Walled Garden Breakout, Pt. 2: Secure Scuttlebutt
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Post by Rusty
If Mastodon & other Fediverse platforms can feel like a foreign realm to
those naturalized to the walled gardens of Zuckerlandia or Twitistan, then
Secure Scuttlebutt [SSB] feels akin to that portion on antique maps marked
"Here Be Dragons." SSB is more than a protocol or a platform; it's a
theoretical concept for restructuring social media. I've actively been
spelunking through SSB for 2 months now & my experience has been a mix of
exhilaration & frustration. While SSB promises to restore user controls &
freedoms, it's currently an awkwardly complex protocol that severely
limits its appeal for mass adoption. This is not to say that folks should
simply give up on SSB. A super young protocol, it's actively being
developed by enthusiastic volunteers from around the globe. I also think
that SSB teaches us a number of important lessons: we need to build & use
networks without servers & we need to create digital connections that
diversify beyond the internet.
++ How it Works ++
Secure Scuttlebutt promises a totally decentralized social media universe,
what many dub the "Scuttleverse." It creates peer-to-peer networks in
which folks communicate or "gossip" through each others' computers
directly. Like other P2P networks, Scuttlebutt negates the need for
accessing servers where vasts amounts of information are stored. It's
worth rehearsing here how most social media protocols work. Typically, you
use a software platform to post information on a server's central database
that is then shared according to specific programmed constraints. For
example, let's say you tweet a link to a cat video that is tagged with
#CatsOfTwitter & #Meowmers. That information is stored on Twitter's
servers & it becomes indexed on the company's database. Twitter then sends
that tweet to all of your followers & it makes the tweet discoverable to
anyone who searches those hashtags. SSB as a protocol functions very
differently. For example, let's say you type an entry about your
adventures in composting in Patchwork, one of SSB's applications. That
post lives on your "diary" in a database housed in your computer's
directory. When the application detects that you can share information
with others, that composting entry is released to your friends' computers.
Essentially, the protocol syncs the information on your "diary" with that
of your friends & your friends' friends. Scuttlebutt's developers proudly
embrace this fact. Users own their data! Your posts are stored on your
computer & they're stored on your friends' computers.
You don't even need to use the internet. As long as you possess the public
identification key of a friend, you can send messages to each other
through all kinds of networks. You could save updates on a USB stick, give
the stick to a friend & they could get the updated content. Or you could
type up a slew of messages in Patchwork in the midst of the Appalachian
Trail over the course of a month. When you get to town & use a cafe's
wifi, your diary will become synced with your friends' diaries & they'll
see everything you wrote while you were incommunicado. Or you could post
an update about living in an internet-free off-the-grid community in New
Mexico. A friend then visits you & gets the update through a synced
Bluetooth connection. When they go back to town for a college class, they
connect to the institution's wifi & your updates get sent to others on
your network.
Scuttlebutt's birthplace is New Zealand & the NZ folks still exert a
powerful pull in its communities [the Scuttleverse's other prominently
featured geographic locations include the US, northern Europe, & Brazil,
although English clearly dominates]. Understanding New Zealand's
geographic isolation is necessary to understanding why SSB came into
existence. Birthed from the brain of Dominic Tarr, SSB was originally an
attempt to cope with New Zealand's unreliable internet connections.
Instead of thinking that this roadblock had to be overcome, Tarr & soon
others developed a way to network using localization & disrupted
connectivity as foundational concepts.
As a result, SSB feels no need to be globally uniform; there are actually
multiple Scuttlebutts. One can use a number of applications programmed to
understand the protocol: Patchwork, Patchbay, Patchfoo, Patchfox,
Manyverse, etc. There are also a number of communities that exist in the
Scuttleverse &, unless there is a person that connects them, they are not
even aware of each others' existence. This is because SSB doesn't archive
users into a central, searchable database. You can't just look up friends
like you do on Facebook. You need to switch public ID keys with another
person in order to find them on the Scuttleverse. Once you become friends
with a person, you also see posts made by folks that they follow too. This
ability to only see posts made by folks that are connected to your friends
is what Scuttlebutt developers dub "gossip." The logic is that the
Scuttleverse's online networks mirror how real life social networks
operate.
Perhaps because developers understood that folks look for personal
connections online that they cannot find IRL, they did create a way to
connect with folks that you didn't know prior to using SSB. There are
public nodes, called "pubs" that new users can follow. Pubs are
essentially bots that'll follow you back, allowing you to see the profiles
of others connected to them. Pubs are the best gateway into exploring some
of the Scuttleverse's communities.
++ The Communities ++
As the first section probably makes apparent, SSB is not easy to
understand. Developers in the Scuttleverse engage in verbose
meta-discussions about the protocol & those discussions are beyond cryptic
to someone like me. The issue of techno-esotericism might be one reason
why the number of active users is quite small. Based on many observations,
I'd put the number of active users around a couple hundred worldwide.
Compare this to Mastodon's couple hundred thousand or Facebook's hundreds
of millions & you get a sense for just how small these SSB communities can
be.
Like all small towns, the Scuttleverse can be a peculiar place with
certain outsized personalities. Most folks join pubs to find other new
users &, as of right now, there are only a handful of pubs that are
publicly open. As a result, new users are exposed to particular folks &
ideas over & over. This creates a situation where some users determine
the tenor of SSB's discourse. Add to this the fact that longtime users
have accumulated lots of followers. When they post, a lot of people
respond to them. At least when using SSB in Patchwork, every time a person
responds to a post, that post gets sent to the top of your feed, meaning
that you can see the same posts over & over for a period of time.
