The effect the mixer ban has had on the forum.

[LoyceV]

Let's say someone come up with a decentralized forum software where no authority can touch. That's pretty much what darkweb is. Every type of filth will leak from a place like that.

That's probably why there's not a single decentralized forum yet. And without centralized server, everyone will need to keep the entire database of all posts. It won't run in a browser, so no advertising for SEO either. Search engines don't visit decentralized forums.
Theymos wrote about the possibility of a decentralized moderation system, kinda like the current Trust system. So if you trust me, you won't see posts I've deleted. But if someone creates a billion spam accounts, that's still going to be a problem.
I expect to be stuck with a centralized forum for a very long time.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Theymos wrote about the possibility of a decentralized moderation system, kinda like the current Trust system. So if you trust me, you won't see posts I've deleted. But if someone creates a billion spam accounts, that's still going to be a problem.
I expect to be stuck with a centralized forum for a very long time.

What if something happen to Theymos today or anytime. Bitcointalk gone? I can not remember the role Cyrus have. Do we have a setup which allow someone else to take control of the domain and the database in case anything happen to Theymos [Not just legal things but things related to health]?

@Theymos

[blckhawk]

That's probably why there's not a single decentralized forum yet. And without centralized server, everyone will need to keep the entire database of all posts. It won't run in a browser, so no advertising for SEO either. Search engines don't visit decentralized forums.
Theymos wrote about the possibility of a decentralized moderation system, kinda like the current Trust system. So if you trust me, you won't see posts I've deleted. But if someone creates a billion spam accounts, that's still going to be a problem.
I expect to be stuck with a centralized forum for a very long time.

Everytime I'm reminded of this, I'm always thankful to the people and organizations that are running those servers for free or at a really low charge just so we can establish a server that's outside of what the common Internet users go to. Regarding decentralizing a forum, what's the big deal of not becoming one because the centralized one seems to me a more appealing thing because that means there's more people that can easily access and participate to the discussion and most of the time, these types of decentralized forum's got something to hide.

[bitmover]

That's probably why there's not a single decentralized forum yet. And without centralized server, everyone will need to keep the entire database of all posts. It won't run in a browser, so no advertising for SEO either. Search engines don't visit decentralized forums.
Theymos wrote about the possibility of a decentralized moderation system, kinda like the current Trust system. So if you trust me, you won't see posts I've deleted. But if someone creates a billion spam accounts, that's still going to be a problem.
I expect to be stuck with a centralized forum for a very long time.

Everytime I'm reminded of this, I'm always thankful to the people and organizations that are running those servers for free or at a really low charge just so we can establish a server that's outside of what the common Internet users go to.

For free? Nothing is free here. This forums runs in an expensive server.
Also, This forum is very profitable, a lot of people is making a lot of money here.

In other forums as well. Quora, reddit,  etc even pay their top contributors to post.

[d5000]

That's probably why there's not a single decentralized forum yet. And without centralized server, everyone will need to keep the entire database of all posts. It won't run in a browser, so no advertising for SEO either. Search engines don't visit decentralized forums.

The closest thing I saw to a decentralized forum that worked was Steem(it). It ran quite well (it still exists) and had good SEO for some time. The crucial part making that possible was obviously that there was a web front-end run by the founders, but the content was stored in a decentralized manner. So there were a couple of alternative web front-ends.

(OK, it is not really a forum, more a kind of blog platform. But a forum and a Steemit-style platform is esentially the same thing, only with different CSS style )

Let's say such a kind of forum is implemented, and one server is taken down. The community could still post on other servers in friendlier jurisdictions, or directly to the blockchain. The web server operators could also decide if they moderate some kind of content, for example illegal stuff. In theory each web frontend operator could have its own moderation (that happened on Steemit if I remember well).

Steem(it) had of course the problem that it had centralization problems because the governance token was highly concentrated on the founders. And of course the monetization system had several flaws.
But actually such a system could be designed with varied grades of (de)centralization. I also personally think that the on-chain storage was not really well done; in the way they did it it could not really scale as others already wrote. I'd better store only the hashes of the posts on-chain and share the complete content via a torrent-style system. This would also make it possible to make illegal stuff really disappear, frontend operators could be compliant with the "right to forget" for example.

