* for the record, i don't think this is a problem that should be enforced by legally mandating what content a private platform can/must host. i think this is a problem that needs to be solved by organized, social groups utilizing decentralized and unmoderated social media platforms.
One of the reasons I started using Aether (reddit-like, open-source, fully serverless/decentralized).
There's not much community there yet, but... no privacy issues, open-source, and fully-decentralized!
aether://board/eed9cb71cbcff951e08f35a697c3a9c1c009b59ba998f6c3a0de0732613c5d6c
​
Aether is a p2p platform therefore, silencing it is hard, it is open source, decentralized.
​
Also feel free to send any lemmy links, maybe I can help it grow too.
a platform that is decentralized and tries it's best to guarantee free speech is https://getaether.net/ , it uses a democratic system to elect mods and all data is stored locally on users devices making it hard to ban content as there is no centralized source.
Many people don't want to download anything so another platform that promises freespeech and so far is doing a good job of it is gab. Trump is on gab. Many right people have joined it first as they were the first to be banned on many platforms but now it has a variety of opinions and many communities to pick from. It's a blend of twitter & reddit. I visit that more frequently. I haven't tried getaether yet but it looks very promising and hope something like that becomes mainstream.
There is also tor network. Those discussions are extremely good and has very good stuff. The major downside is that finding communities is extremely hard, loading pages is very slow.
“Aether is a peer-to-peer flood network that propagates an entire copy of a text corpus, to all its participating nodes. From this corpus, on the nodes themselves, a content graph is incrementally compiled. This compilation happens under the end user’s control and it can be influenced by them.
The text corpus is a graph with six types of graph nodes, which define relations between users, content, and signals. This graph is pruned by a garbage collector in intervals, the collection algorithm is a mark-and-sweep based on time-to-last-interaction.
The nodes communicate with each other certain modifications (deltas) to the graph they each other have. Each node has the same (or near-same) source data (the text corpus), and syncing that corpus across machines is how changes in this content graph is propagated.”
> I remember it started to get noticeably stupid when r/Athiesm became a default sub... just a big dip in the quality of user, but there was still a large portion of the site that was enjoyable to use. Now I stay away from /all like the plague and stick to the same few subs. Even niche hobby subs have gotten remarkably lamer. Everywhere it’s just the most bottom of the barrel humor, people have a hard time engaging in honest debate, you aren’t allowed to go against the status quo in most subreddits, etc.
It's because there's still some good information in the small subs. But even there the mods are cancer. I was interested in a small subreddit with >10k people ... with a bottom mod that bans anyone who disagrees with him and comments in every thread. There's a few people left from before he became a mod, but fewer with each day.
Aether is a solution to the problem: https://getaether.net/ there's even a stupidpol there.
Has anyone tried Aether? This part is relevant
>Actions of moderators are visible to users. No content can just 'disappear', if something gets deleted, you'll know who did it, why they did it, and if you want, how to get it back.
Does anyone have experience with [Aether](https://getaether.net/)? I just jumped in and the setup experience has been very smooth so far. The communities that exist look neat. The moderation style is very unique. Privacy is of utmost importance on the platform, yet it's all public.
If you are concerned about censorship, consider the fully decentralized, uncensorable, Tor-friendly Reddit alternative:
It’s not perfect (could be more open source and has very few users) but it is what it says it is. Uncensorable.
There are fully decentralized alternatives
Twitter-like: https://member.cash
Facebook-like: https://Scuttlebutt.nz
Reddit-like: https://getaether.net
All of these are serverless, peer-to-peer systems with NO authorities, no “admins”. They are still new and need polishing. But they are the future
If you’re going to switch from a centralized system, why take half measures with partly-centralized “Federated” architectures?
Just go fully decentralized with P2P serverless designs. There are several
This is actually a perfect opportunity to point out why power asymmetries should be dismantled or democratized - including those which are fundamental to capitalism. The conversation about "censorship" is fruitless when nobody speaking has the power to implement or dismantle a policy of restricted speech on this platform. The core problem is the power asymmetry between the users and the owners of this platform. Alternatives exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_software_and_protocols_for_distributed_social_networking
Lefty here - try aether. It’s decentralised, so it’ll be a lot harder for anyone to ban it, and since it’s relatively unknown, you’re likely to be able to use it peacefully for a little while.
This hits pretty spot on the inspiration point of Aether: it's basically Usenet 2.0 where every user is an Usenet server.
Check out the docs. You might want to skip to the 'expert overview'.
You are still stuck in that mental rut of thinking free speech only exists in law, it's bigger than law, and that's what I was refering to.
