My Vision for Social Forums

submitted by fschmidt from self.PhoenixForum

First, if this subject interests you, please subscribe to this sub. This sub is a logical place to post ideas for social forums.

I will start by clarifying terminology. What Reddit and similar sites call a "sub" is just a forum. So I will use the term "forum". "Social" means lots of user generated content that is interconnected, and typically you can subscribe to parts of it. So Reddit is a social forum platform. Of course Reddit includes other things like a new horrible UI, support for fascist censorship at the platform level, and various other evil features. But none of this is intrinsic to a social forum platform.

I want the social forums to be fully decentralized with the social aspect implemented through an open protocol used to communicate between forums. So each forum is fully owned by the moderators, and the moderators can do whatever they want in their forum. They can have free speech or fascist censorship within their forum, it is up to them. Forums would be hosted on servers where each server can host many forums. This would be much like web hosting. The owner of the server only has the power to remove forums, that's it.

The open protocol would be specifically designed for social forums. There would be a call to get recent threads from forums, used to show "subscribed". There would be a call to do search across all forums on a server which would be used for both user searches and to get posts of a user. And there would be a call to get all data from a forum. This call allows forums to be cloned/forked and makes forums like open source projects. So for example, if the moderators of a forum piss off their users, then users can just fork the forum. Or if a server owner bans a forum, that forum can just move to another server.

The software that I would like to see written to implement this should be open source and flexible. The architecture should have 3 parts: core, modules, and views. The core implements only the most basic forum functionality and defines the most basic concept. Modules add extra functionality like voting, ignoring users, etc. Modules can depend on other modules, but they are modular in sense that anyone can contribute to the project and add whatever extra functionality that they want. Views are user interfaces. Initially there would be just one but there is no reason why there shouldn't be multiple views. For example there may be a reddit-like view and a phpBB-like view. The moderators of a forum could pick the view. Each view would be independent and would call whatever modules it needs.

This completes my high level description of what I have in mind. Note the things that I did not include. No blockchain. And no general policy. A truly decentralized open source platform can't implement one policy by definition. Any imaginable policy can be implemented in code through modules, and then each forum can decide if it wants to follow that policy.

I am a programmer, so if you have any technical questions about how all this could work, I can answer. I would like to see what I described here implemented, but I don't have the time to do it alone. I would be willing to work with another programmer on this and I would cover all expenses.

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[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (16 children)

This is excellent. Would this work on a similar basis as the "distributed web" discussed elsewhere on saidit?

[–]fschmidt[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (15 children)

I don't know what was discussed. Can you post a link? Then I can answer.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

Well there is this for starters:

https://saidit.net/s/Internet/comments/6rz/ipfs_a_complete_analysis_of_the_distributed_web/?ref=search_posts

[–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

This makes no sense to me. The original web was distributed and simple. This IPFS just adds pointless complexity. The only real weakness of the original web was DNS which IPFS doesn't even address. My idea for social forums is very much like the original web, not like IPFS.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

Well I am no expert, and there were many posts on the topic, so I might be linking you one of the bad ones. But you know, there is a search bar at the top right corner...

I'll ping u/Panzerfaust as he undoubtedly knows more than I do about this topic.

[–]fschmidt[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (11 children)

Pretty much all programmers on SaidIt are modern scum, meaning members of depraved modern culture, so they love pointless complexity and evil generally, and hate simplicity and any good programming. So don't expect them to support anything that makes sense.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (10 children)

We also have a good number of proper NatSoc membership, although I don't know how many of them are programmers.

[–]fschmidt[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (9 children)

I am sure they will love me since I am racially jewish.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (8 children)

Ah, so you are a degenerate subhuman parasite piece of scum? Thanks for pointing it out. Duly noted.

[–]fschmidt[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Ah, so you are modern scum? Thanks for pointing it out. Duly noted.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I just want to point out the huge parallels between what's described here and ActivityPub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub

I like the forking/cloning a forum idea.

[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

"No blockchain."

First, why no blockchain? That seems to be the easiest way to create truly decentralized systems that cannot be blocked or stopped at any single point?

Regarding this bit:

"Or if a server owner bans a forum, that forum can just move to another server."

To me, decentralized would mean it exists on multiple servers, and so any individual server owner can do nothing beyond not hosting it on their server, but that doesn't alter that other places still do host it.

My understanding is that the Ethereum network already offers this kind of thing, though I have no idea how one would implement it.

One issue, which Ethereum prevents by charging 'gas' fees, is that such a system can be attacked by just flooding it with bullshit spam. Indeed we've seen exactly that recently on this Saidit forum, where the front page is just spammed with gibberish. Try doing that on Ethereum or one of Ethereum's L2 chains and it will cost you a fortune, as every activity has a cost associated.

Obviously free, or nearly free, is nice, but it does come with that spam downside.

So:

  1. Why not use blockchain tech?

  2. How would you tackle spam?

[–]fschmidt[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Blockchain is not the easiest solution. A blockchain would contain the history of all forums on the platform and this would be much too big if the platform is successful. Besides which the whole blockchain concept is pointless for forums. All you need is to be able to replicate data from one server to another. Then one server is the active one that your forum domain points to, while you can have a bunch of backups on other servers. If there is some problem with the primary server, just switch to some backup server.

Spam is a nasty problem with no really good solution. Basically each forum should be kept clean by its moderators. Tools to help with this can be added gradually to the software as modules.

[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

"Then one server is the active one that your forum domain points to"

OK, so I block you at the DNS level, what then?

[–]LarrySwinger2 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'll reiterate the point I made in the other thread, since this is the place to discuss it. We already have decentralization in that anyone can set up their own forum, and people can point their web browsers to the sites they like or subscribe only to RSS feeds they like. Your vision still allows moderators to abuse their powers. If that happens on a large scale (like it did on Reddit), that means people have to mass migrate to new forums, and that takes a long time. Platforms like Facebook and Reddit are still alive in spite of their censorship and spying on users, simply because it's hard to get people to move to alternatives. What this vision achieves is that there's a lower barrier to creating a new forum (since people don't need technical skills or a budget for professional hosting), but is this enough? Why is it important to allow moderators to censor speech?

Also, can users pick what view they want to use, overriding the moderators' decision?

[–]fschmidt[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Decentralized social forums requires exchanging data which is what you call federated.

Moderators must be able to control their forums. Otherwise all forums will be overwhelmed by masses of moronic modern scum hurling empty insults at anyone who isn't a moron.

I assume that users can't pick a view because the view defines more than just appearance, it also defines what functionality is available.