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Aether – Free, privacy-sensitive public communities

290 points by HostFat 8y ago

mpnordland 8y ago
FYI, there doesn't appear to be any cryptocurrency involved, which is a plus for me.
berberous 8y ago
The idea of impeaching mods sounds interesting, but unworkable. How do you stop hostile communities from brigading and removing each other’s mods?
- HostFat 8y ago
  It isn't a "democracy", votes have a different weight based on the past participation on the specific community sub.
- boramalper 8y ago
  I've asked: https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-do-you-stop-hostile-communities-from-brigading-and-removing-each-other-s-mods/70 https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-do-you-stop-hostile-communi...
- nemo44x 8y ago
  Some type of social credit system with power at the local and global level. Give active and creditable participants in a single community more authority there by giving more votes. Global credibility (you play nice in other communities) additionally is factored into the users ability to influence. Make this credit consumable. This way a community that wants to disrupt another will have to overspend and leave themselves vulnerable to destruction. MAD in essence.
- lostmsu 8y ago
  I wonder why can't one just pick mods for themselves. E.g. "subscribe" to a mod, meaning whatever that mod hides, you don't see. It could even be mutual.
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    That’s exactly how it works. Default mods are just that, default.
drb91 8y ago
To state the obvious, I can't download—"You caught it before the launch. :)" That said, I really, really appreciate the native client here and I'm excited to try it out.
- HostFat 8y ago
  Maybe you should refresh your browser cache.
  - drewmate 8y ago
    I am also unable to download and I doubt _my_ cache is the issue as I've never visited this site before. Is anyone able to download the Windows client (or any other)?
    - PavlovsCat 8y ago
      > Is anyone able to download the Windows client Yeah, but with the same result as what another poster said > Downloaded and installed, but no content has loaded in last 30min. As of yet, the github page says > Aether 2 last version: 2.0.0 (currently non-functional, in development) [..] (Not yet working, 80% complete) and the last commit was 2 months ago :( edit: this is how the page looks to me: https://i.imgur.com/2tsW5zv.png https://i.imgur.com/2tsW5zv.png
      - HostFat 8y ago
        The github isn't updated currently, I've also asked the dev about the update of the source code Maybe there is an issue with the dns. Those are the current links to download https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/win/Aether-Setup-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.exe https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181... https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/mac/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.dmg https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181... https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/linux/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.snap https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181...
alexandercrohde 8y ago
It'd be nice if I didn't have to download an application to use it. Open to a reddit alternative, but I care more about convenience than any sort of encryption a client would offer.
- boomskats 8y ago
  I dunno - when I saw 'decentralised' I assumed I'd have to download something. Isn't that how decentralised applications work?
  - deweller 8y ago
    It is theoretically possible to serve a web app from github pages and let the decentralized peer-to-peer application run in the user's web browser. There are limitations and this approach might not be feasible for this application.
    - timbit42 8y ago
      The web doesn't have to eat everything.
- newsbinator 8y ago
  Also the application takes 1-5 minutes to "download fresh content".
- benhylau 8y ago
  Since Aether is a peer-to-peer network, the client syncs content and becomes a node itself to scale up the network's capacity. It also allows the user to perform actions without letting a backend track your navigation history, etc. I don't think there is encryption done on the content, only signing and verifying with keys, as there is no concept of private messages in the Aether network at the moment.
CarVac 8y ago
I can't figure out how to use the snap.
- mrspeaker 8y ago
  I downloaded the snap and installed it from the command line with `snap install --dangerous Aether.snap`. Dangerous sounds dangerous... I'm not sure if it was a good idea, but it works and my system found the app when I searched for it. I clicked the "cat's bum icon" and we're away!
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    ‘Cat’s bum icon’ I might just make this the official name of the logo!
  - Lerc 8y ago
    You are installing a program you downloaded off the internet. The --dangerous is there to make you think about that for a moment as(or if you're lucky, before) you install.
a012 8y ago
For anybody who is curious as me: > Aether is a product of Burak Nehbit (@nehbit). You can reach out at burak at getaether dot net. > Burak Nehbit > Burak is an ex-Google, ex-Facebook product designer and engineer. He specialises in end-to-end product experience, from product, UX, to API (developer) experience. He is an expert in the fields of distributed networks and monetisation (e.g: prior jobs at YouTube and Facebook). > He was also the part of the team that built the next generation, material design AdWords at Google. (e.g: complex data visualisation, dashboards). > He is available for consulting as a full-stack designer and engineer in distributed networks space. He lives in San Francisco. https://getaether.net/about-contact/ https://getaether.net/about-contact/
- dhimes 8y ago
  So, Burak, care to share the thought behind your username? :)
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    Which username? I use @b on Aether.
    - dhimes 8y ago
      I was teasing the parent- not being serious.
      - rolleiflex 8y ago
        Ah okay, sorry! I’m the Burak mentioned above and I’m as puzzled as anyone else on why this was posted, and why this is the highest upvoted comment, to be honest. Make a thing for privacy and the next thing people do is post your info online - Satoshi had a point. :)
        DoreenMichele 8y ago
        People got trust issues. They want to know if they can trust the maker. If not, privacy, schmivacy.
axonotl 8y ago
Love the concept. Will try out the product. Immediately, the logo looks a lot like an anus.
- axonotl 8y ago
  paid unique usernames? I can foresee a lot of blackmail happening using this.
  - axonotl 8y ago
    The app wasn't able to load a list of communities in ~15 minutes. Will test when a better version is available.
    - dangoor 8y ago
      I found that on first run, the results returned were blank. Restarting fixed that.
pelagic_sky 8y ago
Downloaded and installed, but no content has loaded in last 30min.
- kaivi 8y ago
  Same for me, it's "Catching up" and appears to connect to some ipv4 nodes, but nothing so far. Edit: it werks now!
- ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
  Same here. At first I thought it was the hug of death, but I feel like with p2p it should only get faster as more people join? Inbounds conns. in last 15m 0 Last inbound Unknown Outbound conns. in last 15m 0 Last outbound Unknown Last outbound duration Unknown
- alexkavon 8y ago
  It performs an initialization. You need to exit the program. Be aware that the “close” button only minimizes to the system tray
prolikewh0a 8y ago
How do you get this to not turn into a fascist/racist trash bin worse than 4chan/b/ as other Reddit clones have seemingly fallen into?
- swiley 8y ago
  I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities. The correct approach (IMO) is to educate people about these rather than to have some sort of censorship mechanism.
  - commun3 8y ago
    That is, unfortunately, unworkable. You cannot successful quarantine toxic people from non-toxic people in the same community. People who aren't toxic rarely want to spend their time around toxic people, and those that don't mind it are usually those who aren't the targets of the toxic people. A community with many members who are openly white supremacists might not be uncomfortable for other white people -- even if they themselves are not white supremacists -- but it's almost certainly unusable for those that are the target of the white supremacists ire. Look at any "open communication platform" that doesn't make any effort to ban "toxic" behaviour and you'll find that the toxic behaviour leaks into every aspect of the platform. If a website permits members to be openly anti-semitic or racist or sexist then they will be anti-semitic, racist and sexist everywhere, whether that's a quarantined sub-community about anti-semitism, or a community about video games, make-up or curating art for galleries. No amount of education is going to encourage jewish people to spend their time talking to openly anti-semitic people about video games. If you permit toxic behaviour then you exclude anybody who feels threatened by that behaviour.
    - the8472 8y ago
      There are diametrically opposed subreddits, 4chan boards or even twitter feeds. People can definitely coexist. The coexistence is not always easy or 100% free of disturbance but most of the time they work well enough to let each group focus on their own things.
    - 8y ago
HostFat 8y ago
