[HN Gopher] Xeres: Uncensorable Peer-to-Peer Communications
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       Xeres: Uncensorable Peer-to-Peer Communications
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 55 points
       Date   : 2025-09-27 18:39 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (xeres.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (xeres.io)
        
       | crtasm wrote:
       | I've not heard of this before. It recently hit v1.0
       | https://xeres.io/news/version-1-0-0-released/
        
       | homeonthemtn wrote:
       | >Without it, abuses are made and evil people take control.
       | 
       | Which will also happen with a zero control, zero responsibility
       | platform.
       | 
       | A given chat will get horrifically toxic, there will be no way of
       | moderation, so users will be forced to create a new chat which
       | will in turn get horrifically toxic and so on and so forth.
       | 
       | No, thank you.
        
         | pfix wrote:
         | I'm not familiar with retroshare but from a quick research it
         | seems you only receive content from people you're connected
         | with and their connections. So it should be pretty
         | straightforward to remove toxic connections
         | 
         | http://retroshare.wikidot.com/en:faq#toc1 (Lost the link where
         | there was an example on how to split a group chat if one person
         | leaves that connected two groups)
         | 
         | And I can imagine it's possible like with ad block plus et al
         | to have local blocklists in your client. Its not like we have
         | this situation elswhere (mail, web) so...
        
         | ktallett wrote:
         | Not every platform should be moderated.
        
         | logicchains wrote:
         | It's rather a world where every platform is 4chan than a world
         | like the Chinese internet where no platform allows criticising
         | the government.
        
         | twelvedogs wrote:
         | You directly choose who you can chat with, you moderate by
         | removing the person I would assume
        
         | akersten wrote:
         | This is a friend to friend protocol, so you have the power, and
         | should exercise it, to remove negative influences from your
         | social graph.
        
         | Xunie wrote:
         | Zero responsibility? You are always responsible for the things
         | you say, both morally and legally, both here and elsewhere.
         | Even in public spaces like town squares or hn comment sections.
         | (hn sux, lmao.)
         | 
         | If a chat gets toxic by your standards, just leave. No one
         | forces you to stay in a chat where you don't want to be. On the
         | other hand, governments do censor and scan your private
         | messages. Good cryptography and trustable software mitigates
         | that partially but not entirely. Privacy and autonomy are
         | fundamental human rights. Seemingly, the only way to enforce
         | them is by exercising your rights and holding your government
         | accountable.
         | 
         | I'd rather be abused by a toxic community I can willingly leave
         | than be abused by a toxic government who can take my voice
         | away, imprison me or worse. They can do that to anyone at any
         | time. Laws like SLAs are worth the paper they're written on.
         | And so software that prioritizes censorship-free speech is a
         | tradeoff to be made and cannot be personally made -- it has to
         | be made as a group. (Software like anything else can still be
         | outlawed!)
         | 
         | The recent events with governments eroding privacy, consumer
         | rights and other rights is a good reason to be wary and a good
         | reason to get active and start exercising those rights.
         | 
         | Re: moderation. I don't know about the moderation tools of
         | Xeres, but it seems trivial to be able to boot people from the
         | chat.
         | 
         | Use your free speech to be kind to one another.
        
         | pluto_modadic wrote:
         | I agree that moderation tools are important :) one of signal's
         | failings is the lack of moderation tooling. You can have small
         | scale group moderation without having government scale
         | surveillance.
        
       | Refreeze5224 wrote:
       | With ChatControl looming, I am glad this exists, and I hope we
       | will continue to have a diversity of choices in private encrypted
       | messaging applications.
        
         | integralid wrote:
         | TFA is pretty cool and the technology is exciting.
         | Nevertheless...
         | 
         | Tech people always think that everything can be solved with
         | better technology. See, we made a protocol for uncensorable
         | communication, now privacy is restored and the evil government
         | plan is thwarted.
         | 
         | No, if e2e becomes illegal, noncompliant apps outlawed and
         | taken out of appstores, if by using this people will risks a
         | fine or prison time or even just police checking you're not
         | actually a pedophile who needs to hide something - regular
         | people won't use it. A small fraction of privacy nerds may do,
         | but that's not significant on a social level. This won't solve
         | recent world privacy problems.
        
       | analog8374 wrote:
       | Assuming that a bad-people-filter is necessary, what would you
       | use to recognize them?
       | 
       | 2 that I can think of : 1) An AI badness pattern recognizer. 2)
       | Vetting by trusted people.
       | 
       | It wouldn't have to be perfect. Would it?
       | 
       | That's a big assuming, yes.
        
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       (page generated 2025-09-27 23:00 UTC)