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A while ago, I posted about my plan to build a Lemmy client using the Plebbit protocol.

The response was, honestly, full of hate. I wasn’t expecting praise or anything, but I didn’t think people would react so negatively to the idea of something truly decentralized.

But here I am again. Still believing that Plebbit is the only real self-hosted social media protocol out there.

Let me explain why, in the most direct way I can:

– Plebbit is serverless. – There are no global admins. – It does not rely on any central server. – It can’t be censored or taken down. – It works like BitTorrent, but for social media. – No subreddit can go offline as long as one peer is online.

Every subreddit (called a "subplebbit") is its own world. Mods can ban users, remove posts, or run things how they want. But there’s no “head office.” Nothing above them.

And yes, Plebbit already has support for NSFW subs like /pol and others. It doesn’t need approval from anyone.

I see Plebbit as the Bitcoin of social media. Pure, peer-to-peer. No middlemen. No backdoors. No central kill switch.

It reminds me of what the internet was supposed to be—free, open, uncensorable.

Sadly, most devs I’ve met online don’t really understand peer-to-peer tech deeply. Some barely know cryptography. That’s okay, but it also makes real decentralization hard to appreciate.

If you’ve never read the Plebbit whitepaper,

https://github.com/plebbit/whitepaper

please do. It’s not just another protocol. It’s a whole different way of thinking about social interaction online.

I’m still planning to build that client. I don’t care if the first reactions were negative. I’m not doing this for approval. I’m doing it because I genuinely believe in it. But reviews matter too.

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[–] Archer@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

This whole thing is just another crypto bro angle and it’s fucking cancer. Whatever the technical merits of the decentralization techniques used, people won’t buy into tech with crypto and crypto bros involved because they don’t want to deal with financial fraud

[–] Vanilla_PuddinFudge@infosec.pub 13 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Decentralized? Zero administration or censorship? Blockchain? No governance or oversight? Absolute freedom? No approval from anyone?

Plebbit contains child porn. Has to, there's no way it doesn't.

When? Probably the day after it went online, and every day following it.

You believe with zero shadow of a doubt that 8chan, motherless and Anonib all have cp, but Plebbit doesn't?

mmmhm

[–] rinse@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Plebbit is text only protocol. Images aren't hosted anywhere on the protocol.

[–] ZeldaFreak@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Images are just bytes. Just encode an image via base64 and now you can send it via text. People will find ways.

[–] rinse@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

The default limit on comments size is 40kb, and each subplebbit (community) can configure that to be even lower. Hardly doubt people will find a way to embed 40kb images

[–] catloaf@lemm.ee 59 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I see Plebbit as the Bitcoin of social media.

I found your problem.

[–] rinse@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's a terrible analogy, I think of Plebbit as the Bittorrent of social media. Plebbit is not built on top of a blockchain, it's a pure p2p network

[–] carloshr@feddit.cl 3 points 2 days ago

I also think that's more a disadvantage than other thing.

[–] shnizmuffin@lemmy.inbutts.lol 45 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Maybe because you tried to backdoor a sales pitch into a community where it wasn't quite on topic, and the community members didn't appreciate it?

[–] istdaslol@feddit.org 18 points 2 days ago

No they made people up that got mad. It’s just sympathy bait. It’s most likely an ad to fake interest in a hopeless project

[–] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 39 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I'm going to post it again.

For anyone else looking for a reason to stay away from plebbit- uh, look at their X account https://x.com/getplebbit
It’s 4chan crypto hashwash

[–] carloshr@feddit.cl 7 points 2 days ago

Uh! Plebbit, crypto and nft. I'll stay as far as I can.

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[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It can’t be censored or taken down

I know nothing of Plebbit, however, even as a huge privacy and freedom of speech advocate, I have issue with uncensored social media. There is a huge difference between freedom and freedumb. Total freedumb equals total chaos. Freedumb seems to be trending, and if all the freedumb loving people want to congregate in one place to spew their bile and hatred at each other, fine....I won't engage. The problem occurs when freedumb loving people want to export that hatred and bile to other social media thinking just because they fly the freedumb flag, everyone else should too. I 'helped' beta test Gab when if first started, and immediately dropped it. It was clear early on who their clientele would be: Hate mongering racists.

Some things, in my most humble opinion, should be censored such as hate speech and overt racism. LBJ, tho he had his own issues with racism, said a truth that still stands today in that, if you give a man someone to hate, they will bend over and willingly spread their cheeks for your amusement. No one slipped me a note up in the slot while I was in utero and asked me what I wanted to be when I got out. Hmmmm....lets see.....oh WHITE definitely. It's stupidity of the highest order to hate someone for their skin pigment when I myself, like them, had no choice in the matter. It's probably not a popular opinion but these things should be censored.

