🆕 Software Suggestion | Funkwhale

[gordon-shumway-net]

Basic Information

Name: Funkwhale
Category: Social Networks
URL: https://funkwhale.audio

Description

Funkwhale is a decentralized audio sharing platform.
Kind of as an alternative to SoundCloud.

Why I am making the suggestion

Because there are photo sharing (PixelFed) and social networks (like Mastodon, Diaspora etc.) on privacytools.io, but no sound sharing platform yet.

My connection with the software

No special connection to that.
Just seen it in a presentation an checked it out a bit.

•  I will keep the issue up-to-date if something I have said changes or I remember a connection with the software.

[Zcr34]

Not certain how important my viewpoint is, but I like the project.

Source Code: https://dev.funkwhale.audio/funkwhale

[lrq3000]

Interesting, reminds me of Audius (which is not federated but rather based on a blockchain). Thanks for sharing, I'll check it out!

[Mikaela]

How big demand is there towards audio sharing? Do you think it would/could fit under social media?

[lrq3000]

@Mikaela I'm not OP but I'd say media file sharing is as important as text file sharing, if not more prevalent nowadays. So the increased privacy value we see in PrivateBin for example is analogous to the advantages provided by audio/video sharing platform, it's only for another file modality (which is potentially even more critical because audio and video can contain more metadata and thus are more at risk of privacy leaking and/or censorship).

About your second question, most of these platforms offer a community aspect, so yes they could fit in social media, even if it overlaps with file sharing (but to me it seems different in the purpose as understood on PTIO: eg OnionShare is to share a specific file whatever the size privately between parties and at a specific point in time, whereas audio/video sharing/streaming platforms are rather intended to provide a media to a public or private audience on a longer run - so the social aspect is argualy a more salient characteristic of these platforms).

[lrq3000]

PS: I have not developed nor contributed to any of these tools, it's just that I am looking for privacy protecting alternatives and I have found that if we don't account for media sharing/streaming, that's a big loophole where people will leak a significant amount of data, whether they are viewers (by trackers) or creators (by censorship).

[gordon-shumway-net]

Hey together, cool that this interesting conversation comes up!
Thank you for that! :)
@lrq3000
You have an interesting point of view. I hadn't thought about it from an perspective you show in your responses to Mikaelas two questions.

@Mikaela
From my perspective Irq3000s already sad everything. It's about public sharing and not private, so File-Sharing as a category would fit maybe not really. And next to File-Share I wouldn't know another alternative.
My additional point is just:
At the moment there is no comment function, maybe it will come later (like in SoundCloud), then the social aspect is even higher. Then it would be maybe a bit like PixelFed, just for Audio.
Okay, it maybe doesn't make sense to put a feature into the calculation which doesn't exist yet. It was still a point I wanted to mention.

[lrq3000]

@gordon-shumway-net Funkwhale describe itself as a social platform. And it makes sense, because even without comments, you still have the creators -> audience public broadcasting, which is a form of social communication. Then when comments/votes will be added, which is only a natural path for such a service, this will create the audience -> creators communication path, hence making communication bidirectional.

I thought of an analogy for why privacy on social media/public broadcasting services matter: imagine going to a show (not necessarily for entertainment, it can be about arts, science, ted talk, etc), but there's a private company SmallBrother which registers who attended which shows. Then they later send you mails of personalized advertisement, depending on what shows you went to see, not only lately, but also the shows you went to 20 years ago (including some pretty controversial ones!). Furthermore, let's say SmallBrother does not only have advertisement powers, but also the capacity to stop any show they do not deem "advertiser friendly" or any other (potentially political) reason, and even ban the creators from representing at any future venue, and all that without even needing to explicitly state their reason to do so.

At this point, I think we can see why it's important SmallBrother shouldn't be allowed so much power in our lives. From an audience POV, tracking is a privacy issue. From the creators viewpoint, censorship is a freedom issue (which also impacts the audience indirectly). Although we do participate in public shows, it does not mean that a private for-profit company should be able to track us down on what we attended/watched nor regulate what we are allowed to. This analogy for medias could also be done for public hearings (which would then be an analogy of text-based public communications such as forums or public group chats).

/EDIT: also note that although media broadcasting/social media platforms are thought as public, in fact they are asymmetrical most of the time: the creators are to be differentiated from the audience. Although the creators accept to publicly broadcast, and hence are not private anymore, the audience is not necessarily accepting to go public, they may very well want to privately watch. Another thing to consider is that in the past, anyone could privately watch anything by purchasing VHS tapes, and later DVDs and BluRays. Lots of independent creators distributed also on such mediums. Nowadays, most media publications are done through online platforms, particularly for independent creators, so if these online platforms are not privacy-protecting, there is no way for the audience to privately experience these medias.

[ian-tedesco]

Is this similar to soul seek? If it is, it looks good since SS is closed source but has a lot of users, still I don't know if this would fit on social media.

[gordon-shumway-net]

Is this similar to soul seek? If it is, it looks good since SS is closed source but has a lot of users, still I don't know if this would fit on social media.

@5a384507-18ce-417c-bb55-d4dfcc8883fe
If you mean that: "slsknet.org" I would say no.
It's not that I know Soulseek, I just took a look at it right now and it seems that Soulseek is a bit like BitTorrent. A P2P Sharing Network, Funkwhale is more like SoundCloud (or maybe also Spotify, but this is not such a good comparision like SoundCloud), a place where you can directly stream music from an decentralized Server Network.

Is that helpful?