Seizing the Means of Anonymous Discussion

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File: 1608525871820.png ( 275.43 KB , 2508x2043 , nntpchan.png )

Seizing the Means of Anonymous Discussion Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:44:31 No.564

Recent events have once again highlighted the necessity of a truly communal, self-governed anonymous discussion forum. This thread is for the development of new forms of decentralized anonymous image boards.

The problem in need of a solution is this: [b]How can we develop a forum that genuinely empowers its community and allows them to resist censorship?[/b]

One recent attempt is NNTPChan/Overchan. NNTPChan is a decentralized imageboard that uses the NNTP protocol (network-news transfer protocol) to synchronize content between many different servers. It utilizes cryptographically-signed posts to perform optional/opt-in decentralized moderation. I'm still rather confused on how moderation works there myself.

This seems like a great idea, by distributing a forum across a collection of servers one can resist the disruption of any single server. When 8ch was shutdown by its DDoS provider, however, its community didn't find the motivation to learn from this and migrate to a censorship-resistance platform. Instead its subcommunities were scattered to the winds, the ones that survived coalescing back on a number of individual websites using the classical top-down server-owner structure, with all the authority and alienation from its userbase that it necessarily contains. What lessons can be learned from this? Is there more that can be done?

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:44:32 No.565

it's not user friendly and nobody likes to pay server hosting fees

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:44:32 No.567

>>565
Okay, so what are some solutions to that?

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:44:32 No.569

File: 1608525872381.png ( 148.26 KB , 1139x503 , webring.png )

Another recent attempt was used by a number of 8ch diaspora communities (sadly not including bunkerchan). They all put together a "Web Ring" where they would include each others' boards from the board catalog. This is much like the old link chains of web 1.0 before search engines became really adept at crawling the web. This can provide "options" in a libertarian sense, allowing people to move to another part of the web ring when there is discontent with how one community is ruled. But we know from the experience of board ownership on 8ch, and even the history of most 4chan alternatives, that these usually aren't real options. Unless a substantial fraction of a community moves in unison to a new space they often don't have enough to sustain themselves. Much like the illusion of choice under wage labor in capitalism, you can choose to post somewhere subjected to the fickles of one owner or another owner, but you can't choose to post somewhere without owners who can exercise power over your discussion. Furthermore, at the end of the day the communities still have to answer to higher powers: the person who owns the website, the person who provides DDoS service, etc.

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:44:32 No.570

>>567
maybe make cryptocurrency donations to owners of "nodes" like a core feature, should be no more than a 2-step process, you can see plenty of idiots are willing to throw their money around like it's nothing on twitch, youtube live chats, live sex cams, patreon, gofuckme, etc., it should be the same way here but with cryptocurrency not credit cards/paypal

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:44:32 No.571

>>565
It is user friendly.
Server cost is only an issue if you don't value the community that much.

>Theoretical architecture
I think the primary thing is identifying the common denominator between socialists on here - in terms of what it is we equally/generally talk about. The answer may be anti-capitalist topics, news, history, /trash/, etc. This could be hosted on "one" (redundant) [b]main[/b] server. Then surrounding this you could make three-four different communities for the ideological differentiation, i.e. ML, leftcom, ancom, socdem, each with their own (redundant) servers. This would help develop theoretical understanding in the comrades, by letting threads on theory really allocate more high quality discussion, free from incessant shitflinging (which is the case on leftist unity chans thus-far).
I think something like this would take the community to another level. But it would require a common code-base / a wiki for making setup easier. Onion services would of course come with the territory, in line with the history of the protocol/community.
Servers (???):
· Anti-capitalist (critique, news, etc.) + .onion
· Strategic (political ideology) + .onion
· Formal (gitlab/wiki/booru/archive) + .onion

federation trw 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:33 No.2628

>>565
>>571

don't know about nntpchan, but federation over nntp is very doable. we have that up and running.
and for server fees: run on tor.

cheers

trw

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:33 No.2630

>>2628
Yes, I've witnessed NNTPchan being federated.

I really wish some programmers on here made a NNTPchan fork for lefty / countercultural purposes…
Initial management could be centralized, with donation page etc., but then eventually being more and more decentralized, with spin-offs and shit, it'd be the best. It's the infrastructure we should have.

different codebase, same result Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:33 No.2633

>>2630

>NNTPchan fork for lefty / countercultural purposes…

while we have not used the nntp codebase, we have accomplished the same (or very similar) things: multiple nodes updating each other via nntp. we have used forum software so far as frontends, but have now started to use vichan as well.

>management centralized,

nah, that's not for me. each node shall have individual moderation imo.

i would not mind hosting some left politic boards on my nodes (so far, most of our boards are tech oriented).

cheers

trw

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:43 No.2745

scuttlebutt.nz

I've seen people try to use retroshare, but it's hopelessly fucked up.

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:43 No.2750

>>2745
it works fine :(

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:43 No.2751

>>2750
Scuttlebutt or RetroShare?

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:44 No.2752

>>2750
None of your friends have a slightly different version, then.
Every time I've tried to use it, the other people are on different distros or platforms where the version is a little newer or older and they are incompatible.

Comrade 2020-12-21 (Mon) 04:47:45 No.2764

>>2752
ah thats fucked, never knew that was an issue
thanks for letting me know

Anonymous 2021-04-16 (Fri) 14:48:14 No.7881

>>564
how does it resist spam?

Anonymous 2021-08-17 (Tue) 23:10:56 No.10740

bumping due to recent talk of resurrecting this / integrating it into a lefty webring

Anonymous 2021-08-18 (Wed) 21:19:03 No.10745

>dec of 2020

>Another spit 6 months later.

Anonymous 2021-08-18 (Wed) 21:19:35 No.10746

I would give literally anything to have nntpchan at this point.

Anonymous 2021-08-26 (Thu) 12:21:17 No.10761

>Recent events have once again highlighted the necessity of a truly communal, self-governed anonymous discussion forum.
Not this shit again.

>This thread is for the development of new forms of decentralized anonymous image boards.
Not THIS shit again.

Stop falling for marketing memes.

Anonymous 2021-09-03 (Fri) 07:03:45 No.10792

>>10761
How is a federated board a marketing gimmick?

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