
Show HN: Reddit alternative – decentralized social news site, no censorship - frizbee
http://get-frisbee.com/
======
minimaxir
Let's look at what happened to Voat.

After people claimed Reddit was censoring users by banning /r/fatpeoplehate,
the more unsavory users flocked to Voat, a blatant Reddit clone.

As you would expect, said unsavory people posted unsavory content. Said
unsavory content, while free and uncensored, was not _legal_ , and that causes
problems:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3avyem/voat_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3avyem/voat_finally_caves_the_first_bannings_of/)

Said issues caused their PayPal account to become frozen:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3augr0/drama...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3augr0/drama_over_voats_paypal_account_getting/)

No, "decentralized" does not magically make you immune to law and punishment.

~~~
bhouston
Diss Voat.co as much as you want, but so far Voat.co is actually a pretty huge
success:
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/voat.co](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/voat.co)

~~~
iLoch
I don't think minimaxir was "dissing" voat.co, just stating facts. As for
voat's success, I can't see how it can ever hope to supersede reddit - or even
come close to competing with reddit - given that it _is_ indeed a blatant
clone. There's no real redeeming qualities of voat that are not already
present on Reddit.

~~~
rjbwork
I personally am not using voat yet, but think that the fact that ModLogs are
totally public and open instead of being hidden away and largely controlled by
a couple of cabals of users is a huge plus.

I don't see voat as being a long term viable thing though, since it's just one
kid in college and the recent surge of users was largely driven by an exodus
from reddit over banning politically incorrect speech.

~~~
koko775
Harassing people and subreddits whose moderators encouraged and supported
harassment go well beyond just "politically incorrect".

------
adamrezich
I don't want to be That Guy, but I really don't think the UI is very
intuitive. A lot of things really bug me about it. It's hard to peruse a list
of posts and scan headlines, unlike on Hacker News or reddit. You compose
comments with a serif font, and then the comment is posted with a sans-serif
font. It appears as if all URLs are just frizbee.co/#SomethingGoesHere,
regardless of what it is. This makes me lost a lot because I'll click the logo
in the upper-left corner because I want to go back to the homepage, but it
doesn't work. It also means that I have no idea what a link is before I click
on it. When I see reddit.com/u/takua108, I know that it's takua108's user
page. When I see reddit.com/r/dota2, I know that it's the Dota 2 subreddit.
When I see
[https://frizbee.co/#ICameHereFromHackerNews558b70ef40cdf](https://frizbee.co/#ICameHereFromHackerNews558b70ef40cdf),
I have no idea what the hell to think. Plus, there's no comment permalinks,
and it looks like every link is using javascript or something, because I can't
even hover over the link to see where it leads!

I like a lot of the ideas behind this, but I feel like the execution is very,
very poor.

~~~
__z
Its even worse than that. Navigation is just totally broken. For example I
clicked your link then on that page I clicked Our Manifesto. The URL changed
to
[https://frizbee.co/#OurManifesto5589a552786d5](https://frizbee.co/#OurManifesto5589a552786d5)
but the page content did not change! This seems to happen all over.

Totally dont need to re-engineer hyperlinks. They are hyperlinks!

(logo in the left hand corner does change the url to
[https://frizbee.co/#HotPosts](https://frizbee.co/#HotPosts) but as you and I
said it just doesnt work)

~~~
frizbee
These glitches have since been fixed.

~~~
na85
Performance is awful on my i7.

You should use less js. I should not be able to watch things being indented
and layouts being modified as the page loads.

~~~
lqdc13
Yup can't even browse with JS turned off unlike HN/reddit.

~~~
frizbee
On the other hand, Tumblr requires JavaScript... and the sites you listed
require it for voting and commenting.

~~~
__z
I find it funny you reply to this and not my comment above... what does
reinventing hyperlinks get you other than screwing up user experience????

Because Tumblr does it too???

What is the positive???

------
koko775
No censorship as in no moderation?

No thanks.

No censorship as in no punishing the stalking and threatening of others?

Also no thanks.

I want free speech where people are free with their speech, not unrestrained
speech (specifically) where people feel free to hurt others.

~~~
milkworsethan
Translation: I want free speech except I want people I don't like to not have
it.

~~~
zamalek
> I want free speech except I want people I don't like to not have it.

No, actually, koko very loosely defined _actual_ free speech. In a nutshell
free speech means that you can say whatever you please so long as you don't
venture into what the American courts call "fighting words" (words/images
designed to cause harm to another person or words/images that inspire others
to cause harm to another person).

Example:

Let's say that I am prejudiced toward piglets (those damn curly tails!). I can
express my extreme disdain for the swines to my heart's content. I can talk to
people who share my bacon-related woes in the open.

