Secure Scuttlebutt
Hacker ApprovedDecentralized social app in Privacy & security
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.
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.
13 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 12
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 92%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 12 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 12 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works on unreliable networks
“it was designed with unreliable networks in mind”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth” “a store and forward system like Scuttlebutt/Briar/etc might work better”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Iran's 120h internet shutdown,Phones back. How to stay resilient?” “in Nostr and SSB, a relay/pub going down is no big deal”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Bluesky has been dealing with a DDoS attack for nearly a full day” Peers host the data they share
“ssb was vastly superior to atproto since all peers hosted the repos”
Comment from 25 Dec 2025 in “My 2026 Open Social Web Predictions” “That's the beauty of this design, you only seed what you share.”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Meta blocks human rights accounts from reaching audiences in Arabia and the UAE” Solves problems Bluesky has
“solved most of the issues that Bluesky suffers from by using content addressable storage and signing key cryptography correctly”
Comment from 21 Feb 2026 in “Be Wary of Bluesky” “Prior art such as secure-scuttlebot had this figured out”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “Bluesky has been dealing with a DDoS attack for nearly a full day” Fans praise the project
“I absolutely LOVE secure scuttlebutt (SSB).”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “The Emacsification of Software” “Thank you for the hard work you've done to keep this alive.”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Be Wary of Bluesky”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Project stalled or broken for years
“ssb's been broken for around five years, but now that it's working again it'd be fun try this experiment again”
Comment from 28 Nov 2025 in “True P2P Email on Top of Yggdrasil Network” “the project is all but dead with Staltz working for Bsky”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “There Are No Instances in ATProto”
What people said
15 of the 17 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the project is all but dead with Staltz working for Bsky”
“That's the beauty of this design, you only seed what you share.”
“there really wasn't that much to see, and it would randomly cause your computer to run hot and eat up gigs of storage”
“I absolutely LOVE secure scuttlebutt (SSB).”
“Prior art such as secure-scuttlebot had this figured out”
“in Nostr and SSB, a relay/pub going down is no big deal”
“Thank you for the hard work you've done to keep this alive.”
“solved most of the issues that Bluesky suffers from by using content addressable storage and signing key cryptography correctly”
“state synchronization became a complex bottleneck”
“scuttlebutt would deserve inclusion before Musk Social”
“Scuttlebutt protocol might be good implementation for most use cases as well”
“it was designed with unreliable networks in mind”
“a store and forward system like Scuttlebutt/Briar/etc might work better”
“ssb was vastly superior to atproto since all peers hosted the repos”
“ssb's been broken for around five years, but now that it's working again it'd be fun try this experiment again”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.