I think both kinda suck, so I’m making my own that’s completely distributed instead of federated. That way hosting costs are near zero (just need some P2P nodes and a download server) and scaling to higher user counts should be automatic if I build it right.
The problem is that building it right is hard, and I don’t have a ton of time.
Not yet, but I’ll definitely post something when I get to a point where I’m ready to share the code. I definitely want it to be open source, I just want enough functionality there so the long term vision is clear.
But here’s some details of what I’m trying to achieve:
web of trust-based moderation - no “mods,” only metadata from people you trust (upvotes, downvotes, blocks, etc)
all storage on devices of users of the service - the more storage you provide, the better your experience; your preferred communities have first priority, but everyone stores something random from the service
text posts only, at least to start - images/videos need to be hosted elsewhere
I’m building it initially as a desktop app, but I’ll port it later to mobile and maybe web (still trying to figure out how web would work; maybe some notion of instances?).
I’m hoping to bridge to lemmy with an ActivityPub service to get content, but I’m not working on that until the above is ready.
Sure thing. I’ll probably make a post about it once I nail down the functionality and start looking for people to help out with UX and features and whatnot.
This sounds interesting, but how do you plan on stopping illegal content being stored on users devices? If there is any chance a user could unknowingly be hosting illegal content that could lead to some very big issues.
text only - images, videos, and other binary content must be stored elsewhere (could still have links though)
data is stored encrypted (user option) - wouldn’t show up in scans
clear separation between “stuff I’m interested in” and “random stuff I’m hosting for the network” - plausible deniability
perhaps an option to opt out of random data storage - you’d still store stuff you’re interested in
But yeah, that’s a huge part of why I’m unwilling to share the code until I’m comfortable with the moderation engine. I think there’s an opportunity to use that moderation engine to reduce storage of CSAM (i.e. don’t store data from blocked users).
I think both kinda suck, so I’m making my own that’s completely distributed instead of federated. That way hosting costs are near zero (just need some P2P nodes and a download server) and scaling to higher user counts should be automatic if I build it right.
The problem is that building it right is hard, and I don’t have a ton of time.
You got more details? Is it up on github?
Not yet, but I’ll definitely post something when I get to a point where I’m ready to share the code. I definitely want it to be open source, I just want enough functionality there so the long term vision is clear.
But here’s some details of what I’m trying to achieve:
I’m building it initially as a desktop app, but I’ll port it later to mobile and maybe web (still trying to figure out how web would work; maybe some notion of instances?).
I’m hoping to bridge to lemmy with an ActivityPub service to get content, but I’m not working on that until the above is ready.
Web of trust sounds interesting. What language(s) are you using to build it?
Rust on backend, React frontend.
Sounds efficient. Lmk if/ when you make the repo public.
Sure thing. I’ll probably make a post about it once I nail down the functionality and start looking for people to help out with UX and features and whatnot.
This sounds interesting, but how do you plan on stopping illegal content being stored on users devices? If there is any chance a user could unknowingly be hosting illegal content that could lead to some very big issues.
Still working on that, but I have some ideas:
But yeah, that’s a huge part of why I’m unwilling to share the code until I’m comfortable with the moderation engine. I think there’s an opportunity to use that moderation engine to reduce storage of CSAM (i.e. don’t store data from blocked users).
You mean scuttlebutt? Or something with content addressing like a fork of bluesky?
Content addressing. I’m using Iroh.