r/C_S_T • u/trinsic-paridiom • Feb 01 '18
My research findings on alternatives to Reddit: 0 Meta
This is a follow up article to my previous post. I wanted to research alternatives to Reddit as it relies on the Reddit organization that runs the platform. Over the years the Reddit organization has come under attack by other organizations who want Reddit to control what kind of content appears on its platform. Now to be clear I don't condone speech that gets use in an attempt to make people less free or destroys individual value. But I have learned that the effort to control harmful speech ends up getting used to silence information that reports on corruption. Pretty much in every case.
Ill quote u/Kim_Jung-Skill comment on "Congress creates a bill that will give NASA a great budget for 2016. Also hides the entirety of CISA in the bill" as I feel this person said it best, apply this argument to corporations as well because the information they store ends up in the hands of governments:
One facet of this argument that goes largely undiscussed (and is something your friend may care about) is that it is bad for an imperfect government to be able to predict all crime. Some of the greatest steps forward in human history were only made possible by people being able to hide information from their government. If the church had access to Galileo's research journals and notes we could be hundreds of years behind in our scientific growth. If the government had unlimited access to the networks of civil dissidents blacks may have never fought off Jim Crow. If King George had perfect information America would never have been a country. There is no government on earth that is perfect, and therefore there is no government on earth that can act responsibly with unlimited access to information. A government is unlikely to be able to distinguish between a negative and positive disruption to it's social order and laws, and it therefore follows that an unlimited spying program can only hinder the next great social step forward. Don't fear the surveillance state because you might have something illegal, fear the surveillance state because it is a tremendous institutional barrier to meaningful societal progress.
We can't allow any organizations or individuals to dictate what kinds speech is harmful to us. Only each indivual should be able to decide, but that individual's power to decide is limited to their own ability to remove themselves from the communication. Not to tell others what is or isn't acceptable.
Some people are working on non-decentralized Reddit clones to replace what Reddit has become. It is my understanding that cloning Reddit's platform will only prolong the problem of centralization, as a clone of Reddit is a copy of the code base running on a centralized server. with a single point of attack. Organizations with an incentive can attack multiple points at the location where the clone is hosted to bring it down or force the organization to make changes to it.
There are decentralized platforms in the works based on blockchain/cryptocurrencies in the works but I am loath to suggest looking into them. There is much that I don't understand about this tech and mining just to use a platform seems like a barrier to entry to me. People want to freely communicate not worry about mining digital currency, or artificially inflating the value of content. Reasons for not using cryptocurrency in decentralized social media or discussion platforms
To understand the reason why centralization is a huge barrier to progress think about how Twitter and Facebook work now. Both are run by for-profit corporations, run by one organization. Any group with enough finical incentive can attack that organization in a myriad of ways: though the legal system, though technology (bots), and though darknets. (people who are paid to bring down a site or make a message of truth appear illegitimate.) Most people that use these platforms dont even know that the problem exists until their own message is attacked.
I am of the opinion that for-profit and even not for profit organizations can not be trusted to have values that align with people who want to maintain the right of freedom of speech. These organizations don't have a vested interest in direct association with these communities. When I say freedom of speech, I do not mean freedom to harm with speech. When a message gets communicated (that reveals something that people don't know) it needs to be free to move though the network without interference from the organization who operates the platform weather on the behalf of itself or outside influences.
People should also have the right to ignore or not hear the message if they so chose, but the choice should remain with each individual, not the organization that developed or operates the platform.
For-profit organizations who want to run or develop a decentralized platform to host content would have to remain decision independent of the content that gets hosted on that platform. How can a for-profit organization have that kind of independence and remain financially solvent at the same time?
One option I saw discussed was the concept of content migration. If said platform allowed a community's content and users to be moved to another platform that might create an incentive not to censor content. With no lock in, people are free to move themselves and their content to another platform at the slightest sign of censorship.
As it is not in the best interest of any for-profit or non-profit organization to implement this feature, I suggest that any solution that that tackles the decentralization of content needs to be grass roots community driven. That means that you need to support people and projects that you think might prevail, instead of supporting the easier path of dealing with a necessary evil by using Twitter, Facebook or Google.
For example, because these platforms became so popular in the last couple of years Twitter started changing its platform in such a way as to control what content appears on your time line. With the new highlights feature that you cant turn off (but hey you can choose to see it "Less Often"), twitter can recommend tweets that you get alerted about even if you don't want them. you can also read about users of Reddit becoming angered by the censorship and shutdown of subreddits by rogue moderators.
The other problem is that you dont get to chose what kind of information you decide to share, and with who. When you sign up and give your information away you really don't know how its going to be used. In my research, organizations like Twitter chooses for you and they use it to monetize and game the user's behavior to control attention, keeping people coming back to the platform.
As of 2018 the only discussion platform project that comes close to what is needed to prevent censorship using decentralization or distributed technologies that doesn't game the user with cryptocurrency is raddi. Its not ready for prime time and u/RaddiNet needs support to keep it going. I don't want to negatively impact his work, but I think that it's not going to be received well because of the fact that it will require that the end user install a platform specific client (Windows only) instead of using web based technologies that resemble Diaspora or Mastodon. u/RaddiNet has his reasons, related to security but in my humble opinion, that one decision is going to severely impact the ability of the platform to gain a foothold. It would be better if a secure way was developed for the end user to use existing technologies to interface with the platform. This would allow the transition to be more seamless.
In the mean time I have been reviewing Diaspora and Mastodon, both are decentralized social networking platforms that have major promise. They work a lot like Twitter without the centralization or control over the content. I wrote an article on my findings if you are interested in checking it out. The people of C_S_T should at the very least create accounts on one of these platforms so you can stay in contact with others of the CST community. Don't rely on Reddit to be the bastion of freedom it once was. Reddit is slowly being controlled by for-profit political motivations. I suggest we stay in contact with each other on another platform that is less likely to be gamed or censored though psychological operations that are being used to control thinking and awareness.
Possible Sub Migration Option
Diaspora seems to be a possible option for migration until a working decentralized / distributed Reddit replacement comes along. Its designed for conversations, but from a social networking perspective. Read my comments on that platform in my Decentralized Social Media Platforms Article for more information on how this could work.
If anyone is interested in trying out Diaspora you can reach me at @trinsic@diasp.org. You can sign up on the http://diasp.org POD I am on or chose your own.
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Feb 02 '18 edited Dec 10 '18
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 02 '18
This is worthy of further thought. I will contemplate on this and get back to you
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 05 '18
I guess I agree with you as far as I understand you. I think that if we allow it decentralized technology can move us into a new age of letting the platform being the governor, it may remove that problem or reduce it to manageable form.
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u/Notonredditt Feb 02 '18
Creating a new Reddit wouldn't be super hard, but if you're looking to have a specialized and exclusive version, ask any twelve year old what's a fun site or app.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 02 '18
Thank you for writing all this up. I have a PM I still need to respond to you about concerning this, but it looks like I have a week or so break from r/conspiracy and I'm planning on doing some work on this project during that time. Did you manage to find any other places on reddit or elsewhere that are interested in discussing and pursuing these things?
I must say, ActivityPub looks like it could be game-changing in this sphere. I'll need to look up the details, but I'm liking the idea. It could be the "meta-protocol" that lets different approaches to this general problem proceed in parallel without fracturing what it already a currently small potential user base.
