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.

  • flamingos-cant@feddit.ukEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    From the FAQ linked on the site:

    Q: Is this running on ETH? A: the token is on ETH, the plebbit protocol itself it not a blockchain, but the app will use several blockchains, tokens and NFTs to recreate all the features from reddit, like usernames, subplebbit names will be crypto domains like ENS (and other chains), awards will be NFTs, tips and upvotes will earn tokens (can set them to your own token or any coin of your choice in your subplebbit)
    […]
    Q: What role does the PLEB token play? A: The base protocol doesn’t use tokens, which lets people who don’t have interest in cryptocurrency (yet) use it for free, but optionally you can use any tokens to do many things, for example you can use names.eth (ENS, which are non fungible tokens) to represent a username or subplebbit name. You can use NFT images as avatars. You can use fungible tokens and NFTs (any token or cryptocurreny of the subplebbit owner’s choice) to vote, curate, reward, tip, incentivize and/or as spam protection (instead of using captchas, require users of your subplebbit to own, stake, burn or pay a certain amount of a token/NFT of your choice to post/upvote). A subplebbit’s name like memes.eth (becomes /p/memes.eth) could be owned by a DAO, and owners of the DAO’s tokens could vote on chain for who gets to be admin and moderator of the subplebbit, i.e. a smart contract/DAO can be owner of a subplebbit.

    This sounds fucking awful. You want a peer-to-peer network, but decided to tie critical features to the blockchain, something arguably less decentralised than APub software.

    • Plebbitor@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      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)
      • flamingos-cant@feddit.ukEnglish
        0·
        8 days ago

        As the FAQ says, the base protocol doesn’t use tokens.

        I don’t care what the protocol technically makes feasible, people don’t use protocols they use software that interprets protocols. ActivityPub doesn’t actually require DNS, but you (correctly) say it does because there’s no software out there people will use that doesn’t require DNS. The point is you still tied human readable names to the blockchain, something absolutely not optional for social media software. No one is going to be like “you should sub to p/nrlaoii2nsl2, the memes are 🔥”.

        NFT profile pics tied to a user’s plebbit account, because we whitelist the specific NFT collections to prevent NSFW profile pics

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

        • Plebbitor@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          8 days ago

          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).

            • iopq@lemmy.worldEnglish
              0·
              8 days ago

              Imagine you buy a cheap domain name for $0.99 a year from namecheap to be lonefaerie.lol or something

              Next year they ask for $19.99 because they can. If you set up an account with that name you can either pay more or have to change accounts

              Why can’t we just buy domain names for like 30 year periods?

              • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
                0·
                8 days ago

                Why can’t we just buy domain names for like 30 year periods?

                You can. I think ICANN has agreed to limit it to 10 year maximum, to reduce domain squatting, though.

                This is a HUGE problem in the IT sector… A lot of folks come up with “new, better, and more agile” systems for core tech, like DNS. What they fail to account for are all the lessons learned, and problems solved over the decades the system has been in use, and fail to understand a lot of the “complications” stem from people being complicated.

                • iopq@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  0·
                  7 days ago

                  That’s the problem, I want a personal domain like name.person for the rest of my life. I don’t want it to expire and have to pay extortion rates for my email address

                  • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
                    0·
                    7 days ago

                    So, what you propose just isn’t feasible.

                    Who is the one who gets John Doe? First come, first serve, and never again available?

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      8 days ago

      Leave it to cryptos to make simple things stupidly difficult. This whole piece you quoted was hilarious, but this part especially stuck out for me:

      The base protocol doesn’t use tokens, which lets people who don’t have interest in cryptocurrency (yet) use it for free