However, I can't encourage people to go and harass or do harm to the hogs. I
can't dox Babe and let everyone know the specific pen of residence: that would
be encouraging others to harm, harass or make breakfast out of the pig.

*May not actually apply to pigs.

~~~
cbd1984
That isn't how "fighting words" is defined.

~~~
zamalek
> ... and the insulting or "fighting words" those that by their very utterance
> inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. —
> Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 1942

Uh, _yes_ it is. If you're going to take the time to tell me that I'm wrong,
you might actually also take the time to _correct_ me. Not only was your
statement incorrect but it added absolutely nothing to the discussion.

~~~
cbd1984
Uh, no, fighting words means something that's _immediate_ , as in _you 're
literally right in front of them insulting them and they punch you in the
nose._

It can't be done over the Internet.

------
empressplay
It's a bit of a stretch to call this "decentralised" when it still relies on
software running on a "master" server (your bot.)

Second, if it is indeed fully anonymous, won't it just become a haven for
trolls?

~~~
frizbee
Even though many playlist servers run on the frizbee.co server, some are
community-owned.

Feel free to host a decentralized server here:
[https://github.com/Frizbeeco/Frizbee/blob/master/documentati...](https://github.com/Frizbeeco/Frizbee/blob/master/documentation.md)

You can also block users for spam.

~~~
empressplay
Okay right, but it's not _decentralised_ -- if it was, I would be able to run
a completely stand-alone server, or join an arbitrary network of servers
completely unrelated to yours just by punching in the IP address of another
member server.

If I _must_ have anything to do with you, it's not decentralised. Distributed,
maybe. But _not_ decentralised.

------
lettergram
I like the idea, but I don't think the UI design is really all that great.

For example the upvote button is massive, and I couldn't easily find the
comment button at all.

Basically, it made me scared to even look at the site... like, "where am I?"

~~~
chanux
Also.. contrast.

------
pyrmont
I'm confused how the licensing of users' content is intended to work.

The site states that you own your content[1] but then on its manifesto page[2]
states that all information is in the public domain. The license itself[3] is
not particularly clear.

Putting information into the public domain does provide for maximum freedom in
terms of how the information can be used, but that's because the copyright
owner renounces their rights.

[1]:
[https://frizbee.co/#WhatMakesFrizbeeDifferent558b273db212a](https://frizbee.co/#WhatMakesFrizbeeDifferent558b273db212a)

[2]:
[https://frizbee.co/#OurManifesto5589a552786d5](https://frizbee.co/#OurManifesto5589a552786d5)

[3]:
[https://frizbee.co/#LegalLicense5589af95a67c3](https://frizbee.co/#LegalLicense5589af95a67c3)

~~~
__z
"you own the copyright to your content... all the content on Frizbee is in the
public domain... you can use and redistribute [user content] in any way,
completely free of charge."

Yeah, really really strange. That makes _no sense._ The whole thing in general
seems to confuse copyright with responsibility of content. Of course I could
have got the gist wrong because it was very confusing and contradicted itself.

------
thefreeman
Can anyone clarify what is decentralized about this? I clicked around a few
threads on the site and they all appear to be hosted at frizbee.co.

~~~
empressplay
It's not decentralised. You have the ability to run a node. Your node
communicates exclusively with frizbee's servers.

------
austenallred
It looks like you're off to a good start. There's design cleanup to do, for
sure. Ya, there are buts that people can clear cookies and vote again -
welcome to the world of building social news software.

There will be two key moments with this: 1\. Will people stick around after
this is off the front page of HN?

2\. When people decide to game your site, how well do you handle voting rings?
The reddit founders have mentioned that nearly half of their code catches
voting rings; that's not trivial to do. And of course, it may be premature
optimization, but it is something to consider that anyone with a few minutes
of time to build a bot could completely destroy your site.

~~~
__z
Wouldn't "handling vote rings" be a form of "censorship"?

~~~
NeutronBoy
You have a right to say what you want, you don't have a right to manipulate
the ranking of the content.

~~~
__z
I don't see the difference. If you want to be free of censorship that also
means free of moderation. Every community needs moderation if only for spam
for a reason. That's why this doesn't make sense, there will have to be some
choices at moderating the content thus choosing what is displayed or not.

------
jedberg
The top post as I write this: "Delete your cookie and upvote forever".

------
empressplay
The original Frizee submission from 32 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9593729)

------
personjerry
"We're the only decentralized democratic social aggregator website"

I feel like this is not true.