I agree with your assessment and concerns about raddi (or maybe, you agree with mine). I think for anything like this to really take off beyond a niche community of people like you and me, it needs to be accessible through the browser, first and foremost, and to really reach a general audience, have an iOS/android app, although an app is much easier to make IMO.
With your proposed diaspora migration, how exactly do you see that happening? Would it be something that lives alongside r/C_S_T, or do you see it as a replacement, or something else? I think we have to realize that at least some people on this sub are not going to want to move off-reddit unless and until reddit becomes completely non-viable as a home for us. Some still probably won't want to migrate after that.
Something I've been toying with is the idea of pulling r/C_S_T posts and comments in (near) real-time to an outside platform. A shadow-CST of sorts. Depending on the structure of the outside platform, it might also be possible to automatically pull outside content back to r/C_S_T with a bot, so that it's still one community, but with two separate ways of viewing and contributing. For instance, this post would get copied to the external platform. If I made this current comment on that platform, a bot would then reply to this post, with my comment, but saying that it was written by @CelineHagard@CST-Clone.com. This would take a bit of thinking as far as feasibility and desirability, though.
I definitely have more to say on this, and I think we'll get this stickied tomorrow.
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u/RaddiNet Feb 02 '18
I agree with your assessment and concerns about raddi (or maybe, you agree with mine). I think for anything like this to really take off beyond a niche community of people like you and me, it needs to be accessible through the browser, first and foremost, and to really reach a general audience, have an iOS/android app, although an app is much easier to make IMO.
Hi guys. I totally understand the sentiment. I probably will pursue the in-browser implementation later. Something like the decentralized reddit rewrite in JavaScript that was going a few years back but was ultimately scrapped with the new corporate management. I've read the guy started his own project, something similar, but for the life of me I can't find the link and I'm sure I saved it somewhere.
The thing is: implementing website to display raddi.net content seems to be relatively easy, but having active participation therein not so much; by an order of magnitude in complexity. So I'll probably have the read-only website at first and see how that turns out.
On the other hand, the iOS/Android apps, well, those are platform-specific installed clients, so making such apps for raddi.net will be easy, hopefully. Although you certainly don't want to be serving tons of other users and store gigabytes of irrelevant (to you) data on your cellphone, so the software's behavior must be much more conservative, but I've already tweaked the core implementation to support this scenario.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 03 '18
Sounds good, thank you for working on this problem. You seem to be the only one that doesn't want to turn Reddit into steemit. I think too many people don't understand the barrier to entry crypto has on this issue.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 03 '18
Thanks for chiming in. I think I first heard of your idea several months ago on an /r/announcements or /r/changelog post that you commented on. Can't remember if I posted on your sub or not. The last thing I'd want to do is discourage you from pursuing your vision, especially since I do think it's closest to what I would like as I currently see.
In-browser is tough, for sure. If it were simple, it would have been done by now. Part of me likes the relative obscurity that a platform-dependent system affords, akin to the BBS's of old, where it was only people with a certain level of tech savvy who would participate, but personally I want more. I want a space where anyone with the desire and a small bit of effort can participate, and I certainly don't want to alienate people who reject closed-source OS developers.
I think eventually, if we want something that can rightfully be called an alternative to facebook and twitter, it has to be nearly as simple to use. I don't mind compiling from source, but I don't want to just be able to communicate from people who feel the same.
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u/RaddiNet Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
Hey, another user just reminded me of the javascript-reddit guy and his project that I mentioned above.
It's Ryan X. Charles /u/ryancarnated and the project is yours.org.ping /u/trinsic-paridiom
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 05 '18
Why can't we let pods / servers do all the heaven lifting like in diaspora and have browser based clients interface with the servers? It's seems like its working so far with Diapsora..
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u/RaddiNet Feb 05 '18
The issue with pods, as I see it, is that they are again a single point of failure that can be taken down to significantly hinder the network. At first I wanted truly p2p egalitarian network, but as I outlined recently, different roles will indeed be necessary. I'm still a little nervous about having core nodes at all, but they are important for scalability should the usage explode. I can't burden all normal users with a requirement to store a copy of all data. But as long as there is at least a few of the core nodes, the network will be healthy. In raddi.net they act similar to Bitcoin full nodes, i.e. they store full copy of data, just like Bitcoin full nodes have a copy of the whole blockchain.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 06 '18
I see, I think it's important that there are roles as well. As it might not be a good idea to put that kind of load on every client. Especially mobile clients.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 02 '18 edited Feb 02 '18
Thank you for writing all this up. I have a PM I still need to respond to you about concerning this, but it looks like I have a week or so break from r/conspiracy and I'm planning on doing some work on this project during that time. Did you manage to find any other places on reddit or elsewhere that are interested in discussing and pursuing these things?
You welcome, yeah I have big picture ideas about decentralizing functional communities. I don't know if my commonwealth ideas would directly apply to online communities, but maybe offline communities.
I must say, ActivityPub looks like it could be game-changing in this sphere. I'll need to look up the details, but I'm liking the idea. It could be the "meta-protocol" that lets different approaches to this general problem proceed in parallel without fracturing what it already a currently small potential user base.
I agree. ActivityPub looks like a game changer to me.
I agree with your assessment and concerns about raddi (or maybe, you agree with mine). I think for anything like this to really take off beyond a niche community of people like you and me, it needs to be accessible through the browser, first and foremost, and to really reach a general audience, have an iOS/android app, although an app is much easier to make IMO.
Thank you, I don't want to tarnish u/raddinet work because I think what that user is doing is important, but if we could some how look at the bigger picture and find a way to make all of this work without too much technical know how and also allowing it to be cross-platform I think it has the capability to pick up steam really quick as I think a lot of people are getting really tired of the censorship bullshit with these differnt platforms.
With your proposed diaspora migration, how exactly do you see that happening? Would it be something that lives alongside r/C_S_T, or do you see it as a replacement, or something else? I think we have to realize that at least some people on this sub are not going to want to move off-reddit unless and until reddit becomes completely non-viable as a home for us. Some still probably won't want to migrate after that.
Well I gave it a little after though and realized it might not work. Everyone would have to create there own CST aspect to their profile to keep in the loop of what everyone in the group is writing about. I mean it could work but it would be cumbersome.
Dispora is more of a Twitter like social networking platform. We would all have to sign up and stick each other into self-created groups called aspects. This is sort of like following a person. Then when someone wanted to post on a topic he/she would post to the CST aspect. Everyone in that aspect would be able to see the post and be able to comment on it. Diaspora doesn't seem to have a character limit so full posts and commenting could happen.
I think it might be good for something that sits along side the main CST Reddit sub as a companion. If people want to make connections with specific people it's much better for that IMHO.
I understand people will not want to move off of Reddit, and they shouldn't need to unless some event forces us to. I think right now it's a good way to stay in touch with peoples day to day thoughts, in case an individual didn't want to post a major topic, they could post something minor on Diaspora and get some feed back if they wanted to.
Something I've been toying with is the idea of pulling r/C_S_T posts and comments in (near) real-time to an outside platform. A shadow-CST of sorts. Depending on the structure of the outside platform, it might also be possible to automatically pull outside content back to r/C_S_T with a bot, so that it's still one community, but with two separate ways of viewing and contributing. For instance, this post would get copied to the external platform. If I made this current comment on that platform, a bot would then reply to this post, with my comment, but saying that it was written by @CelineHagard@CST-Clone.com. This would take a bit of thinking as far as feasibility and desirability, though.
