 2011-07-09 We need a decentralised social web more than ever before