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I’m not familiar with Tryesto but it doesn’t appear to be AitM attack resistant. What is your usecase for this?

… It was incredibly sobering that a case about our privacy was being conducted both in private and in secret. So we’re pleased to see a course change here. That said, the battle is not yet won. The arguments to break encryption do not just relate to this specific case and we are having to constantly make the case for why encryption is vital in our democracy; nor does this judgment stipulate that the case will be held fully in the open moving forward – as it should be – only that we can know the “bare details”. We welcome this news but we continue to fight for full transparency here.

Great question! Unlike Lemmy, which relies on federation with dedicated servers, Plebbit is fully peer-to-peer (P2P) and does not have a central server or even instances. Instead, storage happens via a combination of IPFS and users seeding data. Here’s how it works:

Where Is Plebbit’s Data Stored?

1. Subplebbit Owners Host the Data (Like Torrent Seeders)

   • Each subplebbit owner runs a Plebbit node that stores and republishes their own community’s data.
   • Their device (or a server, if they choose) must be online 24/7 to ensure the subplebbit remains accessible.
   • If a subplebbit owner goes offline, their community disappears unless others seed it—very similar to how torrents work.

2. Users Act as Temporary Seeders

   • Any user who visits a subplebbit automatically stores and seeds the content they read.
   • This means active users help distribute content, like in BitTorrent.
   • If a user closes their app and no one else is seeding the content, it becomes unavailable until the owner comes back online.

3. IPFS for Content Addressing

   • Posts and comments are stored in IPFS, which ensures that popular content remains available longer.
   • Unlike a blockchain, there is no permanent historical ledger—if no one is seeding, the data is gone.
   • Each post has a content address (CID), meaning that as long as someone has the data, it can be re-fetched.

4. PubSub for Live Updates

   • Plebbit uses peer-to-peer pubsub (publish-subscribe messaging) to broadcast new content between nodes in real-time.
   • This helps users see new posts without needing a central server to pull updates from.

What Happens If Everyone Goes Offline?

• If no one’s online to seed a subplebbit, it’s as if it never existed.
• This is a trade-off for infinite scalability—it removes the need for central databases but relies on community participation.
• Think of it like a dead torrent—no seeders, no content.

Comparison With Lemmy

Bottom Line: No Servers, Just Users

• With Lemmy: The instance owner has to host everything themselves like a mini-Reddit admin.
• With Plebbit: The subplebbit owner AND users seed the content—no one has to host a centralized database.
• If something is popular, it stays alive.
• If something isn’t seeded, it disappears, just like torrents.

It’s a radical trade-off for decentralization and censorship resistance, but if no one cares about a community, the content naturally dies off. No server, no mods deleting you from a database—just pure P2P.

Hope that clears it up! 🚀

Plebbit only hosts text. Images from google and other sites can be linked/embedded in posts. This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.

Nowhere in the project whitepaper or FAQ does it talk about banning image hosting. Base64 encoding images in the text post is trivial, so maybe OP is the one projecting this intent or feature?

They probably spawned a sub company who will take that over. No way in hell I believe they stopped this practice.

I applaud your efforts for speaking your mind and letting people know of a perceived threat. I’m not sure you’re really asking for a rational discussion on this topic, so I’ll keep this short.

If your ideals do not align with the host you are on, I suggest you look around and fine one that does and/or start your own server.