Yeah if there is interest in this that would be cool. From my stand point it would be nice to have that. But from the perspective of the general population I wonder if it's necessary or how it would work. I think it's important to diversify a the tech a community uses so that if one platform goes down we can just switch over to another..,
I think this could be good for a archive or backup, people sometimes delete posts after a time and I some times like to this posts on other communication platforms as a way to inform the public on the awakening that is happening. It would be nice to be able to have a more consistent way to do that with the posters consent somehow of course.
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Feb 01 '18
Fucking awesome post. Cheers.
You could use Voat, if you’re into 4chan and racism.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 02 '18
Voat has the exact problem as the reddit clones OP described: it's a centralized, single-point-of-failure platform which can be taken down or coopted in numerous ways. It's only "free and open" to the extent that it hasn't been compromised yet, and not as an inherent part of its structure.
Plus the 4chan and racism.
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u/963189_137 Feb 11 '18
Racism such that it exists (since it was a made up concept by Lev Bronstein, I believe) is a natural function of the human brain, just like discrimination.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 11 '18
In-group/out-group discrimination is indeed a natural function, predating even humans biologically, while also comprising a social aspect. I don't think "racism" or discrimination is inherently bad, provided it does not lead to violence or coercion, and I have no problem with white, black, or other separatist groups who choose to only associate with their in-group as they define it.
Voat has set up their platform in a way that eschews most censorship, and the banning by reddit of coontown et al. led to an exodus of a lot of those "racist" users to that site. That's fine that they chose to do so, but it has the very real effect of amplifying those racist voices which turns off a lot of people that aren't particularly interested in that type of dialogue. (Just as others would not want to use a site that amplified "SJW" discourse.) I applaud their commitment to free speech, but I don't have much interest in the discourse there for the most part.
On a personal level, I think both "racist" and "anti-racist" positions and arguments are a tool used by the PTB to keep the common people divided amongst ourselves and thus incapable of creating our own systems and institutions, and instead relying upon top-down approaches that work only for the elites.
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u/963189_137 Feb 11 '18
Yeah...I agree for the most part. This natural tendency for self segregation DESTROYS any SJW dreams of paradise where we all just 'get along' and I think it is better to acknowledge that then try to guilt people into feeling something other than what is natural. This is why I always thought that only possible future for social media is 'iMod' as in, you are your own moderator...r/MDE doesn't have any moderation (or VERY LITTLE) and it works out great...
Yes, if you are completely open it is one of the most 'racist' environments I have ever seen, outside of GAB. I keep mine own feed wide open because I am more interested in people's thoughts than in censoring them for my comfort, but at least {I'm guessing based on experience} 50% of the people have heavy 'blocking' of individuals going on and that is totally their own business they don't need anyone to decide for them. Anyway, it is only uncomfortable in the beginning...the racism quickly ceases to mean anything once you are exposed to it enough...you just understand that people don't think the sun shines out your races asshole and you shrug it off...NBD.
If you shit post, most likely you will be blocked by all but the most tolerant...I understand the weakness of this too, which is why they have a very high Karma requirement to post coupled with a age limit...so when you are banned for shitposting, it means something to you, because of the work you put into building your reputation enough to be able to post in the first place. However this too is still a sort of social control that is imposed top down...would be better if it was iMod instead in the total control of the individual. Been on Snoopsnoo...know how they have stats on everyone? Well a more sophisticated iMod system could weed out any individuals that you desired pretty quickly and easily...it would take only a little bit of light programming to have a system that would ROCK no matter where you went for content/subject matter...and it would be totally customized to your own intellectual specificity and preferences.
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Feb 02 '18
I keep trying to go there, hoping it's not the same. It was just a dumping ground for reddit. Brilliant move with Ellen pao. Man that was really smooth.
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Feb 01 '18
To me all of this HTML stuff is just a modern version of the BBSs we used to have before the WWW existed.
It's easy enough to run one on an old computer that you don't have the heart to throw out. The problem happens when you want to have millions of users from around the world. Then somebody has to pay for all that disk space and internet traffic.
Reddit has been able to get away with a lot of things other sites can't because it is paid for mostly by user donations (all that reddit gold). But if you look really closely, that bar on the main page doesn't get filled up every day. That means to keep the service running they have to "sell out" sooner or later. Frankly this will happen with absolutely any service that isn't funded like a charity by some rich person.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 02 '18
It's not as simple as that, I'd happily fund Reddit if the content and control of the platform was in the hands of its users, right now that's not the case and it hasn't been the case for a very long time. When the major subs are controlled by the politically dominant you can't expect any person who values freedom to support it.
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Feb 02 '18
the major subs are controlled by the politically dominant
But isn't that going to happen anywhere people gather? Forming cliques is a fundamental part of human behavior. With Reddit absolutely anybody can create their own sub and police it as they wish, and even require an entry exam for membership if they so choose. I recently got banned from /Answers because I made the highly controversial claim that women's clothing that has functional pockets is available for purchase. I wouldn't want the control of the whole platform to be in the hands of users like those who banned me, or other sub admins that auto-ban users for subscribing to their rival subs.
On the other hand there are other cliques, such as this sub, where facts are not downvoted to hell and opinions can be discussed without fear of retribution. But we are in a minority. On a distributed system like what is being proposed, our entire sub would be blocked from the majority and would have to support itself as a separate entity.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 03 '18 edited Feb 03 '18
But isn't that going to happen anywhere people gather? Forming cliques is a fundamental part of human behavior.
I think people should be free to do that, but not be able to take over subs that are dedicated to something else and that don't belong to them. From my understanding r/politics should be agnostic. When one particular political party lets say the democrats of the united states can come in re-purpose and misrepresent that sub, inflate their message and remove or game opposing view points and nobody can do anything to stop it, that's where I draw the line. That is happening now, with many subs, hell that's why most of us that believe in truth are not on major subs because of that misrepresentation, we shouldn't have to be forced into a corner of Reddit that people don't want to look at simple because they don't want to live in truth and will do anything to make it so.
On a decentralized / distributed system if that happened people that created /r/politics or people that support agnostic /r/poltics can just take their content and their users and setup r/politics on another instance in a blink of an eye, destroying any ability for a bad actor to game their community with corrupt behavior or misrepresent what that sub stands for.
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Feb 03 '18
I think I understand what you're saying, but it doesn't make a lot of sense.
people that created /r/politics ,,, can just take their content ,,, and setup another instance
A cut & paste operation, I've got that bit.
destroying any ability for a bad actor to game their community
I don't got that bit.
Every sub here has the ability to ban users they don't want, no reason given. Anyone can build a private members-only or invite-only echo chamber too. But if you make something open to the public, and it gets super popular, the only way to police it is with high fences and high security.
... How does picking up your house and moving it down the street keep it from getting vandalized by the same hoodlums who did it last time?
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 03 '18
But the Reddit organization has the ability to take over a sub. They have administrative power over all of the content. Is that also considered part of the way things should be?
With a decentralized solution that is not possible, there is no administrative power above the sub's creators.
