WireMin has recently announced their new feature (for those who don’t know what is WireMin, it is a decentralized version of Twitter + Signal):
"You can now customize your Social Preference!
Wanna connect with the world➡️ Enable Spaces.
Wanna stay low key➡️ Disable Spaces.
Your Social Network, Your Way!“
As a 3-month user of WireMin, I am quite familiar with the ‘Spaces’ feature; it is definitely their standout feature. Here are a couple of things you can do in the WireMin Space:
- Chat space: you can create your own public/private one or join other public chat rooms anonymously.
- Feed space: you have your own feed where you can post text, pictures, or videos, set them to disappear after 48 hours, or even choose a longer duration.
- Space Discovery: it’s like a ‘Spaces Plaza,’ where you can find all the public chat spaces or feed spaces as long as they have been active in the past 48 hours.
- Plus, due to its nature as a decentralized network, there is no censorship here, and no one has the power to ban anyone, even though there is toxic content (they do have a NSFW content filter, but it can only filter those spaces that the creators have flagged as NSFW).
So, I don’t know why someone would want to disable the Spaces!
But looking at it from another perspective, not everyone enjoys posting on their feed or joining anonymous discussions. This makes Space Discovery useless for them, so an encrypted messenger for 1-on-1 chats might be more useful to them.
I have used it under the ‘Disable Spaces’ mode; it offers a
10-member limit for secret groups. That’s too limiting for me, but it might be sufficient for colleagues to discuss confidential matters in a small group.
Anyway, overall, I think it’s a pretty innovative concept for a social media platform, especially since it’s decentralized. I really believe they are making significant changes to the digital world. All I need now is the source code, please!
You’ve basically ignored the question, and instead explained why decentralized services can’t be taken down.
The answer is that there is no good reason to use this above Mastodon, as Mastodon is free and open source, is not a scam, alongside having a larger community. Signal is also an encrypted messenger operating on an open source protocol, and again does what Wiremin does but better.
WireMin markets itself as a decentralized service. The question was “why use this”, so I mentioned the pros of using decentralized services. I did not ignore the question. WireMin should not be used. Other (truly) decentralized protocols like Matrix, XMPP, or anything running on ActivityPub have benefits over services owned by companies like Signal or Telegram.
However, most people are locked into a platform by their contacts, and their contacts choice of chat application. If most (or all) of your contacts are already on Signal, there’s no good reason to use anything else.