For example, the decentralization movement (like Aether) is a product of people striving for free speech - it prevents people from censoring others yet it has nothing to do with law. You won't understand the problem with the cartoon until you understand that free speech isn't limited to law and governmental enforcement.
Yeah, if you want a site/app like Reddit that is more decentralized or has a more "free speech" platform there's a few different options:
Aether - Desktop app that's P2P. Once there's enough active users on a board/community, the election functions turn on. The devs have an interesting take on it though; instead of giving the elected mods full control over a board, their actions only affect/are only seen by those who voted for them. If you didn't vote for a mod, and they deleted some comment or thread, you would still see that comment/thread.
Additionally, the default setting for the app is to delete any comments, threads, and boards that haven't had activity in 6 months. This "ephemerality" allows for more freedom for the pseudonymous users.
Lemmy - A federated Leftist platform similar to Reddit. This one does have a mobile app, unlike Aether which, according to the dev, would kill your phone's battery because of how the P2P network functions.
Since it's federated (and I think it's compatible with the Fediverse), anyone can self-host their own instance, giving users the ability to choose which instance to register on, or to create their own. I think it'd be interesting to see how the Lemmy community would react to a StupidPol instance joining them.
There are a couple other sites, but I haven't used them enough to know if they're a good enough replacement.
Directly from their site
> Why do I care about communities being democratic? You have a motorcycle. You love it. There’s a b/motorcycles community on Aether. You post a picture of your bike, but it gets deleted immediately. Why? The mods of the place are bored of seeing too many bike pictures and they want to make the community a more “serious” place.
Nobody’s wrong in this case, the mods are right because they probably see way too many regular bike pictures. But you’re right too, people want to post their bikes and be happy about it as well. Who wins?
As it stands elsewhere, the mods. The fact that they are mods gives them ultimate authority over regular users. Isn’t that a little weird? Where does that authority come from? Just from the fact that they were there first?
What Aether does is, you can actually disable the mods that you don’t approve just for yourself, and those disables count as an impeach vote. If majority of the community agrees, the mod loses mod rights for a while for everyone. That makes it so that Aether communities are places where the content is what the current users of the communities want, not those who were there first by chance.
Read more at
Before you all commit to a project like this, you might want to check out Lemmy or Aether.
My $.02: the Reddit model is the peak of Web 2.0 architecture. It has its strengths. It has its flaws. Online community organization in the Web3 space must abandon the old model based on ad delivery and move towards a decentralized market of user-contributors peer-compensated for their content while abandoning alternative currencies like upvotes, karma, followers and karma for actual currency.
There is already a superstonk on lemmy.ml (pretty good decentralized reddit clone) (https://lemmy.ml/c/superstonk)
also, there is a "GameStopMoass" thread with links to the dd and mentions of the backup youtube channels on Aether (https://getaether.net) which is a peer 2 peer ephemeral public community where you can vote and elect mods.
There’s actually a platform I saw awhile back while browsing thru privacytools.io. This is supposed to be a Reddit alternative…open source and all that, but I haven’t checked it out yet!
Right down to the entire internet. Try Aether for a decentralized reddit, currently a ghost town because people insist on centralized platforms no matter how much it bites them in the ass https://getaether.net/
I don't know how it works. Maybe something like torrenting as it is distributed too. by default everything past 6months is deleted. checkout https://getaether.net/ I think this is the direction we need to go. No 1 entity will have the power to censor content.
I recommend you switch over to Aether. It's a decentralized reddit alternative. It's currently a ghost town because most conspiracy theorist are all talk and no solution but it will grow hopefully. https://getaether.net/
They have an open source page. In the page they link to their source code
> Aether’s own source Aether’s source code is available at github.com/nehbit/aether. Our issue tracker is available at meta.getaether.net/c/bugs.
>on crypto things are recorded forever isn’t it?
>
>Also if based on ETH it most be very expensive to use now..
Neither SSB nor Aether actually store their data on a crypto blockchain (though memo does)
Rather, they used peer-to-peer append-only distributed databases that are a lot like a blockchain; see this FAQ.
A fair number have moved into a little decentralized/distributed platform that I use called Aether.
It's an excellent piece of technology, built to be democratically controlled. Would be a shame to see it completely populated by fascists.
Animemes is pretty much beyond salvation. The only way to redeem the place would be to remove all mods and replace them. Which will practically never happen.
Then there's the fact that even in that case, or in the case of everyone moving to goodani, they're still susceptible for power abuse to show up again. Mods have practically unlimited power over their subreddit, and users have no control over this. Even Reddit mods often pushed their own personal beliefs when it comes to subreddit bans/quarantines and closing both eyes on some rule breaking ones, as well as multiple scandals regarding censorship and manipulation of users comments, and deeply unfair ToS.
