We have to reduce the influence of centralized entitites in order to make decisions on our own:

• use systems that allow us to apply greater scrutiny to information
• distribute information in a way that prohibitively increases the cost for a centralized entity to manipulate the narrative
• rely on those we know and trust, rather than third parties with dubious motivations

Corporations and governments will never build systems like this for us, so we have to build them ourselves.

Proposal

Freetheinter.net takes a broad approach to fixing our information problems which is based around three primary goals:

1. Personal rights and security
2. Social trust
3. Goal seeking

Some essential aspects of the software that will lead to true freedom on the internet:

• everybody can use and improve it
• contributions are visible to and shared with everyone
• local trust plays a fundamental role in the flow of data
• hosted on local resources

Functional goals

• false information meets harsh criticism, withers, and dies
• truthful information spreads the fastest
• mutually beneficial consensus is easy to attain
• people are motivated to be purposeful about their connections and relationships
• surveillance, manipulation, and coercion by centralized entties is prohibitively expensive

If we can create a good enough solution, free societies will have an order-of-magnitude advantage in agency compared to those that rely on central control, and will vastly outperform them. Oppressive regimes will become irrelevant and impotent, allowing humanity a better chance to solve the challenges that we will face.

Security

To really be self-sufficient and ensure widespread manipulation is more difficult, communication must be secure. Data must be resilient. Services must be redundant and always available.

Trust

Trust should be purposeful and central to social interactions. If you don’t trust someone, it’s not possible to interact without risking manipulation.

Goal oriented

People have goals, and those should be the backdrop for most social interactions.

People with common goals thrive through collaboration.

Always improving

Progress is constructive over time, increasing suitability

Tools guide users in generating valuable metadata that is used to help them reach their goals. Information filtering, trust assessment, Predictions, assessments, and retrospective analysis can suggest improvements over time.

Learn from mistakes

Smart aides help to emphasize “game changer” events by documenting, breaking down, and tracking resolution of challenges and breakthroughs.

Empower individuals

Help users track their personal and social goals.

(Dogfooding - use this to track freetheinter.net project)

User experience

Everyone publishes to their contacts the topics they will share about, which is the prompt to decide what they want to see that we share. this also defines a second level of sharing transitively. e.g. Ben sends me a list of topics he will tag shared posts under, which are:

• tech, family, exercise, pets, charity, philosophy, programming, google, misc

Ben also shares (automatically) topics that his friends have indicated that they share with him as “transitive tags” which are much broader:

• memes, music, art, cars, radio, rap, science, neurobiology, math, patents, insects, astrobiology, sailing, cooking, discussiongroup (special topic for meeting through Ben, like for a discussion)

I’ve already specified which general topics I’m interested in, and these are used to automatically select from all of the transitive tags.

My social information stream is composed of things Ben shares that match either my interests or what I’ve selected to receive, including content shared by Ben’s friends that he knows I’m interested in.

I want to know what Ben shares about tech, receive, and what his friends share transitively among all of my interests.

This is simply a digital implementation of traditional social interaction patterns:

1. Our friends know what we’re interested from us, and other topics we like
2. We know what our friends are interested in, and other topics they like

Whenever we hear about something a friend likes, we tell them about it. When we have some comment or idea about a topic they are interested in, we share it with them. If we see something we want to discuss, we share it with them and tell them what we think.

This simple arrangement leverages the trust we have in others in order to help filter information. For good knowledge to spread, it simply must be compelling enough to be explicitly shared by a lot of people. For false information to be stopped, it can either be not shared (ignored), or be shared with our opinion that it is false.

Modules

(major WIP)

• credential establishment
  • key generation service
• economic independence
  • key generation service application
• identity establishment and maintenance
  • physical exchange
• relay service
• depot service
• direct interaction
• interaction template
  • broadcast (readable: everybody)
  • conversation (readable: friend bendude@nodomain.com)
  • working group (readable: group ‘jury_panel_05334’)

Objects

• trust relationship
• trust data filter
• trust domain
• layered encryption streaming
• pass-through feed

Operations

• schedule live rendevous interaction
• share availability forecast (schedule)
• share offhand comment about secure chain without share consent
• author private document
• author and share signed document with share consent to your lawyer
• retrieve messages from relay
• retrieve data backup as relay administrator
• share authorization for relay client to identity
• conduit messages
• add document to envelope (creates package)
• share package to relay
• share package to rendevous partner

Concepts

• leveraging the power of personal trust is crucial in order for social systems to serve their purpose.
• sending is broadcasting to all of your relays
  • all data is encrypted
  • relays will accept messages for any user that has permission to use them
  • messages can be addressed or just retained
  • permission is granted by relay admins, usually to everyone they establish identity with
• you can only send a message directly to users on the same relay
• content with scoped share consent can be simply revealed to all connected identities
  • can include share consent or not
• content with unscoped share consent can be revealed without using an envelope
  • envelope is the cryptographic wrapper for content, often applied recursively/matroska
• all content has comment consent, so it is shareable even without share consent
  • this exemplifies freedom of press and speech, and secondarily fair use
• a user must use the same relay to receive a message directly
• only the content signed by an in-person connection is reliable as truth, because there is no global identity service. it’s possible for individuals to send a signed message refuting a false message. this is an signature dispute, and aims to generate material that can be shared along paths of trust.

Updated: 23 December, 2022
Created: 20 December, 2021