You can use with Tor: https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-to-use-aether-behind-tor/53 https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-to-use-aether-behind-tor/53
tomsmeding 8y ago
From the FAQ: > How long does it take for a post to reach the most of the network? > [...] Long answer [...] > [...] In fact, it’s a little larger than one request in a minute, because some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and NATs, and they cannot be reached, they can only make requests out. Regardless of the actual FAQ discussed here, the statement is made that "some" nodes are behind NAT's, implying that most will not be behind NAT's. Living in the Netherlands, I'm not sure about countries overseas in the Americas, but here I'd wager >99% of normal household PC's will be behind a router implementing NAT. This makes actual peer-to-peer communication nigh impossible here, and I'm always doubtful about nice peer-to-peer solutions that claim to be cool and such but sneakily have the ever-present requirement that you have a public IP address. I don't. Nobody I know does, except for VPS's and so forth. But I generally don't run a graphical client on my VPS. Of course, theoretically, this should be solved by IPv6. But really I wouldn't know how to start using that, and whether my provider has all the hardware and software in place to actually have this work. (And whether my provider-issued router supports it, as well.) Can anyone chime in on how the situation regarding NAT's is in the Americas? And does anyone have a good source on how to get started with IPv6 communication between peers, when I don't even know the stuff I mentioned above? EDIT: I see that Aether has/seems to have the option to work around this problem by allowing one to run the backend (the thing that actually connects to the peer-to-peer network) on a different machine than the client. That would enable using a VPS to run the backend.
- vilifiedtwin 8y ago
  This should work on a global switch like zerotier. Then the problem of NAT disappears.
- the8472 8y ago
  Not all NAT's are relevant. As long as they respond to port mapping requests or use endpoint independent mappings they can be traversed. Also note that IPv6 alone does not help because the recommended way to deploy it is to have firewalls in CPEs that block incoming connections by default, so applications still have to request the port to be opened, using the same protocols as for v4 NAT.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
billconan 8y ago
So how does peer discovery work? How to find initial nodes to connect?
- tomsmeding 8y ago
  It seems there is some kind of bootstrap node running somewhere that clients connect to when they haven't got anything. The upside is that this bootstrap node isn't special, and anyone should (I believe?) be able to set up new bootstrap nodes. But I'm not sure on that part.
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    Yes, a bootstrap node is just a regular node with a bootstrap config flag. It doesn’t do anything special. You could make your own node a bootstrap node if you want. (Which is, by the way, is a bad idea - it changes how often other people connect to you in a way that makes bootstrapping easier but posting content harder).
rolleiflex 8y ago
Hey guys - Burak here. Ouch, this was supposed to be a ‘soft’ launch. I’m here to answer any questions as usual. I’ll pick the best and try to add it to the FAQ on the site.
- TekMol 8y ago
  Looks good. But a native application? I would only install a native application if it comes from a source that has a proven trackrecord of being trustworthy. Can you track how many people installed it, now that it is on HN? You say it puts everyone on "one single universe with the same content". So it should be easy to put up an instance that provides a web interface to the content, right? I would think that posting via the browser should also be possible without relying on a single server / authority. A user could hold a private key which they use to sign their posts. And then deliver the post via any server that offers an interface for it. Similar to how a Bitcoin transaction can be delivered via any server that offers such a service. So it would still be decentralized but can be used via the browser.
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    Yes I can, because this is a developer preview version, and it has anonymous metrics in. Stable versions are going to ask in the onboarding if you want to join the anonymous metrics program (like Firefox). Yes it would be easy - that would just be an another node that showed it’s read-only UI on the web. (You still need to mint proofs of work, so you would need an actual computer for posting.)
    - guachesuedehack 8y ago
      is it open sourced ?
    - the_clarence 8y ago
      What’s the proof of work? Is it something common to protect p2p network from spam?
  - balladeer 8y ago
p4bl0 8y ago
How does it compare to RetroShare [1] ? RetroShare has been around for years and works quite well. It seems like Aether attempts to provide quite similar features. [0] http://retroshare.net/ http://retroshare.net/
sigmaprimus 8y ago
It is amazing how within an hour of this post the censors are already asking how to keep this from being taken over by racist/sexist trolls. The whole point of an anonymous open community is to allow for people to express their opinions freely, regardless of whether their views are "PC" or comply with the Vagenda of the vocal minority whos feeling might get hurt from some stupid comments. Suck it up princesses. From what I read there will be moderators to prevent truly hateful and criminal postings but beyond that these moderators will be held accountable for their decisions or lack thereof. Sounds to me like that should work just fine and if it doesn't the community will fail or be pushed out to the fringes just like all the previous ones.
14 8y ago
Sounds good to me as it sounds like the individual is the ultimate end moderator allowing community moderators to try remove stuff but it is ultimately up to the individual if he wishes to see that content. I have to say I extremely dislike moderation. But this moderation it seems like I can choose. I am not a kid I want to choose. This seems like a good in between where offensive stuff may be stopped but no one will prevent you from removing the veil of secrecy should you curious mind want to see more.
tlrobinson 8y ago
> Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If these are public communities that anyone can join pseudonymously (are they?) how does Aether prevent Sybil attacks, where a malicious actor joins a community using multiple identities and votes themselves into power? Also, spam?
- tomsmeding 8y ago
  Does any existing kind of social network prevent that kind of attack? I don't believe so, and I'd think that's pretty difficult to accomplish. Aether does attempt to make this nontrivial, I believe, by requiring proof-of-work before posting things. I don't know, but possibly that proof-of-work also applies for impeachment votes (I hope it does!). Then depending on how hard that proof-of-work requirement is and how many people are already in the community, performing such an attack would become harder.
  - cslarson 8y ago
    Reddit is experimenting with sybil-resistent voting on a sub I moderate (r/ethtrader). In fact there is a vote[0] going on to retain me as the first moderator. The sybil-resistence comes from weighting polls with community points (on our sub we call them donuts - don't ask). Donuts are intended to represent contribution to the community so derive from sub specific karma, being a mod, etc. It's still an experiment but I think it's going well so far. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/9tm60s/governance_poll_i_am_first_moderator_at_your/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/9tm60s/governanc...
  - um_ya 8y ago
    Reddit's way of doing it works pretty well. You create your own community with your own rules, then people join it if they like the way things are run. Only downside to Reddit is the subreddit name squating.
  - benhylau 8y ago
    My understanding is that any participant action requires proof-of-work. Social networks like Secure Scuttlebutt prevents this type of attack by syncing only data within social trust circles. So spammers and bots can vote up each other all they want, but their actions will not be visible outside of their little island unless someone explicitly "friends" one of them. Aether, being a global view of unpartitioned data, has a more difficult time tackling this type of attack, and its proof-of-work minting of user actions seem like a reasonable approach.
PerilousD 8y ago
Its getting blocked by AVAST and MALWAREBYTES (not surprising since I don't usually run random Internet supplied executables).
BearsAreCool 8y ago
Trying to install using snap, keep getting the following errors, any advice? Never stops retrying. bee@blackandyellow:~/Downloads$ snap install --dangerous --devmode Aether-2.0.0-dev.5+1811030036.53a6bb49.snap 2018-11-03T11:59:53-04:00 INFO Waiting for restart... 2018-11-03T12:00:01-04:00 INFO auto-connect of snap "aether" will be retried because of "aether" - "core" conflict EDIT: Snap files are an archive of sorts. I was able to extract it into a folder and run the file named "aether" to get it to work. EDIT2: This gets the frontend working but I don't think it gets the backend working entirely.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  @b here. Seems the snap isn’t able to boot because of a similarly named package? Linux isn’t officially supported right now, but there was somebody downthread that managed to get it to work with the —dangerous flag.