But I think Steem(it) showed the principle of offering a decentralized publishing platform with web front-ends can work.

I think also Nostr has a lot of potential. It solves the "server-dependency" problem of earlier decentralized social networks and could be combined with a blockchain approach in theory.

So in general I'm not so pessimistic about the "decentralized forum" idea.

[LoyceV]

What if something happen to Theymos today or anytime. Bitcointalk gone? I can not remember the role Cyrus have. Do we have a setup which allow someone else to take control of the domain and the database in case anything happen to Theymos [Not just legal things but things related to health]?

I assume Administrator Cyrus also has server access. I have no idea if there's a backup plan for the domain name. Short-term, this will probably be okay (the chance of Admin dying this year is no more than 1%). If the inevitable happens, there may be time to get a new domain name.
For loyce.club, if I would disappear, the domain is still active for a while. Hosting will keep going until something fails or someone pulls the plug. After that it's gone, and a domain squatter will claim the domain.

Regarding decentralizing a forum, what's the big deal of not becoming one because the centralized one seems to me a more appealing thing because that means there's more people that can easily access and participate to the discussion and most of the time, these types of decentralized forum's got something to hide.

For what it's worth: .onion sites aren't decentralized either. They all rely on a server with an owner, even when it's hidden.

Steem(it) had of course the problem that it had centralization problems because the governance token was highly concentrated on the founders. And of course the monetization system had several flaws.

It looked like a pyramid scheme when I checked it years ago, designed to make the first "contributers" money, and needing more people to join. I just looked at it, and it's still showing how many dollars each article raised.

But I think Steem(it) showed the principle of offering a decentralized publishing platform with web front-ends can work.

I'd expect a truely decentralized forum to work without website. Just a program you run, maybe like Tor browser, with a local database (or blockchain) containing all posts ever created. If most of the users use "light clients", I wouldn't call it truely decentralized.

So in general I'm not so pessimistic about the "decentralized forum" idea.

I am, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

[dkbit98]

What happens when theymos is gone (for any reason), that is a good question.
I hope he already prepared some plan to make sure forum survives in his absence, in similar way like Bitcoin survived Satoshi's absence.

The closest thing I saw to a decentralized forum that worked was Steem(it). It ran quite well (it still exists) and had good SEO for some time. The crucial part making that possible was obviously that there was a web front-end run by the founders, but the content was stored in a decentralized manner. So there were a couple of alternative web front-ends.

Main problem with Steem was tokens they used to reward members for writing posts and comments, and I think this project later forked into separate project with different token.
Only way for forum to work in decentralized way long term is if there are no tokens involved, and you should not have to pay to make posts.

I think also Nostr has a lot of potential. It solves the "server-dependency" problem of earlier decentralized social networks and could be combined with a blockchain approach in theory.

I agree with this.
It's possible, and I could even imagine clients or bitcoin wallets that have something like integrated chats or forum extensions, maybe as sidechain or second layer.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

What if something happen to Theymos today or anytime. Bitcointalk gone? I can not remember the role Cyrus have. Do we have a setup which allow someone else to take control of the domain and the database in case anything happen to Theymos [Not just legal things but things related to health]?

I assume Administrator Cyrus also has server access. I have no idea if there's a backup plan for the domain name. Short-term, this will probably be okay (the chance of Admin dying this year is no more than 1%). If the inevitable happens, there may be time to get a new domain name.

The probability of dying percentage is interesting LOL.
Probability for theymos not to die in 2019 was 100% 😂 but anyway, considering the statistic is the same for year 2024, the chance of 1% still seems too high. Let's hope many of us will be able to watch the mining of 21st millionth bitcoin.

I don't know if there is a way to have multiple access [be owner] of a domain or not but if there are such feature then considering such option will be helpful. "Bitcointalk.org", imagine it's not in the hand of a person who do not deserve it [Ver don't deserve bitcoin.com but we could not do anything because he was in control on the domain]. The domain "Bitcointalk.org" is a brand for all.

I am sure, Google have a setup so that whoever is in control of the domain have any situation that he is no more, we will not see Google lost Google.com. The same for Facebook, x and many others.

For loyce.club, if I would disappear, the domain is still active for a while. Hosting will keep going until something fails or someone pulls the plug. After that it's gone, and a domain squatter will claim the domain.

