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HTTP/2 200 server: nginx date: Thu, 09 Oct 2025 19:45:50 GMT content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 x-clacks-overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett link: ; rel=shortlink cache-control: no-cache last-modified: Thu, 09 Oct 2025 20:45:50 GMT wpo-cache-status: saving to cache content-encoding: gzip vary: Accept-Encoding x-xss-protection: 1; mode=block x-content-type-options: nosniff strict-transport-security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains Here’s How You Win: Secure Scuttlebutt |

A talk by @JonTheNiceGuy (Jon Spriggs)

Here’s how you win:

Secure Scuttlebutt

An offline first, peer to peer social network

Psst… Looking for the speaker notes? Press S. Move through the talk by pressing the “right” arrow.

Here’s How You Win

Be yourself

Here’s How You Win

Make friends

Screenshot of the "Profiles" page on Patchwork with the Friends and Followers highlighted

Here’s How You Win

Gossip with your friends

And friends of friends

Once you’re friends with someone, you can chat with them. But you’re not only chatting with your friends, you’re also chatting with their friends too. You see, Scuttlebutt assumes that someone you’re talking to is probably going to be talking with their friends, so when your client syncs up with the rest of the network, it’s also picking up the content from your friends friends too – although it won’t show their content unless you’re also friends with them too. See, if I’m friends with {pick audience member A} and {another audience member B}, but if {A} isn’t online when I am, but {B} is, but {B} is online when {A} is, then I can collect {A}’s content from {B}, and {A} can get my content from {B} too. This is a part of the protocol called “Gossip”, and isn’t only used in Scuttlebutt, but it’s what I always think about when I hear the term. You can extend the reach of your gossip, but that takes longer to bootstrap each connection, and takes more data and bandwidth to do so!

A screenshot of Patchwork with the channels highlighted

Here’s How You Win

Post about things that interest you

A screen shot of the "Private" tab on Patchwork

Here’s How You Win

Talk in private

An extract of the "Scalable Secure Scuttlebutt" paper, retrieved from Github on 2019-10-19

Here’s How You Win

Be online by exception

Here’s How You Win

GNU Terry Pratchett

Wait… What?

Don’t let your messages die

Once you’re connected to each other you exchange your message tree, a bit like doing a git pull or getting the latest part of the bitcoin block chain… which means, GNU TERRY PRATCHETT. Um, OK, so that’s not quite right. There’s a concept in one of the Pratchett books, where “A man is not dead while his name is spoken”. In Scuttlebutt, you can’t rewrite history like you can with Git, so you can’t ask your followers and friends to “forget” you sent a message saying “I like bananas” (which I don’t), so whenever you post in SSB, that’s it… there’s no take-back EXCEPT…

If all the people who know you forget about you, then your message will wither and vanish. But if even one other node remembers you, then when it comes back online, everyone it knows will know about your message. This also has some impact because right now you can’t have two machines sharing the same identity – I have a phone profile and a laptop profile. If you’re really clever, you can ensure that one machine is ABSOLUTELY NOT RUNNING before sharing the .ssb directory between non-phone OS machines, and starting the client on THE OTHER MACHINE, and it *will work*. If you don’t sync the machines back up before you swing back, you get into a Fork state and then everything gets messy. Don’t do that. Run multiple profiles, and ask people to befriend you on all of them.

A screen shot of "Scuttlebutt Apps" taken from scuttlebutt.nz on 2019-10-19

Here’s How You Win

Don’t limit yourself to one application

An extract from the "Pubs" list taken at 2019-10-19

Extracted from the “Pub Servers” wiki page

Here’s How You Win

Find new friends

At a pub(?)

A picture of the facebook icon crossed through

Here’s How You Win

Be Decentralised

Bad UX
Low Discoverability
Small Community
Risk of Cliques

Here’s How You Lose…?

Here’s How You Win

Give Secure Scuttlebutt A Try

Jon Spriggs

Twitter: @JonTheNiceGuy
Linked In: LinkedIn.com/in/JonTheNiceGuy
Blog: jon.sprig.gs

Original Source | Taken Source

A talk by @JonTheNiceGuy (Jon Spriggs)

Here’s how you win:

Secure Scuttlebutt

An offline first, peer to peer social network

Share your life

Be yourself

Make friends

Gossip with your friends

And friends of friends

Post about things that interest you

Talk in private

Be online by exception

GNU Terry Pratchett

Don’t let your messages die

Don’t limit yourself to one application

Find new friends

At a pub(?)

Be Decentralised

Give Secure Scuttlebutt A Try

Jon Spriggs