I had worked on one a few years ago, which used a DHT to exchange messages which were signed GPG JSON. At one point I had it using a Dining Cryptographers-style algorithm to post messages fairly anonymously. I don't recall if that stayed in.
One problem with P2P these days is that you need people to run servers, which they don't typically want to do. I made a small RaspPi box they could run, and planned to run a public instance for people who didn't want to go that far.
One problem I ran into is how to stop terrible posts.
Freenet/etc have a problem with people sharing illegal and harmful material, and I didn't particularly want to help with that.
Additionally, when you create an alt-platform, it gets used be people who are kicked off of mainstream platforms. I didn't really want to end up creating a service primarily used by pedophiles and nazis.
I think there are ways to solve the technical challenges, but it's still difficult to solve the community-management in a distributed/sane way.
(The solution I came up with btw was opt-in mods. People could publish a ban list, and you could subscribe to whomevers you want. But I don't think that's a great long-term solution)
I still think there is some good work to be done in this space, and I may circle back to it someday, but the community elements are vexing.
One problem with P2P these days is that you need people to run servers, which they don't typically want to do. I made a small RaspPi box they could run, and planned to run a public instance for people who didn't want to go that far.
One problem I ran into is how to stop terrible posts. Freenet/etc have a problem with people sharing illegal and harmful material, and I didn't particularly want to help with that.
Additionally, when you create an alt-platform, it gets used be people who are kicked off of mainstream platforms. I didn't really want to end up creating a service primarily used by pedophiles and nazis.
I think there are ways to solve the technical challenges, but it's still difficult to solve the community-management in a distributed/sane way.
(The solution I came up with btw was opt-in mods. People could publish a ban list, and you could subscribe to whomevers you want. But I don't think that's a great long-term solution)
I still think there is some good work to be done in this space, and I may circle back to it someday, but the community elements are vexing.
You can see my version at https://github.com/e1ven/Tavern