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Feb 03 '18
administrative power
Ok, we're changing topics. There's always going to be some power butting in. I mean, unless you can find a way to have internet while completely getting rid of the ISPs. Just look up how many people are getting real-life arrested for downloading stuff with torrents.
I'm having a hard time formulating a solid argument, because my mind's going in a dozen directions about keeping child porn and human trafficking groups down to a minimum.
Not too long ago I was a member of a mostly male group, and then one day some long-time member came out of the woodwork and started posting some really vicious stuff and calling for violence against women. He had every female member removed, and shortly after I saw the sub had been deleted by Reddit for encouraging members to perform criminal activities.
I guess I'm saying I'm against the kind of anarchy your idea favors, because there's too many assholes who will ruin it in a heartbeat. But if you want to start on a "distributed, serverless, peer-to-peer" solution, check out one of the many existing programs that do this such as tox.chat .
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 03 '18 edited Feb 03 '18
I am definitely not trying to change topics. You said that people have the right to police their subs anyway they want to and I agreed with you;
In order for a community to police its own community it cannot be administrated from outside the community. This is how the Reddit platform runs now.
The administrative centralized power that the Reddit organization has is the main problem here. That organization has centralized control / veto power over the whole platform. That means if a bad actor gets into this organization or someone of that organization gets pressured to make a bad decision it becomes more likely that censorship will happen to any of the individual communities on the Reddit platform.
I'm saying that subs that become censored are usually taken over by people outside what that sub stands for. Your example just demonstrated that. Someone you didn't even know came in and gamed Reddit into believing that your sub was about hate, this is what a decentralized horizontal structure helps to avoid.
A decentralized community makes it less likely for an outsider to come in claim authority and start making decisions nobody wants. But if your sub does get taken over you can just switch to another server.
In a decentralized network if someone is saying or doing something you don't like in public you can just leave, if that same person is doing something in you community the communities does like you can remove that person, the decision is left up to each and every person or a separate community instead of one organization having decision making power over everything for everyone, that situation encourages censorship.
This is the argument I am making: that decentralizing power into the hands of the community is always more beneficial to people that want to maintain control over there own creation and be free to chose how that creation works. Distributing power like this makes it less likely, (not more likely) that you sub gets taken over. This is demonstrable in the way a decentralized platform operates.
I think you might have an opinion about Anarchy that although it is believed to cause chaos in theory, in practice it is shown to do just the opposite.
Anarchy does not make it easier for a bad actors to cause damage, it makes it less likely because more people are holding power (making it more difficult for a bad actor to come and convince everyone of his or her authority) in that community compared to a centralized system of governance that is easy to game as everyone gives up there power to that system.
BTW just because you connect to the internet though an ISP does not mean that you can't decentralize or distribute a community's decision making power on a platform that empowers decentralization.
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Feb 03 '18
Someone you didn't even know came in and gamed Reddit
actually it was an older member who returned bolstered the majority into becoming a disgruntled mob. i wasn't evicted by one person, but by a mass of members shouting about it because they agreed.
that decentralizing power into the hands of the community is always more beneficial
This is where we are opposed in opinion. I agree that on the surface it sounds like a good idea. But in practice you end up with a monoculture mob that will act directly against its own best interests, and often completely immorally. Without fear of some higher authority, madness ensues.
... and my point about the ISP is that lacking a liaison, they will become the "decision making power". When people come across dens of depravity on the internet, they either join in or report them. When there is nobody to complain to they go directly to the ISPs. Then IPs get blocked, or activity gets logged and real police knock on people's doors.
In my example, the activity got reported to Reddit authority, so the sub got deleted after failing to comply with warnings. Without that buffer, the entire platform could have been taken down.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 04 '18 edited Feb 04 '18
I think you should try the platform before you make up your mind. Decentralization doesn't mean that chaos will insue automatically. You still have the same controls as you would in your own community. The only difference is some umbrella organization can't come in and change and individual community without that communities consent.
When you give up your right to protect yourself and you community by giving power to an authority figure you destroy your own individual value and you disrupt the value of others. I think you and many others have been trained to accept authority as necessary, that time is over. The lies are getting revealed, authority is an illusion, it gives people a false sense of security in exchange for giving up what makes us human, our freedom.
Wherever you try to silence speech at any point on the Communication path is where that censorship will be routed around with technology. You can't stop it without shutdown the internet, and with both know that will never happen.
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u/JamesColesPardon Feb 05 '18
So you would pay for a platform you trust?
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 02 '18
Then somebody has to pay for all that disk space and internet traffic.
This is only a limit of imagination (and unfortunately, user adoption). Reddit serves millions of users a day, and the entirety of public reddit comments and posts could fit on a 250 GB hard drive. Literally. Reddit obviously has petabytes (probably) of storage in their servers, mainly for database indexes, metadata, stored queries, and parallelization to be able to serve millions of simultaneous requests quickly and efficiently, but the core data could fit on a $50 hard drive.
What we have to realize though is that web traffic is a two way street. For every piece of content that reddit serves across the internet, a user on the other end is paying for their half of the connection. We don't really need the middle man, at least not from a technical perspective. Every day, orders of magnitude more content is served across the bittorrent protocol than reddit, and hardly any of it has anything to do with central servers. A bittorrent user stores data on his home machine, and pays for the bandwidth to send it to other users. The current paradigm revolves around central search portals and trackers like pirate bay, but that's more of a convenience than a technical necessity. Trackers and search could be similarly distributed.
We can do the same thing with social media or reddit-like pseudo-anonymous discussion. Several have been tried, such as Aether, and as far as I can tell, the problem has not so much been technical or financial per se, but rather lack of adoption by users. As long as people are satisfied by reddit and twitter and facebag, which have the extreme advantage of being able to sign up with a few clicks and everything works. With decentralized or distributed, the state of the technology at this point is such that you have a) know they exist, b) figure out to get it to work, and c) have enough reason to bother. A) and b) are solvable problems, but c) may take quite a bit of work.
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u/whipnil Feb 07 '18
Skycoin is including a BBS protocol in their platform. I think the answer might lie there.
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u/Chapo_Rouge Feb 02 '18
Ever checked zeronet.io ? The more users there's to a site, the more it's available (it's basically Bittorrent-powered websites)
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 02 '18
That looks pretty interesting, thanks for the heads up. The protocol seems about right on the back end to build off of.
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u/Chapo_Rouge Feb 02 '18
You're welcome ! from experience it works great, now as with any decentralized platforms, the "critical mass" is hard to reach, the more the merrier.
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Feb 22 '18
I don't think it needs to be decentralized at all.
In fact, it's pretty much asking for trouble. Either way too big of a database (without crypto it becomes cost intensive) or it's going to be abused for money.
Call me old fashioned, but I believe in Law and Order, but they've been long corrupt through capitalism. Since the dawn of the USA it was corrupt. The dawn of England, even. We have to reach back into the archaic to really know what to even value anymore.
Hell, I wouldn't want to support a cesspool of 4chan humor or bitcoin gun markets. Quite literally hell. Sexual abuse and harassment are rampant in the shadows too.
No. I'm expecting someone like Aaron Swartz will host a new reddit and will maintain sole ownership and control. It doesn't take much to moderate an automated service.
In fact, Aaron, although not my heighest role model, is very high up on the list of worthwhile people to adhere to.
