Show HN: Ieddit – A minimalist, Reddit-like site with anonymous posts/comments
ieddit.com
ieddit.com
Tags: much of the content of Reddit is people reposting the same thing at various times to various subreddits, and many of the comments are people noticing that it fits into "r/whatever" instead. The default behavior should be that posts of the same link to various tags (r/awww, r/catsstandingup) should not recreate a new post but just backlink to the same post. Repeat posts to the same tag should be a no-operation. This removes the community aspect of tags, and some of the worst emergent behaviors of reddit along with it. Treating a tag as both a topic and a community leads to a neverending cycle of people creating niche topic tags for the community aspect, but then finding themselves "invaded" as people will always want to find and comment on content about topics that they disagree with.
But of course the community aspect of Reddit leads to good things. So you make a separate concept of communities. These communities could follow the posts of one or more tags, applying filters to those of their own choosing, and make their discussion visible within community borders only or visible to all, based on their own choices (in addition to internal community posts.) They can control admission to the communities on their own rules (fully public, invite codes only, etc.) The ability to automatically follow the posts of certain tags (and either view or not view public comments) will keep small communities from getting stale for lack of posts.
Tags are brilliant idea until you have tens of thousands of them. Plural forms, hyphens or without hyphens, synonyms, i18n tags of the same thing, mis-spellings, etc.
Part of what made reddit successful was exactly the subreddit individualism you're trying to remove. It's why so many people were upset when they removed custom stylesheets for subreddits. It felt like that individualism was being stripped away.
Communities don't just spring up from nowhere. They need common interests to bring the people to them.
Did folk pollute the tags with nonsense?
However, a feature making easier to x-post can do the trick, maybe?
> John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory was proposed in the Penny Arcade (web comic) on March 19, 2004 by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. It says that when a normal person is allowed anonymity and an audience, they lose social inhibitions and act inappropriately.
If anything, the last decade has taught us the immutability of this law. Usernames and comment history seem to help somewhat with people acting accountable for their actions. Total anonymity seems to always lead to a cesspool like 4chan.
I say this as someone who was very good at research back when people didn't understand stuff like not using the same handle across sites, not using same email across sites, not giving out so much info the property of intersection narrows them down... it's amazing to see someone's public and what they think are private thoughts and how they contrast.
I've kind of given up on total anonymity when saying anything of substance given advances in stylometry - anonymous receiving is solved, but speaking seems the real challenge.
With psuedoanonymous sites like reddit it's trivial to be anonymous anyway by rotating alt-accounts. This just streamlines the process.
I miss the late 90s when you had a lot of small, independent websites. Sure there was always a war against spammers and scripts, but I feel like you could find more independent content from individuals instead of these big link aggregation platforms (remember web-rings?)
There is more to think about today when making something that hosts other's content (or links to that content). I'm surprised ActivityPub networks (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) haven't had more issues with spam and bad actors.
When starting a project like this, I think a few small things authors should consider right off the bat: implement some Captcha (preferably an open source implementation that's not Google mandated tracking, if you can find something decent), for at least account creation .. maybe posts too. I'm not sure what Lobsters uses for spam testing/filtering, but it'd be worth looking at that and other projects for any quick solutions. Prismo (https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo) also comes to mind.
Thing is, the instances are generally small and good admins communicate, dropping known abusive IPs and reaching out to server hosts when abusive instances violate local laws like the CFAA.
Content marked as "nsfw" will not show up in the default index page, and nsfw posts in sfw subs will have the thumbnail hidden.
This was 'resubmitted' here when I was sleeping. I woke up to a site I left misconfigured being flooded with people lol.
Small instances that don't do anything about spam usually get defederated fairly quickly.
With the way federation works, your reach is very unpredictable and you need to attach to very large instances if you want to have any effect. And large instances have more moderators to more quickly handle them.
Per-user mastodon probably has more moderators/administrators than comparable services (twitter), so it's a bit more clean.
