# Secure Scuttlebutt

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Secure Scuttlebutt and 1 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a decentralized social network where peers store what they share and work on unreliable networks. Main caveat: the project has stalled since developer Staltz began working for Bluesky.

## Why people recommend it

- Works on unreliable networks (3 comments): "it was designed with unreliable networks in mind" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46684084)) "a store and forward system like Scuttlebutt/Briar/etc might work better" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46608924)) "in Nostr and SSB, a relay/pub going down is no big deal" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47805853))
- Peers host the data they share (2 comments): "ssb was vastly superior to atproto since all peers hosted the repos" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46387524)) "That's the beauty of this design, you only seed what you share." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48212382))
- Solves problems Bluesky has (2 comments): "solved most of the issues that Bluesky suffers from by using content addressable storage and signing key cryptography correctly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47104483)) "Prior art such as secure-scuttlebot had this figured out" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47957502))
- Fans praise the project (2 comments): "I absolutely LOVE secure scuttlebutt (SSB)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130644)) "Thank you for the hard work you've done to keep this alive." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47110092))

## What people warn about

- Project stalled or broken for years (2 comments): "ssb's been broken for around five years, but now that it's working again it'd be fun try this experiment again" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46081133)) "the project is all but dead with Staltz working for Bsky" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48602735))

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Secure Scuttlebutt", https://hackerapproved.com/p/secure-scuttlebutt/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).