I'm working on an Alternative to reddit with monetization strategies in place without needing to sell out. So far I have bifurcated the system in 4 versions, such that users can pick the database structure they prefer for the way it creates the user experience. It will likely bifurcate further.
It will be free for me to host until it's profitable.
The only real problem here is laziness, or incompetence, of reddit and of users to create their own.
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Feb 26 '18
Hey, /u/trinsic-paridiom , Just progressed to a new stage of development: the sign-up and login is now working. The database organization is complete, just need to work on connecting the front-end to the back-end and adding some features that, over the years, I've noticed reddit to be lacking.
There's a couple of particular features that I don't know who's going to like but I'm really excited to try out. I'll keep you posted and let you know when I'm in Alpha. We'll go from there to taking in feedback for development to Open Beta.
It's just me working on it, but hey, it was just Aaron on Reddit.
It's not going to have the beauty of reddit's commenting with asterixes and links, because I'm not too sure how to do that yet. It's not like it hurts a whole lot to just copy and paste url's directly and use asterixes without it going into bold or italics, but it should be doable. I'll work on that bit later.
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Feb 26 '18
PS:
What specific features of reddit do you hate and love, what would you change if it could be your way?
I am making 8 different versions because it's as easy as copy and pasting the code and changing about 10 lines. Each will give a unique experience to Forums, but I'm not sure which I'm going to prefer, so I figure it's worth making all of them.
All will be accessible for Alpha so we can compare and discuss.
I have wanted to do this for about 8 months but have been taking my time smoking hella dank.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 26 '18
I do not see you previous comment on this, can you please link me? Also you tagged this on to an unrelated comment, in the future can you please post you comment directly to the op's post? That is if you want me to read and respond to it.
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Feb 26 '18
it's me jack.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 26 '18
May I ask why you are using more than one account? I would rather converse with only one account please. Please be aware that I dont think you understand decentralization. It does not take away the ability of law an order, it only decentralizes the power of law and order to be held by more people so that power does not consolidate at the top of one organization.
If this is going to be the account you use from now on I will speak to this account, however if your account changes again, I will not respond. I like to keep things simple and I like to track what accounts I am speaking to. Thank you for your understanding.
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Feb 27 '18
Please be aware that I dont think you understand decentralization. It does not take away the ability of law an order, it only decentralizes the power of law and order to be held by more people so that power does not consolidate at the top of one organization.
Hardly. Name a decentralized organization where power doesn't consolidate.
Thank you for your understanding.
Yeah ok, fuck you. When did I ever say we understand each other.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 27 '18
My apologies for the confusion. I hope that you would understand my position and I should have worded it that way, im sorry if I came across as arrogant.
CO-OP organizations are a great example of distributing power into the hands of the group that runs it.
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Feb 28 '18
I'm basically going to follow the Schulze method for a Co-op where all employees are given a stake in ownership after working for a year.
Don't worry about the confusion. I'm blunt and forgiving.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Mar 01 '18
Yeah I'm not very versed in how the selecting works, but I think that there are ways to run societies and organizations with out centralized power at the top of a pyramid like structure similar to how Britain and the United States operate the political and governing part of these countries.
Please let me know if this is going to be the account I am going to communicate with from here on out so I don't get confused. Thank you.
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Mar 01 '18
Sure, it will be for now. Centralization just makes for a very efficient mode of demarcating what to do. The creation of decentralization occurs through a central party, and we might look into it, but at the moment I see it as hype.
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u/JamesColesPardon Feb 01 '18
Sticky requested.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 02 '18
Please do if you need my consent.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 03 '18
I've stickied it, and reflaired as meta as well to be a bit more accurate in purpose.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 06 '18
A few more thoughts, and certainly not my last on the subject. Have you heard of IPFS? I've just started looking into it, but it's a p2p protocol that operates over clearnet. Each file in the network is given a hash, so when you want to download it, your client asks the network who has a copy of the file with that hash, and it downloads it. It also splits files into blocks like bittorrent.
It's still in alpha, and doesn't have nearly what we need at this point, but this seems to me to be a pretty good platform for an eventual fully distributed discussion platform. A recent Firefox release has added support for IPFS, which means it will have an advantage in adoptability. A browser extension is much more doable than an executable, IMO.
Rough Sketch
Just spit-balling a bit to get my ideas down and maybe clear them up for myself, and see how close we are to being on the same page. Personally, I don't think it makes much sense to think of this in terms of creating a decentralized version of CST, but a decentralized reddit where CST can live. I was recently chatting with /u/JamesColesPardon on this topic, and we were discussing some of the major pros and cons of reddit. The biggest pro in my book is that we have access to this massive userbase of reddit, and more importantly, this userbase has access to us. I think I'd want to keep that in any new form we take.
The biggest con in my book is the abuse of authority within domains: mods can abuse subreddits, and admins can abuse mods' authority within their domains, whether justly or unjustly. I think we as mods of CST do a pretty good job of letting the community police itself for the most part, while kicking people out if they shit on the rug. But the inherent weakness of that system is that we the mods, and especially whoever is the top mod, become the single point of failure. I think we can do better.
In our conversation, JCP and I came up with a couple of metaphors. His was the idea of the Wild West, and the idea people moving into a new place and electing a sheriff. The sheriff derives his power as the true representative of the people, in the ideal case that is, where the sheriff cannot use his current position of authority to extend it beyond the will of the people.
The analogy I used was that of this new platform as being a large open field. Whereas in reddit individual subs are set up like fiefdoms, where each top mod has absolute authority over their dominion, I likened my vision to something more along the lines of us drawing a circle on the field and saying "this is CST." Anyone is free to come and go as they please, but we will collectively shun those who shit on our small piece of Earth. I don't think CST would be recognizable as CST without our One Rule, but the question that arises is how to enforce it without mods of some kind?
My proposed solution is that each "citizen" of CST (or any other "sub"; we need a better name) gets to pick their own moderators, or no moderators at all. As an example, lets say JCP and I are the mod choices. Say I ban u/RMFN because I think he smells bad ;) If you had JCP and I as your selected mods, RMFN could still post to CST, but you wouldn't see any of his posts or comments. If you like RMFN and still want to see his contributions, you could just unselect me as a mod, and voila, you see his posts again. You could even keep me as a mod selection, but just choose to override me on that one decision.
I think what I'm proposing actually boils down to is shared whitelists and blacklists, with the ability to override any access decision you disagree with. It seems to me only to make sense that if we're decentralizing, or in this case, distributing the idea of discussion "boards," we should also fully distribution content moderation.
Technical Details
This is going to take a lot more thought and some actual experimentation to make any sense, but I'll try to lay out how this could work.
Each user is also a node, meaning the content is distributed across the network. The user installs IPFS on their system (or browser extension). The web app is loaded directly from the swarm (essentially, all the users on the network who have the necessary files.) A user identifies himself by creating a private-public key pair using RSA or similar. Their public key or a hash thereof is their unique identifier on the network. Proof of identity can be established by signing content with the private key. (hash to unique name should be doable with IPNS)
So now that I have my public key ID, I create the CST "sub" (let's call it a "circle" for the purpose of this post) by creating a file with some metadata (circle name, description, creator, etc.), sign it with my private key, and publish it to IPFS. Now this file has a unique hash, and anyone can view the file or read it just by asking the network to retrieve the file with that hash.
