I feel morally obligated to start using Aether because I think that p2p and decentralization is what we need. I am going to try to make it work.

It would sure help to have a mobile app.

Coming!

You mention that one you make a post that you need to stay online for a half hour or so. How come your post won't continue to propose once you go offline? I would think that once it's sent to a few peers that it should continue to prepare even if I close the client. Is this a choice you made due to limitations or due to user experience? I honestly don't see it justified either way though.

Since you are here. After reading the post I was left with one very big question.

If the network is p2p, and nobody but me can delete my posts, how would you be able to deal with illegal content?

I’ll have a look, and I second the need for a mobile app. Reddit happens during train rides :)

That was my first question too after reading the blog post. It looks like mods can delete posts, but users can undelete them if they want.

This is correct with a minor exception: if the posts are deleted because of illegality or DMCA (i.e. not because you pissed off mod of a random community) those aren’t reversible. You can make your client not respect this form of deletion as well, by modifying the source code, however that would make you legally liable.

Generally, you’re liable for the content your computer shares in all cases, so having that legality-based block list is a benefit to you. You can disable it, but you probably don’t want to.

All other deletions are just a flip switch away from being reverted. Ultimately, as the end user you have full control over both systems.

Why would a pissed-off mod not flip the "this is illegal" switch instead of the "this pissed me off" switch?

Presumably because the ability to use the illegal switch lies with the Aether creator, not the mod.

That is correct. Though mods can report illegality, they can’t use the second system (called badlist, a list of hashes) themselves. They would first delete it through normal means, and then flag it. Likely this will be automated in the UI at some point.

Again, the first system is is designed to be user reversible so disabling a mod is a fairly mundane, ordinary thing that can be done easily via the UI.

Disabling the badlist obviously takes more effort but a determined person would be able to disable it, I’d presume. Nevertheless, for the vast majority of people who don’t disable the badlist, they would still be protected against those who disable it since the filter would protect their computer from accepting or sharing that content. So even when badlist is disabled, the only people anybody who disables it can harm is themselves.

Basically, the badlist a courtesy provided on a best-effort basis, so that your computer doesn’t share sketchy content, because if it does, you are legally responsible for it.

This isn’t the best system probably, but until I find something that works better in practice, this is good enough. When it comes to these kind of things, hope is not a strategy.

How would you feel about a precompiled fork of Aether that has badlist disabled?

(I'm pretty sure this is going to happen at a certain level of popularity.)

That would be liable for helping to distribute illegal content, much like Pirate Bay is.

Cool, that’s basically exactly how I expected it to work.

Even if you disable the badlist, you’d have to work hard to sync bad content that you don’t already have, since most normal clients would not share it.

Who is the Aether creator in this case?

If that's the Aether-company, we are still at their mercy to change rules around mods etc. any time? so there's not much value in the p2p except they save money on hosting and lure us in with the promise of p2p = independence?

The police should deal with illegal content. Anything else that offends someone should be easy to ignore with personal filters.

How do you deal with trolls going around filters? I'm sure most of us did that in the past, some of us were young teenagers in the time of auto moderated live chat.

Better filters. For instance crowd sourced filters that you can subscribe to and help update. Just like ad blocking technology does today to combat advertisers attempt to evade them.

That requires centralisation because either trolls will affect the filter or the list won't be updated.

Each filter comes from its own central location curated as seen fit by its owner, but there can be any number of filters distributed across the net. Each will win subscribers based on their reputation.

Again, this has all been tested in the wild. It works just fine for ad filtering today.

Not really. Adblock made deals with advertisers so people have to use Adblock Pro, and avoid Adblock awesome because it has adware. Same for uBlock.

edit: To make my point clear: it seems unfeasible to weed out bad actors without relying on good actors. Someone you place trust in (adblock list maintainers, p2p network filter maintainers) can make deals with who you try to avoid ('non-intrusive ads', mates). It's little better than letting the centralised host moderate, especially when the biggest moderators like Adblock are the ones we tell people to avoid. Otherwise it's just like PGP, perfectly designed to be never used.

That's irrelevant to the point, or actually makes it stronger. uBlock Origin continues on in spite of those compromised competitors and all of the subscriptions can continue to be utilized. I really don't understand what you're arguing against. The software can be replaced, a bad acting filter list can be ignored, and many good lists can be aggregated to counteract ad agencies attempts to bypass filters. And with the right software you can create your own local filters with a single click on the offending material.

We don't need a parental authority to protect us from seeing naughty images, we can take care of ourselves.

I was thinking more along the lines of it being technically impossible for the police to do anything.

The police can find the ip address of whoever's serving it, ask the isp for their name, and give a knock on their door.

As I have you here, an OT question: will the business version of Aether also remove content after six months?

No. The business version is a hosted / on-prem SaaS, that removes the space limitations and other similar restrictions that deletion is a solution to.

That said, you can still have it delete at a certain threshold. I know of a few large Silicon Valley companies that delete emails past 1.5-2y as a way of limiting their legal exposure. If you’re a 1000+ employee company, that is pretty much standard practice so long as you take care to not delete anything with a legal discovery hold.

Thank you for taking the time to respond. Will give Aether a spin and see if it might work for our business once it's released.

No worries at all. Feel free to email me (email in profile) and I’ll make sure you get a notification when that becomes ready for a pilot.

Hello. Wouldn't 6 months of reddit-scale data be way too much for any single machine?

If it crosses 10gb limit, it starts to ‘back off’ from 6 months to shorter timeframes.