An open source Peer-to-peer serverless decentralized social media protocol built on IPFS
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Plebbit is pure peer-to-peer social media protocol, it has no central servers, no global admins, and no way shut down communities-meaning true censorship resistance.
Unlike federated platforms, like lemmy and Mastedon, there are no instances or servers to rely on
this project was created due to wanting to give control of communication and data back to the people.
Plebbit only hosts text. Images from google and other sites can be linked/embedded in posts. This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.
ENS domain are used to name communities.
Plebbit currently offers different UIs. Old reddit UI and new reddit, 4chan, and have a Blog. Plebbit intend to have an app, internet archive, wiki and twitter and Lemmy UI . Choice is important. The backend/communities are shared across clients.
anyone can contribute, build their own client, and shape the ecosystem
Important Links :
Home
App
https://plebbit.com/home#cb2a9c90-6f09-44b2-be03-75f543f9f5aa
FAQ
https://github.com/plebbit/whitepaper/blob/master/FAQ.md
Whitepapers
https://github.com/plebbit/whitepaper
https://github.com/plebbit/whitepaper/discussions/2
Github
https://github.com/plebbit/plebbit-react
https://github.com/plebbit/plebbit-react/releases
Looks promising, but too difficult to use for average user.
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i don't trust any messenger system that uses the word "serverless". such a word is misleading, at best, and a scam more likely.
I agree in general, just like the word "decentralized". But in this case it's legit, because it simply means it's p2p. I'd call bitcoin "serverless" as well, so it's BitTorrent and IPFS. Plebbit is exactly the same: you open the desktop app and it runs a p2p node automatically in the background, to run your subplebbit, and users connect to it peer to peer. Your p2p node is not really a "server", because it doesn't require any centralized domain to function, it uses transport protocols and peer discovery instead.
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no global admins, and no way shut down communities-meaning true censorship resistance.
"True censorship resistance" is not a desirable property. No normal user wants to deal with moderation. You need to have a structure for delegating moderation and such tasks to other people.
You need to have a structure for delegating moderation and such tasks to other people.
We actually have it: since there's no central database of communities, who decides which ones appear in the homepage of the apps to first-time users? We use a "default list" of communities, which is effectively moderated (vetoed) by the app developer. This is the only "global admin" we basically have, but it's only for the app itself, not the protocol, and it still doesn't stop users from connecting p2p to the community (depending on the app, some plebbit client developers could implement blacklists).
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The communities moderate themselves with their own admins, just like on reddit. The difference is, there's no global admins that can censor communities or enforce global rules. However, the plebbit app developer can basically act like a global admin by blacklisting connections to certain communities. I predict the most popular plebbit apps won't include such blacklisting functions.
Plebbit is like BitTorrent, there's no global BitTorrent admin. You use a BitTorrent client (like uTorrent) to download torrents, and the client could technically blacklist your torrent. You use a plebbit client (like Seedit) to download a subplebbit, and the client could technically blacklist your subplebbit.
It's entirely possible that more centralized plebbit clients will be created, to be published on app stores for example, and they will implement whitelists of safe communities to participate in, blocking any other community.
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@Plebbitor I could not join the matrix, please check the server is OK
nobody is running the matrix server at the moment, if you are interested in running it dm @estebanabaroa on telegram
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How long until this gets overrun with
and nobody wants to use itthere's no
because ALL data on plebbit is text-only, you cannot upload media. We did this intentionally, so if you want to post media you must post a direct link to it (the interface embeds the media automatically), a link from centralized sites like imgur and stuff, who know your IP address, take down the media immediately (the embed 404's) and report you to authorities. Further, plebbit works like torrents so your IP is already in the swarm, so you really shouldn't use it for anything illegal or you'll get caught. -
Plebbit only hosts text. Images from google and other sites can be linked/embedded in posts. This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.
Nowhere in the project whitepaper or FAQ does it talk about banning image hosting. Base64 encoding images in the text post is trivial, so maybe OP is the one projecting this intent or feature?
You can't encode base64 images on plebbit, each fiels has a character limit. Obviously centralized links, from which media is embedded, will be taken down by the relative centralized website.
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If there's no central server then where is all the data stored?. With Lemmy I know the instance creator has to host it all on his own server.
It's stored in each plebbit node. Each subplebbit runs a custom IPFS node for plebbit, with its text-only database, which is the content you see in the app. Peers download it and seed it back.
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Well from their site
Moderation
Since there are no global admins, the administrative control of a subplebbit rests solely with its creator. No one else can moderate content or accounts unless the subplebbit creator grants them permission.
So, it's not that theirs no moderation. It's just "subplebbit" creator/delegates controlled as there is no over arching site wide company able to moderate it on the whole.
It will mean, as a user, you'll have to be liberal with removing subplebbits from your own feed though. I'm sure there will be some.. not so pleasant subplebbits appearing.
Sounds like some insane legal liability to take on with how weird shit is. Will definitely be making an account to check it out though seems like a really cool idea.
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Technically cool, but it's scary that it tries to emulate the anonymous, unmoderated shithole that is 4chan. Go to 4chan now and try to imagine something even more racist, nazi and unhinged.
Calling yourself a decentralized 4chan is ringing all of the alarm bells for me.
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You can't encode base64 images on plebbit, each fiels has a character limit. Obviously centralized links, from which media is embedded, will be taken down by the relative centralized website.
Where can I find the protocol specifications?
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You need to have a structure for delegating moderation and such tasks to other people.
We actually have it: since there's no central database of communities, who decides which ones appear in the homepage of the apps to first-time users? We use a "default list" of communities, which is effectively moderated (vetoed) by the app developer. This is the only "global admin" we basically have, but it's only for the app itself, not the protocol, and it still doesn't stop users from connecting p2p to the community (depending on the app, some plebbit client developers could implement blacklists).
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From the whitepaper:
- The user completes the captcha challenge and publishes his post and
captcha challenge answer over pubsub. - The subplebbit ownerâs client gets notified that the user published to his
pubsub, the post is not ignored because it contains a correct captcha
challenge answer. - The subplebbit ownerâs client publishes a message over pubsub indicating
that the captcha answer is correct or incorrect. Peers relaying too many
messages with incorrect or no captcha answers get blocked to avoid DDOS
of the pubsub. - The subplebbit ownerâs client updates the content of his subplebbitâs
public key-based addressing automatically
I may be misunderstanding how this protocol works, but at step 10 what prevents the owner from publishing the captcha answer as incorrect as a method of censorship based on the content of the post?
nothing prevents it, the sub owner can put a challenge that's impossible to solve to troll people. it's required that this be possible otherwise the sub owner wouldnt have full control over what the challenge is.
a lemmy instance could do the same thing so it's not really an issue, the fix is just dont use subs / instances that dont work.
- The user completes the captcha challenge and publishes his post and
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Where can I find the protocol specifications?
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