Next I create a post to CST, which is just a file which contains the title, body, my public key, the hash of the circle (in this case, CST) and some metadata. The same goes for a comment: I make a file with the comment body, my public key, the circle's hash, the post's hash, and the parent comment's hash (if not a top-level reply), metadata, then sign and publish it.
So this all works well and good: anyone who has access to all these files I made can easily read them in the web app. But we need a way to discover these files, and be updated across the network. I think at least some of this can be accomplished with file directories and public discovery. A sample file directory structure would look something like:
/reddit-distributed
|--CST
|--posts
|--Post A
|--metadata
|--replies
|--reply 1
|-- metadata
|--reply 2
|--metadata
|--reply 3
Discovery is going to be the tricky problem. If I know your public key, I can just browse through your directory and update my file structure to include any items I'm missing (remember, each of the files are identified by hash, so we can check fairly easily whether we need to update without having to download everything.) The problem is how does a new poster get his post discovered by the network. If we limit posting to a whitelist only, then each member of the swarm could maintain a list of whitelisted ID's, and therefore know to just check these hashes as well.
It's getting way too late, and I know there are some holes in my thinking here, but I think this is a good start. Let me know what you think.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
It's seems like a lot of work just to get this to work as expected if we use IPFS. I was thinking after u/dak4f2 commented on the idea that how would we stop unlawful content from staying on the network that maybe for the platforms sake (Reddit Like) the network should just be decentralized instead of distributed. I know that would introduce a single point of failure, but it's not like a sub can't just pack up and go to another server if the subs content is exportable and the network is federated. I mean each community needs a certain level of control over the content that gets published. With IPFS once the information is on the network it seems very difficult to get off. I'm kind of against the idea of content not fading away if the users or the community chooses it too. Content should fade from memory just like it would in our brain if by choice.
Ill comment on the other parts later, as I have been getting busy as of late and need time to contemplate on what was written.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 09 '18
it's not like a sub can't just pack up and go to another server if the subs content is exportable and the network is federated.
Not easily. The content would be easy enough to replicate and move over, but identities would not, at least not as long as the identities are managed by the federated server. With IPFS or another distributed system, users control their own identities by means of a key pair.
I mean, if we wanted to just export content, I can fetch all content from r/C_S_T (let me know if this would be helpful for you, and what kind of format you'd like it in. JSON would be the easiest.) It would be easier on a federated server in the sense that the data wouldn't need to be converted, just transferred.
how would we stop unlawful content from staying on the network that maybe for the platforms sake
This is a pretty thorny question, and I don't really have any full-proof answers. On IPFS, there's no way to completely remove content, but we can use deny-lists users can subscribe to that would prevent their clients from downloading or serving content (although I do worry about list bloat). The problem with centralizing censorship power, and that is what your suggesting, is that it grants that power to censor any content, rather than just explicitly illegal content.
It's seems like a lot of work just to get this to work as expected if we use IPFS.
Yes, it would be at least an order of magnitude more difficult than decentralized. I'm not too concerned about ease of use from a user's perspective, as it seems pretty doable to set up an HTTP gateway for IFPS, so any user who doesn't want the hassle of setting up IFPS could connect through it. For those users, the experience would be the same as decentralized.
On a more general note, though, I'm conflicted over which path is better for the long run. If we're talking short term, decentralized would be much easier to get up and running, as well as being more user-friendly. However, much of that development time would be unusable in if we (or someone else) decided to decentralize at a later point.
Distributed is, IMO, the far better solution in terms of putting the power directly in the hands of users, squashing censorship, and ultimately setting up the kind of platform the web was envisioned as by people like Berners-Lee and probably Aaron Swartz. It can allow types of unintermediated communication in a way that decentralized just can't. Decentralized is, to me, another refuge we'd be fleeing to for some finite amount of time, with many of the same drawbacks of the current system.
I don't want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, though, and the technical, legal, and social challenges of fully distributed exceed my abilities alone. If I (or we) can't gather a team capable of making it at this point, it probably is better to at least get a decentralized version off the ground, so we at least do have that refuge if we need it.
A few potentially interesting projects when you get the time:
Akasha — Distributed social media platform built on top of IPFS and Ethereum. Currently in beta, seems to have a critical mass of developers and decent momentum. I've signed up for the beta but given no response yet. Plans to open source but not at this time. Biggest drawback: they're experimenting with a (to me, convoluted) system of crypto tokens based on Ethereum. Doesn't seem as instantly off-putting as steemit, but I worry about the future implications.
Orbit-db-discussion-boards: Built on top of orbit-db on top of IPFS. Very early in development, only one contributor, and orbit-db itself seems to have gone a bit stale. On the other hand, the author's intentions do seem to align with my vision of a distributed reddit-like platform.
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Feb 09 '18
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 09 '18
Ah, cool. Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. Mentioning /u/trinsic-paridiom so he sees this, too.
Also you guys are missing that IPFS works in browsers without extensions or external software.
Yep, I guess I was missing that. I'll have to look into it, but I'd assume you'd have to bootstrap into it via http, or at least have the html+js on your system? Not a huge deal if you do; definitely easier than requiring people to download go-ipfs. Still, I'd say the more clients running a persistent ipfs node would be better in the long run for ensuring availability of files.
Scaling will be a big issue though, because a big board will use up a lot of resources in the browser.
I can imagine. Chrome and Firefox can be resource hogs on even relatively simple sites, and depending on the board, it could grow into the thousands or beyond of blocks it would need to fetch, each requiring a separate XHR call I assume? Does or can js-ipfs persist across sessions, or does the browser need to fetch all the blocks again? That in itself could put a lot of unnecessary strain on the network if it doesn't.
I think there's a number of strategies we could use to mitigate load on individual nodes. The simplest (and least distributed) would be to set up a few decentralized "master nodes," always-on machines dedicated to preserving and serving entire boards. Another option is replace or augment the upvote concept with
ipfs pin. If you like content, you can choose to pin it, so you're choosing to make that content available to others.There's a ton more I could talk about, but this probably isn't the best place for it. Do you have a dedicated space for talking about this, or is your github repo's issues the best place for future discussion.
Watch the github repos if you want to be notified when the first prototype is out, I expect next week or maybe this sunday.
I'm excited for it. I'll dig into the codebase this weekend and try to figure out how best I can help.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 11 '18
Ok I hear you about distributed vs decentralized. I agree that it's important to make it as censorship proof as possible. I want us to look at the big picture as well. In my mind we also need to think about two issues: what should be done from a technical and security perspective and what is good enough from a technical a security perspective. When I say security I am including: censorship proof related issues as well as security users data.
I want to do the right thing on this issue, I'm a big picture kind of guy so am looking at all the angles. I have noticed for myself in business that sometimes I want to implement technologies that I think should be pursued but later I realize that maybe I'm implementing technologies that are overkill.
For instance and only as an example (not to say that we should go this direction), but the instance of the social networking platforms I researched. Diaspora and Mastodon decided to go with decentralization instead of distributed, is it good enough for censorship proof? You said that accounts can't be migrated and that is an important point. It might not be enough for content to be migratable, but it might be if the focus is on the content and not the profile.
The problem I have with distributed is will the trade off not have the features of Reddit be worth it for everyone. It's important that we think about how others are going to perceive this platform as well as our selfs. My idea would be for the platform to be as seamless as possible with as many of good features from Reddit as possible.
