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Are there any good decentralized message boards?

Biggest question seems to be how does the community deal with spam (and spam taking a large amount of space). But other than that I could see a lot of people willing to host nodes for free.



Some people might remember Hotline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotline_Communications

Independent forums might be due for a comeback as well, with modern technological amenities


Hotline! What a great piece of software. I learned to code as a teenager in a hotline group dedicated to RealBASIC. Such fond memories of that decentralized platform.


I spent all of high school on hotline servers but it was never very decentralized. Not compared to a real federated protocol. It's client-server where servers register themselves with trackers which keep lists of server and return the list to clients when they ask.

KDX is the "modern" open source implementation of the Hotline/Caracho concept.

I still think usenet is the way to go. It's a robust federated system. Sure most people will use a few servers but there's always the easy open to switch to a new one. I even posted on misc.invest.stocks today using eternal-september.org text only access.


KDX isn't open sourced as far as I know. There were open source hotline servers if I remember correctly.


Your hosting can be attacked too, so that's another complication.


Usenet is still around :)

I also tried aether once, and it seemed sort of interesting.


Email mailing lists/discussion groups.

Decentralized and already familiar to everyone from the HN crowd to grandma.


you mean forums since the Web 1.0?


Doesn't need to be decentralized, just a phpBB forum behind Cloudflare would still work. Cloudflare is one of the few companies that hasn't become censor-happy (except that one time..)


The one time I believe you are referring to is when Cloudflare banned the Daily Stormer, which is a far-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist, misogynist, and Holocaust denial message board website that promoted the genocide of Jews. It went far beyond the domain of free speech into advocating violence against people, not to speak of its horrific hatred and racism. Reason enough for anyone to ban it.


[flagged]


I think saying "We do not have the option of 'ban views that are actually bad'" is like saying "We do not have the option of saving lives" because everybody dies.

I also think it's inconsistent to declare morals are all relative while arguing for your free speech ideals. In a forum with moderation, voting, and frequent banning of people.


No, it's not like saving lives, because whether someone is alive or dead is agreed upon by all. This is a positive statement.

Whether a view is bad or not is a normative judgment, not an objective fact.


> "But they're really really actually super-duper truly totally bad!" isn't a valid argument, since many, many people can use it and they will.

It is absurdity to make the claim that, since anyone can say anything, no meaningful concept of objectivity can exist. Interesting how often it recurs in "free speech at any cost" argumentation.


Objectivity applies to positive statements, not normative ones.


Normative statements are based on one's observations and interpretations of facts, and that basis can be meaningfully scrutinized.


Cloudflare helps dictators stay in power, but sure is nice for marketing to roll on “freedom of speech”


That’s the price to pay when you don’t take political stances. The free speech approach is to just leave the dictator’s page up and let opposition pages stay up as well.


It’s not a political stance. Cloudflare is breaking the law by providing services to companies/individuals that fall under US sanctions. It’s not politics here, it’s people’s lives.


> It’s not politics here, it’s people’s lives.

This trope has been repeated about nearly everything Donald Trump has said as well regarding policy.

Was supporting CHAZ just politics or people’s lives? Several people were murdered there.




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