
Aether – Free, privacy-sensitive public communities - HostFat
https://getaether.net
======
rolleiflex
Hey guys - Burak here. Ouch, this was supposed to be a ‘soft’ launch.

I’m here to answer any questions as usual. I’ll pick the best and try to add
it to the FAQ on the site.

~~~
nixarian
You state that one of the purposes of this platform is to allow you the
freedom to be wrong, but if people can save something before 6 months, how
would you prevent someone from saving an embarrassing comment for future use
against you? Or are you the only one capable of saving your own comments?

~~~
rolleiflex
They can definitely save yours - and if you’re someone whose comments should
be saved, be pseudonymous. What they can’t do is they can’t go back 14 years
of history like they can on Twitter, after the fact, and find something out of
context there.

Pseudonymity and ephemerality are the two sides of the same coin. One doesn’t
protect without the other.

~~~
inequity
Have you considered the inequities that such a retention policy introduces
into HOW history can be used?

The entrepreneurial (and governments) will archive everything to serve the
wealthy (including governments), who will be able to use history to their
ends. Those without resources will live in an eternal present, except where
history is used against them.

To sell this kind of retention policy as a user-protecting feature is (in my
view) at best naive, and at worst, disingenuous. This model increases the
economic cost of mining history, but in doing so, entrenches existing wealth
and power structures.

Thanks to the ever-decreasing cost-per-bit of storage, the internet is
forever. The only hope for redemption lies in this permanence affecting
everyone equally; otherwise we're doomed to (continue to) live in a world
where only the wealthy and politically connected have read and write access to
history.

~~~
rolleiflex
There is an argument to be made there, but you're off on the difficulty of
storing data. Reddit, even with its 250M+ users, generates only 8.5Gb per
month of data. A $100 Western Digital hard drive could hold the entirety of
Reddit's comment history. In other words, if you want to collect data, you can
do it just as well if you're just a random guy on the street just as well as
any government can. Aether can't prevent anyone from collecting data, just
like Snapchat also cannot. But what it can do is that it can reduce the
availability of historic data as much as possible, so the data is at least not
_accidentally_ collected.

> ... but in doing so, entrenches existing wealth and power structures.

What entrenches existing wealth and power structures is wealth and power.
That's why it's valuable to have wealth and power. In other words, you could
prefix that sentence with almost anything, and you'd still be right.

------
comex
Nice! I remember hearing about Aether some time ago, and I'm glad to see
development is continuing; I think the world needs more decentralized social
networks. I plan to try it out and maybe post more in-depth feedback.

For now, though, since nobody else in this thread has mentioned it, I'm going
to be that guy – sorry:

I wish it weren't Electron. I don't really expect it not to be; I realize your
development resources are limited, and that it's the easiest way to make a
cross-platform application, which is a must for a social network. Still,
having to deal with a non-native UI makes it harder to truly enjoy using the
app. Also, if it uses as much memory as Electron apps typically do, I'm going
to want to quit it when it's not actively in use – but apparently Aether
really wants to stay running in the background so it can continue to
synchronize posts. (Is there a way to close the client but keep the backend
running?)

~~~
rolleiflex
I know - given enough time and money, I'd make a CLI app using something like
ncurses. Unfortunately though, the reality is that I just don't have the
resources.

The backend is its own process, you could definitely find the binary in the
application package and run it on its own — it's not bound to Electron in any
other way. Electron is just the client, the frontend graph compiler, and the
backend are two separate binaries that communicate with each other over gRPC.
That means you could run any of these independently, as well. [0] The client
is Electron, but nothing except the UI happens in JS, everything happens in
the frontend and the backend, and they're both tiny, fast, native-compiled Go
apps. My backend, for example, is 4.8mb, frontend I think is 6mb. The rest of
the size of the app (70mb) is just Electron, its dependencies, and the whole
enchilada that comes with it. I'm not happy about it either.

For better or worse, though, since the JS part of the app is nothing but its
'skin', it's as memory efficient as Electron apps get. No real processing
happens in JS, it's all Go.

[0] That said, it's not something I support right now, because if you ran the
backend separately and then started the app, you'd effectively be running two
backends. There is not yet a way to tell the app package that it should
connect to an existing backend running locally instead of starting one.

