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Show HN: Reddit alternative – decentralized social news site, no censorship

104 points| frizbee | 10 years ago |get-frisbee.com | reply

125 comments

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[+] minimaxir|10 years ago|reply
Let's look at what happened to Voat.

After people claimed Reddit was censoring users by banning /r/fatpeoplehate, the more unsavory users flocked to Voat, a blatant Reddit clone.

As you would expect, said unsavory people posted unsavory content. Said unsavory content, while free and uncensored, was not legal, and that causes problems: http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3avyem/voat_...

Said issues caused their PayPal account to become frozen: http://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/3augr0/drama...

No, "decentralized" does not magically make you immune to law and punishment.

[+] pervycreeper|10 years ago|reply
Not sure how that's relevant. Voat appears to have too few differentiating features to be a significant threat to reddit. Frizbee, on the other hand, appears to be something genuinely new. As far as the other claims in that post go, the administrator of 8chan has compiled a more accurate recounting of this controversy here: https://medium.com/@infinitechan/what-do-we-know-about-voat-...
[+] empressplay|10 years ago|reply
It's not even decentralised -- if it was, I should just be able to set up a server, and connect it to any other server, and have a network. AFAICT you're forced to connect to Frizbee's servers / network and register, and that by definition makes it centralised.
[+] Natsu|10 years ago|reply
Did I miss a post? SRD seems to say that Paypal terminated their account. I don't see involvement by law enforcement, unless I missed a post?

Or did they refuse to take it down? I thought the CDA protected hosts as long as they took it down when notified? But I also haven't been following this closely and I don't know where Voat is (was?) hosted.

[+] zamalek|10 years ago|reply
To be fair remember that Atko (the Voat founder) has always maintained that he would act when authorities told him to. This wasn't a buckling under pressure: it was following the law (albeit reactively and not proactively).

However:

The whole scenario is an utter joke: Reddit is thought-policed to the point of unbelievable absurdity. It's like a nursery school filled with Rachel Dolezals. Voat is filled with people who have gone completely off the rocker, given the ability to exercise their rights, and see fit to use their newly acquired rights to speak of nothing but those unsavory topics - most commonly racists.

The website are polar opposites and both are a hindrance to free, critical and intelligent thought - be it on purpose (Reddit) or by virtue (Voat).

It seems like the website format is a flawed concept. I don't take either website seriously.

[+] tomjen3|10 years ago|reply
Subredditdrama is a not exactly a high quality place.
[+] austenallred|10 years ago|reply
Had no idea Voat was run by a sixteen-year-old. That's pretty impressive. The poor kid must be peeing his pants trying to figure out how to keep the site up and having no money for servers.
[+] adamrezich|10 years ago|reply
I don't want to be That Guy, but I really don't think the UI is very intuitive. A lot of things really bug me about it. It's hard to peruse a list of posts and scan headlines, unlike on Hacker News or reddit. You compose comments with a serif font, and then the comment is posted with a sans-serif font. It appears as if all URLs are just frizbee.co/#SomethingGoesHere, regardless of what it is. This makes me lost a lot because I'll click the logo in the upper-left corner because I want to go back to the homepage, but it doesn't work. It also means that I have no idea what a link is before I click on it. When I see reddit.com/u/takua108, I know that it's takua108's user page. When I see reddit.com/r/dota2, I know that it's the Dota 2 subreddit. When I see https://frizbee.co/#ICameHereFromHackerNews558b70ef40cdf, I have no idea what the hell to think. Plus, there's no comment permalinks, and it looks like every link is using javascript or something, because I can't even hover over the link to see where it leads!

I like a lot of the ideas behind this, but I feel like the execution is very, very poor.

[+] __z|10 years ago|reply
Its even worse than that. Navigation is just totally broken. For example I clicked your link then on that page I clicked Our Manifesto. The URL changed to https://frizbee.co/#OurManifesto5589a552786d5 but the page content did not change! This seems to happen all over.

Totally dont need to re-engineer hyperlinks. They are hyperlinks!

(logo in the left hand corner does change the url to https://frizbee.co/#HotPosts but as you and I said it just doesnt work)

[+] koko775|10 years ago|reply
No censorship as in no moderation?

No thanks.

No censorship as in no punishing the stalking and threatening of others?

Also no thanks.

I want free speech where people are free with their speech, not unrestrained speech (specifically) where people feel free to hurt others.

[+] frizbee|10 years ago|reply
Hi,

Just to clarify, the owners of particular playlist servers can moderate them as they choose. The difference is that because of the decentralization aspect, it is not chosen by a central entity.

[+] milkworsethan|10 years ago|reply
Translation: I want free speech except I want people I don't like to not have it.
[+] empressplay|10 years ago|reply
It's a bit of a stretch to call this "decentralised" when it still relies on software running on a "master" server (your bot.)

Second, if it is indeed fully anonymous, won't it just become a haven for trolls?