prolikewh0a 8y ago
Is the linux tarball on the website updated to the most recent version? It runs under Arch, but just syncs endlessly. It's also a light client, where the Windows version is dark theme. I don't like using snaps, so this is preferred.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  @b here. Snap version is untested - it compiles but no guarantees. I think some people got it to work downthread, you might want to check which flags they used.
  - prolikewh0a 8y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I'm talking about the tarball on https://www.getaether.net/linux_download.html https://www.getaether.net/linux_download.html Link Location: https://github.com/nehbit/aether-public/releases/download/v1.2.3-LNX-TAR/aether_1.2.3.tar.bz2 https://github.com/nehbit/aether-public/releases/download/v1... Looks like it's v1.2.3, released in 2014, so I'm guessing this client won't work? Might want to remove that link! :)
    - rolleiflex 8y ago
      Oh wow - you got the old, old version from the prior site, v1.x. The new version is 2.0.0, it’s a completely different app. Clear your cache and go to getaeether.net again, that should give you the new site and new version.
      - prolikewh0a 8y ago
        It actually takes me to that old website when I use 'click here for other options' on Windows and my Arch machine, in incognito mode.
lez 8y ago
For linux users who don't want to install the snap, just try it out: $ sudo mkdir /mnt/aether $ sudo mount -t squashfs <downloaded.snap> /mnt/aether $ /mnt/aether/aether
indigodaddy 8y ago
Anything to worry about as far as attack vectors when running something like this? eg, could someone hack my computer more easily than they could from just running Facebook in a browser, etc?
devwastaken 8y ago
>Aether is a peer-to-peer app, and it has no servers. A result of this is that source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined. Not possible. Either source IP's are in communication, meaning you know the active posters IP, or the content is being proxied from a centralized server. I hate Discords lies in saying they won't sell user data, but at the least they know the real danger of how IP's are infact all that's needed to call a swatt team down to kill someone in the U.S. If you want to build an actual private conscious platform you will have to do something like FreeNode where people can make their own 'servers' for free, but also make their own actual servers if they want to.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  The posts are echoed across the network. You know where you got the post, you don’t know whether that post was created by that specific IP. Because you could have gotten the same post from all other nodes in the network as well. Delivery IP is not the creation IP.
  - devwastaken 8y ago
    The IP by definition of a P2P network must be the creation IP at some point. IP's delivering the content are liable for what they spread. Using client IP's to distribute data like a proxy only shifts the burden onto the clients themselves. These are all problems that should be gone over in detail on Aethers site, and should have been the main problem to tackle in its protocol.
- jstanley 8y ago
  > Not possible. Either source IP's are in communication, meaning you know the active posters IP, or the content is being proxied from a centralized server. Which of these is true of a P2P network of Tor hidden services? e.g. https://ricochet.im/ https://ricochet.im/ is P2P chat that uses Tor hidden services. It neither has centralised servers nor leaks IP addresses.
  - devwastaken 8y ago
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Could you make the life span settable by the speaker? That is, the default is 6 months, but perhaps I want less? Or more (to be archived locally some way)?
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  Yup - check LocalMemoryDays key on your backend config. That controls the archival. That should be the largest value, and the network head and network memory should be smaller than that.
lxe 8y ago
> What Aether does is, you can actually disable the mods that you don’t approve just for yourself, and those disables count as an impeach vote. If majority of the community agrees, the mod loses mod rights for a while for everyone. That makes it so that Aether communities are places where the content is what the current users of the communities want, not those who were there first by chance. Even if "impeaching mods through votes" is unpractical, subscribing to an unmoderated view of the forum on your own accord is brilliant!
- imglorp 8y ago
  It is brilliant. The moderation layer is a like a data view. I wonder, what happens if, going a step further, there are different moderation teams working on the same comment stream, and readers could flip between them at will? If you ever wondered what the other side was thinking, you could flip views and experience it. Of course, you still need some absolute site rules to cover doxxing and illegalities.
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    > I wonder, what happens if, going a step further, there are different moderation teams working on the same comment stream, and readers could flip between them at will? It already has that. :) That is the whole point of moderation - you can choose who you want to be moderated by. (It’s on a per mod basis for now, though, but per mod team is a good idea. Thanks for the feature request!)
    - _up 8y ago
      Maybe people you follow or "mark as trustworthy", should also be more relevant in what you see.
      - rolleiflex 8y ago
        That's something that came to my mind as well. Probably there's something interesting following that path too — though for the time being I'm focused on getting the basics right first.
badrabbit 8y ago
> Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. Fyi, impeach means to hold a trial not to kick them out. On this point I have to disagree. Democracy does not work well in foss communities and can easily be hijacked and makes it to easy to foster strife and divisions. I like the traditional foss way of being led by a BDFL where if you disagree with leadership you can "Just fork it".
- shkkmo 8y ago
  Impeach: call into question the integrity or validity Seems perfectly appropriate usage to me.
  - badrabbit 8y ago
    You're right,I was correcting a common misunderstanding.
sfilargi 8y ago
If you advertise a “privacy-sensitive” product, please don’t load css from googleapis.com and JS from googletagmanager.com on your website. Actually don’t load anything from third parties. It’s a complete turn off.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  I agree - but anybody who ever built anything would tell you it’s a tradeoff. Yes, I could get metrics through the server logs. But I’m just one single guy that built this thing. I don’t have the resources to build a privacy sensitive tool and a privacy sensitive page view reporter that tells me how many people visited a page, so I can improve it. One challenge at a time.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - fbender 8y ago
    Why not use Piwik/Matomo?
qwerty456127 8y ago
> Aether is a peer-to-peer app, and it has no servers. A result of this is that source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined. Really? Doesn't p2p model actually expose your IP address to everybody you communicate to?
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  It is a flood network. > A result of this is that source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined.
Animats 8y ago
Maybe they can get Gab to adopt this.[1] Gab is having trouble finding hosting. This could go mainstream fast if it picked up the Gab crowd. [1] gab.ai
- krapp 8y ago
  >This could go mainstream fast if it picked up the Gab crowd The "Gab crowd" doesn't have the cultural pull or influence that this would require.
  - Animats 8y ago
    They're loud and have reasonable numbers. Get some gun forums on there and there will be traffic.
    - krapp 8y ago
      Yeah, but the mainstream still wants nothing to do with them, although I suppose it depends on how you define mainstream.
qwerty456127 8y ago
Why does it enforce CC-BY-SA? I never care about what are people going to do with comments I post, can't I choose WTFPL / CC0 / Unlicense instead?
qwerty456127 8y ago
WTF is is this "Minting proof-of-work for the entity..." thing when submitting comments? Does it mine BitCoins or something?
- benhylau 8y ago
  There is no mining of cryptocurrencies. You are spending CPU cycles to compute a proof so spamming the network with user actions is non-zero cost.
qwerty456127 8y ago
Is Aether actually going to be hard for privacy-hostile governments to block or compromise?
- benhylau 8y ago
  I think the _scope_ of privacy here should be clarified. Content on Aether is public. There is no concept of private encrypted messaging. The privacy guarantee is that what content you view within the network, your navigation path, cannot be tracked by a server. This is because your node syncs _all_ the data, including the content that you don't navigate to. This is in contrast to the way many services track user behaviour by their username. As discussed in other posts, it is difficult to discover origin IP of pseudonymous users, because in a flood network, when my node gets some information it is usually not from the IP where that information was generated. That is another privacy feature due to the way Aether distributes data. Aether is more difficult to block than centralized services, since you will have to catch all the nodes instead of just one set of known IPs / domains. With great effort it is probably possible to DPI at ISPs to identify Aether traffic and drop? But being a peer-to-peer protocol, Aether can easily sync across VPN tunnels, run within private networks, or physical meshnet infrastructure independent of ISPs.