~~~
fbender
How about providing a WebExtension that exposes the bits that require a binary
(e.g. P2P and possibly proof-of-work part if WASM does not work for you) or
are provided by the platform, then you can waive the Electron requirement for
those who do not want it, plus your web interface potentially works the same
for read-only visitors and users (who have the web extension installed). You
can also include the frontend bits in the WebExtension so no one relies on the
website working anymore.

------
mpnordland
FYI, there doesn't appear to be any cryptocurrency involved, which is a plus
for me.

------
tlrobinson
> Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting.

If these are public communities that anyone can join pseudonymously (are
they?) how does Aether prevent Sybil attacks, where a malicious actor joins a
community using multiple identities and votes themselves into power?

Also, spam?

~~~
tomsmeding
Does any existing kind of social network prevent that kind of attack? I don't
believe so, and I'd think that's pretty difficult to accomplish. Aether does
attempt to make this nontrivial, I believe, by requiring proof-of-work before
posting things. I don't know, but possibly that proof-of-work also applies for
impeachment votes (I hope it does!). Then depending on how hard that proof-of-
work requirement is and how many people are already in the community,
performing such an attack would become harder.

~~~
cslarson
Reddit is experimenting with sybil-resistent voting on a sub I moderate
(r/ethtrader). In fact there is a vote[0] going on to retain me as the first
moderator. The sybil-resistence comes from weighting polls with community
points (on our sub we call them donuts - don't ask). Donuts are intended to
represent contribution to the community so derive from sub specific karma,
being a mod, etc. It's still an experiment but I think it's going well so far.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/9tm60s/governanc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/9tm60s/governance_poll_i_am_first_moderator_at_your/)

------
lxe
> What Aether does is, you can actually disable the mods that you don’t
> approve just for yourself, and those disables count as an impeach vote. If
> majority of the community agrees, the mod loses mod rights for a while for
> everyone. That makes it so that Aether communities are places where the
> content is what the current users of the communities want, not those who
> were there first by chance.

Even if "impeaching mods through votes" is unpractical, subscribing to an
unmoderated view of the forum on your own accord is brilliant!

~~~
jonnydubowsky
I like the way you sum this up Ixe. Your comment illicits a mental model like
a manual transmission where the terrain (dynamics of the conversation) sets
the context for what gear to select (which mods to have in place) , based on
how much gas you are giving the engine, which is a personal choice of the
driver. One driver may choose a very low gear to go down a hill (a
conservative moderator that controls the decent of the vehicle) and another
driver may wish to just coast down at high speed (very litte moderation). Same
car, same terrain, different driver, different choice for what gear to keep it
in. The mental model gets a little loose goosy when you consider that this is
not a single person making the decision but rather a group, but oh well.
Thanks Burak for making this platform. I'm really enjoying the ride so far!

~~~
jonnydubowsky
I completed the mental model... It's. Like one of those 12 passenger 4x4 off
road tour vans, or even a 100 passenger hydrofoil boat, where the driver has a
reputation score, as do the passengers, and you can pick which boat you want
to go on based on the expected conditions of the drive. If the boat ride is
billed as a leisurely jaunt for calm bird watching, and the driver knows this
is what the passengers want, and he decides to push the pedal to the metal and
everyone is thrown about, the passengers can suspend the driver and pick one
who understands the consensus of the what the groups specifications are. This
has amazing potential as a platform for civil engagement and public works
management and other areas of social coordination. I can't wait to get into
this further.

------
a012
For anybody who is curious as me:

> Aether is a product of Burak Nehbit (@nehbit). You can reach out at burak at
> getaether dot net.

> Burak Nehbit

> Burak is an ex-Google, ex-Facebook product designer and engineer. He
> specialises in end-to-end product experience, from product, UX, to API
> (developer) experience. He is an expert in the fields of distributed
> networks and monetisation (e.g: prior jobs at YouTube and Facebook).

> He was also the part of the team that built the next generation, material
> design AdWords at Google. (e.g: complex data visualisation, dashboards).

> He is available for consulting as a full-stack designer and engineer in
> distributed networks space. He lives in San Francisco.

[https://getaether.net/about-contact/](https://getaether.net/about-contact/)

~~~
dhimes
So, Burak, care to share the thought behind your username? :)

~~~
rolleiflex
Which username? I use @b on Aether.

~~~
dhimes
I was teasing the parent- not being serious.

