
Show HN: Ieddit – A minimalist, Reddit-like site with anonymous posts/comments - cc-d
https://ieddit.com/about/
======
comnetxr
I had an idea for a minimal change to improve a Reddit-like site, perhaps you
will find it interesting: split the concept of "subreddit" into "tags" and
"communities".

Tags: much of the content of Reddit is people reposting the same thing at
various times to various subreddits, and many of the comments are people
noticing that it fits into "r/whatever" instead. The default behavior should
be that posts of the same link to various tags (r/awww, r/catsstandingup)
should not recreate a new post but just backlink to the same post. Repeat
posts to the same tag should be a no-operation. This removes the community
aspect of tags, and some of the worst emergent behaviors of reddit along with
it. Treating a tag as both a topic and a community leads to a neverending
cycle of people creating niche topic tags for the community aspect, but then
finding themselves "invaded" as people will always want to find and comment on
content about topics that they disagree with.

But of course the community aspect of Reddit leads to good things. So you make
a separate concept of communities. These communities could follow the posts of
one or more tags, applying filters to those of their own choosing, and make
their discussion visible within community borders only or visible to all,
based on their own choices (in addition to internal community posts.) They can
control admission to the communities on their own rules (fully public, invite
codes only, etc.) The ability to automatically follow the posts of certain
tags (and either view or not view public comments) will keep small communities
from getting stale for lack of posts.

~~~
est
> split the concept of "subreddit" into "tags" and "communities".

Tags are brilliant idea until you have tens of thousands of them. Plural
forms, hyphens or without hyphens, synonyms, i18n tags of the same thing, mis-
spellings, etc.

~~~
tudorw
I'd like to see some 'AI' assisted tagging, where users are prompted to use a
tag from a pool of common tags with the AI making suggestions on what might be
appropriate, this would address most of the issues listed above.

~~~
aloisdg
Something like Stack Exchange's tag system would be enough.

~~~
tudorw
I'm not massively familiar with Stack Exchanges tag system, it does have some
synonym handling,
[https://blender.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms](https://blender.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms)
, that seems limited to one alternative though, is there a more advanced
aspect that I am missing, perhaps covering sememes?

~~~
cpayne624
Can sort by Target to see the (sometimes) multiple synonyms for a particular
tag.

------
JohnJamesRambo
How will you avoid-

> John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was proposed in the Penny
> Arcade (web comic) on March 19, 2004 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. It
> says that when a normal person is allowed anonymity and an audience, they
> lose social inhibitions and act inappropriately.

If anything, the last decade has taught us the immutability of this law.
Usernames and comment history seem to help somewhat with people acting
accountable for their actions. Total anonymity seems to always lead to a
cesspool like 4chan.

~~~
djsumdog
Be careful if you're at work. There's already porn on this thing in some of
the Imgur links.

I miss the late 90s when you had a lot of small, independent websites. Sure
there was always a war against spammers and scripts, but I feel like you could
find more independent content from individuals instead of these big link
aggregation platforms (remember web-rings?)

There is more to think about today when making something that hosts other's
content (or links to that content). I'm surprised ActivityPub networks
(Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) haven't had more issues with spam and bad actors.

When starting a project like this, I think a few small things authors should
consider right off the bat: implement some Captcha (preferably an open source
implementation that's not Google mandated tracking, if you can find something
decent), for at least account creation .. maybe posts too. I'm not sure what
Lobsters uses for spam testing/filtering, but it'd be worth looking at that
and other projects for any quick solutions. Prismo
([https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo](https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo))
also comes to mind.

~~~
zaarn
Most Masto/Pleroma instances are too small to be worth the trouble. I get
about 1-2 spam bots signing up per week, usually deleted automatically or
within 1 hour of signing up (longer if all the admins are sleeping).

Small instances that don't do anything about spam usually get defederated
fairly quickly.

With the way federation works, your reach is very unpredictable and you need
to attach to very large instances if you want to have any effect. And large
instances have more moderators to more quickly handle them.

Per-user mastodon probably has more moderators/administrators than comparable
services (twitter), so it's a bit more clean.

------
thrownaway954
Good luck with moderating this thing. Everyone bitches and moans about Reddit,
but the fact of the matter is that sites like Reddit cost a ton to keep up and
running and without some sort of revenue, they go down. Without some sort of
regulation, sites QUICKLY divulge into a collection of scrupulous and illegal
activities, and become blacklisted from advertisers.

I get how everyone wants a community that they can posts and share things
anonymously, but the fact of the matter is that unless you have unlimited
money where you can fight legal battles and absorb the cost of running it
yourself, at some point you are going to need outside resources to keep the
thing online and that comes in forms of donations or advertising.

