Bitsocial

In this clip, @VitalikButerin is describing bitsocial.net without knowing it. He says that decentralized social media needs real choice between communities, more user control, and a way to create a community without setting up a whole new set of infrastructure. I agree with all three. I just don't think a chain gets us there. Why? Because a like can't be double spent like money can, so social doesn't need consensus. Putting it on a chain means paying gas, validators or a sequencer for a problem social doesn't have. It also doesn't scale. Look at node requirements [1]. We need every user to be able to leave any host and run their own node with 1 click, on cheap hardware or a phone. It’s also bad UX. Users shouldn’t have to connect a cryptocurrency wallet to enjoy a decentralized social media app. We should help all web2 social users, even anti-crypto people. The Farcaster people protesting in this clip know where onchain social leads: a handful of validators and one main app, and leaving means losing your audience [1]. Remember Secure Scuttlebutt? I think Vitalik does. It showed us all years ago that social can be peer to peer with no chain at all [2]. One problem was it made every peer keep the full history of everyone it follows. Bitsocial is P2P without the chain. Every community is a keypair with its own node, its own rules and its own spam challenges, and any app can read any community. Probably the most innovative part is the custom anti-spam challenges: each community decides what it takes to post there [3]. Don't like how a community is run? Make your own from the 5chan desktop app, on your laptop, with no server or domain. Running a full node is as easy as opening a Bitsocial desktop client, which runs one automatically. Soon users will run full nodes from the browser too, via my Forge RPC [4]. We started with an imageboard (5chan.app, the first Bitsocial client) because it doesn't require user profiles. We're working on profile nodes, which run on non-custodial RPCs like Forge RPC by default, since not every user will run their own node. They're out very soon and will open the door to a possible Twitter/X alternative on Bitsocial [5]. We also have a Reddit alternative in the works, seedit.app, the second Bitsocial client, which will soon enjoy profile nodes as well as Forge RPC for community creation on web. Bitsocial needs more contributors, it’s just me and @rinse_12 at the moment. We’ve been working on it for almost 5 years so far. Join us on github.com/bitsocialnet. Sources: [1] docs.bitsocial.net/compariso… [2] docs.bitsocial.net/compariso… [3] docs.bitsocial.net/custom-ch… [4] bitsocialforge.com/#forge-rp… [5] bitsocial.net/#master-plan-p…

The problem with this is that agents posting offers everywhere means spam everywhere, and whoever filters it (e.g. Nostr relays or apps) becomes the middleman. It turns out, it's happened already 🙃 This month bots made ~400 of a Nostr marketplace's newest 500 listings. The fix was a hardcoded filter on top of an admin blacklist. github.com/PlebeianApp/marke… A Nostr listing is just an event on relays. If one relay blocks a spammer, he posts to another, so the app showing the listings has to clean up. Bitsocial fixes this with an approach that's never been done before (as far as I know): arbitrary challenges exchanged p2p between users. It's explained here bitsocial.net/#arbitrary-cha… Basically it means that each community node decides what gets in. Its owner picks the anti-spam challenge, which is fully customizable/arbitrary: could be a captcha, a small payment, a token, AI; whatever they want. Spam has to pass that community's own gate before it exists there at all. Technical comparison here: docs.bitsocial.net/compariso…

Ever wanted "@grok is this true?" on a decentralized social network? Askwise is an open-source AI reply bot for Bitsocial communities and profile. Mention it in a post or reply and it answers in the thread, images included. It only works in communities and profiles that opt in