Wrapping my mind around Minds.com
The minds logo..
Recently I've heard about a social site called Minds that was being promoted as a new site for free speech, so my curiosity was piqued.
I created an account there: https://www.minds.com/neoxian
And I made a few posts. Minds has a points system, where one point = one view. You can spend your points to boost posts, yours or others. Minds.com will promote these posts, showing them on other's screens, until they reach the purchased number of views. A boosted post has to be approved before it can be boosted, a process that can take a few hours sometimes, but you can post as many unboosted posts as you like.
You can earn points for free, just by being active on the site, making comments, getting subscribed too, etc.
Minds.com is fully open source. They have a github: https://github.com/minds . That's really good, certainly makes them way better than Facebook or Twitter.
But I wanted to understand the fundamental design behind Minds and how it stacks up to Steemit, so I made this post there (and promoted it)
https://www.minds.com/blog/view/680517894072705039
I asked:
I'm trying to understand the design of Minds. What makes it censorship resistant? What makes it decentralized? Why can't the goverment shut down minds.com? Minds is open source, and that's good. If I ran my own server, could I still access all the posts?
How are the points managed? On one server? Is there a block chain? Or a shared database?
If there is a whitepaper or some document describing the design, someone please point that out to me.
And to my pleasant surprise, the co-creator Bill Ottman (@ottman ) answered me!
Good questions. It's decentralized in that ultimately, yes, nodes will be able to optionally federate (this is still in dev). It is censorship resistant in that we allow all legal content, and in the future will integrate torrent options. The points are currently on one server, but we will be integrating bitcoin in future. Please check out docs at https://minds.org/docs or https://github.com/minds
Well that was neat, to get a direct answer like that. I was disappointed though, in that it sounds like the anti-censorship and de-centralization aspects of this site are still being worked on, and not something that exists now.
I'm sure Minds.com has good intentions, but Google used to have the motto "Don't be evil" and we can see how that turned out. Censorship resistance and decentralization have to be built into the design of a system. One can't rely on the promises and good intentions of a company.
For now, I believe that Steemit is one of the best censorship free sites there is. I have proved that with these two posts:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@neoxian/how-to-run-busy-org-locally
https://steemit.com/steemit/@neoxian/steemit-uncensored-presenting-the-uncensored-patch
And Steemit exists and works right now, with a design and a whitepaper.
I don't want to be too down on Minds though. It is a great idea, and that fact that it's open source is a great start. Definitely a step in the right direction, so I'll keep an eye on it, and cross post to there.
A little competition in the censorship free space never hurts.
Thanks for the information, I was wondering the same thing about minds.com not censorship idea. Since it is not on a blockchain base system (just open source), it CAN be censored, for now. it is a good idea as you say, but since steemit already exists in a BC based system i dont really see the point at this time, in the future if they structure the site in a way for the users to have access at the promises they claim it would make a little more sense, i hope they go that way. I also think it would be great for steemit to add a function like bitchute.com has , a torrent way of sharing the data and no centralized servers needed, we the users will have the power of the contents and a secure way for them to survive ,add that with the blockchain technology and i see a win win situation! thanks fot the post!
I hope you don't mind , I used this post as an example on some pro minds.com posts in youtube, to show that minds it's not really what they are claiming to be (not having a blockchain tech or something similar to back their not censorship claims) if there is a problem about the usage of this post , let me know and I will erase the comments i made in said posts, thanks again.
No problem, thank you.
Nice, thanks for the info @neoxian
I am on minds.com since ages but never really understood the system - anonymous community is there - sometimes use it to promote steemit posts too.
Thanks for writing this. Sadly it's. not until an overt censorship move by us govt that many will even worry about how structural the commitment to uncensored at any give site is.
Yeah, I am on minds as well. Honestly I use that site as a way to boost promote some of my work for free. So every time I log in there I have around 100 free points or whatever and I use that to gain 100 free views by boost promoting my stuff. However, I noticed that if say 100 people see your post on minds, only maybe 5-10 of those will actually click or read the content, so, it does help raise views but not in any meaningful way.
As for posting content, minds does allow for you to post videos especially ones that YouTube calls "copyright" even though it isn't and it's fair use. So if you don't care to monetize your video, you can post it to minds and not worry about it getting blocked for censorship. However minds has no incentives, other than reaching people with information.
Steemit with the rewards, actual currency makes people want to flock here for the cash, and keeps them coming back and keeps them engaged.
so censorship free here on steemit.
LOL
Check out sealion.club too. another great censorship free site.
Well, you are still here, and I can still read your comments.
they show up in your reply feed?
lol
my posts don't show up on feeds, my replys don't show up in reply feeds, my posts dont show up on the new feed. I cant link my posts to other sites.
denial is not just a river in Egypt
Yea and I've addressed all that in my previous posts. Which you don't read or understand, but you also think that 2.5$ is the same as 25000$. There is no reasoning with you.
strawman but ok
keep upvotng your own comments
Don't mind if I do.
Hell, they could save themselves some time and just run minds on top of the steem blockchain. If they don't want their data to mingle put it in a side chain.