Loyce.club can set up a team with a few trusted and knowledgeable people who have the same interest so that we do not lose the work.

[bitmover]

That's probably why there's not a single decentralized forum yet. And without centralized server, everyone will need to keep the entire database of all posts. It won't run in a browser, so no advertising for SEO either. Search engines don't visit decentralized forums.

The closest thing I saw to a decentralized forum that worked was Steem(it). It ran quite well (it still exists) and had good SEO for some time. The crucial part making that possible was obviously that there was a web front-end run by the founders, but the content was stored in a decentralized manner. So there were a couple of alternative web front-ends.

Good point.

However, I wouldn't say that steemit is censorship resistant.

Although the backend has some decentralization,  the front end (which controls all the traffic,i.e, the value) can easily censor words, authors, etc... and the founders can be coerced.

[d5000]

I'd expect a truely decentralized forum to work without website. Just a program you run, maybe like Tor browser, with a local database (or blockchain) containing all posts ever created. If most of the users use "light clients", I wouldn't call it truely decentralized.

Well, you can't dictate your users which type of client they should use Is Bitcoin less decentralized because users use Sparrow/Electrum/mobile clients?

The crucial question for me is that it should be possible to use it without any restriction directly connecting to the blockchain (or Torrent-shared database), and ideally there should of course be an easy to use interface to post this way. If anybody however wants to run a web frontend publishing the posts from the blockchain there, then nobody can stop them; and this additionally would make SEO possible. And this was true with Steem too, as all posts were stored on the blockchain. However I'm not sure in this case how user-friendly the Steem blockchain client was for users wanting to post and read.

A web front end existing would not make the project more centralized, if it is always clear that the originating posts come from blockchain/torrent/IPFS/ZeroNet.

The only possible issues I see with this "hybrid model" are copyright and duplicate content issues. Copyright can be relatively easily solved, you could simply require a Creative Commons license from all users posting on the forum. But duplicate content depends on the search engine algorithm (e.g. Google's). Basically the web frontend operators would compete for the top SEO spots but they would harm the whole project if they compete too hard. If they don't work commercially, they could however refer to one version of the web-delivered content as the "canonical" one.

Although the backend has some decentralization,  the front end (which controls all the traffic,i.e, the value) can easily censor words, authors, etc... and the founders can be coerced.

The problem of Steem(it) was not the decentralization of the content. It was that the founders-run web interface (which was not the only one) was too dominant. People talked more about "Steemit" (the main web interface) than about "Steem" (the blockchain project), and that was for sure also intended, because so it was easier to promote. There was also the issue of the "sponsored accounts". This was a requirement because on Steem's blockchain there was a fee to create new addresses, which was quite high for some time when Steem bubbled (more than $5), and only if you registered on the Steemit web interface you got an account for free.

But all these are flaws that don't have to be repeated by a really decentralized project. The crucial issue is that the database distribution and content creation are decentralized. What the web frontends do is their business (as long as the copyright issue is solved, see above). If one of them is coerced to censor information, users can switch to another one.

Main problem with Steem was tokens they used to reward members for writing posts and comments, and I think this project later forked into separate project with different token.
Only way for forum to work in decentralized way long term is if there are no tokens involved, and you should not have to pay to make posts.

In my opinion, a token could be involved if it's necessary to secure the blockchain and it's distributed in a decentralized way (e.g. via PoW). Even if it's a bitcoin sidechain, it could be still necessary to run a different consensus algorithm to secure that sidechain (if it's not merged-mined). (Such a possibility is for example one of the reasons I'm so interested in sidechains )

I thought however that Steem's monetization model wasn't bad, it was basically similar to what projects like "Flattr" intended to achieve 10 years ago. What however was totally bad in Steem was the initial token distribution. It seems there was no premine but the coin was heavily instamined by the founders in its initial stage, when it was promoted as an "experimental blockchain" without any marketing and so there were few miners interested it. Later they switched to DPoS.

[JollyGood]

If there was any pressure put on the other forum surely it would have come in the form of contact between law enforcement agencies and the admin/owner of the other forum. If that contact had really happened, the admin/owner of that forum should have posted about it on his forum. What could be happening is that other forums might be following the same route theymos set with exactly the same reasons.