~~~
rtpg
how can a website be decentralized...

~~~
x0
Maybe if you spread it across 500 AWS instances

------
liamzebedee
If people are interested in P2P decentralized discussion systems, check out
[http://getaether.net](http://getaether.net) made by @nehbit . Beautiful UX,
wasn't released yesterday either.

------
__z
Grey text is hard to read - needs contrast overall. Finding links and controls
by random clicking and trial and error also isn't pleasant. mystery meat
navigation.

------
ethana
Apparently you can clear your cookie and up vote again. I can see the spambot
coming already.

------
empressplay
Also, the "view counts" on the website are pure BS -- the comment view counts
don't grow at the same rate the thread view count does, for example. The
thread view-count grows at almost a clockwork rate, etc.

I know, I know, Reddit pulled similar stunts in its early days but it still
feels a bit dodgy.

~~~
frizbee
Hi,

It's not a stunt, and you are purely speculating. The reason for the view
count for the comments being different is very easy to explain: a comment may
not have been posted at the same time as a post, and therefore has a different
number of views.

------
keedot
I honestly hope one of these takes off. I don't want to ever go there, I don't
take amusement in other people's suffering. But seeing so much outrage on
reddit from assholes bitching that they can't be racist/bigoted/loathsome on a
private forum screaming about freedom of speech which belies their own
ignorance makes me long for the days of gopher. I find it repugnant, and I'm
glad to live in a country where I'm free to say anything, but hate speech is
prosecuted.

~~~
duncan_bayne
"I'm glad to live in a country where I'm free to say anything, but hate speech
is prosecuted."

I'm going to be optimistic for the future of humanity, and assume that was a
(masterful) troll.

~~~
DanBC
That's a very common sentiment in eg England.

Americans tend not to realise that their free speech laws are sometimes seen
as extreme in Europe.

It's not surprising they used a throwaway, they already got downvoted.

(It wasn't me.)

~~~
soneil
The Westboro Baptist Church make an easily graspable example of this. In the
US the consensus (if any) seems to be "vile, but within their rights". But
they're banned from entering the UK or Canada, because we draw that line
differently.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Well yes, where 'differently' means 'hypocritically'.

For example, you prevent anti-jihad activists like Robert Spencer from
entering the UK to speak, but you're perfectly prepared to allow pro-jihad
activists to live in the UK and preach hatred of Jews, women, and non-Muslims
in general.

This is the problem with limits on freedom of speech - they allow people doing
the limiting to ban speech they don't like, for no other reason that they
don't like it.

~~~
keedot
That's a problem with politicians. Don't confuse the two.

~~~
duncan_bayne
Sorry, I don't understand. It looks (to an outsider) like politicians are
selectively enforcing nebulous 'hate speech' laws to silence people they don't
like. How is that not a built-in feature of hate speech laws?

~~~
DanBC
I don't quite understand your complaint. You say the UK doesn't have freedom
of speech; you demonstrate that by giving an example of people who do have
freedom of speech; you then mention people who are banned from entering the
UK, but those people are banned because there is a risk of violence; you then
say that that rule is not applied to violent Islamists who live in the
country.

Of course it isn't! They live here, border controls are entirely the wrong
tool to use for citizens.

Those border controls are used to prevent many Islamists from coming to the
country.

And violent Islamists are dealt with using other laws.

A better example of uneven freedom of speech laws might have been the
protections that Jews and Christians had (under racial discrimination laws and
blasphemy laws) that were not extended to Muslims.

~~~
duncan_bayne
"but those people are banned because there is a risk of violence"

No, they're banned because their speech is so unpopular amongst a small but
violent group of the population, that the Govt. would rather they weren't
allowed to speak there.

That's a freedom of speech issue, not a border control issue.

If the Govt. were functioning properly, it would uphold its duty to protect
unpopular speech by preventing (or at least attempting to prevent) violence
directed at them. Instead, they just close their doors.

------
moron4hire
I don't know, is censorship the problem with Reddit?

------
blfr
How does login/registration work? Once I changed the moniker, added a
password, how do I then log in?

~~~
frizbee
You login using the same menu you used for adding a passphrase- you enter your
passphrase form another computer.

------
protomyth
I'm starting to think the sufficiently complicated Lisp quote applies to
USENET.

------
myhackeraccount
quite slow

------
SrslyJosh
If you're a bad enough person that _Reddit_ will ban you or your favorite
subreddits, by all means get the fuck out! =)

------
monksy
Ummm no. You're late to the game. Also, you're not established. If anyone has
a claim to this, it's Voat. (Despite their difficulties)

~~~
zxcvcxz
Who runs voat? How do I know it isn't run by Russian spies? or US spies?

~~~
monksy
Probably both.. and what prevents either of those from running this?

------
carsongross
Haters gonna hate, but eventually something like this will win. It's too
obvious an idea and hard drives are getting too cheap.