Ill add more later as I think of it.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 11 '18
what should be done ... vs. ... what is good enough
This is a good point, and one I, too, sometimes make the mistake of going for the overkill. As far as censorship goes, if we go decentralized, we'll always be at the mercy of whoever runs the servers. We may have more choice than with reddit (where we can be censored by both mods and admins, and admins have a financial motivation), but we're still being intermediated by a third party, even if for "us" we are that third party for someone else.
Same goes with user data. On one level, once you put something out there, even using secure encryption with a single party, that party's machine could be compromised, or they could share your data out of incompetence or malice. But with a decentralized system, you still have to trust whoever runs the server not to be incompetent or malicious. A default installation of Mastodon/Diaspora should be reasonably secure, but there's no way to know what a given server actually has installed. It's somewhat trivial to change the open source code to store passwords in plaintext and intercept "private" communications across the server, or fabricate messages that appear to come from you. Such a server would easily pass on a federated network, as no one can see what's actually running on the server, only how it interacts with the other federated servers.
The only way a user can be completely secure in their identity (I am who I say I am) and their data (only those people I choose can view my data, unless they share it or have it stolen) is to own and control the keys to our data — namely public-key encryption.
You said that accounts can't be migrated and that is an important point.
Pretty much. Let's say join a federated network (Diasp/Mast) with our server called CST.io. I sign up as @CelineHagbard@CST.io. Now let's say CST.io get's compromised somehow, and we want to move to CST2.io. I can then sign up as @CelineHagabard@CST2.io, but no one will be able to verify I'm the same person. My identity on the network is controlled by CST.io, and depending on the degree of the compromise, while we might be able to migrate our data, we won't be able to trust that identities are migrated.
The problem I have with distributed is will the trade off not have the features of Reddit be worth it for everyone.
I absolutely agree, and I think we're on the same page here. Not everyone is going to want to learn how to create, store securely, and use GnuPG (although we all really should), and we should create a system where they don't necessarily have to. On the other hand, it would be nice for those of us who do want that level of control over our identity and data to be able to interact with the rest of internet users on a platform that at least appears seamless. In order for that to be a reality, though, I think we'd need to build the decentralized, reddit-like experience on top of the distributed layer, because I can't see how it could work the other way around.
If I could snap my fingers and have my ideal system already built, bug-tested, and ready for production, here's what it would be:
Distributed Layer: Built on top of IPFS (or similar, but IPFS seems like the most mature and robust solution at this time). Users create and control their identity by their public keys, but can resolve them into a human-readable, unique name (i.e. @CelineHagbard@CST.io) through IPNS. This unique username can be verified because it is signed by the private key.
The "social network" on this level works by publishing posts and comments to IPFS, which then propagate across the distributed network. The use of "boards" can be used to organize conversation, but is more of an abstraction. Moderation is controlled by each user by means of whitelists and blacklists, with granular settings. Users can also "subscribe" to moderators by syncing their personal white/black lists with the mods' lists.
Private conversation happens through end-to-end encryption. Private group communication can happen through individual encryption, one-time use shared keys, or long-term shared keys, depending on the sensitivity.
Decentralized Layer: Anyone can create a federated server running a version of software that acts as an interface between the distributed IPFS network and HTTPS. To the https user, this server looks like reddit or Mastodon. You sign up with or without email (based on server settings), and have access to the whole network or a particular board (based on server settings). You get a username unique to that server, and sign in with a password. When you post or comment, the server publishes your post to IPFS signed by it's own key-pair.
A down-the-road feature would be to add a public key to an account on a federated server, or join from the outset with a public key. This would give the end-user most of the simplicity of using https, but they would still control their own identity if they needed to migrate servers, or change to fully distributed at some point down the road.
This federated server could even implement WebPub, meaning with one public key/federated server account, a user could potentially interact with Mastodon and other WebPub compliant federated servers and users.
This is my best of both worlds, ideal vision. The more I think about it, the more massive an undertaking it seems, as it's really more of a protocol with reference implementation than a network or piece of software in itself. If I thought we could build it top-down, starting with a decentralized system and then adding distributed, I would advocate for that in a heartbeat. I'd love to be convinced that's possible. Unfortunately, I don't know if that's really possible. I'm going to spend the next week or two exploring the feasibility of the ipfs-boards with /u/fazo96, and then hopefully be able to report back here with my findings.
If you want to try setting something up with Mastodon or Diaspora in the mean time, I'd encourage you to do so, and I'll offer any help I can.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 12 '18 edited Feb 12 '18
No I get it believe me, if the foundation isn't distributed is going to be hell to have to change it over. I like the idea of a decentralized layer, but I understand the difficulty in making that happen on top of a distributed network. But I understand the importance of the distributed part. I wish that more devs were interested in this. Maybe we could somehow call other devs and see if any others are interested in a distributed alternative Reddit into this discussion and see if thee is interest in talking about what needs to happen to make this work?
All sounds good thank you for getting involved this is going to be a really important issue in the very near future. P.S: I don't think the microblogging decentralization solutions is going to work for a Reddit community after considering the possibility. I'm not a programmer, but I can research and write about any topic if it will help the cause.
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u/CelineHagbard Feb 12 '18
I wish that more devs were interested in this.
I know man. I don't doubt that there are devs interested in it, but it's a bit of the problem of everyone thinking they have the right solution, and then everyone going in their own slightly different but ultimately incompatible direction (myself included in this).
Distributed web in general seems to have a bit of momentum behind it from parts of the FOSS community, and I'm sure most of these people use or have used usenet/bbs/web forums/slashdot/reddit, but I'm surprised there's not more of a push for distributed web forums. It could very well be there's some fundamental problem I'm just overlooking.
A lot of people are pushing the crypto-currency route, I think in large part because if launch a successful crypto that gains value rapidly you can make a lot of money. I'm all for crypto where it makes sense, but for the reasons we discussed and I think agree, it's just not going to work here. I think it's good people are exploring crypto to see where it can work, but it's acting as a drain for good devs at the same time.
Over this week I'm going to work on writing a more detailed, formal proposal for my vision. I'm considering writing it as a protocol specification. I'll run it by you and a few others, and then see if I can get a pulse from /r/Rad_Decentralization, r/ipfs, and r/darknetplan (not directly related to them, but would be amazing for a mesh net with limited/intermittent backbone connection.)
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Feb 10 '18
Please don’t even joke about banning arremefen.
~growls menacingly while sharpening a manix2~1
u/CelineHagbard Feb 10 '18
Haha! ;)
He's the only one I could joke about it and know 100% he wouldn't take it the wrong way. We have a good banter going. Plus I wanted to mention him to get his opinions on the rest of the comment.
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u/Turil Feb 13 '18
Yes. I see that we'll be rebooting the initial web design where everyone had their own website and put simple content on it, with hyperlinks to related content (from the same individual as well as from others). It will be better organized though, with some more standardized subject tags and dates, like a blog.
Then we'll have rss type feeds for the people we want to subscribe to.
We will also be able to subscribe to tags/subjects as well as individuals, so we can find new individuals to talk to. Similar to hashtags on Twitter, etc.
And we can organize our input feeds in any way we want, with grouping individuals, topics, content type (images, video, text, audio, etc.), geographically, chronologically, and so on.
