
Show HN: Vitriol – distributed, serverless publishing platform - vitriolum
https://vitriol.co
======
eganist
I'm going to go out on a limb here... based on modestly more private
conversations than this Hackernews thread, I'm inclined to read the
name—Vitriol—and the fundamentally distributed architecture _together_ as
being an effective dogwhistle for already angry people further driven to
extremism by the entirely appropriate blackholing of Gab.

It may be a neat concept technically, but I already don't like the direction
this is taking in setting up the future of this product.

~~~
api
... which will kill it, or at least keep it a niche echo chamber for deranged
hate and outrage addicts. If they don't want it to be a platform for rage porn
vitriol is an awful name.

The word addict here is somewhat serious. One thing I've been thinking for a
while is that a lot of these hate and outrage trolls on the net are addicted
to the brain chemicals these emotions trigger.

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whalesalad
> vitriol – cruel and bitter criticism.

Really strange name choice.

~~~
egwynn
When it first entered English from Latin, the word meant ‘glass’
([https://www.etymonline.com/word/vitriol#etymonline_v_7846](https://www.etymonline.com/word/vitriol#etymonline_v_7846)).
But that’s not a sense any modern English speaker could be expected to
recognize.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
They might make the connection with “Vitrification” if they’re inclined in
that direction. They might realize that Vitr- is a common root, and might even
guess what it is.

~~~
egwynn
Yeah, though it’s a stretch all the same. I’m not sure what the intention here
is. The name is either a joke, just plain bad, or etymologically
overoptimistic.

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hkt
Well, the name at least makes it clear that author of the system knows what it
will be used for. I've reached the conclusion after years of crypto quackery
and free speech nutjobs that actually, publishing platforms need to moderate
what they are used for and by who. Free for alls like this attract some of the
work people imaginable.

~~~
GhostVII
Why not give users more filtering options, rather than censoring certain
views? Let the users choose what type of content they want to see, rather
choosing for them.

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ajacksified
Because sometimes one doesn't want to host a platform for, say, Holocaust
denial. Platforms can, and should, moderate speech pursuant to the values of
the company, which _can_ mean anything from heavy moderation to none at all.

People who want to take part in "fringe" discussions, whether it goes agains
the culture, or assholes (white supremacists) will end up on whatever platform
they feel the most free and secure. But what happens when a group of
antisemites discovers a Jewish community, and decides to comment on their
posts, and harass them over PMs? The burden is placed on them to add filters
for all of the users, or the content posted, which harms the growth of the
group; a new member may visit the Jewish community, see it full of hate, and
decide never to join. Through inaction, your platform has traded the safety
and security of one group for another, and in my opinion, it's those who seek
to harm others that should be removed, not the other way around.

I worked at Reddit for three years (left two years ago), and it's taken me a
long time to realize this.

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GhostVII
I suppose it depends what kind of platform you are hosting. With something
like Vitriol, where you are mostly posting content independent of other
people, it doesn't seem like there is much possibility for abuse. But with
something like Reddit I can see how moderation is more important, since you
can direct message people.

~~~
vitriolum
Exactly. It's not a community, it's more a tool for publishing content that
other people consciously decide to follow. The point being that this content
can't be shut down by a central organization, but will disappear if nobody
cares about it.

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jbeard4
I got can error message on loading the user intro: "There has been an
unrecoverable error connecting to IPFS. Please retry again later."

Maybe not quite ready for prime time.

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aboodman
_This also means that it will be impossible for third parties to limit access
to your articles._

?? I don't understand. Somebody, somewhere is hosting the reading UI at
vitriol.co, right? That's the chokepoint to attack.

Political issues aside, it feels like this has to be client-side software in
order to achieve what it sets out to - more like scuttlebutt.

~~~
vitriolum
You can download the code from here: [https://gitlab.com/vitriolum/vitriol-
web](https://gitlab.com/vitriolum/vitriol-web) and serve it from whenever you
want, even localhost.

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jtbayly
How can I verify whether this is actually working as advertised? For all I
know this is just a blog running on a central server with terrible URLs.