[+] colordrops|10 years ago|reply
What about using bitcoin as a voting mechanism? That would get rid of trolls, or at least the poor ones.
[+] lettergram|10 years ago|reply
I like the idea, but I don't think the UI design is really all that great.

For example the upvote button is massive, and I couldn't easily find the comment button at all.

Basically, it made me scared to even look at the site... like, "where am I?"

[+] jaywunder|10 years ago|reply
All the buttons get squished together on mobile too
[+] pyrmont|10 years ago|reply
I'm confused how the licensing of users' content is intended to work.

The site states that you own your content[1] but then on its manifesto page[2] states that all information is in the public domain. The license itself[3] is not particularly clear.

Putting information into the public domain does provide for maximum freedom in terms of how the information can be used, but that's because the copyright owner renounces their rights.

[1]: https://frizbee.co/#WhatMakesFrizbeeDifferent558b273db212a

[2]: https://frizbee.co/#OurManifesto5589a552786d5

[3]: https://frizbee.co/#LegalLicense5589af95a67c3

[+] __z|10 years ago|reply
"you own the copyright to your content... all the content on Frizbee is in the public domain... you can use and redistribute [user content] in any way, completely free of charge."

Yeah, really really strange. That makes no sense. The whole thing in general seems to confuse copyright with responsibility of content. Of course I could have got the gist wrong because it was very confusing and contradicted itself.

[+] thefreeman|10 years ago|reply
Can anyone clarify what is decentralized about this? I clicked around a few threads on the site and they all appear to be hosted at frizbee.co.
[+] empressplay|10 years ago|reply
It's not decentralised. You have the ability to run a node. Your node communicates exclusively with frizbee's servers.
[+] austenallred|10 years ago|reply
It looks like you're off to a good start. There's design cleanup to do, for sure. Ya, there are buts that people can clear cookies and vote again - welcome to the world of building social news software.

There will be two key moments with this: 1. Will people stick around after this is off the front page of HN?

2. When people decide to game your site, how well do you handle voting rings? The reddit founders have mentioned that nearly half of their code catches voting rings; that's not trivial to do. And of course, it may be premature optimization, but it is something to consider that anyone with a few minutes of time to build a bot could completely destroy your site.

[+] __z|10 years ago|reply
Wouldn't "handling vote rings" be a form of "censorship"?
[+] jedberg|10 years ago|reply
The top post as I write this: "Delete your cookie and upvote forever".
[+] personjerry|10 years ago|reply
"We're the only decentralized democratic social aggregator website"

I feel like this is not true.

[+] rtpg|10 years ago|reply
how can a website be decentralized...
[+] Grue3|10 years ago|reply
Usenet says hi, from the 80s.
[+] liamzebedee|10 years ago|reply
If people are interested in P2P decentralized discussion systems, check out http://getaether.net made by @nehbit . Beautiful UX, wasn't released yesterday either.
[+] __z|10 years ago|reply
Grey text is hard to read - needs contrast overall. Finding links and controls by random clicking and trial and error also isn't pleasant. mystery meat navigation.
[+] ethana|10 years ago|reply
Apparently you can clear your cookie and up vote again. I can see the spambot coming already.
[+] empressplay|10 years ago|reply
Also, the "view counts" on the website are pure BS -- the comment view counts don't grow at the same rate the thread view count does, for example. The thread view-count grows at almost a clockwork rate, etc.

I know, I know, Reddit pulled similar stunts in its early days but it still feels a bit dodgy.

[+] frizbee|10 years ago|reply
Hi,

It's not a stunt, and you are purely speculating. The reason for the view count for the comments being different is very easy to explain: a comment may not have been posted at the same time as a post, and therefore has a different number of views.

[+] keedot|10 years ago|reply
I honestly hope one of these takes off. I don't want to ever go there, I don't take amusement in other people's suffering. But seeing so much outrage on reddit from assholes bitching that they can't be racist/bigoted/loathsome on a private forum screaming about freedom of speech which belies their own ignorance makes me long for the days of gopher. I find it repugnant, and I'm glad to live in a country where I'm free to say anything, but hate speech is prosecuted.
[+] duncan_bayne|10 years ago|reply
"I'm glad to live in a country where I'm free to say anything, but hate speech is prosecuted."

I'm going to be optimistic for the future of humanity, and assume that was a (masterful) troll.

[+] steveeq1|10 years ago|reply
English translation: "I believe in freedom of speech. . . except for things that I find offensive"

There is no such thing as hate speech in a free speech environment. There is no guarantee you won't be offended.

[+] bruceb|10 years ago|reply
" I'm glad to live in a country where I'm free to say anything, but hate speech is prosecuted."

hmm...

[+] moron4hire|10 years ago|reply
I don't know, is censorship the problem with Reddit?
[+] blfr|10 years ago|reply
How does login/registration work? Once I changed the moniker, added a password, how do I then log in?
[+] frizbee|10 years ago|reply
You login using the same menu you used for adding a passphrase- you enter your passphrase form another computer.