12 votes

My seventy-two hours Secure-Scuttlebutt experience

Warning, this is a rant. Feel free to criticize me.

  1. As ESL speaker, there's a "butt" in the name.
  2. SSB is the protocol, you have to download client called "patchwork" which is not an attractive name either
  3. After setup patchwork, idk what to do next except staring at a blank "timeline" something
  4. So I grabbed documentations (you need manuals to use a god damn social network software), obviously you have to join pubs to dive in.
  5. After joined pubs, you start to stare list of "pubs followed you/someone else joined the pub" message explode.
  6. After a awkward self-post on "#new-people", I learned that you have to follow others to get content. So am I supposed to follow thousands of strangers on the Internet for a good degree of influx content?
  7. After several rounds following, I still dont get how to make new friends. I mean by what? I cant judge if I should follow someone because of random recent posts.
  8. So I started to search for stuff. The search is mostly broken, the results are not in chronological order, only English alphabet works, I dont know if reply someone's 2 year old post is polite or not. Engaging a conversation but expect no response feels wrong.
  9. The only way to tell if a "channel" is popular or not is through the search box. The "all channels" page does not show numbers at all.
  10. Channel names are a mess. The plural form and alternative spellings are killing me. I always feels worried that I might miss good content by not thinking of what creative "channel" names people invent. When making posts it gets worse, you have to paste dozens of bullshit channel names just in case.
  11. There's no way to tell if the software is functioning or not. Sometimes it took up to ten minutes busy downloading stuff, the rest times it's totally static. F5 does not work, Cmd+R reloads the whole electron app frame.
  12. When downloading stuff, I totally do not want old posts. There's not way to filter that.
  13. There's an "Active Channels" on the left side of the software, it jumps indefinitely for no reason. When I click one of the channels, I see old posts without any "activity". Again, you have to follow people in that channel to get fresh content.
  14. There's search for name tag function. Maybe there are people social with each other just by lookup Internet IDs. Since names can be the same on Secure-Scuttlebutt, you have to use public keys to identify people accurately.
  15. It's written in Nodejs/Javascript. I lost my motive to contribute.

TL;DR barrier of harvest is wayyy too high.

Anyone else using/tried secure-scuttlebutt? What are your thoughts?

3 comments

  1. [3]
    annualnuke
    Link
    Sounds a lot like my experience with Mastodon.

    I learned that you have to follow others to get content

    I still dont get how to make new friends. I mean by what? I cant judge if I should follow someone because of random recent posts.

    Sounds a lot like my experience with Mastodon.

    3 votes
    1. [2]
      est
      Link Parent
      Mastodon is a lot better, you can squat at the global timeline, if you stare long enough, you can eventually pick up good content. On Secure-Scuttlebutt it's like you alone on an island

      Mastodon is a lot better, you can squat at the global timeline, if you stare long enough, you can eventually pick up good content.

      On Secure-Scuttlebutt it's like you alone on an island

      6 votes
      1. moredhel
        Link Parent
        I agree, scuttlebut is a bit dead and requires non-trivial investment. I ran it for a few weeks and liked the idea. Especially as I was going to be offgrid for a week or so at a time. Sadly I...

        I agree, scuttlebut is a bit dead and requires non-trivial investment. I ran it for a few weeks and liked the idea. Especially as I was going to be offgrid for a week or so at a time. Sadly I never managed to cultivate enough of a community. I would like to try again though as I like the idea!

        1 vote