Kobeissi argues that existing options for decentralizing social media are either: (a) not fully P2P (Mastodon is "self-hosted but not decentralized," per a competitive analysis on Capsule's pitch deck, ergo its servers are "vulnerable to Parler-style AWS takedowns") or (b) not focused enough on the specific use case of social media (some other decentralized protocols like Matrix aim to support many more features/apps than social media and therefore can't be as lightweight is the argument) or (c) simply aren't easy enough to use to be more than a niche geeky option.
So given how many protocols already offer self-hosted/P2P social media services it seems fair to ask what's different here - and, indeed, why build another open decentralized standard? Then, for the mesh federation thing, we're just doing HTTPS calls and then having decentralized caching of the databases and so on."Īmong the Twitter back-and-forth about how (or whether) Kobeissi's concept differs to various other decentralized protocols, someone posted a link to this XKCD cartoon - which lampoons the techie quest to resolve competing standards by proposing a tech that covers all use cases (yet is of course doomed to increase complexity by +1). And that is so self-contained that it's embeddable everywhere, that's migratable - and it's really quite impossible to get this level of simplicity and elegance so quickly unless you go this route. "There are no other files - and then once you have it running, in that folder when you set up your capsule server, it's just the Capsule program and a Capsule database that is a file. It sets up a server, it contacts Let's Encrypt, it gets you a certificate, it uses SQLite for the database, which is a serverless database, all of the assets for the web server are within the binary," he says, walking through the "really nice technical idea" that snagged $100,000 in pre-seed backing insanely fast. And you get that binary and you deploy it and you run it, and that's it. "When you deploy Capsule right now - I have a prototype that does almost nothing running - it's basically one binary. "That is kind of terrifying," he suggests.Ĭapsule would seek to route around the risk of mass deplatforming via "easy to deploy" P2P microservices - starting with a forthcoming web app. court seeking damages and injunctive relief from Apple for allowing Telegram, a messaging platform with 500 million+ users, to be made available through its iOS App Store - "despite Apple's knowledge that Telegram is being used to intimidate, threaten and coerce members of the public" - raising concerns about "the odds of these efforts catching on." He also points to a lawsuit that's been filed in U.S. But he says he is concerned about giant private corporations having unilateral power to shape internet speech - whether takedown decisions are being made by Twitter's trust and safety lead or Amazon Web Services (which recently yanked the plug on right-wing social network Parler for failing to moderate violent views). Kobeissi also takes that view, while adding the caveat that he's not "personally" concerned about Trump's deplatforming. President Donald Trump's access to their megaphones - a demonstration of private power that other political leaders have described as problematic. Interest in the space has been rekindled in recent weeks after mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter took decisions to shut down U.S.
Extant examples include ActivityPub, Diaspora, Mastodon, P2P Matrix, Scuttlebutt, Solid and Urbit, to name a few. The list of decentralized/P2P/federated protocols and standards already out there is very long - even while usage remains low. Completely insane."Ĭapsule is just the latest contender for retooling Internet power structures by building infrastructure that radically decentralizes social platforms to make speech more resilient to corporate censorship and control. "But by the end of the day - last Sunday, eight days ago - I was running a Delaware corporation valued at $10 million with $100,000 in pre-seed funding, which is insane. I've been running a business based on consulting and based on academic R&D services," he continues. Instead the tweet "just completely exploded" and he found himself raising $100,000 "in a single day" - with $50,000 paid in there and then. "I posted that tweet and the expectation that I had was that basically 60 people max would retweet it and then maybe I'll set up a Kickstarter," he tells us. But Kobeissi says he was startled by the level of interest in the concept. For now there's nothing to see beyond Capsule's landing page and a pitch deck (which he shared with TechCrunch for review).
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