~~~
rolleiflex
Ah okay, sorry! I’m the Burak mentioned above and I’m as puzzled as anyone
else on why this was posted, and why this is the highest upvoted comment, to
be honest. Make a thing for privacy and the next thing people do is post your
info online - Satoshi had a point. :)

~~~
DoreenMichele
People got trust issues. They want to know if they can trust the maker. If
not, privacy, schmivacy.

------
tomsmeding
From the FAQ:

> How long does it take for a post to reach the most of the network?

> [...] Long answer [...]

> [...] In fact, it’s a little larger than one request in a minute, because
> some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and NATs, and they cannot be
> reached, they can only make requests out.

Regardless of the actual FAQ discussed here, the statement is made that "some"
nodes are behind NAT's, implying that most will _not_ be behind NAT's. Living
in the Netherlands, I'm not sure about countries overseas in the Americas, but
here I'd wager >99% of normal household PC's will be behind a router
implementing NAT. This makes actual peer-to-peer communication nigh impossible
here, and I'm always doubtful about nice peer-to-peer solutions that claim to
be cool and such but sneakily have the ever-present requirement that you have
a public IP address. I don't. Nobody I know does, except for VPS's and so
forth. But I generally don't run a graphical client on my VPS.

Of course, theoretically, this should be solved by IPv6. But really I wouldn't
know how to start using that, and whether my provider has all the hardware and
software in place to actually have this work. (And whether my provider-issued
router supports it, as well.)

Can anyone chime in on how the situation regarding NAT's is in the Americas?
And does anyone have a good source on how to get started with IPv6
communication between peers, when I don't even know the stuff I mentioned
above?

EDIT: I see that Aether has/seems to have the option to work around this
problem by allowing one to run the backend (the thing that actually connects
to the peer-to-peer network) on a different machine than the client. That
would enable using a VPS to run the backend.

~~~
rolleiflex
> because some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and NATs

That is just a weird turn of phrase on my part, will fix it. What I mean is:

because some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and [restrictive] NATs.

In other words, most NATs work fine. Even if they don’t work fine, it has a
process called a ‘reverse open’ where the inbound connection is requested by
the receiving remote and the remote ‘captures’ and uses the same TCP socket.

Even if that doesn’t work, as you’ve discovered, you can run the backend Ona
VPS.

~~~
tomsmeding
Thanks for replying -- the client seems to work beautifully on osx here. It
took some time to start showing post content, and I even restarted it once
because it didn't seem to do that after a few minutes, but now it does, so
that's good.

My NAT is apparently a restrictive one, since I've got "Mapping failed, no
router, or router uncooperative" as my port mapping status. But as you
predicted, I've indeed got some inbound connections, so yay.

~~~
Orochikaku
I unfortunately am getting the same error however I'm not getting any inbound
connections either

[https://i.imgur.com/49VaP62.png](https://i.imgur.com/49VaP62.png)

------
lsiebert
Moderation seems like a view layer on top of the content graph, right?

I feel like a feature to blacklist actual storage and distribution of a
particular post by fingerprint is going to be needed, because I'm not cool
with simply not rendering child porn or someone's banking details if I'm still
storing it for 6 months, and transmitting that info for two weeks.

~~~
rolleiflex
The payload is just text. You’re not carrying anything else.

But yes - for the very small, but not nonexistent case where a text itself can
be not kosher, this is something that needs to be built in. It’s on my list.

------
berberous
The idea of impeaching mods sounds interesting, but unworkable. How do you
stop hostile communities from brigading and removing each other’s mods?

~~~
lostmsu
I wonder why can't one just pick mods for themselves. E.g. "subscribe" to a
mod, meaning whatever that mod hides, you don't see. It could even be mutual.

~~~
rolleiflex
That’s exactly how it works. Default mods are just that, default.

------
alexandercrohde
It'd be nice if I didn't have to download an application to use it. Open to a
reddit alternative, but I care more about convenience than any sort of
encryption a client would offer.

~~~
boomskats
I dunno - when I saw 'decentralised' I assumed I'd have to download something.
Isn't that how decentralised applications work?

~~~
deweller
It is theoretically possible to serve a web app from github pages and let the
decentralized peer-to-peer application run in the user's web browser.

There are limitations and this approach might not be feasible for this
application.

~~~
timbit42
The web doesn't have to eat everything.

------
devwastaken
>Aether is a peer-to-peer app, and it has no servers. A result of this is that
source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined.

