Diaspora did not take off, but attempts to build an Open Source distributed social network will continue until such a network is created. A new and very promising project in this direction is called Tent . This is an open framework for the social web - for the social network, where the content is under the complete control of the users themselves, not the commercial companies.

If the user wants, he can provide access to his files to Facebook / Twitter / Google / etc., Which created a convenient interface for reading this data, but it is not necessary to store files on their servers, whether it be photos, a social graph or just tweets.

Basic principles

Each Tent server can connect to any other Tent server. Each user can start the Tent server or entrust their data to another server. Communication between users is established independently of the server, so you can migrate to another server without losing any information. Each user establishes what information he opens for any other user. Tent servers can work in hidden mode via Tor for those who need anonymity. Anyone can create a web application that connects to Tent to display or create custom content (statuses, microblogging, notifications about new photos).

Tent is based on extensible open formats for posting profiles and other information. JSON is used for storing and transferring profiles, OAuth 2 and HMAC signatures are used to request data by applications, and the use of HTTPS is total. Initially, the system is designed for maximum extensibility.
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User entities are identified by their URI. For example, the user johnsmith.me corresponds to the server tent.johnsmith.me . Each user creates a list of other users he follows. As soon as they publish a new post on their servers (photo, text, video, etc.), they receive an alert via WebHook, and the content can be viewed in the corresponding web application.

The social network Tent does not define the economics of the ecosystem, that is, it can simultaneously coexist with paid and free hosting, advertising programs or completely non-commercial servers. Since anyone can start his server and join the system, he sets the rules for him. Total freedom is the main idea formulated in the Tent manifest .

The first version of the open server Tent called TBD will be published in the repository on Github in the very near future. Immediately after this, a hosting version will appear for users who want to register on the site, rather than launch their own server.

For more information about the Tent protocol and TBD servers, see the developer documentation .