Folks tend to be quite friendly in the Scuttleverse & there is a fierce
optimistic streak in many of them. Most are actively working in
human-centered technology projects or trying to combat the effects of
climate change. Scrolling through a set of Scuttlebutt posts makes you
feel less depressed about our collective future: "Wow, there are people
who do give a fuck!" However, folks only actively engage with you if your
posts directly feed into ongoing topics of debate. The range of hotly
discussed topics remains quite small, including issues such as SSB
development & design, mesh-networking, living off-the-grid, etc. However,
when a fellow "butt" does engage with your posts, they offer thoughtful
responses that I have never encountered anywhere else in social media.
When I used Facebook & Twitter actively, I found folks just relied on the
like buttons to do all the responding for them. And while folks on
Mastodon are quite responsive, the platform's structure encourages quick,
clipped commenting. Since SSB folks write extended posts that possess the
depth one usually associates with blogs, they also carefully read through
others' content. Fellow "butts" have given me a lot of insight & help when
they respond to my questions. Khimaros, a fellow Mastodon & SSB user told
me that SSB is so attractive to him because it offers superior content
compared with other social media outlets. I agree with his assessment so
long as a user is interested in that content's current limited range.
Since Scuttlebutt is a decentralized protocol, it also means that no one
person or group can actually control the Scuttleverse. In other words, SSB
relies on an incredible amount of trust. There are no designated
moderators who police what others say. No one can boot trolls & other
malicious actors from networks. Individual users can block other
individual users, which stops their devices from syncing, but parts of the
Scuttleverse could theoretically transform into toxic cesspools. Sure,
users try out a variation of anarchist consensus decision, but I've seen
that turn quickly into a kind of agonized clusterfuck. Without more formal
safeguards built into the protocol, I worry that SSB could become another
instance of what the Tactical Technology Collective dubs "weaponised
design."
++ Current Challenges ++
Probably the best known issue with SSB is that your identity is tied to a
device. If I download Manyverse on my mobile phone, the application
generates an ID key for me on that phone only. This means I cannot access
my connections if I went to Patchwork on my laptop, for example. If you
want to use SSB on multiple devices, you need to create multiple
identities. Considering that users have grown accustomed to accessing
their accounts on any available device, this is a major roadblock to SSB's
widespread adoption. While "butts" are overwhelmingly optimistic about the
protocol, everyone agrees this is a major pain in the ass.
Another problematic issue is that you cannot delete posts. Once your posts
appear on others' computers, they no longer have a singular home where
they can be accessed & destroyed. Once you send out those posts, they now
have multiple homes. I understand that the protocol's very structure makes
deletion difficult. I do. Many developers argue that SSB is the place for
"sober" commentary, that the permanence gives folks pause for posting. I
don't know: we've collectively witnessed at least 4 decades of online bad
behavior. Also, folks say stupid shit all the time. Should they be held
accountable forever? What if they wish to leave Scuttlebutt? What if
they're being targeted by malicious actors? What if they just wish to
reduce their digital shadows? If you can't delete your posts, do you
really own your data? Of course, what I'm perceiving as a flaw could be
seen as an advantage to other users. A SSB user who asked to remain
anonymous did tell me that they were actually thinking of using the
protocol's permanence to their advantage: "I've been considering what it
would be like to use it as a repository for my academic writing (and my
published writings' PDFs)."
Furthermore, the specter of permanent posts prematurely kills
conversations on SSB. While the vast majority of users on any network
would qualify as lurkers, the percentage is way higher on SSB. Khimaros
told me that he hesitates posting because of "the irrevocable nature of
activity" on SSB. The above-quoted anonymous user also mentioned
frustrations with the inability to form "always-private groups" where
identity & conversation couldn't potentially leak out.
Another worrisome issue regards privacy protections. Other users, for
example, can identify your IP address & other identity markers. Developers
mention that you can use a virtual private network [VPN] or access
Scuttlebutt through an onion router to obscure your IP address. However,
is it fair to put the onus of protection on users? While VPNs & Tor are
not exactly difficult, they do require a level of technical familiarity
that not all general users possess. Others more versed in technology than
myself have voiced concerns about the protocol's encryption as well.
++ Scuttlebutt's Potential ++
Despite some major challenges, I believe in SSB & think that it could
become an integral tool in building a more human-centered & ethical
internet. I don't think it will ever become the primary social media
network of large swathes of people. Yet I don't think SSB should
necessarily aim for that either. Instead, I see its greatest potential as
being a tool for aiding communication between individuals in a closed
network. I'm imagining a kind of altnet where one of two options occurs:
1.) all the participating individuals trade public ID keys with each other
& agree to not join any pubs; 2.) as SSB user told me, an administrator
could configure participants' encryption keys to only recognize each
other. SSB would make for a great tool in a closed network because
everyone's information is stored on each other's computers. There would be
no corporate spying or targeted ads. Since you avoid outside servers &
could even avoid the internet, the rules of discourse could be negotiated
by the active participants. In other words, SSB could help maintain
autonomous digital spaces at a time where they are rapidly disappearing.