command line timeline server and client, decentralized micro-blogging follow/unfollow network, in golang.
Picture a 64x64 chessboard and place a pawn in every square. By default in these universes, you follow 63 other people and they each follow you.
Now find your row and remove a pawn from column 7 and 14. You are not following user 7 and user 14 anymore.
When they go to post something, a pointer to their latest message will be placed in each user's inbox; if the user follows them.
This is what Following []unit64 is for and it means:
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
1111111011111101111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111
A giant, efficient grid to run a small twitter like message board for just 64 people.
When this universe first boots up, all usernames are available and it's first come first served to grab a two to twenty-two length username. You send in your desired name, and a public key, and forever more this node will give you and your private key the right to post as you.
But this is just one node, and this code is open source. Anyone can start a new node with the same username you just picked can be given to someone else.
Universes are chained together. And just like the blockchain, you want to attach your node to a good chain that's going to be accepted in lots of other places. The world can only vet and maintain so many different chains of universes. If your chain can't govern itself you might break apart and join other lead nodes.
It's all about a decentralized twitter/timeline system that one company does not control. All it takes is $5 a month to rent a digitalocean server and place your one node in the system.
As more and more people start to adopt TL, it will be harder to get first name usernames and still have your chain taken seriously by the N major other chains. And for free speach and who gets to set the rules? It's the person with the $5 credit card bill's decision. There will be certain community standards some chains allow.
Yes, but they would be all alone, claiming to be you in a node that no one else agrees is valid.
Then yes, there is competition for your username. The same way the username "goodname" on twitter is in competition for "goodname" on another social media site.
They both co-exist but you vote with your attention and your wallet. You can choose to accept the TL chain where most of your friends are. You can chose to spend your $5 a month node on the chain you like. You can even get two nodes and spend $10 a month or as much as you want.
A lot. Most of them small. Over time only a few will dominate the scene as "the big chains" and you can probably guess there will be one that leans left politically and one that leans right. Is there a center one? Sure. Is there more than one center one? Sure. When you see something that offends you, define your own guidelines and break off into a new chain.
Read your contract with digitalocean or whoever you are renting your $5 a month server from. I woudln't want illegal content on my server! When you are in a major chain, certain messages are flagged for violations and removed. Can everyone agree on which messages MUST be removed? No. Can a bunch of people agree on some basic guidelines? Yes.
Yes, when someone installs the TL client for the first time, they are given the default chain. But you can configure your client to speak to another chain. Think of some very popular blogger like Matt Taibbi. You know where the REAL Matt Taibbi is blogging from right? At the time of writing this (March 2021) it's substack. But if he were to suddenly abandon that account and appear somewhere else, you'd follow that new Matt Taibbi account on some other chain.
It goes to digitalocean or aws or any cloud provider you want to use to rent a server that has CPU, RAM, Internet Access, and hard drive space. With one node you are the sysop for 64 people. You are paying the bill for these 64 people to talk and follow each other you are part of this decentralized social media system. The whole point is if many individuals pay the hosting costs, there is no one big company paying ALL the hosting and therefore making ALL the rules.
But 64 people isn't very many people. So you need to band together with another 64 and another 64 and on and on.
anyone is free to take the server binary and run it on a machine with a nice amount of RAM and publish the IP or domain name of your public TL server to the main list.
When you run the client it will connect to the main server to get a copy of the main list. Then it will pick a random server from that list to query for your timeline ls command.
[~/TL/client] $ ./client
client ls # List recent timelines
client profile # List recent timelines
client post # Post new timeline with --text=hi
client auth # Set your username --name=
client toggle # Toggle follow --name=
client idplease # tell me what server/node i'm connected to
client taken # taken usernames
[~/TL/client] $ ./client ls
Inbox
[~/TL/client] $ ./client post --text=hi
[~/TL/client] $ ./client ls
Inbox
01. andrew less than a minute hi
[~/TL/client] $ ./client auth --name=bob
Ok you are now: bob
[~/TL/client] $ ./client post --text=hi
[~/TL/client] $ ./client ls
Inbox
01. bob less than a minute hi
02. andrew less than a minute hi
[~/TL/client] $ ./client profile
Profile
01. bob less than a minute hi
[~/TL/client] $ ./client profile --name=andrew
Profile
01. andrew 1 minute hi
[~/TL/client] $ ./client auth --name=andrew
This username already taken!
[~/TL/client] $ ./client auth --name=andrew2
Ok you are now: andrew2
[~/TL/client] $ ./client idplease
localhost:8080
[~/TL/client] $ ./client taken
{"users":[{"ts":1617232944,"username":"andrew"},{"ts":1617241169,"username":"andrew2"},{"ts":1617238813,"username":"bob"}]}
[~/TL/client] $ ./client auth --name=sue
Ok you are now: sue
[~/TL/client] $ ./client taken
{"users":[{"ts":1617242196,"username":"sue"},{"ts":1617232944,"username":"andrew"},{"ts":1617241169,"username":"andrew2"},{"ts":1617238813,"username":"bob"}]}