Distributed open source discussion site like voat?

12    17 Jul 2015 22:22 by u/storr

Hey all,

I'm really ignorant to how to code things like bittorrent, bitcoin, or really anything distributed, but I see an opportunity to create something that might truly survive as a place for open discussion with no censorship online.

It seems to me technologies like WebRTC could be leveraged to create a network of distributed "servers" as soon as a user opens up the page.

Does anybody know of a project similar to the one I'm describing? If not, does anybody have any advice and or reading material that might get me started?

Is what I'm describing even possible?

5 comments

2 u/technologyisnatural 17 Jul 2015 23:58

Aether has been getting some love ...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6787807

RetroShare is older ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RetroShare

Twister is newer (and uses bitcoin blockchain tech) ...

http://twister.net.co/

There are a whole lot of things like Twister being discussed at https://www.reddit.com/r/decentralizeweb/

Also mentioned every time this subject comes up, the granddaddy of them all ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

1 u/storr [OP] 18 Jul 2015 00:10

Thanks! I'm embarrassed how badly my google-fu has let me down...

2 u/technologyisnatural 18 Jul 2015 00:47

No worries, I'd only heard of most of these because of the "alternatives to reddit" discussion. Each of these has its pros and cons, though. I don't think anyone has solved the "decentralized alternative to reddit" problem.

And even if someone hits the technical mark perfectly, there is still the social adoption problem. Actually, that reminds me of another project, that is/was supposed to be a decentralized Facebook ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)

... it got a lot of press and was even crowdfunded, but I never hear about it any more.

1 u/moister 19 Jul 2015 02:07

On the topic of usenet I have been working on an nntp(ish) based forum/pastebin/imageboard for a while.

It's still in a primordial soup state but there's 2 nodes

http://i2p.rocks/nntpchan/ ( run by me )

and

http://4sjrmga5qaqxposhuwriwl7x6qgzonwddof55fkeqpyw475mugdq.b32.i2p/ (run by someone else)

source code: https://github.com/majestrate/srndv2/