The only real way to fix this is through a platform that allows electing and impeaching mods, and where mods cannot hide their actions because such things would be shown to everyone. For now, the only reddit-like network I know that does such things is Aether.
THESE are alternatives.
Aether - free and open-source decentralized social news aggregator with a built-in voting system.
Tildes is a web-based self-hostable online bulletin board
Raddle is a public Postmill instance focused on privacy and anti-censorship
THESE are alternatives.
Aether - free and open-source decentralized social news aggregator with a built-in voting system.
Tildes is a web-based self-hostable online bulletin board
Raddle is a public Postmill instance focused on privacy and anti-censorship
THESE are alternatives.
Aether - free and open-source decentralized social news aggregator with a built-in voting system.
Tildes is a web-based self-hostable online bulletin board
Raddle is a public Postmill instance focused on privacy and anti-censorship
THESE are alternatives.
Aether - free and open-source decentralized social news aggregator with a built-in voting system.
Tildes is a web-based self-hostable online bulletin board
Raddle is a public Postmill instance focused on privacy and anti-censorship
THESE are alternatives.
Aether - free and open-source decentralized social news aggregator with a built-in voting system.
Tildes is a web-based self-hostable online bulletin board
Raddle is a public Postmill instance focused on privacy and anti-censorship
> Blockchain can help us develop more ethical
Citation needed!
https://www.taler.net/en/ sound like one of the very few examples and it's not a blockchain.
> I invite you to check both Aether and Twister
https://getaether.net/docs/faq/aether_cryptography/ Aether claims not to be a blockchain
> It's much much better than corporate reddit or anything that is either federalized/centralized, closed-source or commercial.
You are confusing decentralization, openness and blockchain. ActivityPub, for example, is open and decentralized and has no blockchain.
There is already Aether which is a peer-to-peer distributed network (no central server) which allows democratic management of "subreddits" where you can vote mods in or out. Subs can be voted up or down too. All mod actions are transparent to users so no posts just "disappear".
But to achieve the light-weight between peers you link to graphics and media, and don't upload it into posts.
Posts are ephemeral and disappear after 6 months if no interaction with them.
Also check out https://getaether.net/
The key difference being that it is distributed rather than federated. The entire corpus of content is peered between users over a fully connected virtual mesh network.
Moderation will be democratically controlled (not implemented yet).
The current usership is a mixed bag - the usual colonists of this type of platform: privacy freaks, free software advocates, ancaps (so it goes), a spattering of socialists. Seriously, I think there are only 20 people using it right now. Get the fuck on there.
Honestly I'm just waiting for a democratically controlled (or federated) reddit alternative like Aether to take off. Moderators need to be held accountable for their actions (or inaction).
Unfortunately it's going to take a lot for an alternative to gain any kind of critical mass, especially with no mobile app in the case of Aether.
If you want an alternative to Reddit, I highly recommend Aether. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a lot of users yet, then again, that makes it kind of a friendly cozy place so I don't mind it.
If everyone migrated it would basically be a censorship resistant Reddit, which would've been nice too.
I don't know anything about twitter, I don't use it. I believe what you say - there are people who call for violence against fascists, there are probably people who identify as Antifa who call for further violence that isn't against fascists. Personally, I don't give a shit about any of it.
We can talk about deplatforming nazis all day but it won't change the fact that neither of us get to decide what YT deems to be right or wrong, that's part of the issue. YT as a concept is multi-faceted. It is a community of viewers, content creators, a platform for distributing videos, but also it is the product of a corporation whose interests take 100% precedence over those other conceptions. It is one of several examples of totalitarian structures imposed on communities of (willing) individuals whose mere presence on the platform provide a substantial part of its value. Reddit is another example of this except the value extracted out of the user is even more substantial (self-moderating, discussion-driven, sub-culture generating). There are free, egalitarian, democratic alternatives to these major social media platforms. Platforms that are designed to be fundamentally democratic and/or anarchist in their approach to moderation.
People on those sites can have meaningful and productive discussions about the ethics of deplatforming because they have the capacity to enact the consensus.
> won't have to worry about serving data they disagree with (pirated content for example)
Well... if you try to put restriction like this on a forum, I'm confident that humans will somehow find a way to bypass this kind of restriction.
> Does such a site exist already
I think of Aether when I see this post.
Not exactly what you describe but https://getaether.net/ made a splash around r/btc a while back (thread). It seems moderators can be simply ignored by community members and even removed from the moderation spot.
There has been a lot of failed reddit clones, why would this be any different? There are two decentralized reddits that I know of, Aether and Akasha.
I would also advise reading this article: http://shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
Without proper controls, all you are going to make is another 8chan or voat or otherwise equally hideous community. What are you going to do to make sure it isn't chock full of child porn and white nationalism?
