
Anonymous Reddit without servers - vyrotek
http://getaether.net/
======
natrius
Persistent pseudonyms seem to be required for voting-based communities to
work. Without them, what is a vote? Whose votes do I trust?

Distributing reddit is a hard problem, but making it anonymous is even harder.
It'll be easier to start with cryptographic identities and add anonymity
later. In the meantime, users can generate new identities for every action.
They will be ignored by other users, since reputation is the easiest way to
separate signal from noise.

Building this system will be much easier if you investigate the toolkits for
building distributed systems that have been built since Aether started.
Ethereum has three building blocks for distributed systems: a blockchain for
storing data that requires consensus, like the identities of the creators and
moderators of a community; Whisper, a messaging system for sending data that
doesn't require consensus, like broadcasting the existence of a sub-forum; and
Swarm, a distributed data store for things like discussion archives and the
HTML, CSS and Javascript that such a discussion system could be built from to
run on every device that every user owns. (For an example of an application
with this sort of architecture, see Augur.
[http://augur.net](http://augur.net))

Besides the development speed gained from using these tools, your system will
gain benevolent forkability. You want developers with ideas about
decentralized communities to write forks that effectively don't steal users
since everyone's using the same data sources to read from and write to. But
using a homegrown distributed system makes that less likely. If it were built
on Ethereum's toolkit, even if a developer disagrees with most of what you've
done, it's in their interest to use the same data source even if they rewrite
everything. The userbase of benevolently forkable distributed systems never
needs to be split, which is a powerful characteristic for growth.

Aether is fantastic, and it's where the web is heading. Good luck!

~~~
curiousjorge
Ethereum is super interesting but I'm kinda turned off by seeing "Licensing"
and looks like it's aimed at some sort of profiteering, which I don't think is
compatible with the sort of architecture we are going for, but I might be
wrong here, please feel free to correct me.

~~~
dogma1138
Nothing wrong with licensing, cryptocurrencies on the other well meh...

All of those "proof of work" type schemes eventually will dwindle down to the
same centralized network they are aiming to replace.

With the amount of compute power required to perform any operation mining will
end up being handled by a couple of big players which the rest will use a
proxy.

BitCoin already is pretty much centralized with mining becoming an operation
which requires you to setup a bloody data center to get into the game, yes
allot of those are some weird complexes in the middle of no-where China, but
they are still bloody huge and expensive.

And there isn't much you can do about it, if you build a network which
establishes "trust" based on "effort" the effort cannot be trivial, or to be
more exact the amount of trust one will have in such network is tied directly
to the amount of effort one has to put into it to perform a given task.

~~~
HappyTypist
That's not true. While bitcoin mining is conducted through pools, what mining
pools do is entirely public. Miners can easy choose another pool if one abuses
their power.

For example, in 2014 a pool named GHash.io was close to obtaining 50%
hashpower. It is customary for pools to stop accepting new signups when they
are close to 50%, however GHash.io refused to do so. The miners organised an
exodus and GHash lost half of their miners in a month.

~~~
inoop
What is stopping people from setting up multiple pools and getting 50% that
way?

How do you really know all those pool operators are actually different people?

For a 'trustless' system, it seems like you need to place an awful lot of to
trust in this small, secretive cabal of mining operators.

------
vyrotek
I stumbled onto this while discussing with some friends the possibility of
someone creating a "distributed Reddit". I thought it might bring the
opportunity to discuss some Reddit alternatives.

Does anything similar to Reddit but with a model more like Wordpress exist?
Perhaps there's interest in offering independently hosted sub-communities that
can be centrally linked to for discoverability? Could it provide subdomains
such as __programming.newreddit.com __which pointed to an externally hosted
community?

Is what I'm describing what Diaspora was attempting to create? I haven't
honestly looked into it very much. Many people have suggested trying out
[http://voat.co](http://voat.co) which looks like is open source. Someone may
be able to leverage that.

~~~
derefr
> Does anything similar to Reddit but with a model more like Wordpress exist?
> Perhaps there's interest in offering independently hosted sub-communities
> that can be centrally linked to for discoverability? Could it provide
> subdomains such as programming.newreddit.com which pointed to an externally
> hosted community?

I was just talking to a friend about setting this up.

1\. Take the reddit codebase, strip off all the subreddit stuff so you've got
one "subreddit" per site, and set up a WordPress.com-like site to allow people
launch instances of that in a cloud somewhere, with a profit margin to you;

2\. (optional) create an "aggregation" API for the instances and an
"aggregator" site+app that lets people sign-in to subscribe to conformant
sites (y'know, like an RSS reader), then spits out a reddit-front-page-like
index. All the links and votes and such are API calls back to the originating
servers; the aggregator is just a read-only consumer of the sites.