  - qwerty456127 8y ago
    > This is because your node syncs _all_ the data, including the content that you don't navigate to. All the data? Isn't it going to take a huge lot when the network grows popular?
aw3c2 8y ago
Privacy-sensitive communication MUST be transport encrypted, if not end-to-end. What are the plans here and how soon will it be implemented?
Kaveren 8y ago
> "Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If a mod behaves inappropriately, users can disable that mod locally as well." This sounds like it's definitely vulnerable to abuse. Democracy is nice, but I'm not sure it's a great idea in a situation like this where it's online with total anonymity and easy to vote fraudulently. > "Aether keeps a 6 months of content by default. It's gone after." I often want to search for stuff that seemed unimportant at the time a year or more later. We should focus on changing society so it's not so critical of statements people made years ago when they changed as a person, this is a better solution. Skeptical of the value of community-building that Aether can provide, it seems like a novelty product to me. What is wrong with pseudononymous communities like Reddit & HN?
- SquishyPanda23 8y ago
  > We should focus on changing society so it's not so critical of statements people made years ago when they changed as a person I'm a believer in progress long term, but I seriously doubt humanity is really capable of what you're describing in a way that's applied equally to all groups of people. It seems several orders of magnitude much easier for people to develop the habit of recording information they might need later.
  - brokenmachine 8y ago
    > It seems several orders of magnitude much easier for people to develop the habit of recording information they might need later. 6 months is fine for just social commentary and such, but it seems to me that a design like that effectively forces the community to be banal, because the community will not remember anything for any longer than that time. Better if there was some mechanism by which the most-saved (upvoted?) posts are retained by the network as a whole for longer. On, for example, Stackoverflow, most of the posts I've found useful have been more than 6 months old. 6 months is not such a long time unless we're talking about the latest pop culture hotness. We are lucky Shakespeare didn't use a platform that forgets everything after 6 months.
natch 8y ago
>Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. This invites tyranny of the majority. Which will mean for certain topics where the community dislikes open discussion and questioning of ideas, divisiveness will grow because bad ideas can not be effectively challenged.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Won’t this be resolved the way it does on Reddit with people ejecting to more specific communities? I’m a feminist for example, but I’m no longer welcome in mainstream feminist subreddits, so I subscribe to various more-specific-feminism subbreddits, and explicitly debate friendly ones.
  - natch 8y ago
    I'm not too happy with that resolution though, because it leads to problems. While it may seem to reduce short term conflict, it exacerbates the effect of many of us living in ever-more-impervious bubbles. Which could lead to larger problems down the road as people's shared understandings about reality diverge even more.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      If enough people believe the same, then such segregation will not happen, because moderation will be self-moderated. OTOH, if enough people really want all those bubbles, there isn't really anything you can do to stop them.
      - natch 8y ago
        >If enough people believe the same, then such segregation will not happen That's wishful thinking. Reality has shown that this isn't the case. >there isn't really anything you can do to stop them. You can challenge them on it. Unless they shut down challenges. Which is what this system enables.
- SquishyPanda23 8y ago
comex 8y ago
Nice! I remember hearing about Aether some time ago, and I'm glad to see development is continuing; I think the world needs more decentralized social networks. I plan to try it out and maybe post more in-depth feedback. For now, though, since nobody else in this thread has mentioned it, I'm going to be that guy – sorry: I wish it weren't Electron. I don't really expect it not to be; I realize your development resources are limited, and that it's the easiest way to make a cross-platform application, which is a must for a social network. Still, having to deal with a non-native UI makes it harder to truly enjoy using the app. Also, if it uses as much memory as Electron apps typically do, I'm going to want to quit it when it's not actively in use – but apparently Aether really wants to stay running in the background so it can continue to synchronize posts. (Is there a way to close the client but keep the backend running?)
- devwastaken 8y ago
  I think native UI in dedicated applications is massively overrated. It's great if it's apart of the system, if there's a config menu or something you'd expect from the system itself, but I have never had a problem with Spotify or Discord in terms of 'non native'. They can be a lot better absolutely, but native look is far worse.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  I know - given enough time and money, I'd make a CLI app using something like ncurses. Unfortunately though, the reality is that I just don't have the resources. The backend is its own process, you could definitely find the binary in the application package and run it on its own — it's not bound to Electron in any other way. Electron is just the client, the frontend graph compiler, and the backend are two separate binaries that communicate with each other over gRPC. That means you could run any of these independently, as well. [0] The client is Electron, but nothing except the UI happens in JS, everything happens in the frontend and the backend, and they're both tiny, fast, native-compiled Go apps. My backend, for example, is 4.8mb, frontend I think is 6mb. The rest of the size of the app (70mb) is just Electron, its dependencies, and the whole enchilada that comes with it. I'm not happy about it either. For better or worse, though, since the JS part of the app is nothing but its 'skin', it's as memory efficient as Electron apps get. No real processing happens in JS, it's all Go. [0] That said, it's not something I support right now, because if you ran the backend separately and then started the app, you'd effectively be running two backends. There is not yet a way to tell the app package that it should connect to an existing backend running locally instead of starting one.
sandov 8y ago
>Introduction: What’s Aether? >Aether gives you fresh, new content about the things you’re interested in. >You can create a community for your friends, or for strangers that are interested in similar things. All communities are public, and everyone can write to any community. (There’ll be communities restricted to certain people, but we’re still working on that for now.) >If you’re familiar with Reddit, Slashdot, or Usenet, it’s pretty similar. Aether does a two main things differently though. The first is that it’s ephemeral. The content disappears after a while. The other is, the communities are democratic, they elect their own leadership. I hate these non-definitions. You've told me a lot of things, but I still don't know what is aether. Is it a website? a service? a protocol? an API?.
eddieone 8y ago
I tried it, it didn't work. Sorry
lsiebert 8y ago
Moderation seems like a view layer on top of the content graph, right? I feel like a feature to blacklist actual storage and distribution of a particular post by fingerprint is going to be needed, because I'm not cool with simply not rendering child porn or someone's banking details if I'm still storing it for 6 months, and transmitting that info for two weeks.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  The payload is just text. You’re not carrying anything else. But yes - for the very small, but not nonexistent case where a text itself can be not kosher, this is something that needs to be built in. It’s on my list.
qwerty456127 8y ago
Please add a way to copy a link to clipboard instead of opening it in the default browser. Viewing/saving/url-copying a picture without opening the source in the default browser would also be great.
andro_dev 8y ago
How come this is called a privacy sensitive aplication while this is happening "and it has anonymous metrics in. Stable versions are going to ask in the onboarding if you want to join the anonymous metrics program (like Firefox)." ? The dev should be upfront about it even when the prerelease versions are being used. Tell us what those "anonymous metrics" are for instance. Is the communication between nodes encrypted or transported over SSL?
brokenmachine 8y ago
Are there any limitations on how large a post can be? Could a malicious user just post giant posts to make the network suffer?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
Svoka 8y ago
I created Rust sub. Feel free to join. Also, I don't see how to find or share link to a community. Is there a way to find community by a fingerprint?

