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anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

Yes, somewhat similar. Thanks for the link. The major difference here is that Pepe runs on a mix network similar to I2P, this helps hide your identity whereas anyone can see what you are doing with plain Bitcoin.

To answer the question in your comment: yes, you can install and configure I2P, you can install iMule on top of it to exchange files and some distributed forum to post on. But the usability of all that is really low even for a pro-user. The performance is also not great because those systems were not designed to be used with each other from scratch.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

Well, some government can decide to outlaw cryptography, jam radio (this includes Starlink, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth etc.), but you can still use something like Sneakernet. So I'd argue it's possible, but one need to choose their friends very carefully.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

Why not? At least here, free speech means free speech, not "I don't like existing platforms because I cannot silence people I don't like, I'm building a new one" type of "free speech".

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

HashCash whose difficulty is chosen collectively based on the load. Since threads/boards are represented with Merkle-CRDTs, there's eventual consistency, so participants can reach some sort of consensus based on the message rate. This limits the posting rate and gives some time for moderation. Threads eventually die off, so it's not a big problem there's shadowed spam in them. And regarding boards, people will simply not participate in making swarms around spammy threads, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

How would you trust anyone? Anyone can claim they are the good guys. With open source software, you can at least audit a project and the technical decisions (that make sure no one controls the network, even the authors) behind it.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

It kinda does: https://1b677b8f8bb20100.github.io/introduction/#why-is-pepe...

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

If you do not feel like donating, consider showing the referenced blog post to your friends who might be interested in this project. Donations will fuel the development, but the author is going to work on it no matter what.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

The referenced blog post explains why. The author has just started.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

Looks interesting. Unfortunately, flooding does not scale, its cost is O(n²) where n is the number of participants. The saddest part is that if they were to switch to a less bandwidth-crippling scheme (such as GossipSub), that would destroy the whole purpose because malicious agents can start soliciting messages, and given there is no premix layer on top, time to reveal your identity is going to start approaching zero.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

Not secure enough? People operating the servers see everything you are doing, this is no-no for whistleblowers.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

This project is pretty much what you are describing, only more secure and tailored for a pretty much single use case.

anon20190221on Frustrated with Parler deplatforming, I am building a service no one can silence

I would not call it ignorant. It is extreme, yes, but not ignorant. Unfortunately, you cannot have censorship-resistance with exceptions. Even if you have the greatest moderation team, it will all break apart sooner or later.