Not that I need further proof of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory and still am attracted to "anonymous" "free" "speech", I'm using TOR at work to avoid being flagged for such accidental visits.
What you and I deem a 'fuckwad' will vary greatly. While somebody spamming 'hitler did nothing wrong' is certainly a fuckwad, it is only an issue which this fuckwadry is exposed to those who were not expressively looking for it.
I see zero issues in fuckwads congregating if they stick to themselves.
In addition to that, allowing those communities to exist legitimizes them and allows them to recruit impressionable people.
The combination of these two things lead to things like gamergate and "doing it for the lulz" and ends with things like the march in Charlottesville and the El Paso shooting.
We all hope the troll spewing "Hitler did nothing wrong" learns better somehow, but there isn't a quick and effective "somehow". The Internet enables us to connect with people all over the world, or at least the English-speaking world, but all we've constructed is more echoey echo chambers. Fuckwads sticking together is how we got to the current state of politics. Someday, someone smart is going to figure out how to do better than deleting/hiding fuckwads' comments and giving them their own echo chamber.
It's the best solution we have now, but it's a pretty bad one.
Or equally likely-- there are a tiny fraction of bona fide users who act moderately anti-social on the net when granted anonymity, just as they would in real life.
It's just that forums with no little to no publishing friction allow those people to do 100x damage compared to what they could get away with in real life.
Add to that:
* corporate-sponsored trolls doing 1000x damage compared to real life
* nation-state trolls doing 10000x damage compared to real life
That's how you get that inimitable Reddit charm of watching an entire thread on geopolitics seem to change its hive mind as the mods manually strip out all the astroturf over the course of an hour.
1. Full Anonymity (no way to differenciate between user A and B except by the content)
2. Anonymous Pseudonymity (Users can take usernames, but they don’t mean a lot because they can be changed fast and there is no per user post history)
3. Accountbuilding Pseudonymity (Users usually stick to their accounts, Per user post history or karma is visible and meaningful)
4. Mandatory Real Names (on top of the stuff in point 3 you also have to use your real name - but face no consequences if you make something up)
5. Enforced Real Names (same as point 4, but the service provider has to check your identity)
Positive effects of mandatory real name policies could never been proven — as far as I know they haven’t improved civility e.g. on facebook.
I believe the secret lies more in the feedback systems and how easy it is to flip or flop your position away from what you historically said. It helps if all community interactions or rules are clear and minimalistic instead of arbitrary and arcane.
All of this together weakens or strengthens the impact of the kind of user you mentioned. So in short: the emergent culture on really bad image boards is also part of their systemic design, just like it is with hn, facebook, instagram and any other online plattform. I think the type mentioned in point 3 (accountbuilding) paired with clever measures to keep the aims of the community aligned help a lot.
And also, of course, it just holds for some otherwise apparently normal persons.
4chan is a collection of boards, and not all of them are cesspools. The ones focused on niche hobbies tend to fare better.
Of course, abrasive discussion is still common. But one man's cesspool is another man's hot spring.
A cesspit is still a cesspit even if some people choose to call it a hot spring.
You should see how some people act in real life playing hockey or soccer. Everybody knows their real names, but that doesn't stop them from being assholes.
I get how everyone wants a community that they can posts and share things anonymously, but the fact of the matter is that unless you have unlimited money where you can fight legal battles and absorb the cost of running it yourself, at some point you are going to need outside resources to keep the thing online and that comes in forms of donations or advertising.
I think we're gonna be stuck with shitty walled censored communities for a while. At least there's hn?
Just thinking out loud
I'll definitely be following this website with interest; I'm a huge fan of sites that allow anonymous posting as well as how Reddit can create active communities around very niche topics (which is a lot harder on e.g. 4chan).
EDIT: I do have some problems with this rule: "Nothing that violates US law, or anything that would be considered 'gray area'." What is a 'gray area' is, itself, a gray area. I don't think the rule itself needs changing, but it would be good if it was supported by some examples of things that people might want to do but you won't allow.