Not possible. Either source IP's are in communication, meaning you know the
active posters IP, or the content is being proxied from a centralized server.

I hate Discords lies in saying they won't sell user data, but at the least
they know the real danger of how IP's are infact all that's needed to call a
swatt team down to kill someone in the U.S.

If you want to build an actual private conscious platform you will have to do
something like FreeNode where people can make their own 'servers' for free,
but also make their own actual servers if they want to.

~~~
rolleiflex
The posts are echoed across the network. You know where you got the post, you
don’t know whether that post was created by that specific IP. Because you
could have gotten the same post from all other nodes in the network as well.

Delivery IP is not the creation IP.

~~~
devwastaken
The IP by definition of a P2P network must be the creation IP at some point.

IP's delivering the content are liable for what they spread. Using client IP's
to distribute data like a proxy only shifts the burden onto the clients
themselves.

These are all problems that should be gone over in detail on Aethers site, and
should have been the main problem to tackle in its protocol.

------
p4bl0
How does it compare to RetroShare [1] ? RetroShare has been around for years
and works quite well. It seems like Aether attempts to provide quite similar
features.

[0] [http://retroshare.net/](http://retroshare.net/)

------
lez
For linux users who don't want to install the snap, just try it out:

$ sudo mkdir /mnt/aether

$ sudo mount -t squashfs <downloaded.snap> /mnt/aether

$ /mnt/aether/aether

------
sfilargi
If you advertise a “privacy-sensitive” product, please don’t load css from
googleapis.com and JS from googletagmanager.com on your website.

Actually don’t load anything from third parties. It’s a complete turn off.

~~~
rolleiflex
I agree - but anybody who ever built anything would tell you it’s a tradeoff.
Yes, I could get metrics through the server logs. But I’m just one single guy
that built this thing. I don’t have the resources to build a privacy sensitive
tool _and_ a privacy sensitive page view reporter that tells me how many
people visited a page, so I can improve it. One challenge at a time.

~~~
fbender
Why not use Piwik/Matomo?

------
pelagic_sky
Downloaded and installed, but no content has loaded in last 30min.

~~~
ObsoleteNerd
Same here. At first I thought it was the hug of death, but I feel like with
p2p it should only get faster as more people join?

Inbounds conns. in last 15m 0

Last inbound Unknown

Outbound conns. in last 15m 0

Last outbound Unknown

Last outbound duration Unknown

------
andro_dev
How come this is called a privacy sensitive aplication while this is happening
"and it has anonymous metrics in. Stable versions are going to ask in the
onboarding if you want to join the anonymous metrics program (like Firefox)."
?

The dev should be upfront about it even when the prerelease versions are being
used.

Tell us what those "anonymous metrics" are for instance.

Is the communication between nodes encrypted or transported over SSL?

------
14
Sounds good to me as it sounds like the individual is the ultimate end
moderator allowing community moderators to try remove stuff but it is
ultimately up to the individual if he wishes to see that content. I have to
say I extremely dislike moderation. But this moderation it seems like I can
choose. I am not a kid I want to choose. This seems like a good in between
where offensive stuff may be stopped but no one will prevent you from removing
the veil of secrecy should you curious mind want to see more.

------
drb91
To state the obvious, I can't download—"You caught it before the launch. :)"

That said, I really, really appreciate the native client here and I'm excited
to try it out.

~~~
HostFat
Maybe you should refresh your browser cache.

~~~
drewmate
I am also unable to download and I doubt _my_ cache is the issue as I've never
visited this site before. Is anyone able to download the Windows client (or
any other)?

~~~
PavlovsCat
> Is anyone able to download the Windows client

Yeah, but with the same result as what another poster said

> Downloaded and installed, but no content has loaded in last 30min.

As of yet, the github page says

> Aether 2 last version: 2.0.0 (currently non-functional, in development) [..]
> (Not yet working, 80% complete)

and the last commit was 2 months ago :(

edit: this is how the page looks to me:
[https://i.imgur.com/2tsW5zv.png](https://i.imgur.com/2tsW5zv.png)

~~~
HostFat
The github isn't updated currently, I've also asked the dev about the update
of the source code

Maybe there is an issue with the dns.

Those are the current links to download

[https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181...](https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/win/Aether-
Setup-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.exe)

[https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181...](https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/mac/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.dmg)

[https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181...](https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/linux/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.snap)

~~~
PavlovsCat
Just as I was going to say "maybe it's my router", I checked the app again and
saw it has loaded content, yay :)

------
natch
>Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting.