~~~
namanyayg
I wonder if there's some way to do it in a decentralised way? But that'd be
susceptible to 51%-esque attacks too, and no one wants to provide resources
for the site.

I think we're gonna be stuck with shitty walled censored communities for a
while. At least there's hn?

~~~
thrownaway954
"I wonder if there's some way to do it in a decentralized way" \- Everyone has
that same thought until it's put into practice and you find yourself hosting
stuff "from the community" that can get you dragged into court or prison.
BTW... if you think "the community" is going to come together and help you
through the financial and legal hardships you will be sorely mistaken. They
will just pack up and move on to the next thing and you will be let to fend
for yourself.

~~~
chongli
Maybe this is an opportunity to use machine learning to filter this stuff out?
It could be done on the client side for every user connecting to the network.
That way each user would have control over what comes into their machine,
rather than just being an open dropbox. You could also force everything to be
plaintext and just block anything encrypted or in an unrecognized file format.

~~~
thrownaway954
You do that and let us know how that works out for you.

------
Smithalicious
I think this "reddit-with-4chan-features" approach is more viable than 8chan's
"4chan-with-reddit-features" approach, since I don't think the imageboard
model is very compatible with the "community-run boards" feature. It's also a
good thing that (it appears that) this website is "fresh" and apolitical
rather than coming forth from a political rift in another community (e.g.
8chan, gab, voat).

I'll definitely be following this website with interest; I'm a huge fan of
sites that allow anonymous posting as well as how Reddit can create active
communities around very niche topics (which is a lot harder on e.g. 4chan).

EDIT: I do have some problems with this rule: "Nothing that violates US law,
or anything that would be considered 'gray area'." What is a 'gray area' is,
itself, a gray area. I don't think the rule itself needs changing, but it
would be good if it was supported by some examples of things that people might
want to do but you won't allow.

EDIT2: Another issue: in a lot of fonts, Ieddit (with capital i) looks very
similar to leddit (with lowercase L), which is a derogatory term for Reddit on
4chan (and possibly elsewhere) (owing to the shitty rageface memes which use
the word "le")

~~~
cc-d
>EDIT: I do have some problems with this rule: "Nothing that violates US law,
or anything that would be considered 'gray area'." What is a 'gray area' is,
itself, a gray area. I don't think the rule itself needs changing, but it
would be good if it was supported by some examples of things that people might
want to do but you won't allow.

Loli/shota porn mainly. Other forms of borderline cp. The problem is,
specifically stating 'hey don't upload THIS CONTENT', will result in people
specifically uploading that content to buck the rules. I'll probably still add
the clarification.

The gray area clause allows operational leeway.

>EDIT2: Another issue: in a lot of fonts, Ieddit (with capital i) looks very
similar to leddit (with lowercase L), which is a derogatory term for Reddit on
4chan (and possibly elsewhere) (owing to the shitty rageface memes which use
the word "le")

I see a lot of people suggesting this. tbh I kind of like teh association with
the "leddit" term, I find it amusing. From a ui perspective, the /i/ might
make more sense though.

~~~
Smithalicious
>Loli/shota porn mainly Consider my interest in the site nullified and your
morals ridiculed.

~~~
GoblinSlayer
Porn is 3d pretty sure?

------
bArray
For a site focused on transparency and privacy, it's parked behind CloudFlare.
I can't view the site past the about page without JS enabled and allowing
CloudFlare to probe and track me.

> Decentralized platforms are not an ideal solution for

> internet communities.

Hard disagree. Communities are about give and take, the early internet was
driven by people hosting bulletin boards, IRC servers, web servers, etc. There
are people out there still willing to be part of the solution if you give them
the chance.

> TOR is also not an answer, the technical barrier in

> accessing hidden services alone disqualifies them as a

> practical alternative, before even considering the

> bandwidth/latency limitations.

TOR is plug-and-play these days, although using TOR effectively requires a
change in mind-set, both for the server owners and users of such servers.

> As seen with youtube, reddit, &c. With transparency and

> accountability, and without a significant profit incentive

> to do otherwise, the model still works.

Servers, time and expertise usually cost money. Staff running the show need to
put food on their tables one way or another - there will always be a financial
incentive. Unless, of course, you reduce running costs to near zero.

~~~
cc-d
>For a site focused on transparency and privacy, it's parked behind
CloudFlare. I can't view the site past the about page without JS enabled and
allowing CloudFlare to probe and track me.

Unfortunately I have no choice in this regard. I do no have the means to
resist any sort of ddos. I remember at one point you could set the 'cloudflare
security level' to low, but when I looked in the UI today I could not find
such an option.

If there exists a solution to either not using cloudflare, or some option
hidden away that allows me to tell clouflare o fuck off with how it treats
traffic, I'd love to know.

