I mostly got hate on HN every time I posted about it LOL. I think something about "decentralized" gets some people really riled up (maybe it's the association with crypto / blockchain?) but frankly, it's the ONLY solution to extreme centralization.
Someone's got to build a platform with all the features of Discord, but make it decentralized and open source.
I've spent over $1M and 10 years on it. I have to package it so that it's easy to install. But I'm working on something to take care of that, in the next few months, that will also include actually safe AI agents inside.
I'm happy to welcome anyone aboard who takes the time to learn the platform, but I won't lie, it's huge. As you would expect an open source decentralized clone of Facebook / Discord to be. I just hope it's architected well enough for developers to pick it up quickly. At the very least, I think it's a lot less spaghetti than Wordpress and Joomla :)
PS: In 2018 I launched something that HN hates even more... a Web3 company that released open source smart contracts at https://github.com/Intercoin . Why you ask? Because once a lot of value is at stake (whether it takes the form of money, votes, or even just community roles), it's better to have thousands of computers secure it than "just trust" the central site.
When founders of famous centralized messengers criticized decentralization, I had to write this:
Don't forget, it's not just Discord. As of Jan 1, Texas is now requiring digital ID to download any app at all or visit many internet sites, and forcing Apple/Google to build it in "to protect the children" of course. And Utah is following suit soon too. The Supreme Court last year said that digital ID can be required by states.
Hard disagree. You read nothing, you assumed everything, and wrote cookie-cutter slop that adds nothing of substance.
There is no shit coin and no rug pull. You can’t own any coin. But this perfectly illustrates why HN, full of smart people, is also full of people who actively fight against solutions to centralization.
These problems existed before crypto. You are defending a dystopian nightmare system that is progressively getting worse. If people like me don’t build a decentralized alternative you’ll just keep bitching about problems while having literally zero solutions (except “just give the government MORE power and they’ll save us this time through regulations”.) Newsflash, the governments are the biggest consumers of this centralized tech (like Palantir) and pushers of this dystopian future where they can do anything secretly while you can’t do anything without them knowing.
“Hacker ethos” is now filled with a lot of shills for corporate greed. You’re the ones pumping your latest centralized data silo where VC-funded companies convince everyone to give them your data or just grab it into your AI models, which take published work of millions of people, with Nigerians paid to label your data for pennies, and then sell it back to the stock market for billions of dollars in yet another bubble. “Web2” platforms have been shilling and rugpulling the public for decades. It’s called “capturing the market” and “extracting profits for shareholders from the ecosystem”. Go read Peter Thiel’s “competition is for losers, build a monopoly”. You have no moral authority to chastise authors of decentralized protocols and distributed systems. They’re cleaning up YOUR mess.
You need someone to rework that ecosystem.pdf file if you're serious. You spent a million dollars on this but your ecosystem pdf looks like it was created by a 12-year old trying out slides for the first time.
I don't think it's cool even now.
I mostly got hate on HN every time I posted about it LOL. I think something about "decentralized" gets some people really riled up (maybe it's the association with crypto / blockchain?) but frankly, it's the ONLY solution to extreme centralization.
Someone's got to build a platform with all the features of Discord, but make it decentralized and open source.
I've spent over $1M and 10 years on it. I have to package it so that it's easy to install. But I'm working on something to take care of that, in the next few months, that will also include actually safe AI agents inside.
It will look sort of like this: https://engageusers.ai/ecosystem.pdf
I'm happy to welcome anyone aboard who takes the time to learn the platform, but I won't lie, it's huge. As you would expect an open source decentralized clone of Facebook / Discord to be. I just hope it's architected well enough for developers to pick it up quickly. At the very least, I think it's a lot less spaghetti than Wordpress and Joomla :)
PS: In 2018 I launched something that HN hates even more... a Web3 company that released open source smart contracts at https://github.com/Intercoin . Why you ask? Because once a lot of value is at stake (whether it takes the form of money, votes, or even just community roles), it's better to have thousands of computers secure it than "just trust" the central site.
When founders of famous centralized messengers criticized decentralization, I had to write this:
https://community.intercoin.app/t/web3-moxie-signal-telegram...
And history has proven me right... their only move is "withdrawing" from a country like Sweden. Well I guess the DSA would make them withdraw from all of Europe: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1ixrv14/signals_ce...
Don't forget, it's not just Discord. As of Jan 1, Texas is now requiring digital ID to download any app at all or visit many internet sites, and forcing Apple/Google to build it in "to protect the children" of course. And Utah is following suit soon too. The Supreme Court last year said that digital ID can be required by states.