toad wrote: > From Frost. Good idea? Bad idea? Given that we will have true opennet > also?
I think it's a great idea to introduce friends to one another in a limited and relatively safe capacity, even if it's just for retrieving ARKs and traversing NATs. Apart from the direct benefits of improved connectivity, this would give people a way to test the waters before making a fully fledged darknet connection. For my own project, I've been thinking about how to balance the private aspect of the darknet against the social aspect - there's unlikely to be one answer that suits everyone, so the question is how to make it as simple as possible for users to express their preferences. I suggest having three levels of visibility: private, friends only, and public. It should be possible to assign a level to any piece of information: a blog post, a blog comment, a shared file, an entry in a friends list, or a node's address. Private should be the default. Example 1: Alice writes a blog post and marks it "friends only". Alice's friends can see it, but they shouldn't let their friends see it (obviously this requires trust, like everything else on the darknet). Bob, one of Alice's friends, comments on the post. Bob is marked "private" in Alice's friends list, meaning that none of Alice's other friends can see that Alice and Bob are friends, so none of Alice's other friends are allowed to see Bob's comment. Carol, another of Alice's friends, also comments on the post. Carol is marked "friends only" in Alice's friends list, so Alice's other friends are allowed to see Carol's comment. Example 2: Dave connects to Bob and asks to be marked "public" in Bob's friends list. Bob marks him as "friends only". In general a friend should be free to make things less visible than you ask, but shouldn't make things more visible than you ask. However, there's no way to enforce this - you have to trust your friends. Example 3: Carol shares a directory and marks it "public". This means that anyone who can see Carol can see the directory. Carol is marked "friends only" in Alice's friends list, so Bob can see the directory. Carol shares a second directory and marks it "friends only". Alice can see this directory, but Bob can't. It's possible to be more sophisticated, eg by creating groups and filters, but in my opinion it's more important for the system to be understandable than flexible. Cheers, Michael