~~~
bArray
> If there exists a solution to either not using cloudflare,

> or some option hidden away that allows me to tell clouflare

> o fuck off with how it treats traffic, I'd love to know.

The method I use to avoid CloudFlare altogether (probably wrong as it's
bespoke) is to do the following before "handling" the request:

* Store all connecting IPs, last request time and the rate at which requests are being made in a serviced-buffer. If the request rate becomes too high, give them a timeout (return a very small page telling them to come back in a few minutes).

* If database hits are high, drop non-important requests first, starting with views, then up/down votes, comments and then user security. Views and votes can fail silently and most people won't be any of the wiser.

* If static content requests are high, drop generated content first, followed by large files (all JS, most CSS, images, etc). For the generated content, you can use a recently generic cached view.

* Lastly, if all else fails, just return a redirect to some static server hosted somewhere strong (like GitHub pages for example), explaining that demand is high at this current time.

This approach has worked for me so far. Under high load, you need to handle
requests as soon as possible, even if it means not returning something.
Holding onto a connection is what will sink your ship.

In general most sites seem to die because they spend too long dealing with
individual requests. especially when the database is hit. As soon as you
overload a WordPress database for example, it's screwed. And this is just for
displaying content to the website!

~~~
GoblinSlayer
Do you even need to store ips? Just count accepted connections and every, say,
1000th connection check current time, if less than a second elapsed since
previous check, close the listening socket. Isn't ddos caused by packet
congestion rather than server processing?

~~~
bArray
> Just count accepted connections and every, say, 1000th

> connection check current time, if less than a second

> elapsed since previous check, close the listening socket.

Then you risk killing genuine traffic. Above average hit from a handful of
locations is more likely to be abuse.

> Isn't ddos caused by packet congestion rather than server

> processing?

From what I understand, a DDoS attack any pat of your system, usually the part
that is the slowest. You want to kill attacking traffic as quickly as possible
without affecting genuine traffic. As for attacks on the network itself, this
is where you rely on your cloud service provider.

------
Aeolun
I am of the opinion this should represent subs as /i/all, instead of with /r/

~~~
undefinedFoo
yep, should use /i/ for subs instead of /r/ because the latter is, most of the
time, associated with reddit.

~~~
cc-d
from a ui perspective, i think this is correct.

the only issue will be losing familiarity for reddit users.

------
cc-d
yes hello site's creator here

there were a ton of technical issues earlier that are now 'mostly' fixed

in terms of the nsfw content, the index page is basically /r/all without nsfw.
marking something as nsfw in a sfw sub hides the thumbnail.

this was posted here while i was sleeping... i went to bed thinking nobody had
noticed my previous post and wasn't being attentive. the original post i made
to Show Hn was 15 hours ago... I'm guessing a mod 'refreshed' this?

~~~
Eleopteryx
>yes hello site's creator here

I like your way of greeting

------
iikoolpp
> Anonymous /r/beastiality 6h

> Dogs knotting women (www.com)

Really, who expected anything else?

~~~
tzs
...and there is no /r/bestiality. Come on, people...if you are going to make a
forum for your interests, at least learn to spell the name of those interests.
The word comes from the Latin word _bestia_.

------
Figs
The name 'ieddit' is way too close to 'reddit' and should be changed to avoid
trademark issues.

------
Mirrorforce
I like the idea of having a website like reddit, similar functionality without
the bloat.

The new reddit design is horrible.

The design on the site could be a little closer to this site perhaps.

~~~
The_Androctonus
[https://old.reddit.com/](https://old.reddit.com/)

This is how I still browse the site. You can also disable subreddit theming in
your preferences and you’ve got a much more lite version of the site like the
old days.

------
siquick
Based upon the first few posts, this probably isn't a great idea.

~~~
cc-d
This was re-submitted here when I was sleeping, and I was the only admin. I
went to bed thinking my submission had not been noticed, leaving my site
misconfigured thinking it did not matter.

The technical issues and most of the offensive content has been taken care of.

------
rodolphoarruda
I would be willing to pay up to 10 usd per month to be able to create an
account and run my news feed under my domain name.