~~~
kordless
You'll need to tie the deployment to a payment mechanism to achieve this for a
subset of users without giving control to a single entity. I have some ideas
how to do that.

~~~
TrevorJ
That sounds interesting. Would be a fun project.

------
sktrdie
This has been on a couple of times. It's an interesting concept but user's
reputation isn't really stored anywhere. It's just a synch of data between
peers. So someone can very easily simulate many points, or upvote content
several times.

~~~
hellbanner
Was it namecoin? I can't recall the name of the project but the idea was you
mined (ala bitcoin) coins for your "name".. so if you had a year's worth of
processing behind your name then you were an established identity vs someone
with 0 seconds of processing.

~~~
Leon
Wouldn't that end up as the person with the most money has the biggest voice?

~~~
zamalek
Only if implemented that way. Intrinsically there is simply more certainty
that they are who they say they are.

------
austenallred
Getting to a high level of traction while requiring people to download a
client is _incredibly_ difficult. I can't see it happening.

~~~
bgilroy26
Based on the aether's name and your comment, I thought this discussion was
about Ethereum.

An app built on Ethereum would also check off the 'decentralized' box for
people who are angry at Ellen Pao.

[https://www.ethereum.org/](https://www.ethereum.org/)

~~~
natrius
To me, decentralization isn't just about avoiding control. I think that the
network effects that decentralization yields are the only way to compete with
an established network. It's hard to get people to agree on which centralized
alternative to use, but if structured correctly, there can be just one
decentralized alternative with several benevolent forks with different
features, but a shared data store. No one's in control, and everybody wins.

------
wemysh
If it would be a browser based solution, the number of people who try it would
be 1000x higher.

~~~
narrowrail
You mean browser-based, as in provided by a server (aka centralized)? Perhaps
there is a way to daemonize the process and run it headless on a server with
web access, but the _whole_ point is no central server to depend on.

Edit: I guess I don't understand how this project, which makes one of its key
features to be be web server less, would be accessed by web browser without
doing what I suggested above. Could you explain?

~~~
natrius
Browser-based, serverless apps are what Ethereum is all about. You run a
daemon on your computer that maintains a blockchain, messaging system
(Whisper), and content storage system (Swarm). That daemon exposes an RPC
interface so local processes can get data from it. The most common result is
an HTML, CSS, and Javascript bundle that is a full-fledged application without
a server, because its backend is peer-to-peer.

Web apps aren't a requirement—you could build a traditional desktop app that
talks to the Ethereum daemon as well. But using the application runtime that
everyone already has installed lowers the barrier to entry, so it's what most
successful projects will choose.

~~~
narrowrail
>You run a daemon on your computer

I think you might notice that in the comment you are replying to I
specifically mention using a daemon?

Anyway, running a daemon still requires one to download software which seems
to be the point of complaint for some people with this project.

~~~
natrius
Just sharing a concrete example that exists today. Yes, a download is still
required.

------
rev_bird
Honestly, most of the functionality I need from Reddit is replicated from
active message boards that I frequent. Yeah, there often isn't any kind of
"voting" mechanism, but the part I love most about the smaller subreddits is
the _discussion_. Popular threads always stand out.

This particular project seems to be more about the mechanics behind having a
distributed system and not as much about the community-building aspects, but
to be honest when I hear "Decentralize Reddit! Host the subs elsewhere!" my
first thought is, "you're describing the internet."

------
yesco
If it is only going to rely on community votes for moderation, how will it
deal with spam?

------
nathan_f77
> It's also temporary. Whatever you post disappears after six months. It's
> designed to be an ephemeral space, and it's focused on now, rather than the
> past.

Not a fan of this idea. I love finding new subreddits and taking a look at
their top posts of all time.

~~~
thenomad
Ditto. Information on topic-specific subreddits is really useful, and not
always subject to rapid bitrot.

(Context: I'm a filmmaker. There's plenty of writing about filmmaking from 30+
years ago that's still very useful. And filmmaking is a comparatively tech-
driven, fast-moving interest.)

------
smaili
Anyone in the Bay Area is serious about building a Reddit alternative, let me
know - me (at) smaili (dot) org

~~~
TrevorJ
I think the next 'reddit' needs to be an evolution and innovative in some
ways. Cracking the comment thread organization would be a good place to start,
that seems like something that could really be improved on. Also, as a few
other people have mentioned in here, decentralizing/decoupling the central
'brand' from the individual 'sub sites' seems important from both a technical
and business standpoint.

~~~
_up
I am working on a feedly alternative that also ingests the voting/ranking of
other sites like Reddit and Hacker News. Do you think implementing discussions
that can be integrated via Javascipt a la disqus would be a good solution?
Building voting/raking ingestion and also discussion ingestion could also be
done via an Open Protocol so all Feedreader could benefit.

~~~
TrevorJ
Small sample size, but thats the one feature I sorely miss in feed readers:
comments and discussion.