Taking a look at the other forum, I see that there are a couple of mixer campaigns that have been "paused" but it looks like they are over for good. It seems that the pressure from the authorities is having an effect and that theymos was on the right track with this issue.

[Sandra_hakeem]

What if something happen to Theymos today or anytime. Bitcointalk gone? I can not remember the role Cyrus have. Do we have a setup which allow someone else to take control of the domain and the database in case anything happen to Theymos [Not just legal things but things related to health]?

"For everything that breaths - there's a limit, might and most importantly, an end". What's saddens me more is how ignorant we are about the fear of transition(maybe getting involved in a ghastly accident or something). In any case, we aren't planning our funerals already when we're still alive so I'd say - for now, I think everything is under control.

If the forum's domain is accessible by Cyrus himself, then I think it's way better. We just gotta need someone to stand in should there be a need.

Let's hope many of us will be able to watch the mining of 21st millionth bitcoin.

I'm afraid, that's not gonna ever happen. Always remember that death remains inevitable!

I am sure, Google have a setup so that whoever is in control of the domain have any situation that he is no more, we will not see Google lost Google.com. The same for Facebook, x and many others.

That's more like COCA -COLA and it's recipe. I learnt only two People have direct access to it and they can't fly in the same aircraft?

[LoyceV]

I'd expect a truely decentralized forum to work without website. Just a program you run, maybe like Tor browser, with a local database (or blockchain) containing all posts ever created. If most of the users use "light clients", I wouldn't call it truely decentralized.

Well, you can't dictate your users which type of client they should use

Tor browser wasn't the best example. Maybe torrents are a better comparison: nobody expects to download torrents through a centralized website that does the download for them and gives them the file. Instead, you install a torrent client. Or you rent a "seed box" from a specialized provider.
If I imagine a decentralized forum client, it doesn't have to be restricted to only one forum: many different forums could be accessed from the same client, and every user could create their own forum.

The crucial question for me is that it should be possible to use it without any restriction directly connecting to the blockchain (or Torrent-shared database), and ideally there should of course be an easy to use interface to post this way. If anybody however wants to run a web frontend publishing the posts from the blockchain there, then nobody can stop them

So, hypothetically, the forum could be accessed through a browser through one of many centralized servers (which together provide decentralized access), just like you "access" Electrum servers through the Electrum client. That sounds good to me!

Basically the web frontend operators would compete for the top SEO spots but they would harm the whole project if they compete too hard. If they don't work commercially, they could however refer to one version of the web-delivered content as the "canonical" one.

If many individual "points of entry" are competing for SEO, users can just choose the one that doesn't add too many ads. Or the fastest server with the best uptime. I hope to see this in reality some day.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

Are you guys seriously getting your heads around a decentralised forum? Forums are things of the past and those that survive are because they were launched and were successful in the past. I think the only thing that hasn't completely killed them is that a lot of people forum during quiet times at work.

[examplens]

I am sure, Google have a setup so that whoever is in control of the domain have any situation that he is no more, we will not see Google lost Google.com. The same for Facebook, x and many others.

This sounds like you're sure the Google owner didn't hire the neighbour's nerd kid to register a domain and make a simple site for him. 

Things that cannot be compared. You trying to compare the corporate management of digital assets (with the domain as the basic asset) to a situation where a examplens ^{just example} account has been hacked and she now has to go through authentication and proof of ownership of the account. And all this while the administrators, who are in different time zones, may not be online, so the process can take days.

That's more like COCA -COLA and it's recipe. I learnt only two People have direct access to it and they can't fly in the same aircraft?

That's a myth.
You don't really think that only two people are cooking a drink for the whole world.

[philipma1957]

Let's say someone come up with a decentralized forum software where no authority can touch. That's pretty much what darkweb is. Every type of filth will leak from a place like that.

That's probably why there's not a single decentralized forum yet. And without centralized server, everyone will need to keep the entire database of all posts. It won't run in a browser, so no advertising for SEO either. Search engines don't visit decentralized forums.
Theymos wrote about the possibility of a decentralized moderation system, kinda like the current Trust system. So if you trust me, you won't see posts I've deleted. But if someone creates a billion spam accounts, that's still going to be a problem.
I expect to be stuck with a centralized forum for a very long time.

the best you could do is a three or four server mirror system.

all in different countries.

but this still means  individuals attached to one of the servers could get grabbed up and charged by a country.