EDIT2: Another issue: in a lot of fonts, Ieddit (with capital i) looks very similar to leddit (with lowercase L), which is a derogatory term for Reddit on 4chan (and possibly elsewhere) (owing to the shitty rageface memes which use the word "le")
Only one group likes image boards anyway, this won't matter.
Loli/shota porn mainly. Other forms of borderline cp. The problem is, specifically stating 'hey don't upload THIS CONTENT', will result in people specifically uploading that content to buck the rules. I'll probably still add the clarification.
The gray area clause allows operational leeway.
>EDIT2: Another issue: in a lot of fonts, Ieddit (with capital i) looks very similar to leddit (with lowercase L), which is a derogatory term for Reddit on 4chan (and possibly elsewhere) (owing to the shitty rageface memes which use the word "le")
I see a lot of people suggesting this. tbh I kind of like teh association with the "leddit" term, I find it amusing. From a ui perspective, the /i/ might make more sense though.
> Decentralized platforms are not an ideal solution for
> internet communities.
Hard disagree. Communities are about give and take, the early internet was driven by people hosting bulletin boards, IRC servers, web servers, etc. There are people out there still willing to be part of the solution if you give them the chance.
> TOR is also not an answer, the technical barrier in
> accessing hidden services alone disqualifies them as a
> practical alternative, before even considering the
> bandwidth/latency limitations.
TOR is plug-and-play these days, although using TOR effectively requires a change in mind-set, both for the server owners and users of such servers.
> As seen with youtube, reddit, &c. With transparency and
> accountability, and without a significant profit incentive
> to do otherwise, the model still works.
Servers, time and expertise usually cost money. Staff running the show need to put food on their tables one way or another - there will always be a financial incentive. Unless, of course, you reduce running costs to near zero.
Unfortunately I have no choice in this regard. I do no have the means to resist any sort of ddos. I remember at one point you could set the 'cloudflare security level' to low, but when I looked in the UI today I could not find such an option.
If there exists a solution to either not using cloudflare, or some option hidden away that allows me to tell clouflare o fuck off with how it treats traffic, I'd love to know.
> or some option hidden away that allows me to tell clouflare
> o fuck off with how it treats traffic, I'd love to know.
The method I use to avoid CloudFlare altogether (probably wrong as it's bespoke) is to do the following before "handling" the request:
* Store all connecting IPs, last request time and the rate at which requests are being made in a serviced-buffer. If the request rate becomes too high, give them a timeout (return a very small page telling them to come back in a few minutes).
* If database hits are high, drop non-important requests first, starting with views, then up/down votes, comments and then user security. Views and votes can fail silently and most people won't be any of the wiser.
* If static content requests are high, drop generated content first, followed by large files (all JS, most CSS, images, etc). For the generated content, you can use a recently generic cached view.
* Lastly, if all else fails, just return a redirect to some static server hosted somewhere strong (like GitHub pages for example), explaining that demand is high at this current time.
This approach has worked for me so far. Under high load, you need to handle requests as soon as possible, even if it means not returning something. Holding onto a connection is what will sink your ship.
In general most sites seem to die because they spend too long dealing with individual requests. especially when the database is hit. As soon as you overload a WordPress database for example, it's screwed. And this is just for displaying content to the website!
Some forms of ddos are focused on layer 7, but these are not the problem.
The ddos attacks that are actually difficult to deal with are the layer 3, multi-hundred gigabit attacks. Which in our new IoT reality, are not uncommon.
> connection check current time, if less than a second
> elapsed since previous check, close the listening socket.
Then you risk killing genuine traffic. Above average hit from a handful of locations is more likely to be abuse.
> Isn't ddos caused by packet congestion rather than server
> processing?
