Plebbitor

joined 1 year ago
[–] Plebbitor@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It was supposed to be a lot more decentralized than Lemmy. Plebbit was built around a p2p protocol and the idea was that it wouldn’t rely on servers, everything would be fully serverless and self-hosted in a true decentralized way. What made it interesting was that it was planned to support multiple UIs, so people could use different frontends like their own version of Lemmy’s UI, or even something totally custom. A Lemmy style UI was even on their roadmap.

But the problem is... it never really happened. It’s been super slow because there are only like 3 devs working on it, and they’ve been trying to find more help for ages. The MVP still hasn’t come out, and I think the crypto side of it just scared people off or made things harder. I really believed in the idea at first, but now it just feels like vaporware.

 

A few months ago, I posted here about my excitement for Plebbit and the promise it held for decentralization. I was convinced that a p2p social platform with a unique UI could be the future, with different UI of all social media..including Lemmy, a true alternative to centralized services. I saw the potential, and I wanted to believe in it.

Plebbit promised a lot of an innovative interface, decentralization, community driven governance. But after months of delays, vague updates, and little to no progress, it’s clear they never delivered. They had the right ideas but lacked the follow through to make them a reality. What was once an exciting project quickly turned into an example of what can go wrong when the hype overshadows the substance.

I wanted Plebbit to succeed, but in the end, I’ve realized that I’m better off sticking with what actually works.

If Plebbit had actually followed through on its promises especially with its vision of being a decentralized Reddit alternative. it could have been the best. The idea of a selfhosted platform, where users had true control over their content and communities, was a dream for those of us who wanted more than just another centralized app. It had the potential to be the go-to solution for anyone seeking real decentralization and p2p freedom. But unfortunately, that potential was never realized. Instead of delivering on its ambitious promises, Plebbit became just another project that failed to meet expectations, and the opportunity for a truly revolutionary platform faded away.

 

I’ll be honest, I really believed in Plebbit.

The idea of a truly decentralized, peer-to-peer social platform felt like something the internet desperately needed. A space beyond centralized servers, censorship, and platform overlords. Something that wasn’t just “Reddit, but a real shift in how we interact online.

Plebbit pitched that dream. They talked about p2p everything : hosting, moderation, identity. They made it sound like the future was finally within reach. And I wanted to believe.

But over time… it became clear. It was all talk. All hype. All roadmap, no road.

Constant delays with vague excuses.

Overpromising, under delivering at every stage.

“Community governance” that never materialized beyond buzzwords.

A dev team that slowly drifted into silence while the protocol rotted. I kept checking in, hoping something had changed. That maybe I’d been too impatient. But no. It wasn’t just slow, it was never real to begin with.

So, I’m sticking with Lemmy. It’s not perfect, but at least it’s real. Maybe we’ll get the true decentralization we’ve been promised one day

[–] Plebbitor@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because lemmy is federated, it's not decentralized. Instances run on centralized servers, using DNS, they can get deplatformed at any time and delete your data. They effectively work just like regularly centralized websites, and can block each other. Whereas on plebbit, each community is a node that can't get deplatformed (works like torrents, ie no domain/DNS/SSL) and users connect to it p2p. So, to run a lemmy instance, you have to run a whole site, whereas to run a plebbit node you just have to open the desktop app and browse the site with it. Creating a sub with your node is free, just like creating a torrent file.

[–] Plebbitor@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Yeah, we need better communities, most of them are poorly maintained at the moment. But some of them are cool, like technopleb.eth, plebpiracy.eth, plebmusic.eth, movies-and-anime.eth. You can check out the full list on https://seedit.app/#/communities/vote (this is a maintained list of default subs to show in the app, but you can connect p2p to any sub whatsoever if you know its address, just like you can download any torrent with a torrent client)

 

Lemmy was a great idea. It put reddit into the users hands. Its fast, works well and gave the community control of its community

I'm not endorsing Seedit, but I support decentralized social media and want to share information for those who are interested. This is not promotion, im ust spreading awareness.

I know a lot of people here hate Reddit (rightfully so) because of how they keep banning people for their opinions. If you miss the old Reddit experience but want something that actually decentralized and can't be taken down, check out Seedit.

