Hi there!

Your site looks really interesting. Based on content alone I’d be inclined to join. However my concern is the exact same thing as Reddit- even though it is part of the Fediverse, you’re just one site, single instance.

Let’s say your thing works, and FWIW I hope it does.

Let’s say you grow like Reddit. Let’s say there’s even a Digg-like migration to Normals.

Since you’re only one instance, if something happens to you, if you run out of money, if you get acquired, if you suddenly decide to turn evil, or much more likely if you pull a Slack (like when they killed their IRC bridge) and someday shut down the Fediverse gateway and become an isolated forum, we’re all SOL.

It’s not that I think you’re a bad guy. I think your heart is in the right place. But the way you are building your system requires us to not only trust you, but trust future-you and any business partners or new owners. It makes my registration part of your ‘monthly active users’ which you can sell and I can’t get away from without completely ditching Normals and going back to vanilla Fediverse.

With that said- I hope your thing works, if you bring more content to the Fediverse that’s a good thing.

I also can’t seem to load your instance from mine- I’m on lemmy.today and I can’t load @selfhosted@normals.me…

Lots of people are getting pissed at it being closed source. I get that it isn’t the norm. But, there are closed-source paid software on the Fediverse. This isn’t anything new. Also, there’s ways to disagree and share opinions without being hostile - we are not children here nor teenagers lacking a fully developed brain

Epic

Edit: closed core…

Hello world. :)

I think its funny when someone doesn’t disclose it’s an ai project they get hella upvotes

418

Please no. Fediverse, open standards, open source, free software, no bullshit.

Hello! Good luck!

It’s weird running these things. Why was running a Lemmy or Piefed instance not right for your taste, if I may ask?

Am I right in taking it as sort of a stackexhange alternative?

If your “anti-abuse” security requires your software to be closed source, then your software is not secure. Well built software can be open source, and still secure.

You imply that your code could not prevent abuse if it was known, so, no offense, but that code must be pretty bad!

I like the fediverse because it distributes power. I, as a user, have the power to choose my instance, choose my moderation, choose the structure that my social interactions are built upon (threads based, microblogs, etc) and if I dont like something, I have the power to change it. Thats why open source is such a perfect fit to that model. Closed source federation then, sounds to me like you didnt get it.

ACK !

closed source and symmetric blocking. two strikes.

the core is closed for anti-abuse reasons

That’s a terrible, horrible, no-good, really bad excuse for not releasing the code. Better be upfront and admit that you don’t want to share the code.

Media loads from the source.

This might actually be a problem. If your instance gets popular, you might end up overloading a remote server. Add a proper caching proxy, or even better look into content-addressable systems to allow multiple servers to share the load.

Loud and clear!