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Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative

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Re: Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative

#181
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Like what? Never had that happen.

Some servers/instances maybe are less reliable than others. Same for teddit and invidious.

Ah, well, luckily it’s easy to switch servers. But that’s the issue with Mastodon, you have to view the content on the instance it’s posted on.

Re: Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative

#182

I don't think technology is the problem here. Rather, it is the evergreen gullibility of humans, showing their willingness to trust their communities and memories and volunteerism to corporations which then seize control of everything. We had a P2P and open source Reddit alternative 40 years ago, called Usenet. But people fell for a centralized one run by a company once it came along, like they always do. May Reddit'…

I agree with your main point: tech isn't the problem here. But a minor quibble: USENET wasn't exactly peer-to-peer. I mostly got to USENET through my university or ISP's NNTP servers. If I wanted to start a new group and get you involved, I would've had to set up my own NNTP server for you to connect to, using either your NNTP client or your own NNTP server.

OR you could talk to the newsmaster and have that one set up and propagated.

Re: Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative

#183
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really find Mastodon that slow. I do think it's got a lot, lot of sharp edges that need smoothing out before it's really viable. But speed isn't a problem, and it's decentralised.

Nitter page: full page layout with all text loads in about half a second, images load in the next three https://nitter.it/rauschma Mastodon page: requires unblocking JavaScript, takes one second just to load the basic layout (without post contents), then takes four to ELEVEN seconds to fully load https://fosstodon.org/@rauschma I expected better.

Now use nitter and create your account, login, and tweet something. If you can't, you didn't compare.

Re: Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative

#184
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really find Mastodon that slow. I do think it's got a lot, lot of sharp edges that need smoothing out before it's really viable. But speed isn't a problem, and it's decentralised.

Nitter page: full page layout with all text loads in about half a second, images load in the next three https://nitter.it/rauschma Mastodon page: requires unblocking JavaScript, takes one second just to load the basic layout (without post contents), then takes four to ELEVEN seconds to fully load https://fosstodon.org/@rauschma I expected better.

Weird. Anecdotal I think. Maybe something with your instance. Mastodon UI is quick and snappy for me. I migrated away from mastodon.social when the influx from Twitter made that server very slow (it has since scaled up significantly).

Re: Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like scraping and providing an alternative API would violate TOS and will receive a takedown notice in due time.

You don't need to agree to TOS to scrape a public website, what they write in it is moot.

They can still ban your service, e.g. block your IPs. Sure, you could then play a cat and mouse game with them, but your API clone going down every few days will make it unusable for anyone with a real purpose. The companies that reddit (officially) wants to target, e.g. OpenAI et al., have no problem scraping.

Re: Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative

#187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like scraping and providing an alternative API would violate TOS and will receive a takedown notice in due time.

You don't need to agree to TOS to scrape a public website, what they write in it is moot.

Reddit may not be a public website for long. They push their app and ask for logging in so often, it wouldn’t surprise me if they shut off parts of the site for not logged in users.
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