290 points by HostFat 8y ago

FYI, there doesn't appear to be any cryptocurrency involved, which is a plus for me.

The idea of impeaching mods sounds interesting, but unworkable. How do you stop hostile communities from brigading and removing each other’s mods?

HostFat 8y ago
It isn't a "democracy", votes have a different weight based on the past participation on the specific community sub.
boramalper 8y ago
I've asked: https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-do-you-stop-hostile-communities-from-brigading-and-removing-each-other-s-mods/70 https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-do-you-stop-hostile-communi...
nemo44x 8y ago
Some type of social credit system with power at the local and global level. Give active and creditable participants in a single community more authority there by giving more votes. Global credibility (you play nice in other communities) additionally is factored into the users ability to influence. Make this credit consumable. This way a community that wants to disrupt another will have to overspend and leave themselves vulnerable to destruction. MAD in essence.
lostmsu 8y ago
I wonder why can't one just pick mods for themselves. E.g. "subscribe" to a mod, meaning whatever that mod hides, you don't see. It could even be mutual.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  That’s exactly how it works. Default mods are just that, default.

drb91 8y ago

To state the obvious, I can't download—"You caught it before the launch. :)" That said, I really, really appreciate the native client here and I'm excited to try it out.

HostFat 8y ago
Maybe you should refresh your browser cache.
- drewmate 8y ago
  I am also unable to download and I doubt _my_ cache is the issue as I've never visited this site before. Is anyone able to download the Windows client (or any other)?
  - PavlovsCat 8y ago
    > Is anyone able to download the Windows client Yeah, but with the same result as what another poster said > Downloaded and installed, but no content has loaded in last 30min. As of yet, the github page says > Aether 2 last version: 2.0.0 (currently non-functional, in development) [..] (Not yet working, 80% complete) and the last commit was 2 months ago :( edit: this is how the page looks to me: https://i.imgur.com/2tsW5zv.png https://i.imgur.com/2tsW5zv.png
    - HostFat 8y ago
      The github isn't updated currently, I've also asked the dev about the update of the source code Maybe there is an issue with the dns. Those are the current links to download https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/win/Aether-Setup-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.exe https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181... https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/mac/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.dmg https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181... https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/1811030036.53a6bb49/linux/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5%2B1811030036.53a6bb49.snap https://static.getaether.net/Releases/Aether-2.0.0-dev.5/181...

alexandercrohde 8y ago

It'd be nice if I didn't have to download an application to use it. Open to a reddit alternative, but I care more about convenience than any sort of encryption a client would offer.

boomskats 8y ago
I dunno - when I saw 'decentralised' I assumed I'd have to download something. Isn't that how decentralised applications work?
- deweller 8y ago
  It is theoretically possible to serve a web app from github pages and let the decentralized peer-to-peer application run in the user's web browser. There are limitations and this approach might not be feasible for this application.
  - timbit42 8y ago
    The web doesn't have to eat everything.
newsbinator 8y ago
Also the application takes 1-5 minutes to "download fresh content".
benhylau 8y ago
Since Aether is a peer-to-peer network, the client syncs content and becomes a node itself to scale up the network's capacity. It also allows the user to perform actions without letting a backend track your navigation history, etc. I don't think there is encryption done on the content, only signing and verifying with keys, as there is no concept of private messages in the Aether network at the moment.

CarVac 8y ago

I can't figure out how to use the snap.

mrspeaker 8y ago
I downloaded the snap and installed it from the command line with `snap install --dangerous Aether.snap`. Dangerous sounds dangerous... I'm not sure if it was a good idea, but it works and my system found the app when I searched for it. I clicked the "cat's bum icon" and we're away!
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  ‘Cat’s bum icon’ I might just make this the official name of the logo!
- Lerc 8y ago
  You are installing a program you downloaded off the internet. The --dangerous is there to make you think about that for a moment as(or if you're lucky, before) you install.

a012 8y ago

For anybody who is curious as me: > Aether is a product of Burak Nehbit (@nehbit). You can reach out at burak at getaether dot net. > Burak Nehbit > Burak is an ex-Google, ex-Facebook product designer and engineer. He specialises in end-to-end product experience, from product, UX, to API (developer) experience. He is an expert in the fields of distributed networks and monetisation (e.g: prior jobs at YouTube and Facebook). > He was also the part of the team that built the next generation, material design AdWords at Google. (e.g: complex data visualisation, dashboards). > He is available for consulting as a full-stack designer and engineer in distributed networks space. He lives in San Francisco. https://getaether.net/about-contact/ https://getaether.net/about-contact/

dhimes 8y ago
So, Burak, care to share the thought behind your username? :)
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  Which username? I use @b on Aether.
  - dhimes 8y ago
    I was teasing the parent- not being serious.
    - rolleiflex 8y ago
      Ah okay, sorry! I’m the Burak mentioned above and I’m as puzzled as anyone else on why this was posted, and why this is the highest upvoted comment, to be honest. Make a thing for privacy and the next thing people do is post your info online - Satoshi had a point. :)
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        People got trust issues. They want to know if they can trust the maker. If not, privacy, schmivacy.

axonotl 8y ago

Love the concept. Will try out the product. Immediately, the logo looks a lot like an anus.

axonotl 8y ago
paid unique usernames? I can foresee a lot of blackmail happening using this.
- axonotl 8y ago
  The app wasn't able to load a list of communities in ~15 minutes. Will test when a better version is available.
  - dangoor 8y ago
    I found that on first run, the results returned were blank. Restarting fixed that.

pelagic_sky 8y ago

Downloaded and installed, but no content has loaded in last 30min.

kaivi 8y ago
Same for me, it's "Catching up" and appears to connect to some ipv4 nodes, but nothing so far. Edit: it werks now!
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
Same here. At first I thought it was the hug of death, but I feel like with p2p it should only get faster as more people join? Inbounds conns. in last 15m 0 Last inbound Unknown Outbound conns. in last 15m 0 Last outbound Unknown Last outbound duration Unknown
alexkavon 8y ago
It performs an initialization. You need to exit the program. Be aware that the “close” button only minimizes to the system tray

prolikewh0a 8y ago

How do you get this to not turn into a fascist/racist trash bin worse than 4chan/b/ as other Reddit clones have seemingly fallen into?

swiley 8y ago
I feel like the cost of having open communication platforms is the existence of toxic communities. The correct approach (IMO) is to educate people about these rather than to have some sort of censorship mechanism.
- commun3 8y ago
  That is, unfortunately, unworkable. You cannot successful quarantine toxic people from non-toxic people in the same community. People who aren't toxic rarely want to spend their time around toxic people, and those that don't mind it are usually those who aren't the targets of the toxic people. A community with many members who are openly white supremacists might not be uncomfortable for other white people -- even if they themselves are not white supremacists -- but it's almost certainly unusable for those that are the target of the white supremacists ire. Look at any "open communication platform" that doesn't make any effort to ban "toxic" behaviour and you'll find that the toxic behaviour leaks into every aspect of the platform. If a website permits members to be openly anti-semitic or racist or sexist then they will be anti-semitic, racist and sexist everywhere, whether that's a quarantined sub-community about anti-semitism, or a community about video games, make-up or curating art for galleries. No amount of education is going to encourage jewish people to spend their time talking to openly anti-semitic people about video games. If you permit toxic behaviour then you exclude anybody who feels threatened by that behaviour.
  - the8472 8y ago
    There are diametrically opposed subreddits, 4chan boards or even twitter feeds. People can definitely coexist. The coexistence is not always easy or 100% free of disturbance but most of the time they work well enough to let each group focus on their own things.
  - 8y ago