This invites tyranny of the majority. Which will mean for certain topics where
the community dislikes open discussion and questioning of ideas, divisiveness
will grow because bad ideas can not be effectively challenged.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
I've never seen a community that was completely open to discussion and where
bad ideas disappeared because they were effectively challenged.

On the other hand, I've been in several communities where the mods had a clear
agenda and the participants were helpless to change it.

I'd personally rather the people who are hostile to new ideas or critical
thinking have their own communities and that their ability to harm other
communities can be mitigated by a moderation system accountable to the users.

I do think there needs to be serious discussion about how to make communities
that are good for people. The echo chamber and polarization effects tend to
contract people into a smaller worldview. How to have a cohesive community
that doesn't do that is essentially an unsolved problem in the social
sciences.

~~~
natch
I agree with most of what you said, but we might be looking at it from
different angles.

Especially want to zero in on this:

>I'd personally rather the people who are hostile to new ideas or critical
thinking have their own communities

A fact that you don't seem to have in your mind here is that often those
people _are_ the majority.

So you'll have majorities voting in mods who are hostile to new ideas and
critical thinking.

With this platform we still get lock-in of polarized thinking and echo
chambers.

~~~
SquishyPanda23
I think your view here may be a little more pessimistic than mine.

I don't think the majority is opposed to critical thinking, although I think
most people are bad at it. I also think most people are bad at civil and
effective communication, so you may get toxic communities even from well-
meaning people.

I'll be interested to see what happens. You may be right that communities will
select mods that create echo chambers.

I'm a little more optimistic. Whichever way it goes, I think the ability to
experiment (e.g. with weighted or modified voting schemes) with this sort of
mechanic is definitely worth pursuing.

~~~
natch
Yes you are optimistic.

------
BearsAreCool
Trying to install using snap, keep getting the following errors, any advice?
Never stops retrying.

bee@blackandyellow:~/Downloads$ snap install --dangerous --devmode
Aether-2.0.0-dev.5+1811030036.53a6bb49.snap

2018-11-03T11:59:53-04:00 INFO Waiting for restart...

2018-11-03T12:00:01-04:00 INFO auto-connect of snap "aether" will be retried
because of "aether" \- "core" conflict

EDIT: Snap files are an archive of sorts. I was able to extract it into a
folder and run the file named "aether" to get it to work.

EDIT2: This gets the frontend working but I don't think it gets the backend
working entirely.

~~~
rolleiflex
@b here. Seems the snap isn’t able to boot because of a similarly named
package? Linux isn’t officially supported right now, but there was somebody
downthread that managed to get it to work with the —dangerous flag.

------
HostFat
You can use with Tor:

[https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-to-use-aether-behind-
tor/53](https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-to-use-aether-behind-tor/53)

------
Svoka
I created Rust sub. Feel free to join. Also, I don't see how to find or share
link to a community. Is there a way to find community by a fingerprint?

------
PerilousD
Its getting blocked by AVAST and MALWAREBYTES (not surprising since I don't
usually run random Internet supplied executables).

------
qwerty456127
> Aether is a peer-to-peer app, and it has no servers. A result of this is
> that source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined.

Really? Doesn't p2p model actually expose your IP address to everybody you
communicate to?

~~~
rolleiflex
It is a flood network.

> A result of this is that ___source_ __IP of any __ _specific_ __public __
> _post_ __cannot (easily) be determined.

------
Kaveren
> "Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If a mod
> behaves inappropriately, users can disable that mod locally as well."

This sounds like it's definitely vulnerable to abuse. Democracy is nice, but
I'm not sure it's a great idea in a situation like this where it's online with
total anonymity and easy to vote fraudulently.

> "Aether keeps a 6 months of content by default. It's gone after."

I often want to search for stuff that seemed unimportant at the time a year or
more later. We should focus on changing society so it's not so critical of
statements people made years ago when they changed as a person, this is a
better solution.

Skeptical of the value of community-building that Aether can provide, it seems
like a novelty product to me. What is wrong with pseudononymous communities
like Reddit & HN?

~~~
SquishyPanda23
> We should focus on changing society so it's not so critical of statements
> people made years ago when they changed as a person

I'm a believer in progress long term, but I seriously doubt humanity is really
capable of what you're describing in a way that's applied equally to all
groups of people.