And what happens if I create a piece of content, close the window, and then
share the URL with somebody? Will they not be able to see it?

~~~
vitriolum
You can download the code from here: [https://gitlab.com/vitriolum/vitriol-
web](https://gitlab.com/vitriolum/vitriol-web) and serve it from whenever you
want, even localhost.

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eggy
I really like the idea. The load of the intro page took around 35 seconds.
Could Erlang/Elixir/LFE be used instead of JS/React? I am not familiar enough
with IPFS to know if this is a valid question.

~~~
pmontra
Lucky you. My experience ended with

> There has been an unrecoverable error connecting to IPFS. Please retry again
> later.

~~~
vitriolum
IPFS bootstrappers out there are still a bit unstable. Sorry about that -
please retry.

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ai_ia
Just curious why did you name the platform Vitriol?

~~~
vitriolum
It comes from "Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum
Lapidem", an alchemical motto. No reference to hate intended.

~~~
CharlesW
Whatever the intent, how it will be perceived is effectively out of your
control. Its current name is a headwind, actively working against its
potential for success. If the project is important to you, you must rename it.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/vitriol](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/thesaurus/vitriol)

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pmlnr
<offtopic>

I wish we had a few years without tech buzzwords. Web 2.0, virtualization,
devops, cloud, containers, microservices, serverless... I'd so, so much like
to focus on something existing and make it work well. Maybe we wouldn't have
20+ crappy chat systems, but one good federated xmpp or matrix.

</offtopic>

~~~
vinceguidry
That's all well and good, but the examples you gave are problems of scale and
economics, not invention. XMPP works as well as you want it to, and clients
are on all the platforms, but Apple users want to use iMessage. That's not a
problem that any kind of invention can solve.

The buzzwords themselves are references to incremental improvements in the
state of the tech ecosystem that allow more powerful solutions for all. An app
we all have on our devices right now, Slack, was once buzzword soup. Now it's
an actual solution used by businesses the world over. It's not perfect, but it
works better for our collective needs than IRC ever did.

What's going to replace the Slack's of today's tech world? I dunno, but I bet
they'll be built on buzzwords.

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matte_black
We do _not_ all have Slack on our devices.

~~~
vinceguidry
I see many many non-technical teams that use Slack. Slack's made inroads in
the business messaging market that used to be the sole domain of enterprise
vendors like Microsoft, Cisco, and Oracle.

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nathias
love the concept and the name, but it isn't working (IPFS error)

~~~
vitriolum
Sorry, IPFS bootstrappers are still a bit unstable. Should work now.

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fiatjaf
Why aren't you storing the text content of the articles as text files? (If you
were, they could be accessed from other places, not only through the Vitriol
interface.)

~~~
vitriolum
They're stored as HTML, because of the WYSIWYG nature of the editor. I guess
Markdown was the other obvious choice, but editing MD is not so immediate on
mobile.

~~~
fiatjaf
I still can't browse them as HTML files.

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tiuPapa
So there is one thing that I always think when I see something like this. So
if an article is replicated and stored on every user who reads that article
once wouldn't that mean after some point a user won't be able to read any more
posts because they have run out of space? Also, isn't it just collectively
more expensive than just paying for a centralized service?

In the same note, where would I start if I knew nothing about p2p but wanted
to build something like this?

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fiatjaf
How is it distributed and serverless if I'm pointing my browser to vitriol.co
and getting stuff from there?

~~~
vitriolum
You can download the code from here: [https://gitlab.com/vitriolum/vitriol-
web](https://gitlab.com/vitriolum/vitriol-web) and serve it from whenever you
want, even localhost.

~~~
fiatjaf
No, because I won't have my username and all that.

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irq-1
From gitlab:

> ... your article will be accessible even if you're offline, _as long as
> someone is reading (sharing) it._

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yosefzeev
How does this differ from IPFS?

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weego
It is IPFS based on the error that comes up

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econner
AKA Twitter

~~~
vitriolum
More like Medium, but distributed.

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revskill
Why gitlab ?

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amoitnga
doesn't work

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nenadg
it's great

