I've tried Voat, but it's literally just Reddit.
The world needs a p2p, anonymity-first, censorship resistant link-sharing and discussion site/app/thing.
If anyone could point in some such direction, I sure would appreciate it.
You're on it. You're using it right now. This is it.
I've been an active user and contributor to (in order) local BBS, Fidonet, Usenet, Slashdot, Kuro5hin, digg/reddit, HN, and in my opinion, HN is the best, most interesting and functional discussion board that has ever existed.
Enjoy it! It won't last forever.
Simple stuff like collapsing long comment threads would be a Very Nice Plus, f'rex.
I've been on nearly all the platforms you've mentioned. The early ones (BBSes, Usenet) were tiny in comparison. Slashdot always kinda sucked for moderation, though its editorial curation was more useful than people today appreciate. Kuro5hin had some good ideas but ultimately never gained traction. I actually skipped digg. I use reddit, and like it for some elements, but it also frustrates me.
My interests are more toward a bloggy-oriented discussion platform, and the mix of capabilities, community, and hosting (free is unfortunately where I'm at for now), is hard to find.
I'm actually warming back on blogs, with self-hosted static-site systems being particularly attractive.
But that makes reddit and HN an apples to oranges comparison. They aren't even trying to be the same thing.
My personal concern, is that there is no reddit replacement that has a broad focus. All of the alternatives seem to be racist shit-holes, or fluffy, clearly manufactured facebook-feed alternatives.
Sigh...alright, I'll bite. Can you give a concrete example of HN censoring in effect?
Also, I must mention that dang has been significantly more fair the past year or so. It's been a long while since I've really noticed any of the issues I'm about to list.
From least to most concerning:
1. A couple of years ago, dang would regularly wade into gender arguments. And he'd apologize publicly and profusely to women who had unspecific complaints about Hacker News making them feel "unsafe", assuring those women that he felt their pain and would fix the problem.
2. Rules about tone were enforced unevenly. (Again, to be clear, they're now enforced far more fairly.)
Cruel, over-the-top, mean-spirited, Shanley-style [1] derogatory posts from feminist activists would routinely be allowed to stand. People would respond asking why this tone was being allowed on HN, and others would respond with "it's oppressive to tone-police women in tech". Despite all the attention drawn to these posts, they would not be moderated.
At the same time, the slightest acerbic replies against feminist activism were either "deaded" or publicly admonished by dang.
3. This last point is the most difficult to prove, but regular lurkers will know exactly what I'm talking about. Flags were enforced unevenly—they were used as an excuse to minimize community exposure to posts that disagreed with dang's politics.
When a controversial submission that ran counter to the feminist narrative quickly disappeared off the front page despite hundreds of comments, people would complain in the thread (because where else would they complain?). He'd respond, "Hey, this submission received a lot of flags. This wasn't my decision. I'm not closing this thread, so you can continue discussion. But I'm listening to the community by taking it off the front page."
However, controversial submissions that promoted the feminist narrative would often stay up for hours. Those posts undoubtably received tons of flags, too. When people would complain, dang would explain that he would disregard flags for controversial posts if they generated important conversations.
[1]: http://www.breitbart.com/london/2014/12/10/the-madness-of-qu...
It's funny how this creates an echo chamber where nobody in real life is racist, or where you believe yourself that something remotely racist is wrong.
But as to the rest of it, yeah, the HN hivemind is insane in exactly the same way Startup Culture is a sick, greedy mess.
Every single time that's been tried it tanked because either pathological arseholes overwhelmed everyone else, or no-one wanted to use it.
But since you ask for an example that you can use: The "free" hierarchy of Usenet. It was set up to have no rules.
Absolutely. I once ran a community that grew from 5 to 50 to 300+ people, and had this utopian vision that moderation wouldn't be necessary, we were intelligent, enlightened people who would have healthy discussions and hash out our disagreements in civil ways.
Alas.
That said, moderation and moderation tools - especially on reddit, are evolving. To the point that many issues which I thought were fatal, are now manageable (such as permanent noise to signal ratio attenuation).
Unfortunately what keeps me up at night, is that the tools we are developing are straight up censorship bots and their proliferation on various subreddits, and eventually to all social platforms is beyond worrisome.
Theres big brother, and then theres the more agile and nimble little brother.
Let users decide: "I never want to see anything from that guy ever again" (unless, say, 50 people I've upvoted upvote one of his comments).
I can see why people would want to avoid such solution, with all the "filter bubble" rhetoric, but I can't see why it wouldn't be a viable option?
In fact, I'm pretty sure there's a huge opportunity in that space, for whoever nails the mechanics correctly.
I just some nostalgia for /. from this comment. People who friended or foed you were "fans" and "freaks", respectively.
There is a lot of space between reddit's "everything the mods let you see" (whether you want it or not) and facebook's "only what your friends (or Zuck) want you to see", and the two extremes cause a lot of friction. Something much better is certainly possible.
As with Usenet, you'd end up having to buy a bigger hard drive just to keep your killfile up to date.
Even if you managed that and then managed somehow to get funding to grow and scale for a system with no obvious revenue opportunities history shows us you are still likely to fail.
How about a system like this.
Something like HN or reddit, but make it read only via online. And the only way to post into it should be by sending a hand written mail, to the admins. These will not be filtered, and will be posted exactly as they are written. People will be able to see the discussions online. The original note can be optionally delivered/forwarded to the recipient (let us snail mail that too)... There will be upvotes and downvotes. But nothing will be sorted or hidden based on that. In other words, take the "instant gratification" out of the discussions, and make them more personal.
We can see this today in the case of TOR. The network is censorship-resistant from within, but it's still vulnerable externally - if governments put its users into jail, that's effectively censoring the whole network instead of some specific content.
I am also interested by Yours (https://www.yours.network), which is built using Bitcoin.
And you can see a list of other related projects here: https://github.com/yoursnetwork/yours-core/blob/master/docs/...
Reddit had the advantage that the subreddit is a natural partition point so it's not quite as hard a problem as something more granular, but still: p2p social network is hard.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you suggesting moderation of online discussion is coercion, and therefor criminal? I think the entire legal system (US specifically) would disagree. Or are you suggestion that a user that is using coercion is criminal, and something you would put a stop to?
> Should I stoop to the level of a common racist by FORCING him/her to speak a certain way?
That's a judgement call to make, depending the context of the site. Yes, you can make the argument that censorship of hate speech is as unethical as the speech itself. I'm not sure if I agree or disagree, and it's a bit of a rabbit hole. Or you could make the argument that your site is for particular discussion of certain topics, and if it's well known what the rules are, there's great benefit to the community by enforcing them: eg /b/ vs Hacker News.
> I've no right to tell people what they can and can not say
You absolutely do, if they are using a site which you own or are in some way in charge of. The same way you have the right to tell someone to get off your lawn.
> nor will I hold myself responsible for their thoughts and actions. It's their burden to bear.
You don't have to hold yourself responsible, but your users might. And shrugging that responsibility might result in a bad experience for many users, depending on how the culture and discussion of a site develops.
> Should I stoop to the level of a common racist by FORCING him/her to speak a certain way?
You are not a Forum. On the other hand, your comment implies you try to convince someone to act (not) a certain way. The difference between the force and conviction might make all the difference, but conviction is one kind of force, isn't it?
This is possible with INN. Everything you ask for, I think, is possible with INN.
As for alternatives, what about The Pirate Bay? Links, comments, anonymity.
An existing example is Freenet, which has a decentralized messaging system.