this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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Why haven’t we seen a peer-to-peer (P2P) social media platform yet? (lemm.ee)
submitted 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I’ve been day dreaming about a social media platform built entirely on a peer-to-peer (P2P) model, leveraging the existing BitTorrent protocol. The idea is to decentralize content creation, distribution, and moderation, eliminating the need for centralized servers and control.

Here’s the high-level vision:

  • Posts as Torrents: Every original post creates and seeds a torrent file on behalf of the OP.
  • Upvotes as Seeds: Upvoting a post downloads and seeds the post, reinforcing its availability.
  • Comments as Torrents: Each comment generates and seeds a torrent file somehow linked to the original post.
  • Comment Upvotes as Seeds: Upvoting a comment downloads and seeds the comment, amplifying engagement.
  • Text Only: to avoid exposing users to potentially graphic content (due to lack of centralized moderation) this platform would initially be limited to text content only. This would also drastically reduce the compute and bandwidth requirements of the seeder.
  • Custom BitTorrent Clients: Open-source Social Media BitTorrent clients would display the most popular social media content by day, week, month, or year. These clients would allow users to seed only the content they find valuable thus organically moderating the network of ideas. Relevant content continues to be seeded and shared, while outdated or unpopular content fades due to a lack of seeds.

This setup seems like it could address key issues in traditional social media—privacy, censorship, and centralized control—while naturally prioritizing high-value content.

Why hasn’t a system like this been widely adopted? Is it a matter of technical limitations, lack of a viable economic model, or something else?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

There is Briar

There are Briar Public Forums with nearly dead activity, but like every few months, there be some posts. You download the app (Android only, although there are desktop clients) create a profile, paste the link to the website http://briar.retiolus.net/ and also you add their link, and wait for the bot account to connect you. (The bot is down frequently, so just wait like up to 2 days) Both profiles need to add each other to form a connection.

Then you use use text commands in private chat to the bot to request invites to the forums.

Then accept the invite. And in the forums, you post your profile link so others can add you, and you also can add others. You need a lot of contacts since the bot frequently goes down, the more connections, the stronger the network.

Or if the bot is down for a long time, you can add me at briar://ac5dsvvrwm4mnalxdonumapfwolvbjdxuosuxkn2yfizfiey6b6uq and comment your link so I can add you. I can invite you to all the forums.

You can join a forum and just ask a question and see if anyone responds.

Its not a lot of users, but it exist and that is already awesome! Theres like a thousand post/comments in the forums alread (well theres like the same 20-100 or so users in the conversations... so... 😅)

Edit: Heres what it looks like (the app blocks screenshots, so I have to take an actual photo):

The "Shared with X People" is just how many of my contacts have that forum, there could be like 100 people that I just haven't added yet.

Also, there is zero moderation, so its real free speech there. Unfortunately, that also means that people could theoretically say racist things and theres nothing you can do unless everyone in the forum remove the racist, but even then, the messages already posted will remain. 🤷‍♂️

Maybe someone can work on the code and add some moderation features, I mean, its open source, any of y'all Lemmings who can code can work on it 👀