HostFat 8y ago

You can use with Tor: https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-to-use-aether-behind-tor/53 https://meta.getaether.net/t/how-to-use-aether-behind-tor/53

tomsmeding 8y ago

From the FAQ: > How long does it take for a post to reach the most of the network? > [...] Long answer [...] > [...] In fact, it’s a little larger than one request in a minute, because some nodes are behind restrictive firewalls and NATs, and they cannot be reached, they can only make requests out. Regardless of the actual FAQ discussed here, the statement is made that "some" nodes are behind NAT's, implying that most will not be behind NAT's. Living in the Netherlands, I'm not sure about countries overseas in the Americas, but here I'd wager >99% of normal household PC's will be behind a router implementing NAT. This makes actual peer-to-peer communication nigh impossible here, and I'm always doubtful about nice peer-to-peer solutions that claim to be cool and such but sneakily have the ever-present requirement that you have a public IP address. I don't. Nobody I know does, except for VPS's and so forth. But I generally don't run a graphical client on my VPS. Of course, theoretically, this should be solved by IPv6. But really I wouldn't know how to start using that, and whether my provider has all the hardware and software in place to actually have this work. (And whether my provider-issued router supports it, as well.) Can anyone chime in on how the situation regarding NAT's is in the Americas? And does anyone have a good source on how to get started with IPv6 communication between peers, when I don't even know the stuff I mentioned above? EDIT: I see that Aether has/seems to have the option to work around this problem by allowing one to run the backend (the thing that actually connects to the peer-to-peer network) on a different machine than the client. That would enable using a VPS to run the backend.

vilifiedtwin 8y ago
This should work on a global switch like zerotier. Then the problem of NAT disappears.
the8472 8y ago
Not all NAT's are relevant. As long as they respond to port mapping requests or use endpoint independent mappings they can be traversed. Also note that IPv6 alone does not help because the recommended way to deploy it is to have firewalls in CPEs that block incoming connections by default, so applications still have to request the port to be opened, using the same protocols as for v4 NAT.
rolleiflex 8y ago

billconan 8y ago

So how does peer discovery work? How to find initial nodes to connect?

tomsmeding 8y ago
It seems there is some kind of bootstrap node running somewhere that clients connect to when they haven't got anything. The upside is that this bootstrap node isn't special, and anyone should (I believe?) be able to set up new bootstrap nodes. But I'm not sure on that part.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  Yes, a bootstrap node is just a regular node with a bootstrap config flag. It doesn’t do anything special. You could make your own node a bootstrap node if you want. (Which is, by the way, is a bad idea - it changes how often other people connect to you in a way that makes bootstrapping easier but posting content harder).

rolleiflex 8y ago

Hey guys - Burak here. Ouch, this was supposed to be a ‘soft’ launch. I’m here to answer any questions as usual. I’ll pick the best and try to add it to the FAQ on the site.

TekMol 8y ago
Looks good. But a native application? I would only install a native application if it comes from a source that has a proven trackrecord of being trustworthy. Can you track how many people installed it, now that it is on HN? You say it puts everyone on "one single universe with the same content". So it should be easy to put up an instance that provides a web interface to the content, right? I would think that posting via the browser should also be possible without relying on a single server / authority. A user could hold a private key which they use to sign their posts. And then deliver the post via any server that offers an interface for it. Similar to how a Bitcoin transaction can be delivered via any server that offers such a service. So it would still be decentralized but can be used via the browser.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  Yes I can, because this is a developer preview version, and it has anonymous metrics in. Stable versions are going to ask in the onboarding if you want to join the anonymous metrics program (like Firefox). Yes it would be easy - that would just be an another node that showed it’s read-only UI on the web. (You still need to mint proofs of work, so you would need an actual computer for posting.)
  - guachesuedehack 8y ago
    is it open sourced ?
  - the_clarence 8y ago
    What’s the proof of work? Is it something common to protect p2p network from spam?
- balladeer 8y ago

p4bl0 8y ago

How does it compare to RetroShare [1] ? RetroShare has been around for years and works quite well. It seems like Aether attempts to provide quite similar features. [0] http://retroshare.net/ http://retroshare.net/

sigmaprimus 8y ago

It is amazing how within an hour of this post the censors are already asking how to keep this from being taken over by racist/sexist trolls. The whole point of an anonymous open community is to allow for people to express their opinions freely, regardless of whether their views are "PC" or comply with the Vagenda of the vocal minority whos feeling might get hurt from some stupid comments. Suck it up princesses. From what I read there will be moderators to prevent truly hateful and criminal postings but beyond that these moderators will be held accountable for their decisions or lack thereof. Sounds to me like that should work just fine and if it doesn't the community will fail or be pushed out to the fringes just like all the previous ones.

14 8y ago

Sounds good to me as it sounds like the individual is the ultimate end moderator allowing community moderators to try remove stuff but it is ultimately up to the individual if he wishes to see that content. I have to say I extremely dislike moderation. But this moderation it seems like I can choose. I am not a kid I want to choose. This seems like a good in between where offensive stuff may be stopped but no one will prevent you from removing the veil of secrecy should you curious mind want to see more.

tlrobinson 8y ago

> Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If these are public communities that anyone can join pseudonymously (are they?) how does Aether prevent Sybil attacks, where a malicious actor joins a community using multiple identities and votes themselves into power? Also, spam?

tomsmeding 8y ago
Does any existing kind of social network prevent that kind of attack? I don't believe so, and I'd think that's pretty difficult to accomplish. Aether does attempt to make this nontrivial, I believe, by requiring proof-of-work before posting things. I don't know, but possibly that proof-of-work also applies for impeachment votes (I hope it does!). Then depending on how hard that proof-of-work requirement is and how many people are already in the community, performing such an attack would become harder.
- cslarson 8y ago
  Reddit is experimenting with sybil-resistent voting on a sub I moderate (r/ethtrader). In fact there is a vote[0] going on to retain me as the first moderator. The sybil-resistence comes from weighting polls with community points (on our sub we call them donuts - don't ask). Donuts are intended to represent contribution to the community so derive from sub specific karma, being a mod, etc. It's still an experiment but I think it's going well so far. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/9tm60s/governance_poll_i_am_first_moderator_at_your/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/9tm60s/governanc...
- um_ya 8y ago
  Reddit's way of doing it works pretty well. You create your own community with your own rules, then people join it if they like the way things are run. Only downside to Reddit is the subreddit name squating.
- benhylau 8y ago
  My understanding is that any participant action requires proof-of-work. Social networks like Secure Scuttlebutt prevents this type of attack by syncing only data within social trust circles. So spammers and bots can vote up each other all they want, but their actions will not be visible outside of their little island unless someone explicitly "friends" one of them. Aether, being a global view of unpartitioned data, has a more difficult time tackling this type of attack, and its proof-of-work minting of user actions seem like a reasonable approach.

PerilousD 8y ago

Its getting blocked by AVAST and MALWAREBYTES (not surprising since I don't usually run random Internet supplied executables).

