Maybe not the best, and certainly not as popular as some recommended federated services, but Aether (getaether.net) has been interesting to use.
It:
- is P2P. Everyone using the app sees the same network; no federation keeping communities separate. This also means that everyone receives information from the network, including posts, comments, and moderator actions. One feature here is that if a moderator is overbearing, you can ignore their actions.
- features mod elections so that the default list of moderators can be selected by the community; mod actions are auditable since they're sent to all peers so you can see what the mod has done.
- is text only by default. I think there's a feature to approve domains to have their content render in the app, but it is mostly a text based community
- doesn't keep the whole history of posts to the network. I think this is probably a development choice to make sure clients don't have to download terabytes of history just to view recent posts. It's marketed as being ephemeral and won't keep track of your brain fart posts made years ago.
- is mature. Posts on HN about Aether have been made as far back as 10 years ago.
- features proof of work spam prevention. Every action you make takes a little bit of computing power to prevent network spam.
I feel as though it’s not a good Reddit alternative if p2p/federation/pow/etc need to be explained in order to use it.
> Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities
From their homepage is god awful marketing - I don’t care about what’s under the hood I just want the content.
Tbh also not a fan of deleting content that’s more than 6 months old - a lot of the value of Reddit comes from when you find a new hobby you can look through old top posts to find the best info.
I feel that the whole P2P thing isn't necessary to explain just to get up and running with it, just that it's useful to know when you start digging in to figure out how things work.
> Tbh also not a fan of deleting content that’s more than 6 months old
Agreed. Aether's idea is that the community will hold on to material that is important, likely by reposting.
It:
- is P2P. Everyone using the app sees the same network; no federation keeping communities separate. This also means that everyone receives information from the network, including posts, comments, and moderator actions. One feature here is that if a moderator is overbearing, you can ignore their actions.
- features mod elections so that the default list of moderators can be selected by the community; mod actions are auditable since they're sent to all peers so you can see what the mod has done.
- is text only by default. I think there's a feature to approve domains to have their content render in the app, but it is mostly a text based community
- doesn't keep the whole history of posts to the network. I think this is probably a development choice to make sure clients don't have to download terabytes of history just to view recent posts. It's marketed as being ephemeral and won't keep track of your brain fart posts made years ago.
- is mature. Posts on HN about Aether have been made as far back as 10 years ago.
- features proof of work spam prevention. Every action you make takes a little bit of computing power to prevent network spam.