[–] rinse@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Some things, in my most humble opinion, should be censored such as hate speech and overt racism

You can choose to filter those out, for example Seedit by default filters out NSFW content. Plebbit is not pure chaos, it's a p2p protocol that allows communities and users to connect if they really wish to with no intermediaries.

[–] EccTM@lemmy.ml 31 points 2 days ago

I’m not doing this for approval.

Okay. Go away and do it then.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I like the concept. But something without any central admins is probably going to be full of all kinds of awful stuff, and I don't want to have to spend time strictly moderating my own feed, because if my client happens to cache anything illegal then I'm now potentially distributing that illegal content P2P which is a huge problem.

The mention of cryptocurrency or blockchain also provokes quite a negative feeling, it's basically just a haven for scams and useless things, and any kind of integration with it I do not want to be involved with.

[–] rinse@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

I don’t want to have to spend time strictly moderating my own feed

You can choose to filter those out, for example Seedit by default filters out NSFW content. Eventually we’re gonna have labeling services, similar to Bluesky where you can subscribe to someone’s else labels of spam/nsfw/etc.

because if my client happens to cache anything illegal

Plebbit is text-only protocol, also it is end-to-end encrypted. Also you could set your own node to never seed anybody else's content.

The mention of cryptocurrency or blockchain also provokes quite a negative feeling, it’s basically just a haven for scams and useless things, and any kind of integration with it I do not want to be involved with.

We're not a crypto project, we do have integrations with crypto, like blockchain name systems but that’s a good thing because they’re more censorship resistant than traditional DNS

[–] savvywolf@pawb.social 18 points 2 days ago (6 children)

My question is... What does this do that ActivityPub and ATProto doesn't do? That's the angle you should approach this from (and be ready to defend... People on Lemmy seem adamant that ActivityPub is perfect and unbeatable...). We're technical people here, sell it as a technical solution to a problem rather than using buzzwords or comparing it to Bitcoin.

You've mentioned serverless many times, but ultimately I need to send content somewhere and ask someone to send me content. I can't just throw my posts into the wind and expect someone else to get them. So how do I make a post if not by sending it to a trusted person?

[–] Cochise 8 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It's not serverless, of course. Each peer is a server and the peer that created the "sub" have control to be able to moderate things. You have to maintain your peer always online, because it's a server. Traffic happens over IPFS, which is sloooooow.

ActivityPub is not perfect, but this is just a channer wanting some freeze prach space he can control.

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[–] mehdi_benadel@lemmy.balamb.fr 14 points 2 days ago (12 children)

Wait until regulations hears about your decentralized social media not regulating CSAM content sharing. Pure decentralization is a libertarian wet dream. We are not into that here.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Libertarian police 

I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.

“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”

“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”

“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”

The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”

“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”

“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”

He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”

I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.

“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.

“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.

“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”

It didn’t seem like they did.

“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”

Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.

I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.

“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.

Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.

“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.

I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”

He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.

“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.

“Because I was afraid.”

“Afraid?”

“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”

I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.

“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”

He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me.

[–] november@lemmy.vg 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I wanted to coldremoved the guy.

God, Lemmy's word filter is so asinine.

[–] AtariDump@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago

From my end I still see the word c0ck

[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 4 points 2 days ago

Feels like P.K.Dick, but actulized with current day terminology.

Good work

[–] mehdi_benadel@lemmy.balamb.fr 2 points 2 days ago

Lol that's very good satire, thank you for that

[–] nagaram@startrek.website 3 points 2 days ago

Despite everything. I was considering giving it a try, just to see.

But your right, if there's a CSAM community on there I would inevitably host it to.

So I will not be trying plebbit

[–] rinse@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

Also plebbit is text only protocol, there are no images hosted on the protocol.

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[–] Marvelicious@fedia.io 6 points 2 days ago (4 children)

Sounds like a real haven for "free speech extremist" types. Personally, I'm not searching for social media with more hate, slurs and conspiracy nonsense. I'd go back to twitter if I wanted that.

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[–] sxan@midwest.social 7 points 2 days ago (5 children)

I think there's such a knee-jerk reaction to any mention of crypto currency, even in comparison, that even a whiff of a relationship generates negative reactions. As you say, much of it is based on no actual knowledge about the topic. It doesn't help that there are some truly deplorable people associated with cryptocurrency, a great many bad actors, and proof-of-work was in retrospect a terrible design decision by Satoshi.

Blockchain isn't cryptocurrency, and vice-versa, but most people can't distinguish between the two. If there's any mention of blockchain on the site, or especially if you mention bitcoin (as you did) you're going to get crusaders.

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[–] november@lemmy.vg 6 points 2 days ago

If you want to participate in Plebbit, then do that. Have fun. You do you. It shouldn't matter whether anyone here approves or not.

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