BearsAreCool 8y ago

Trying to install using snap, keep getting the following errors, any advice? Never stops retrying. bee@blackandyellow:~/Downloads$ snap install --dangerous --devmode Aether-2.0.0-dev.5+1811030036.53a6bb49.snap 2018-11-03T11:59:53-04:00 INFO Waiting for restart... 2018-11-03T12:00:01-04:00 INFO auto-connect of snap "aether" will be retried because of "aether" - "core" conflict EDIT: Snap files are an archive of sorts. I was able to extract it into a folder and run the file named "aether" to get it to work. EDIT2: This gets the frontend working but I don't think it gets the backend working entirely.

rolleiflex 8y ago
@b here. Seems the snap isn’t able to boot because of a similarly named package? Linux isn’t officially supported right now, but there was somebody downthread that managed to get it to work with the —dangerous flag.

prolikewh0a 8y ago

Is the linux tarball on the website updated to the most recent version? It runs under Arch, but just syncs endlessly. It's also a light client, where the Windows version is dark theme. I don't like using snaps, so this is preferred.

rolleiflex 8y ago
@b here. Snap version is untested - it compiles but no guarantees. I think some people got it to work downthread, you might want to check which flags they used.
- prolikewh0a 8y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I'm talking about the tarball on https://www.getaether.net/linux_download.html https://www.getaether.net/linux_download.html Link Location: https://github.com/nehbit/aether-public/releases/download/v1.2.3-LNX-TAR/aether_1.2.3.tar.bz2 https://github.com/nehbit/aether-public/releases/download/v1... Looks like it's v1.2.3, released in 2014, so I'm guessing this client won't work? Might want to remove that link! :)
  - rolleiflex 8y ago
    Oh wow - you got the old, old version from the prior site, v1.x. The new version is 2.0.0, it’s a completely different app. Clear your cache and go to getaeether.net again, that should give you the new site and new version.
    - prolikewh0a 8y ago
      It actually takes me to that old website when I use 'click here for other options' on Windows and my Arch machine, in incognito mode.

lez 8y ago

For linux users who don't want to install the snap, just try it out: $ sudo mkdir /mnt/aether $ sudo mount -t squashfs <downloaded.snap> /mnt/aether $ /mnt/aether/aether

indigodaddy 8y ago

Anything to worry about as far as attack vectors when running something like this? eg, could someone hack my computer more easily than they could from just running Facebook in a browser, etc?

devwastaken 8y ago

>Aether is a peer-to-peer app, and it has no servers. A result of this is that source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined. Not possible. Either source IP's are in communication, meaning you know the active posters IP, or the content is being proxied from a centralized server. I hate Discords lies in saying they won't sell user data, but at the least they know the real danger of how IP's are infact all that's needed to call a swatt team down to kill someone in the U.S. If you want to build an actual private conscious platform you will have to do something like FreeNode where people can make their own 'servers' for free, but also make their own actual servers if they want to.

rolleiflex 8y ago
The posts are echoed across the network. You know where you got the post, you don’t know whether that post was created by that specific IP. Because you could have gotten the same post from all other nodes in the network as well. Delivery IP is not the creation IP.
- devwastaken 8y ago
  The IP by definition of a P2P network must be the creation IP at some point. IP's delivering the content are liable for what they spread. Using client IP's to distribute data like a proxy only shifts the burden onto the clients themselves. These are all problems that should be gone over in detail on Aethers site, and should have been the main problem to tackle in its protocol.
jstanley 8y ago
> Not possible. Either source IP's are in communication, meaning you know the active posters IP, or the content is being proxied from a centralized server. Which of these is true of a P2P network of Tor hidden services? e.g. https://ricochet.im/ https://ricochet.im/ is P2P chat that uses Tor hidden services. It neither has centralised servers nor leaks IP addresses.
- devwastaken 8y ago

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Could you make the life span settable by the speaker? That is, the default is 6 months, but perhaps I want less? Or more (to be archived locally some way)?

rolleiflex 8y ago
Yup - check LocalMemoryDays key on your backend config. That controls the archival. That should be the largest value, and the network head and network memory should be smaller than that.

lxe 8y ago

> What Aether does is, you can actually disable the mods that you don’t approve just for yourself, and those disables count as an impeach vote. If majority of the community agrees, the mod loses mod rights for a while for everyone. That makes it so that Aether communities are places where the content is what the current users of the communities want, not those who were there first by chance. Even if "impeaching mods through votes" is unpractical, subscribing to an unmoderated view of the forum on your own accord is brilliant!

imglorp 8y ago
It is brilliant. The moderation layer is a like a data view. I wonder, what happens if, going a step further, there are different moderation teams working on the same comment stream, and readers could flip between them at will? If you ever wondered what the other side was thinking, you could flip views and experience it. Of course, you still need some absolute site rules to cover doxxing and illegalities.
- rolleiflex 8y ago
  > I wonder, what happens if, going a step further, there are different moderation teams working on the same comment stream, and readers could flip between them at will? It already has that. :) That is the whole point of moderation - you can choose who you want to be moderated by. (It’s on a per mod basis for now, though, but per mod team is a good idea. Thanks for the feature request!)
  - _up 8y ago
    Maybe people you follow or "mark as trustworthy", should also be more relevant in what you see.
    - rolleiflex 8y ago
      That's something that came to my mind as well. Probably there's something interesting following that path too — though for the time being I'm focused on getting the basics right first.

badrabbit 8y ago

> Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. Fyi, impeach means to hold a trial not to kick them out. On this point I have to disagree. Democracy does not work well in foss communities and can easily be hijacked and makes it to easy to foster strife and divisions. I like the traditional foss way of being led by a BDFL where if you disagree with leadership you can "Just fork it".

shkkmo 8y ago
Impeach: call into question the integrity or validity Seems perfectly appropriate usage to me.
- badrabbit 8y ago
  You're right,I was correcting a common misunderstanding.

sfilargi 8y ago

If you advertise a “privacy-sensitive” product, please don’t load css from googleapis.com and JS from googletagmanager.com on your website. Actually don’t load anything from third parties. It’s a complete turn off.

rolleiflex 8y ago
I agree - but anybody who ever built anything would tell you it’s a tradeoff. Yes, I could get metrics through the server logs. But I’m just one single guy that built this thing. I don’t have the resources to build a privacy sensitive tool and a privacy sensitive page view reporter that tells me how many people visited a page, so I can improve it. One challenge at a time.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- fbender 8y ago
  Why not use Piwik/Matomo?

qwerty456127 8y ago

> Aether is a peer-to-peer app, and it has no servers. A result of this is that source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined. Really? Doesn't p2p model actually expose your IP address to everybody you communicate to?

rolleiflex 8y ago
It is a flood network. > A result of this is that source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined.

Animats 8y ago

Maybe they can get Gab to adopt this.[1] Gab is having trouble finding hosting. This could go mainstream fast if it picked up the Gab crowd. [1] gab.ai

krapp 8y ago
>This could go mainstream fast if it picked up the Gab crowd The "Gab crowd" doesn't have the cultural pull or influence that this would require.
- Animats 8y ago
  They're loud and have reasonable numbers. Get some gun forums on there and there will be traffic.
  - krapp 8y ago
    Yeah, but the mainstream still wants nothing to do with them, although I suppose it depends on how you define mainstream.

qwerty456127 8y ago

Why does it enforce CC-BY-SA? I never care about what are people going to do with comments I post, can't I choose WTFPL / CC0 / Unlicense instead?

qwerty456127 8y ago

WTF is is this "Minting proof-of-work for the entity..." thing when submitting comments? Does it mine BitCoins or something?

benhylau 8y ago
There is no mining of cryptocurrencies. You are spending CPU cycles to compute a proof so spamming the network with user actions is non-zero cost.

qwerty456127 8y ago

Is Aether actually going to be hard for privacy-hostile governments to block or compromise?

benhylau 8y ago
I think the _scope_ of privacy here should be clarified. Content on Aether is public. There is no concept of private encrypted messaging. The privacy guarantee is that what content you view within the network, your navigation path, cannot be tracked by a server. This is because your node syncs _all_ the data, including the content that you don't navigate to. This is in contrast to the way many services track user behaviour by their username. As discussed in other posts, it is difficult to discover origin IP of pseudonymous users, because in a flood network, when my node gets some information it is usually not from the IP where that information was generated. That is another privacy feature due to the way Aether distributes data. Aether is more difficult to block than centralized services, since you will have to catch all the nodes instead of just one set of known IPs / domains. With great effort it is probably possible to DPI at ISPs to identify Aether traffic and drop? But being a peer-to-peer protocol, Aether can easily sync across VPN tunnels, run within private networks, or physical meshnet infrastructure independent of ISPs.
- qwerty456127 8y ago
  > This is because your node syncs _all_ the data, including the content that you don't navigate to. All the data? Isn't it going to take a huge lot when the network grows popular?

aw3c2 8y ago

Privacy-sensitive communication MUST be transport encrypted, if not end-to-end. What are the plans here and how soon will it be implemented?

