UPDATE. UPDATE UPDATE: I’ve managed to be accepted by the system completely now and can now post. All parts of the system appear to be working and I’ll be updating my profile on there tomorrow some time. In the light of recent news about the possiblity of more censorship of counterjihad views on certain social media platforms I’d like to invite all those who follow me on Twitter to download Twister create an account and follow me. My handle on Twister is @fahrenheit211 Twister, for those who have not read the blurb below is a microblogging platform very similar in operation to Twitter, except for one thing, there is no central server, the system is all peer to peer. Also it seems, at least to the eye of someone such as myself who plays around with manual encryption, that the encryption used by Twister is pretty strong and may even it is to be hoped be difficult to break even for those whose work address reads ‘Cheltenham’. So come on over and give Twister a try. I’m an ‘appliance operator’ and even I could manage to install it.
I love Twitter, it’s a fast moving, dynamic medium for discussion which has helped me to publicise this blog and also allowed me to make contact with some wonderful people. It also brings me dickheads and ‘refugees welcome’ wankers but, hey, such morons can always be blocked.
There are some things of course that let Twitter down. Firstly and most worrying for many is the prospect and sometimes the reality of censorship by Twitter monitors. Time after time I’ve seen non-violent counter jihad Tweeters banned or suspended because there has been an organised complaint by Muslim activists.
Secondly there’s the moral hazard of allowing this one company, which the users have no means of democratic control over, having arbitrary rules about what is and isn’t acceptable. If the board of Twitter suddenly went full ‘social justice warrior’ tomorrow there would be an immediate clear out of all counterjihad writers and users on the platform, including myself, and there is nothing that anybody could do about it. A private individual or company is quite rightly allowed to set its own rules in its own space. I for example have particular rules about what I find acceptable on my site and what I will not allow without challenge just as any privately run entity has. However when an organisation gets very big and plays a major part in disseminating information between users, then there is the danger that the organisation will impose rules that are not to the liking of all of those who use the platform.
Thirdly there is the very real danger that the police, especially the police in places like the UK that have taken the PC and Islamopandering shilling with enthusiasm, may gain access to users IP addresses, and the physical addresses of users etc, merely by asking Twitter management for this information. I have seen several cases where people have had ‘visits’ from the old bill merely for expressing some dislike for Islam or criticising aspects of Islamic culture, theology or belief on Twitter. This is not good and shows that Twitter, like other social media companies will hand over users data to the police merely because there has been a complaint about ‘racism’ or ‘Islamophobia’.
Therefore, although I’m going to continue to use Twitter, I am testing an alternative microblogging platform called Twister and experimenting with what it can do. If you want to get on Twister and follow me on this platform then my nickname on there is @fahrenheit211
Now Twister is very similar in its function and even in its appearance to Twitter, many of the things that Twitter users expect such as direct messaging, follow/unfollow etc are in Twister. However, Twister differs from other microblogging platforms in that it is not hosted by or run from one or more central servers. Twister is a peer to peer application and there is no storage of information on central databases and no recording of IP addresses. Also, and some of you may appreciate this, it is fully encrypted end to end. The Twister website has much more detail than I can give or even understand (I’m not a mathematician) but from what I can see Twister is much more secure from prying eyes than either Twitter or Facebook. From what I can gather from discussions around the issue of Twister’s cryptography, the system is uncrackable by the average hacker unless they’ve got access to a supercomputer or two, even then the crypto employed by Twister is said to be difficult if not impossible to crack at the current time. For those interested the type of crypto used in Twister is described as secp256k1
Twister is an open source programming project and relies for its security and operation on similar blockchain technology to that used by Bitcoin.
Now I’m not going to lie to you, Twister is not exactly an immediate plug and play application like Twitter, it takes time to set up because all the relevant blocks in the blockchain need to be downloaded to the application before you can continue. This could take up to an hour, maybe more, depending on the speed of your connection. To get started I’ve had to download nearly 600 days of block chain data before I could get started. Another thing that I need to say is that Twister is currently in Beta test mode some of the software is in Alpha test mode, and I would strongly advise people, before installing it, to back up their data and have a ‘restore’ disc ready should things go catastrophically wrong. It probably may not, but backing up is always a good idea especially when installing unusual or novel software. It was originally designed for a Linux operating system but has been ported and recompiled for other OS including Windows, Android and Mac. I’m currently running on the Windows version.
It is tricky to set up. Apart from the downloading of the block chain there is the issue of having to wait until all peers have accepted the new user and new account. However once done, it appears to work. You may have to ‘follow’ yourself in order to get started but eventually it will work and there are enough similarities with the Twitter front end to make using it reasonably intuitive for the regular Twitter user. It is I must say a little more sluggish than Twitter and that may be down to the fact that the system is distributed across different peers worldwide, but that is something that I can live with. There doesn’t seem to be any way of searching for people with similar interests, but the application may change as time goes by. I’m going to give it a go and have a play about with it and see what it’s like. You never know it may turn out to be a pretty good and more secure way to engage in discussion.
If you want to get on Twister and enjoy end to end encryption of your messages and much of the functionality of Twitter then you need to download the executable file from the Twister home page
Here’s the Twister main page
This is where I got the version that I downloaded which is from a site external from the Twister website
https://github.com/iShift/twister-webkit/releases
Here’s wikipedia info on the blockchain system
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_chain_%28database%29
The Wiki on Twister itself
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twister_%28software%29
A neat ‘how to’ video on how to install Twister
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMfBZujAC00
Another video on Twister and its potential as an alternative to Twitter by Jason Schaumleffel @jpschaumleffel
This informative video does go into more detail about how Twister differs from Twister. Mr Schaumleffel also speaks of how Governments which are forcing people off Twitter have opened a Pandoras Box by driving the movement of non-centralised, less censorious systems such as Twister. He makes the valid point that on Twister, unlike some other platforms, there is no ability to delete posts. He also made the valid point that as well as this app being able to give secure communication for those in oppressive nations this software could be used for more nefarious ends. He did say that if governments had not been so eager to censor or shut down Twitter in certain jurisdictions then developments such as P2P blogging would not have come about.