------
bshimmin
It's slightly funny to read about a "moderated, distributed, and anonymous"
forum system, as if these features were new and exciting, when we've basically
had exactly that since about 1980: usenet.

~~~
thenomad
So, the obvious question is this: why aren't we seeing a massive influx of
Usenet users from Reddit right now? And why didn't everyone move to Usenet
rather than Reddit after Digg fell apart?

There's clearly something, or somethings, that are preventing Usenet from
being terribly useful at present for the "Reddit-like" use case.

(I used to be a heavy Usenet user back in the '90s. Haven't touched it in more
than a decade, though.)

~~~
bshimmin
It's been a good while, perhaps a decade now, since usenet was really a
commonplace thing, so it's unlikely that anyone will ever flock there now.

Usenet's downfall perhaps in part stems from its legacy as part of the "nice"
era of computing's history, when it was just sort of assumed that everyone
using computers were friendly people in academia and thus we didn't need to
worry about bad people doing bad things. Some people would date Usenet's
downward spiral as starting with Eternal September, but I think really it was
just spam and binaries that killed it (the latter making usenet very expensive
- and risky - for ISPs to offer as a service; which meant then looking for a
(probably) paid-for alternative news provider).

Once people stopped using it, it became hard to see why it was good in the
first place - and everybody by that point was doing everything through their
web browser, and there never really was a great usenet experience through the
web (certainly Google Groups wasn't it).

------
aoeu33315
Anyone heard of freenet project, this seems like a bad copy.

~~~
dghughes
Bad, bad stuff on there.

No way.

~~~
tete
Only if you dig deep enough for it. There are certain subreddits that are
pretty bad as well.

~~~
dghughes
You see links to "it" on the intial page.

------
Qantourisc
Anyone else worries about: "Whatever you post disappears after six months." ?
On one side you might wish to keep posts, like for example questions. And on
the other side, people can just copy the posts or make a client that keeps a
copy forever locally. And thus such claims cannot be guaranteed.

~~~
tete
I think it might mostly be a question of capacity. One can save stuff though,
so that fact isn't hidden at all. It's also mentioned.

------
ionwake
I built [http://www.sagebump.com](http://www.sagebump.com)

It brings across and merges your sub reddit preferences, slashdot feeds &
stackoverlfow feeds.

It then removes bias, ranks and merges the articles together.

I mentioned it on reddit but got absolutely no traction.

I think it might have been because you don't post directly on the site.

I can do that but it was meant to act as a tool to merge accounts rather than
enable native posting.

Anyway, if anyone likes what they see and want to help me either develop it or
get it exposure, then I am happy to collaborate. Whether it be a co-founder or
investor.

~~~
crummy
I like this a lot. Some feedback:

\- Can you remember that I've visited so I don't need to see the intro again?

\- The intro does a pretty poor job of explaining what the site is. Even just
a header saying "Sagebump: Aggregated social news feeds"

\- Do the filters work in Settings? Also the word filter is ambiguous here;
I'm not sure if I'm filtering in or out.

~~~
ionwake
Hi, yes the pop up was a quick hack yesterday I will add this on.

I will add your header - thank you !

The filters do work - I may need to double check them incase I broke them !

Thank you for taking the time to look at it and for your feedback .

------
JD557
The first sync is taking a long time, is this normal?

(They recommend you to launch it at boot, so I guess it is)

~~~
take-take
This post on reddit[1] has a lot of IP addresses to bootstrap off of. [1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/getaether/comments/3c1802/aether_as...](https://www.reddit.com/r/getaether/comments/3c1802/aether_as_a_reddit_alternative/csrdwsk)

~~~
ryr
Thanks. Here's mine 71.30.200.42:59005

------
jacquesm
Rebuilding Reddit in a better way is _not_ a technical problem.

------
paragon_init
Happy to see that it's open source, too.

[https://github.com/nehbit/aether-public](https://github.com/nehbit/aether-
public)

------
anaolykarpov
Now imagine this protocol used to command and control a botnet.

------
davidgerard
Is this where we start using NNTP again yet?

------
vilhelm_s
Hm, downloaded on my MacOS 1.8.5 machine, but the app crashes on startup.

------
pakr
Is anyone using it ?

------
Vendan
urm, a bit of a bad decision to have it say "Open this website in a desktop
computer to download Aether, or join the mailing list, so you'll be reminded."
with the desktop computer part bolded and italicized, like I'm an idiot that
needs to be walked through these things. I'm using firefox on linux. I get
that there may not be a linux client, but do your client sniffing better.

Edit: Wait, no, you have linux binaries, your github says so, so why don't
they show up on the main site?

~~~
Vendan
wait, why the downvote? Literally no download link even though I can actually
run it: [http://i.imgur.com/LVY5I9W.png](http://i.imgur.com/LVY5I9W.png)

------
swagv
digg 3.0

~~~
charlesism
Is that meant as a compliment or an insult?

