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I read an article about a project called noosphere, which I found quite interesting. I like thinking about next generation social networks that aren’t so unhealthy and there was a lot to think about.
https://subconscious.substack.com/p/noosphere-a-protocol-for-thought
Sep 22 · 3 months ago · 👍 noaoh
🚀 clseibold · Sep 22 at 16:53:
FreeNet is a terrible terrible system, and very insecure in other terms besides just cryptography/privacy. IPFS is decent, but overengineered. I'm not sure how it's "insecure by design". ZeroNet's ideas were the best, imho, because it was just a bittorrent-like protocol with cryptography, and user directories underneath website directories allowed for dynamic user-created content on websites. It just needed major polish.
The problem with all of these technologies is the communities they bring. Many of them are rife with illegality and bigotry. ZeroNet wasn't like this for the most part - somehow it escaped this - that is, until it got overrun with spammers and 4chan people.
I shy away from networks that claim to be "a protocol for thought" as if to emphasize the intellectual superiority of people on that network. It's arrogant, a bit narcissistic, and just plain gross. It's like people haven't learned from all of the pseudo-intellectual cults and "Intellectual Dark Web"s that pervade the internet - the people who claim to be "free thinkers" but are really just manipulating others for their own selfish need for attention.
Being in a small underground community doesn't make you a superior human being. It doesn't make you smart. It doesn't make you more intelligent than others. A smart "free thinker" can be anyone anywhere. A real "free thinker" recognizes the nuance of social media - how it is used for bad and good, how it was used for the Arab Spring while it was being used by pseudo-intellectuals to gain thousands in book sales telling lies and half-truths, and how it's used by normal people and really intelligent knowledgeable people, and those who need connection because they are lonely, as well as those who are addicted to attention and portray a fake version of themself online.
Also, people need to learn what the hell Gnosticism really was and how it was very exclusionary and harmfully ascetic before making communities centered around it. I get it that people like to feel special and like they're some part of unique group that knows all truth, but that's them letting their narcissistic tendency (which everyone has) take control. These people need to knock it off and grow up.
And if people are using this as some sort of joke, I'd ask them how this "joke" is actually helpful to people other than to derive pleasure from other people's suffering and their falling victim to actual cults that pry on lonely and vulnerable people.
The people from the Veilid project are putting out very dangerous and harmful ideas. I'll just finish with that.