It seems several orders of magnitude much easier for people to develop the
habit of recording information they might need later.

~~~
brokenmachine
_> It seems several orders of magnitude much easier for people to develop the
habit of recording information they might need later._

6 months is fine for just social commentary and such, but it seems to me that
a design like that effectively _forces_ the community to be banal, because the
community will not remember anything for any longer than that time.

Better if there was some mechanism by which the most-saved (upvoted?) posts
are retained by the network as a whole for longer.

On, for example, Stackoverflow, most of the posts I've found useful have been
more than 6 months old. 6 months is not such a long time unless we're talking
about the latest pop culture hotness.

We are lucky Shakespeare didn't use a platform that forgets everything after 6
months.

------
indigodaddy
Anything to worry about as far as attack vectors when running something like
this? eg, could someone hack my computer more easily than they could from just
running Facebook in a browser, etc?

------
qwerty456127
Please add a way to copy a link to clipboard instead of opening it in the
default browser.

Viewing/saving/url-copying a picture without opening the source in the default
browser would also be great.

------
qwerty456127
Why does it enforce CC-BY-SA? I never care about what are people going to do
with comments I post, can't I choose WTFPL / CC0 / Unlicense instead?

------
chiefalchemist
Could you make the life span settable by the speaker? That is, the default is
6 months, but perhaps I want less? Or more (to be archived locally some way)?

~~~
rolleiflex
Yup - check LocalMemoryDays key on your backend config. That controls the
archival. That should be the largest value, and the network head and network
memory should be smaller than that.

------
Animats
Maybe they can get Gab to adopt this.[1] Gab is having trouble finding
hosting. This could go mainstream fast if it picked up the Gab crowd.

[1] gab.ai

~~~
krapp
>This could go mainstream fast if it picked up the Gab crowd

The "Gab crowd" doesn't have the cultural pull or influence that this would
require.

~~~
Animats
They're loud and have reasonable numbers. Get some gun forums on there and
there will be traffic.

~~~
krapp
Yeah, but the mainstream still wants nothing to do with them, although I
suppose it depends on how you define mainstream.

------
aw3c2
Privacy-sensitive communication MUST be transport encrypted, if not end-to-
end. What are the plans here and how soon will it be implemented?

------
qwerty456127
WTF is is this "Minting proof-of-work for the entity..." thing when submitting
comments? Does it mine BitCoins or something?

~~~
benhylau
There is no mining of cryptocurrencies. You are spending CPU cycles to compute
a proof so spamming the network with user actions is non-zero cost.

------
brokenmachine
Are there any limitations on how large a post can be? Could a malicious user
just post giant posts to make the network suffer?

------
eddieone
I tried it, it didn't work. Sorry

------
badrabbit
> Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting.

Fyi, impeach means to hold a trial not to kick them out.

On this point I have to disagree. Democracy does not work well in foss
communities and can easily be hijacked and makes it to easy to foster strife
and divisions. I like the traditional foss way of being led by a BDFL where if
you disagree with leadership you can "Just fork it".

~~~
shkkmo
Impeach: call into question the integrity or validity

Seems perfectly appropriate usage to me.

~~~
badrabbit
You're right,I was correcting a common misunderstanding.

------
qwerty456127
Is Aether actually going to be hard for privacy-hostile governments to block
or compromise?

~~~
benhylau
I think the _scope_ of privacy here should be clarified. Content on Aether is
public. There is no concept of private encrypted messaging. The privacy
guarantee is that what content you view within the network, your navigation
path, cannot be tracked by a server. This is because your node syncs _all_ the
data, including the content that you don't navigate to. This is in contrast to
the way many services track user behaviour by their username.

As discussed in other posts, it is difficult to discover origin IP of
pseudonymous users, because in a flood network, when my node gets some
information it is usually not from the IP where that information was
generated. That is another privacy feature due to the way Aether distributes
data.

Aether is more difficult to block than centralized services, since you will
have to catch all the nodes instead of just one set of known IPs / domains.
With great effort it is probably possible to DPI at ISPs to identify Aether
traffic and drop? But being a peer-to-peer protocol, Aether can easily sync
across VPN tunnels, run within private networks, or physical meshnet
infrastructure independent of ISPs.

