Fryorcraken on Warpcast

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https://opensea.io/collection/dev-21

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@fryorcraken.eth

@farcaster network architecture, correct me if I am wrong please. Hubs use gossipsub, which means one cannot run a hub on a mobile phone without burning their data plan. There is a gRPC interface defined on hubs, so one could run a client using said API...

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@fryorcraken.eth

... yet no peer discovery is available so developers need to hardcode the URL of the endpoint (hub) to use. FC is "sufficiently" decentralized so a number of drawbacks are expected and accepted. With such a centralised model for mobile clients, it enable app devs to:...

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@fryorcraken.eth

a) gather metadata beyond what is available on the fc network: what channels the user spend most time on, what casts the user pay more attention too etc....

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@fryorcraken.eth

b) manipule the user's timeline: shadow ban, push sponsored content, etc

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@fryorcraken.eth

c) Simply ban a user from using the app..

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@fryorcraken.eth

I wonder among these drawbacks, which ones are accepted and which ones are to be resolved?

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Varun Srinivasan pfp

Varun Srinivasan

Is it even theoretically possible to prevent any of those ?

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Fryorcraken pfp

@fryorcraken.eth

For b), I'd say yes with a client app that does connect to any node of the network to get messages. However, you'd of course need FOSS and reproducible builds to ensure devs are not being malicious.

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@fryorcraken.eth

Actually, the solution above applies to all the drawbacks. Another intermediate solution would still allow the presence of a BE but user would check that they're not being lied to, ie, BE is not omitting tweets etc. Maybe something already done with the CRDT protocol?

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Varun Srinivasan pfp

Varun Srinivasan

You could just make an open sourced backend that the user runs, that is most practical I think. Very unrealistic to have a purely client side app that can generate a useful timeline given the amount of data processing you need to do

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@fryorcraken.eth

I haven't tried building FC so I accept that I don't know what I don't know. The issue with users running their own BE is that they won't. Could a design similar to Nostr work where the BE logic is part of the hub and users can use one or several hubs?

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Varun Srinivasan pfp

Varun Srinivasan

If you move the entire BE logic into hubs (which is very complex to get a good app!) then hubs become very expensive and difficult to run and the networks becomes centralized because there aren't enough hubs.

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Dan Romero pfp

For users that care about this, would expect a Protonmail or Fastmail type service to pop up where you trust the operator to just give Hub access with some basic feed generation (that you control). Another comparable is Alchemy and Infura.

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