Even while it turbocharges movements to fight unaccountable power, the Internet itself is becoming one. The tech press has a fun name for the companies driving this trend: FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google.)
To accompany the HOPE talk Zbay, Fighting FAANG, and the Quest for a Peer-To-Peer Messaging App That "Just Works", this page proposes a strategy for fighting FAANG: building free software, peer-to-peer apps that, like predecessors Limewire and Bitcoin, are fully forkable, that is, forkable in ways that preserve the full content and user experience of the original.
Watch it here: https://vimeo.com/444081020
- Bitcoin over Tor isn't a good idea
- Reddit's main code is no longer open-source.
- Sorry Facebook, Reddit Is Now The Third Most Popular Site In The US
- Coinye
- Hong Kong Unrest Drives 4x Surge in Telegram Downloads, Boosts Other Apps Used by Protesters
- Signal Downloads Are Way Up Since the Protests Began
- Scalable Privacy - Daira Hopwood at Zcon1
- Loki Service Node Financials (reddit thread)
Messaging seems like a uniquely promising place where peer-to-peer apps can fight FAANG, so the talk (and this page) focus on messaging apps. This list is not comprehensive, and if there is an approach to peer-to-peer messaging you'd like to see listed here, submit a pull request or contact us.
- Aether
- 3box
- Blockstack
- IPFS
- Filecoin
- Textile
- GUN
- Scuttlebutt
- Patchwork
- Planetary
- Radicle
- Webtorrent
- Webtorrent Workshop
- Particl
- OpenBazaar
- Tor
- Nym
- Loopix
- Orchid
FightFAANG is a project of Zbay founder Holmes Wilson, who previously co-founded the U.S.-based tech activism nonprofit Fight for the Future.
A hearty thanks to Guillaume Marceau and Lisa LaRochelle for their feedback on Zbay, this talk, and the ideas underlying both.