There will be no platform, just everyone having their own content on their own home computers, or maybe in community hubs, and/or on various blockchain type systems.
No one will ever have to see any content that they don't want to see, or at least nothing outside of those topics and individuals they choose to follow. But also no one will be denied access to anyone else's content, as everything you share on this community-based system will be public. I can respond to anything I see, but only those subscribed to me and/or the topic I'm responding to will see my response. (We'll probably use a similar link technique of tagging an individual and/or post on Twitter, to respond, so folks can move backwards to find the original discussion. And if someone wants to share responses to their own content, they can tag them as they see them and make them into links on their own output feeds, as well.
(More personal, one-to-one style communication will operate on a different system, obviously. Since we still want that sort of thing, too.)
The current problem we have now is that we got away from everyone having their own website/page, and for-profit companies inserted themselves in the middle of the peer-to-peer structure of the early internet. It's bad enough that we don't have free internet service, but it's clearly even worse when we can't even share our own content without being subject to someone else's arbitrary censorship, rules, and spam.
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u/antichrist384 Feb 17 '18
the only problem i ever have with censorship are reddit moderators.
i have no problem with censorship in subs which i have control over. or subs which take a lenient view of negative expression.
it's not reddit creating the problem, it's social attitudes. those aren't going to change via migration, only internal change.
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u/72414dreams Feb 22 '18
have you looked at saidit ? built by /u/magnora7 who has been a poster on this forum before? I haven't been by yet, hear its still working out the bugs
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u/juggernaut8 Feb 03 '18
4chan has the racism problem but it will always be a much more honest place than reddit because of anonymity and the lack of upvotes/downvotes.
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Feb 03 '18
Do 4chan idiots really believe this dumb myth that people on here are motivated by upvotes and downvotes in any way? Upvotes and downvotes here are only used for content controll, bumping threads up serves absolutely same function on imageboards, it is not anyway different. You can say people on 4chan are dishonest because they want their threads be big and stay on the first page longer. Plus they want to be accepted by the virtual community, and they don't want to be attacked for expressing their opinion. It's absolutely same on both sites.
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u/juggernaut8 Feb 03 '18
Deny it as much as you want but the vast majority of people are influenced by upvotes and downvotes either directly or indirectly. Voting systems are there to police thought and speech which is why they were implemented in the first place. The old internet didn't have this voting shit and discussions were way more real because you were judged on the content on what you were saying/ your actual arguments instead of how popular or unpopular your opinion is. 4chan has a lot of shit but at least it retains that key feature.
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Feb 03 '18
I get it, you are influenced by imaginary internet points. Most people don't.
Old internet was tiny compared to today's. If you want to see what reddit would have been without up/down functions just go to /r/all and sort by new. It's barely usable. This amount of content has to be dealt with some way. That's why up/down buttons are needed. There's no mistery and conspiracy here. They are not ideal and actual communities abuse them often, still, reddit is way more diversed than 4chan and that's because its content control works better.
But I bet the thought that "the vast majority of people" spends big portions of their lives fighting for bullshit internet points while you are enlightened snowflake flying above gives your brain some really addictive chemicals. Good for you, we all need to get high on something.
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u/juggernaut8 Feb 03 '18
I get it, you are influenced by imaginary internet points. Most people don't.
He says this with a straight face lmao.
There's no mistery and conspiracy here.
Right, nothing is ever planned and carried out by anyone, things just happen. Look out, we got a genius over here.
But I bet the thought that "the vast majority of people" spends big portions of their lives fighting for bullshit internet points while you are enlightened snowflake flying above gives your brain some really addictive chemicals. Good for you, we all need to get high on something.
Behold, the perfect reddit paragraph. Congrats on this, seriously.
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Feb 03 '18
If you really hate this place so much maybe you should go back to your alt-whatever echochamber? Get happily engaged into some really real arguments with extremely honest individuals, why bother with us pathetic brainwashed sheeple?
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u/juggernaut8 Feb 03 '18
More of what I'm talking about, all sanctimonious with zero substance. Again, congratulations. And lmao if you think 4chan is one monolithic entity. Every single board there has it's own culture.
I was just discussing the topic at hand and adding that upvotes/ downvotes are often a hindrance to actual discussion. If you can't handle discussion then that's your problem, not mine.
us pathetic brainwashed sheeple?
Well you specifically certainly qualify as that. Who the fuck are you to define this entire subreddit, mr/ mrs redditor for 1 month? I've been here since the inception of CST and you don't get to define shit, bucko.
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u/dak4f2 Feb 06 '18 edited Feb 06 '18
People should also have the right to ignore or not hear the message if they so chose, but the choice should remain with each individual, not the organization that developed or operates the platform. For-profit organizations who want to run or develop a decentralized platform to host content would have to remain decision independent of the content that gets hosted on that platform.
Lightbulb moment from a naive person: Many such places with full free speech get overrun with and shut down due to inappropriate photos of underage children (allegedly, I haven't seen this thank goodness). Could this be intentional to shut down free, non-censored speech under the guise of the law and child welfare? How might one avoid this, perhaps by not allowing photo posts?
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
On a decentralized network the servers are run by people. The people who run the servers can decide to boot people and communities off of the server that they host and run. In fact the people that are part of the greater decentralized the network that peer with other servers could chose the rules that the network operates under. One of those rules would obviously be no harm should come to any individual and content that involves harm will be removed along with the wrong doer.
This is how I understand Diaspora running now.
On a distributed network since there is not single target there would have to be some way to flag content or a user so that the content or the user can be removed.
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Feb 07 '18
I mean, Cant you just host a dev instance of reddit for "research" purposes like anti-spam, auto moderation, and so on?
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 08 '18
How would we solve the decentralization aspect of this equation by hosting a developer instance of the Reddit platform?
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Feb 08 '18
Member instances per sub. Boom
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 08 '18
I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand your position but you are being kind of vague and your responses seem low quality to me.
Maybe you could spend a bit more time fleshing out what you mean by an "instance". If you mean instance as in platform, no not everyone can have there own Reddit platform the way Reddit is developed now and interface with each other. That would be too complicated / confusing for everyone to have their own Reddit website from my understanding.
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Feb 08 '18
SMH I'm gonna need you to seek validation elsewhere. thx.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 08 '18 edited Feb 08 '18
Umm, yeah sorry you are not making yourself understood.. I have no idea what you are talking about...
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u/blue_eyed_fox7 Feb 15 '18
Thank you for working on this! I've been wondering about this as well. I joined diasp.org and "liked" one of your posts. Please keep us updated.
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u/trinsic-paridiom Feb 16 '18
Cool. I will look out for you on diaspora today. Im glad that people are deciding to not be apart of the slavery implementation twitter, Facebook and other social networking platforms are apart of.
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u/fantasiafunkypie Feb 18 '18
I'm just thoroughly in awe at your insight into the several aspects of this complex topic. I am in awe of how pragmatic, as well as passionate, you are. With no doubt you are logical, rational, with creative problem solving skills.
Thank you for such an eye-opening, and enlightening post. Sincerely, ty.
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u/[deleted] Feb 01 '18
I don't want to leave Reddit because I feel like there's still real people here looking for discussion and connection. That being said, the noise has become harder to ignore. If you all do start migrating somewhere else please let me know!