• Looks & feels like old Reddit

• Fully P2P on IPFS → No global admin to ban you

• You can self-host your own community

• ENS domains used for subplebbits

• MVP is coming in 2 weeks, and speed will improve

Right now, it's a bit slow, but once the MVP drops, it’ll be fast. If anyone is seriously interested in running a community, you can dm me I’ll buy an ENS for you.

Seedit doesn’t rely on any servers. It’s pure P2P, running entirely on IPFS. No central authority, it literally can't be taken down.

Seedit is NOT a Lemmy competitor. It’s part of the Plebbit protocol, which supports multiple UIs. In fact, a Lemmy-style UI is coming soon.

The code is fully open source, If you're into decentralization and open protocols, check it out.

https://github.com/plebbit/seedit

 

Plebbit is pure peer-to-peer social media protocol, it has no central servers, no global admins, and no way shut down communities-meaning true censorship resistance.

Unlike federated platforms, like lemmy and Mastedon, there are no instances or servers to rely on

this project was created due to wanting to give control of communication and data back to the people.

Plebbit only hosts text. Images from google and other sites can be linked/embedded in posts. This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.

ENS domain are used to name communities.

Plebbit currently offers different UIs. Old reddit UI and new reddit, 4chan, and have a Blog. Plebbit intend to have an app, internet archive, wiki and twitter and Lemmy UI . Choice is important. The backend/communities are shared across clients.

anyone can contribute, build their own client, and shape the ecosystem

Important Links :

Home

https://plebbit.com/home

App

https://plebbit.com/home#cb2a9c90-6f09-44b2-be03-75f543f9f5aa

FAQ

https://github.com/plebbit/whitepaper/blob/master/FAQ.md

Whitepapers

https://github.com/plebbit/whitepaper

https://github.com/plebbit/whitepaper/discussions/2

Github

https://github.com/plebbit

https://github.com/plebbit/plebbit-react

https://github.com/plebbit/plebbit-react/releases

https://github.com/plebbit/seedit

https://github.com/plebbit/seedit/releases

[–] Plebbitor@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

You can create a plebbit client that uses DNS instead of crypto domains to resolve the addresses, but it won't be compatible with our clients because we think that's a terrible idea. The whole DNS system is a complete scam, it's controlled by very few people, all in the same jurisdiction. There is absolutely no point to plebbit if most people will use .lol or .fun names that the US government can seize with no effort.

DNS is not the future, crypto is the future.

Who is “we” here and why do they get to decide what’s acceptable in my community (‘subpleb’ if you will)?

For our clients, "we" means us devs, the devs of Seedit and Plebchan. You can create your own client where you have NSFW profile pics, maybe resolved with regular centralized image hosting websites instead of NFTs like we did. Our NFT whitelist is only temporarily centralized, same as our default list of subplebbit addresses to show in the homepage of the client (before the user is subscribed to any sub). Both lists are here: github.com/plebbit/temporary-default-subplebbits In our clients, we will decentralize this curation via gasless pubsub voting by token holders. There's no other way to decentralize it, so this is another thing that crypto excels at (DAOs).

[–] Plebbitor@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (5 children)

As the FAQ says, the base protocol doesn't use tokens. Meaning, there are no critical features tied to any blockchain.

The crypto features we implemented in our clients are not required by the protocol. The protocol works perfectly fine without them. We implemented them in our clients because they are nice, and they are:

  • readable names using crypto names, instead of having to see long alphanumeric IPNS public keys as addresses
  • NFT profile pics tied to a user's plebbit account, because we whitelist the specific NFT collections to prevent NSFW profile pics
  • tipping, which is an upcoming feature, to provide a fully decentralized alternative to Reddit awards/gold (plebbit users will actually make money, so will the community owners and admins since they'll be able to tax tips in their community; and there's no corporation/global admin that gets a cut)
 

Plebbit is a selfhosted, opensource, nonprofit social media protocol, this project was created due to wanting to give control of communication and data back to the people.

Plebbit only hosts text. Images from google and other sites can be linked/embedded in posts. This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.

ENS domain are used to name communities.

Plebbit currently offers different UIs. Old reddit and new reddit, 4chanw, andhave a Blog. Plebbit intend to have an app, internet archive, wiki and twitter and Lemmy. Choice is important. The backend/communities are shared across clients.