Kaveren 8y ago

> "Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If a mod behaves inappropriately, users can disable that mod locally as well." This sounds like it's definitely vulnerable to abuse. Democracy is nice, but I'm not sure it's a great idea in a situation like this where it's online with total anonymity and easy to vote fraudulently. > "Aether keeps a 6 months of content by default. It's gone after." I often want to search for stuff that seemed unimportant at the time a year or more later. We should focus on changing society so it's not so critical of statements people made years ago when they changed as a person, this is a better solution. Skeptical of the value of community-building that Aether can provide, it seems like a novelty product to me. What is wrong with pseudononymous communities like Reddit & HN?

SquishyPanda23 8y ago
> We should focus on changing society so it's not so critical of statements people made years ago when they changed as a person I'm a believer in progress long term, but I seriously doubt humanity is really capable of what you're describing in a way that's applied equally to all groups of people. It seems several orders of magnitude much easier for people to develop the habit of recording information they might need later.
- brokenmachine 8y ago
  > It seems several orders of magnitude much easier for people to develop the habit of recording information they might need later. 6 months is fine for just social commentary and such, but it seems to me that a design like that effectively forces the community to be banal, because the community will not remember anything for any longer than that time. Better if there was some mechanism by which the most-saved (upvoted?) posts are retained by the network as a whole for longer. On, for example, Stackoverflow, most of the posts I've found useful have been more than 6 months old. 6 months is not such a long time unless we're talking about the latest pop culture hotness. We are lucky Shakespeare didn't use a platform that forgets everything after 6 months.

natch 8y ago

>Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. This invites tyranny of the majority. Which will mean for certain topics where the community dislikes open discussion and questioning of ideas, divisiveness will grow because bad ideas can not be effectively challenged.

erikpukinskis 8y ago
Won’t this be resolved the way it does on Reddit with people ejecting to more specific communities? I’m a feminist for example, but I’m no longer welcome in mainstream feminist subreddits, so I subscribe to various more-specific-feminism subbreddits, and explicitly debate friendly ones.
- natch 8y ago
  I'm not too happy with that resolution though, because it leads to problems. While it may seem to reduce short term conflict, it exacerbates the effect of many of us living in ever-more-impervious bubbles. Which could lead to larger problems down the road as people's shared understandings about reality diverge even more.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    If enough people believe the same, then such segregation will not happen, because moderation will be self-moderated. OTOH, if enough people really want all those bubbles, there isn't really anything you can do to stop them.
    - natch 8y ago
      >If enough people believe the same, then such segregation will not happen That's wishful thinking. Reality has shown that this isn't the case. >there isn't really anything you can do to stop them. You can challenge them on it. Unless they shut down challenges. Which is what this system enables.
SquishyPanda23 8y ago

comex 8y ago

Nice! I remember hearing about Aether some time ago, and I'm glad to see development is continuing; I think the world needs more decentralized social networks. I plan to try it out and maybe post more in-depth feedback. For now, though, since nobody else in this thread has mentioned it, I'm going to be that guy – sorry: I wish it weren't Electron. I don't really expect it not to be; I realize your development resources are limited, and that it's the easiest way to make a cross-platform application, which is a must for a social network. Still, having to deal with a non-native UI makes it harder to truly enjoy using the app. Also, if it uses as much memory as Electron apps typically do, I'm going to want to quit it when it's not actively in use – but apparently Aether really wants to stay running in the background so it can continue to synchronize posts. (Is there a way to close the client but keep the backend running?)

devwastaken 8y ago
I think native UI in dedicated applications is massively overrated. It's great if it's apart of the system, if there's a config menu or something you'd expect from the system itself, but I have never had a problem with Spotify or Discord in terms of 'non native'. They can be a lot better absolutely, but native look is far worse.
rolleiflex 8y ago
I know - given enough time and money, I'd make a CLI app using something like ncurses. Unfortunately though, the reality is that I just don't have the resources. The backend is its own process, you could definitely find the binary in the application package and run it on its own — it's not bound to Electron in any other way. Electron is just the client, the frontend graph compiler, and the backend are two separate binaries that communicate with each other over gRPC. That means you could run any of these independently, as well. [0] The client is Electron, but nothing except the UI happens in JS, everything happens in the frontend and the backend, and they're both tiny, fast, native-compiled Go apps. My backend, for example, is 4.8mb, frontend I think is 6mb. The rest of the size of the app (70mb) is just Electron, its dependencies, and the whole enchilada that comes with it. I'm not happy about it either. For better or worse, though, since the JS part of the app is nothing but its 'skin', it's as memory efficient as Electron apps get. No real processing happens in JS, it's all Go. [0] That said, it's not something I support right now, because if you ran the backend separately and then started the app, you'd effectively be running two backends. There is not yet a way to tell the app package that it should connect to an existing backend running locally instead of starting one.

sandov 8y ago

>Introduction: What’s Aether? >Aether gives you fresh, new content about the things you’re interested in. >You can create a community for your friends, or for strangers that are interested in similar things. All communities are public, and everyone can write to any community. (There’ll be communities restricted to certain people, but we’re still working on that for now.) >If you’re familiar with Reddit, Slashdot, or Usenet, it’s pretty similar. Aether does a two main things differently though. The first is that it’s ephemeral. The content disappears after a while. The other is, the communities are democratic, they elect their own leadership. I hate these non-definitions. You've told me a lot of things, but I still don't know what is aether. Is it a website? a service? a protocol? an API?.

eddieone 8y ago

I tried it, it didn't work. Sorry

lsiebert 8y ago

Moderation seems like a view layer on top of the content graph, right? I feel like a feature to blacklist actual storage and distribution of a particular post by fingerprint is going to be needed, because I'm not cool with simply not rendering child porn or someone's banking details if I'm still storing it for 6 months, and transmitting that info for two weeks.

rolleiflex 8y ago
The payload is just text. You’re not carrying anything else. But yes - for the very small, but not nonexistent case where a text itself can be not kosher, this is something that needs to be built in. It’s on my list.

qwerty456127 8y ago

Please add a way to copy a link to clipboard instead of opening it in the default browser. Viewing/saving/url-copying a picture without opening the source in the default browser would also be great.

andro_dev 8y ago

How come this is called a privacy sensitive aplication while this is happening "and it has anonymous metrics in. Stable versions are going to ask in the onboarding if you want to join the anonymous metrics program (like Firefox)." ? The dev should be upfront about it even when the prerelease versions are being used. Tell us what those "anonymous metrics" are for instance. Is the communication between nodes encrypted or transported over SSL?

brokenmachine 8y ago

Are there any limitations on how large a post can be? Could a malicious user just post giant posts to make the network suffer?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

Svoka 8y ago

I created Rust sub. Feel free to join. Also, I don't see how to find or share link to a community. Is there a way to find community by a fingerprint?