------
burnout41
Three clicks in and I see a picture of a dog fucking a woman.

~~~
cc-d
This was re-submitted here when I was sleeping, and I was the only admin. I
went to bed thinking my submission had not been noticed, leaving my site
misconfigured thinking it did not matter.

The technical issues and most of the offensive content has been taken care of.

------
timemachine
[https://github.com/cc-d/ieddit](https://github.com/cc-d/ieddit)

------
chillacy
I actually think these are compelling features:

* Fully Transparent Mod/Admin Action Logs <\- This is evidenced by the fact that on reddit mod drama sparks up every so often

* Anonymous Posting Option <\- The fact that people make throwaways indicates that they desire anonymity sometimes

My next question though is what stops reddit from implementing them?

~~~
slig
> My next question though is what stops reddit from implementing them?

They're never going to implement the anonymous posting. They used to let users
register without providing an email, since the new redesign it's required.

~~~
woutr_be
> They're never going to implement the anonymous posting. They used to let
> users register without providing an email, since the new redesign it's
> required.

As far as I know, it's still not required. When you're at the signup popup and
it's asking for your email, just click next. It's not a required field.

------
duxup
I like the idea of anonymous posting and at the same time on Reddit I've found
challenges with brand new accounts with agendas showing up en mass with little
regard for the local community and just wanting to push their agenda.

It's a rough thing to allow anonymous comments and also foster a community
online.

------
fyskij
Nice work! I really like the UI and the concept.

I got excited by your post because I'm building a reddit-clone too.

It's called Dinomia and it's a just-for-fun concept with a transaction system.

Each time you upvote something an "upvote / credit" is transferred from you to
the author of the post, like sending money. When you create a
post/comment/community you loose X "upvote/credits" etc.

I hope Ieddit has great success and congratulations again for the work you
have done.

------
danjac
Looking at the code base, it doesn't look like there's any CSRF protection in
place. Not sure what other security issues there are but I'd be careful about
using this. You probably want some tests in there as well. Overall looks like
a promising project but you might have rushed to get something in front of
people when a bit more polish would have made a better first impression.

------
ZoomZoomZoom
Sorry, but I can't register as my perfectly reasonable name (although, quite
long, but < 30 ASCII characters) declined as invalid.

------
nurettin
I like mastodon's way of marking "sensitive" content, which will hide text or
pictures until you explicitly click to open them.

------
kitd
Total anonymity is the fastest way to get law enforcement on your back IME,
unless you enjoy spending your day dealing with takedowns.

------
lowiqprogrammer
Really nice, I appreciate that you don't use Google's ReCaptcha. Some
suggestions if you're targeting privacy, remove third party assets and remove
all JavaScript and add a Tor hidden service. People who are obsessed with
privacy will run NoScript a lot of time.

~~~
whenchamenia
Agreed. NoCaptcha is a red falg to me as a user that usability has taken a
backseat to ease of administration.

------
gallexme
Are emails visible to others users? (nice to know before u fill it out for
possible password recovery)

------
Rotdhizon
Almost every single action signs me out. Creating a sub gives back an
'invalid' error message', which then signs me out.

Have clicked on less than 10 links and have already been exposed to bestiality
images. This post in question has been up for half an hour, where is the
moderation?

~~~
cc-d
I am the only 'moderator' and I was asleep whenever this was re-submitted
without me having any fore-warning.

The technical errors are fixed now. I went to bed with the site reconfigured,
not worrying too much because I thought this post was a dud.

------
orionblastar
How do you avoid becoming like other Rediit clones like Notabug
[http://notabug.io/](http://notabug.io/) where you get toxic posts and
comments? You give people anonymous access and they show their dark sides.

------
Multicomp
Looks like this is getting a lot of HN hug of death.

Let the username landgrab begin. Apparently they are called SubEddits instead
of Subreddits? Not much in the way of r/android or similar but time will tell
if this lasts or vanishes. Seems nice enough so far.

------
jhasse
Why not use an existing (well-tested) code base like Postmill
[https://gitlab.com/postmill/Postmill](https://gitlab.com/postmill/Postmill) ?

------
FrozenVoid
How are you going to prevent your reddit clone website being overrun with
lowest-common-denominator content? i.e. how you will maintain quality long-
term, after the initial rush of novelty wears off.

------
lettergram
I’m getting the error:

> Too Many Requests: 60 per 1 minute

I visited the site twice...

It looks interesting, but I am curious what are the implications. I.e. how
does everyone’s interactions change.

Also seems kinda weird I have to login to be honest...

~~~
cc-d
This was re-submitted here when I was sleeping, and I was the only admin. I
went to bed thinking my submission had not been noticed, leaving my site
misconfigured thinking it did not matter.

