[Freedombox-discuss] Establishing Communicationbetween Freedomboxes

[John Walsh]

Hi Ian 

> Behalf Of ian at churchkey.org
> 
> I think the best way to do this is through something like a 
> dynamicDNS centralized service. Currently, the network effect 
> is on the side of intermediated social networks because 
> having everyone's contacts in one place makes it much easier 
> to find each other. Same logic behind the phone book.

I just realised that the FreedomBox Foundation will have to offer a
centralised DynamicDNS service for those FreedomBox users with an ISP
provided Dynamic IP address. I am a user, but is this a reasonable
assumption.

If my assumption is correct, then your FrienDNS service could probably
piggy-back on top of the FreedomBox service. 
>
> We can do that without having to actually store all your 
> content on someone else's server or route all communication 
> through that foreign server. The basic idea is:
> 
> "A server running our new extension would be called something 
> like a "friend finding service" or perhaps "FrienDNS". People 
> could create accounts with this FrienDNS server just as they 
> do with dynamic dns servers, picking a user name and putting 
> in directions on where to find the machine with their stuff, 
> but this time they give the server a little more information 
> about themselves as people. Not too much information, this is 
> a centralized service after all, but just enough for people 
> to recognize each other in a search and ask to "friend" or 
> otherwise connect. Maybe that's just a name, picture, and 
> where you're from; the kind of things you found in old 
> college facebooks before the term got trademarked. Maybe you 
> give more information than that to the business community 
> FrienDNS service or to the dating one. You decide in each 
> context how much information to give other people before 
> agreeing to connect with them.

I would still prefer the minimum mandatory profile information to be the
users account name (account at domain.tld) and their preferred language(s), so
that you connect people who speak the same language. You can link a user
defined Public profile to the account name. Still, the biggest selling point
for FrienDNS is that it issues a secure invite, the alternative is to send
an unencrypted email invite.

For those with a static IP address there should be options to be unlisted,
local directory (my freedombox) and global directory
(freedomboxdirectory.com) - Friendika offers these options. 
> 
> Once someone finds you and wants to connect, the FrienDNS 
> service gets directions to your machine from the dynamic dns 
> service underneath and sends the request over to you for 
> approval, just like we expect social networks to do. In )
> addition, I'm going to say we should have the friend finding 
> service keep a unique token from us, some little bit of 
> machine data we give it so that, when it sends us a 
> connection request, we know it really came through the 
> service. So when you get a request to connect with someone, 
> you see who they are from their FrienDNS account information, 
> which service they found you on, and a token from the service 
> confirming that the request really did initiate there."
> 
> I wrote this last year, with more detail, here:
> http://churchkey.org/2010/03/17/dynamic-dns-facebook/ (also 
> part of the new freedombox planet feed: 
> http://planeteria.org/freedombox/)
I think the only measures you can take to stop SPAM is probably a
Block/Report Account