…i remember going to our computer lab in the early nineties and seeing a flyer about this new protocol called the world wide web, thinking to myself in what way is that better than gopher?..
Comment on Plebbit is a peer-to-peer Reddit alternative that allows you to self host and own your own community
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So in what way is that better than Lemmy?
myrrh@ttrpg.network 2 weeks ago
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Greetings, fellow geezer! And yes, I’ve been there too. My first foray on the web was with Lynx, a text based browser. Left me pretty underwhelmed. But once I actually tried Mosaic, I was instantly converted.
myrrh@ttrpg.network 2 weeks ago
…NCSA mosaic won the web, absolutely…
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
From reading the whitepaper, you basically replace instance admins with community admins, and your P2P peers will cache some of the content so you don’t hit the community admin all the time. Benefits:
- lower hosting costs - you only need to pay for storage for your community, plus some transfer as comments/posts get updated on your "instance"
- risk is limited to whatever communities someone is hosting, not an entire instance
- user accounts aren’t centralized, so if a community goes down, you still have your user account
- some protection against doxxing IP addresses, whereas w/ Lemmy you need to trust your instance admins
Other differences:
- moderation is selected by the community admin, there are no instance admins
- trust mechanisms (captcha and whatnot) is managed at the community level, since there is no instance level
Potential downsides:
- no ActivityPub, so it won’t interact w/ the fediverse whatsoever
- affiliated w/ their own crypto token, and has ties to Ethereum NFTs and whatnot
- lots of different interfaces (4chan clone, Reddit clone, etc), which could cause distraction for devs
- uses public-key addressing instead of content addressing, so it could be slow (they propose a mitigation)
I think it’s a step in the right direction in some areas, but ultimately there’s just a bit too much association w/ cryptocurrencies for it to really be a long-lasting service. We’ll see though, maybe my fears are unwarranted.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
The ideas sound solid. One of Lemmy’s issue is different instances hosting the same community and frequently posting the same content. But too much centralization leads to lemmy.world admins controlling everything. Still there might be abuse such as people claiming every community name.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yeah, name squatting could be an issue, depending on if they rely on ENS or if it’s merely an option. The whitepaper claims communities are merely a public key someone controls, and the name is supplementary, so you could conceivably have duplicate communities. So in theory, squatting wouldn’t be a major issue, but discovery could be (i.e. if ENS is used for discovery, then it’s de-facto authoritative).
I haven’t looked at the implementation, just the website and whitepaper, so I don’t know the specifics. But in theory it looks to have many of the same problems Lemmy has, with the major difference being reducing hosting costs and some dox protection.
geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Without some level of beneficial dictatorship all projects are doomed if moderation is required.
jagged_circle@feddit.nl 2 weeks ago
Oof. No Activity Pub is a death sentence
JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Does it need to be better? Can people just share things they find interesting or that they made?
Boomkop3@reddthat.com 2 weeks ago
I think it’s the same in most aspects, just less developed. However, it looks like the devs lie about the benefits and use a less secure alternative to dns.
It’s garbage with a funny name