From what I understand, a DDoS attack any pat of your system, usually the part that is the slowest. You want to kill attacking traffic as quickly as possible without affecting genuine traffic. As for attacks on the network itself, this is where you rely on your cloud service provider.
For lowering the costs of running, there are tonnes of pretty cheap options out there. I personally quite enjoy running my C1 instance at Scaleway [1], I get dedicated hardware, 4 ARM cores, 2GB RAM, 50GB SSD (with the option of additional storage) and 200Mb/s external network.
The benefit of the C1 solution is that I can have it screaming 24/7 (mine instance really is) and the price is fixed. If you buy yourself a Raspberry Pi, you can do testing at home and then deploy your solution to the cloud with relative confidence.
the only issue will be losing familiarity for reddit users.
there were a ton of technical issues earlier that are now 'mostly' fixed
in terms of the nsfw content, the index page is basically /r/all without nsfw. marking something as nsfw in a sfw sub hides the thumbnail.
this was posted here while i was sleeping... i went to bed thinking nobody had noticed my previous post and wasn't being attentive. the original post i made to Show Hn was 15 hours ago... I'm guessing a mod 'refreshed' this?
I like your way of greeting
The new reddit design is horrible.
The design on the site could be a little closer to this site perhaps.
This is how I still browse the site. You can also disable subreddit theming in your preferences and you’ve got a much more lite version of the site like the old days.
The technical issues and most of the offensive content has been taken care of.
The technical issues and most of the offensive content has been taken care of.
* Fully Transparent Mod/Admin Action Logs <- This is evidenced by the fact that on reddit mod drama sparks up every so often
* Anonymous Posting Option <- The fact that people make throwaways indicates that they desire anonymity sometimes
My next question though is what stops reddit from implementing them?
They're never going to implement the anonymous posting. They used to let users register without providing an email, since the new redesign it's required.
As far as I know, it's still not required. When you're at the signup popup and it's asking for your email, just click next. It's not a required field.
It's a rough thing to allow anonymous comments and also foster a community online.
I got excited by your post because I'm building a reddit-clone too.
It's called Dinomia and it's a just-for-fun concept with a transaction system.
Each time you upvote something an "upvote / credit" is transferred from you to the author of the post, like sending money. When you create a post/comment/community you loose X "upvote/credits" etc.
I hope Ieddit has great success and congratulations again for the work you have done.
Have clicked on less than 10 links and have already been exposed to bestiality images. This post in question has been up for half an hour, where is the moderation?
The technical errors are fixed now. I went to bed with the site reconfigured, not worrying too much because I thought this post was a dud.
Let the username landgrab begin. Apparently they are called SubEddits instead of Subreddits? Not much in the way of r/android or similar but time will tell if this lasts or vanishes. Seems nice enough so far.
> Too Many Requests: 60 per 1 minute
I visited the site twice...
It looks interesting, but I am curious what are the implications. I.e. how does everyone’s interactions change.
Also seems kinda weird I have to login to be honest...
The technical issues and most of the offensive content has been taken care of.
Am I doing something wrong or is it a bug?
It's got Reddit style functionality (HN style theme at present) with all content on the Bitcoin (BCH) blockchain.
https://support.patreon.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
Those guidelines are here for anyone who is curious:
[1]: https://github.com/dessalines/lemmy [2]: https://gitlab.com/prismosuite/prismo
> Dogs knotting women (www.com)
Really, who expected anything else?
The best communities don’t strive for the hockey stick growth.
In the old design you could go to /r/subredditname/comments and see an ordered list of comments regardless of which post they were associated with. It really livened things up and let you track the conversations going on given that there wern't that many new posts in a given day. That's gone with the new design unfortunately.
Example: https://old.reddit.com/r/sweden/comments/
I have disabled the new design entirely in my user preferences, so I get the old design even if I don't put "old" in the URL.
Anyway, I'm not sure anonymity is a great feature. The lack of accountability is a good part of the reason why Reddit became such a cesspool.