We have to face the simple fact that the world is not as free as we would like.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

This sounds like you're sure the Google owner didn't hire the neighbour's nerd kid to register a domain and make a simple site for him. 

Things that cannot be compared. You trying to compare the corporate management of digital assets (with the domain as the basic asset) to a situation where a examplens ^{just example} account has been hacked and she now has to go through authentication and proof of ownership of the account. And all this while the administrators, who are in different time zones, may not be online, so the process can take days.

I don't know how the setup works or is there any such setup at all. If you are referring Google domain was hacked [I would say legally bought] by someone when it expired and then they decided to take it from the new owner and giving it back to Google then I think I read such story. 

[uchegod-21]

Are you guys seriously getting your heads around a decentralised forum? Forums are things of the past and those that survive are because they were launched and were successful in the past. I think the only thing that hasn't completely killed them is that a lot of people forum during quiet times at work.

Also the reason BTT survived?
I think BTT is just special and maybe some things like signature campaign has been a key to keeping here going.
The reason forums got outdated could be because of lack of the modern day UI/UX amongst other things.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Also the reason BTT survived?
I think BTT is just special and maybe some things like signature campaign has been a key to keeping here going.
The reason forums got outdated could be because of lack of the modern day UI/UX amongst other things.

The forum is outdated because only one person is responsible to update files and database. Theymos already made many changes in the forum core, I am no sure if all these are documented. If it is not documented then it will be harder to check all the updates and restore to any other theme [not just SMF but the new forum software if we ever move].

The different kind of advertising idea helps users to stay active in the community, everyone likes to get something in return of doing something that they always do.

[d5000]

If I imagine a decentralized forum client, it doesn't have to be restricted to only one forum: many different forums could be accessed from the same client, and every user could create their own forum.

Here we have to distinguish between the platform and the client.

If somebody wants to found a Bitcointalk-style decentralized forum, create a (e.g. Steemit-like) blockchain, and set some rules for it, that could be achieved with a dedicated "platform". Another idea is to use an existing "platform" like the various decentralized Reddit clones and create a Bitcointalk-style variant of it. Or, even alternatively, you could design a client software (either local or web-based) which is able to access several "platforms" (e.g. different Mastodon, Nostr, Reddit-clone etc. instances), filters them for Bitcoin-themed "subforums", and creates something like a local Bitcoin-themed forum coming from different platforms.

Every possible variant of these concepts is possible. There is however one main problem one has to deal with: spam. For example, let's say you create a decentralized forum where everybody could create a subforum. How do you prevent that subforums are massively created?

Basically this is the same problem than the problem with moderation. There are two approaches to this: one is that you could implement a governance function, e.g. with a token. This was basically like Steemit did it: if a post received too many downvotes it wasn't displayed to users by default, and this could also happen to subforums. You could also the users require to vote for subforum creation, but due to sybil attacks you would probably need a PoS-style system, which has also disadvantages.

But there is another approach: let the clients (e.g. the web interface operators, or the local software) decide. These softwares could include an own content classification and also moderation system. This could also be a factor for them to compete: who has the most interesting and attractive interface?

Are you guys seriously getting your heads around a decentralised forum? Forums are things of the past and those that survive are because they were launched and were successful in the past. I think the only thing that hasn't completely killed them is that a lot of people forum during quiet times at work.

I think you're defining "forum" too narrowly ("websites that look like the forums of the 90s and 00s, like Bitcointalk "). Twitter, Instagram, even TikTok are also "forums", only with a slightly different interface. These are platforms allowing people to discuss, react to other posts, and categorize posts thematically (if that's done via folksonomies - e.g. hashtags - or ontologies - subforums defined in some kind of a "top-down" manner - isn't that important.) There are even some successful forums which are very close to the 90s instances, particularly Reddit and their clones.

Of course instead we could talk about a decentralized Bitcoin-focused social media platform. There are many functions in modern social networks I would like to see in Bitcointalk, for example to follow other users and be alerted in the watchlist whenever they post. This is absolutely no problem in a forum software, modern softwares like Discourse allow it. And this would also be no problem in a decentralized forum. You would have only to implement filter rules, like in the "listunspent" Bitcoin RPC command you can filter by address.