~~~
qwerty456127
> This is because your node syncs _all_ the data, including the content that
> you don't navigate to.

All the data? Isn't it going to take a huge lot when the network grows
popular?

------
billconan
So how does peer discovery work? How to find initial nodes to connect?

~~~
tomsmeding
It seems there is some kind of bootstrap node running somewhere that clients
connect to when they haven't got anything. The upside is that this bootstrap
node isn't special, and anyone should (I believe?) be able to set up new
bootstrap nodes. But I'm not sure on that part.

~~~
rolleiflex
Yes, a bootstrap node is just a regular node with a bootstrap config flag. It
doesn’t do anything special. You could make your own node a bootstrap node if
you want. (Which is, by the way, is a bad idea - it changes how often other
people connect to you in a way that makes bootstrapping easier but posting
content harder).

------
CarVac
I can't figure out how to use the snap.

~~~
mrspeaker
I downloaded the snap and installed it from the command line with `snap
install --dangerous Aether.snap`. Dangerous sounds dangerous... I'm not sure
if it was a good idea, but it works and my system found the app when I
searched for it. I clicked the "cat's bum icon" and we're away!

~~~
Lerc
You are installing a program you downloaded off the internet.

The --dangerous is there to make you think about that for a moment as(or if
you're lucky, before) you install.

------
prolikewh0a
Is the linux tarball on the website updated to the most recent version? It
runs under Arch, but just syncs endlessly. It's also a light client, where the
Windows version is dark theme. I don't like using snaps, so this is preferred.

~~~
rolleiflex
@b here. Snap version is untested - it compiles but no guarantees. I think
some people got it to work downthread, you might want to check which flags
they used.

~~~
prolikewh0a
Thanks for the reply. I'm talking about the tarball on
[https://www.getaether.net/linux_download.html](https://www.getaether.net/linux_download.html)

Link Location: [https://github.com/nehbit/aether-
public/releases/download/v1...](https://github.com/nehbit/aether-
public/releases/download/v1.2.3-LNX-TAR/aether_1.2.3.tar.bz2)

Looks like it's v1.2.3, released in 2014, so I'm guessing this client won't
work? Might want to remove that link! :)

~~~
rolleiflex
Oh wow - you got the old, old version from the prior site, v1.x. The new
version is 2.0.0, it’s a completely different app. Clear your cache and go to
getaeether.net again, that should give you the new site and new version.

~~~
prolikewh0a
It actually takes me to that old website when I use 'click here for other
options' on Windows and my Arch machine, in incognito mode.

------
prolikewh0a
How do you get this to not turn into a fascist/racist trash bin worse than
4chan/b/ as other Reddit clones have seemingly fallen into?

~~~
Lkjhmnbv
The same way you prevent them from becoming progressice/racist trash bin worse
than reddit.

You let them speak and prove them idiots. It's really not hard. Unless you're
constantly on the side that's losing, then it's pretty miserable.

But know that even though you're losing now you can reformulated your
arguments and try again because no ones going to censor you. You have all the
same rights because you, like they, are people deserving respect, no matter
how much you look down on them or hate them. And that's what I tell them about
you.

Less hate more love.

~~~
dhimes
The problem, however, is that people are unresponsive to arguments. We are not
reasonable, unfortunately. People aren't coming to these places to learn. They
don't _want_ to learn.

I'm very curious as to how we can get out of this, because I really have a
hard time understanding people and this is an enormous laboratory.

~~~
faitswulff
> unresponsive to arguments

Not just unresponsive to arguments, but will argue in bad faith, and it takes
10x as much effort to disprove someone's bad contentions than it does to
produce them.

~~~
jonnydubowsky
I agree with this position and wonder if there is any supporting evidence that
speaks to this point that you know of?

------
sandov
>Introduction: What’s Aether?

>Aether gives you fresh, new content about the things you’re interested in.

>You can create a community for your friends, or for strangers that are
interested in similar things. All communities are public, and everyone can
write to any community. (There’ll be communities restricted to certain people,
but we’re still working on that for now.)

>If you’re familiar with Reddit, Slashdot, or Usenet, it’s pretty similar.
Aether does a two main things differently though. The first is that it’s
ephemeral. The content disappears after a while. The other is, the communities
are democratic, they elect their own leadership.

I hate these non-definitions. You've told me a lot of things, but I still
don't know _what is aether_. Is it a website? a service? a protocol? an API?.

