An October 27, 2023 article in the New York Times entitled “…
An October 27, 2023 article in the New York Times entitled “The Consequences of Elon Musk’s Ownership of X” begins as follows: When Elon Musk bought Twitter a year ago, he said he wanted to create what he called a “common digital town square.” “That said,” he wrote, “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.” A year later, according to study after study, Mr. Musk’s platform has become exactly that. Now rebranded as X, the site has experienced a surge in racist, antisemitic and other hateful speech. Under Mr. Musk’s watch, millions of people have been exposed to misinformation about climate change. Foreign governments and operatives — from Russia to China to Hamas — have spread divisive propaganda with little or no interference. It gets worse from there. After reading the article, you’ve become worried about Twitter/X’s stability and social responsibility when Elon Musk is the owner (and when the company’s CEO is a Penn State alumna, Linda Yaccarino). These thoughts, combined with your computer networking knowledge learned in IST 220 and throughout the rest of your education at Penn State, inspire you to create your own new Twitter alternative, Roar. While the basic functionality of your application will be similar to that offered by Twitter/X, you hope that yours will be more secure, reliable, and ethical. Basically, you want Roar to be a superior alternative to Twitter/X. You’ll be creating both a network application and an application-layer protocol to create the service. It is now time to answer the three big questions we’ve discussed throughout topic 2. Please answer the following questions in numbered paragraphs. Would you recommend a client-server architecture, or a peer-to-peer architecture? Why? (2 pts) Would you recommend using TCP, or UDP? Why? (2 pts) Would you recommend using an open protocol, or a closed/proprietary protocol? Why? (2 pts)
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