There has been a Voat community created, but it has immediately become exactly what you'd expect of Voat. I created a community on Aether, which is the first decentralized reddit-style experience I think I've seen. It's also designed to maximize user privacy, while remaining a public content forum.
Mastodon is federated, so like a bunch of small servers talking to each other. For instance you could start an instance for your friends, or just your family, etc. I bet through, a lot of people don't check source code and have accounts on servers that are sucking up data.
There are more decentralized options coming, such as Aether, which runs on ethereum.
A truly decentralized social media site would be where the all of the users store all of the others users data on their own machines (encrypted of course), the computations needed to actually run the server that hosts the website, are all distributed across all of the nodes on the network. When your computer does this work, it would be rewarded with a coin, that is important because no one is going to "mine" for free. Good will and altruism only go so far and ultimately fail.
I recently found out about Aether and I feel it's a better and more usable option than Darknet, although I still need to clarify some things about it. I've already created a piracy forum. My other and more solid distributed suggestion atm is scuttlebutt.
Also, Darknet sites are not perfectly secure, just FYI. All they need to do is figure out who is running it and take them down.
> https://github.com/nehbit/aether
Oh I didn't see that. AGPL is an awesome licence, one of the most (IMO) copyleft licences. Google won't touch it. Brilliant.
> As far as I'm aware, Burak is the sole developer. He is funded via Patreon
Fair enough, it's a new project. But the Terms & Conditions are quite clear that there is a contract with a private company.
I'm not seeing anything about being open-source on their webpage (they have a page entitled "Open Source", but it doesn't express that the app itself is open-source), so right away that sends up a red flag.
But then top that off with their privacy policy, especially "Sharing your personal information" and "Behavioural advertising", the answer is a resounding "no". I'm legitimately curious as to where they tout their privacy, because if they do, then, well... Their own privacy policy tells a different tale.
Services like Reddit will always remain unprofitable without external investment and inserted promotion posts.
The alternative is to use a distributed system which does not rely on any central server (so no person has to pay for its maintenance and thus lose money).
Like Aether (really interesting: elected and impeachable mods, no central server/company, etc)
or Syndie (somewhat harder to use and set up, but good)
I looked at aether as well. My problem with it is that might ban loli as well. From the TOS:
>Sexual or suggestive content involving minors
>Aether does not allow any sexual or suggestive content, involving minors, or person(s) who appear to be minors, whether be it videos, photos, 3D renderings, animation, or in any other form.
Are drawings considered "person(s) who appear to be minors"? If they are not persons, perhaps drawings can be considered as "any other form". It's not 100% clear like reddit, but I just feel like it's one word away from explicitly banning it
I'll copy a comment I made earlier if you want another name to throw in the hat of potential alternatives.
> Iv'e been messing around with this Aether since yesterday. Its a decentralized, P2P, Reddit like platform. In concept it's probably the best option out there but there are issues atm. The biggest being the lack of any sort of user-base, let alone an anime fandom.
>It requires downloading a client, which is an issue to some. It also takes a a good minute, and is a bit CPU intensive to post, comment, upvote, or anything like that due to the proof of work. I started an Animemes community on there, and have been flooding it with the many memes I've saved over the years, I guess I'll see if the service catches on and people start using it or not. If you know of, or find out about any other or better platforms I would love to hear about them.
Iv'e been messing around with this Aether since yesterday. Its a decentralized, P2P, Reddit like platform. In concept it's probably the best option out there but there are issues atm. The biggest being the lack of any sort of user-base, let alone an anime fandom.
It requires downloading a client, which is an issue to some. It also takes a a good minute, and is a bit CPU intensive to post, comment, upvote, or anything like that due to the proof of work. I started an Animemes community on there, and have been flooding it with the many memes I've saved over the years, I guess I'll see if the service catches on and people start using it or not. If you know of, or find out about any other or better platforms I would love to hear about them.
I started playing around with this Aether thing earlier. You have to download a client, but its essentially a completely decentralized Reddit like platform. It seems very new so it doesn't have much of a user base, and its missing important features like a search for communities, but if enough of us that are tired of Reddit's shit start flooding over there it could end up being perfect. Hell now that I'm thinking about it I might just start an Animemes community on there myself just to see what it's all about.
Ja, würd ich auch vermuten.
Ich hab btw mal auf die Schnelle das hier gefunden: https://getaether.net
Hab mir das aber noch nicht genau angeschaut. Die Idee eines dezentralisierten Netzwerks würde mich mehr interessieren, als sich wieder von einem Serverbetreiber abhängig zu machen. Was meint ihr?