The technical issues and most of the offensive content has been taken care of.

------
ksahin
There's something weird when I create a post. When I search existing subs,
(for example programming) it doesn't seem to work.

Am I doing something wrong or is it a bug?

~~~
cc-d
Bug. Fixed now, 4 minute response time :)

~~~
ksahin
Waouh congrats!

------
pippy
Have you thought about making the data distributed and p2p? that way it's more
resilient. Reddit at one stage was also minimalist and open source

~~~
icedchai
Why don't we just bring back Usenet?

~~~
deadbunny
To be fair Reddit was basically Usenet in web form for the longest of time.
Then they needed to make money.

------
floatingatoll
Patreon’s URL for reporting community guidelines violations is here:

[https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-
us/requests/new](https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/requests/new)

Those guidelines are here for anyone who is curious:

[https://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines](https://www.patreon.com/policy/guidelines)

~~~
whenchamenia
How is this relevant? The project does not seem to be violating any
guidelines. Are you suggesting an illegal and unethical reporting of a sites
donated income because you don't agree with it on a publicly indexed forum? If
so, thats really messed up.

~~~
floatingatoll
"Illegal"?

------
StudentStuff
The name is very similar to lemmy with this font. Lemmy being the federated
alternative to Reddit/HN: [https://dev.lemmy.ml](https://dev.lemmy.ml)

------
known
How do you make sure that anonymity is not abused?

~~~
clord
how do you make sure that identity is not abused?

------
olah_1
Now if only Ieddit, Tildes, Lobsters, Hacker News, Voat, and NotABug would all
federate with each other like Lemmy[1] and Prismo[2].

[1]:
[https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy](https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy)
[2]:
[https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo](https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo)

------
acomagu
I read as "Leddit"

~~~
wideasleep1
Great name for a Zeppelin sub!

------
aks579
Nice

------
blondin
comments links are not working.

------
HNLurker2
For chan

------
topmonk
ieddit sounds quite close to idiot. You might want to change that (unless it
was intended)

------
radicalriddler
Is the site dead already?

------
jonathankoren
Hasn't the past 20 years shown that anonymous posts and comments are a perfect
breeding ground for trolls?

~~~
kspacewalk2
You're on a site where at least half the commenters are anonymous, and
evidently the discussion level here is good enough for you to stay.
Conversely, Facebook is not any less cancerous because they have a real name
policy. So no, I'd say the least N years have not shown that.

~~~
npo9
I think the most important aspect of a community is its members. Reddit,
Facebook, etc have all tried hard to grow their communities and have reduced
the quality of them as they increased the headcount.

The best communities don’t strive for the hockey stick growth.

~~~
throwaway1777
Reddit and Facebook are not a single community, they are many communities some
of which have a very high bar for quality, and some of which are a free for
all that tends toward low quality memes and trolling.

~~~
jcims
I found that removing any community of more than 100K subscribers from my
reddit experience made it much more tolerable.

In the old design you could go to /r/ _subredditname_ /comments and see an
ordered list of comments regardless of which post they were associated with.
It really livened things up and let you track the conversations going on given
that there wern't that many new posts in a given day. That's gone with the new
design unfortunately.

~~~
Sharparam
You can opt out of the new design and still access that.

Example:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/](https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/)

I have disabled the new design entirely in my user preferences, so I get the
old design even if I don't put "old" in the URL.

------
jlarocco
I haven't used Reddit in a very long time, but does it not allow anonymous
posts and comments any more? My account, at least, isn't tied to my real name
or identity in any way, IIRC.

Anyway, I'm not sure anonymity is a great feature. The lack of accountability
is a good part of the reason why Reddit became such a cesspool.

~~~
jdc
You're mixing up anonymity and pseudonymity.

~~~
icedchai
Just create a new throwaway account each time.

~~~
el_dev_hell
This used to be a lot easier. Now reddit doesn't let you create an account
without an email (and most burner email tools are blocked like
[https://www.mailinator.com/](https://www.mailinator.com/).

~~~
icedchai
Actually it does. Just hit "next" when it prompts for an email. I just created
another account 30 seconds ago, no email required.

~~~
johndough
My comments often don't show up when I don't verify an email address, which
severely limits the use of anonymous accounts.

~~~
Eleopteryx
To me it seems like there are features of the site or certain subs that
essentially shitlist you until your account is of a certain age or upvote
quota. You're not wrong that posts by brand new accounts seem to be invisible
sometimes.

------
xvilka
Would be nice to have it written in Go, to be truly minimalist and for easy
local deployment.

