sofiechan home

Welcome to Sofie Channel. Curated anonymous discussion about life and philosophy.

admin said in #1269 2y ago: received

I've been working on a little something in the background for the past year, and more earnestly for the past few months. It's a new social media platform designed to curate a high quality discourse community about whatever topics are important to us.

"Launch early and often" they say, so don't expect a fully polished new world order, but I dare say it works for basic posting. There's a lot left before it's really ready for primetime, but it's strong enough now to invite a few more early adopters.

The basic concept is that sofiechan is moderated by what you might call a "bayesian reputation market"; the system interprets your votes and interactions as evidence of taste and quality, and curates the best threads and posters.

Sofiechan is unapologetically monarchist. The crowdsourcing is not intended to reflect "the will of the people". My bet is that we will get a better experience by combining crowdsourcing with the careful judgement and vision of a single good moderator.

Sofiechan is anonymous so that we can have frank conversations about important topics without exposing our public reputations to third party social censure, and explore ideas that aren't entirely our own. You are accountable to the algorithm, not "the public".

Eventually, I want sofiechan to cover a great many topics, and be a space where different communities can curate their own little walled gardens. But for now it's a single board focused mostly on our interests in life and philosophy. ("Sofie" as in "philo sophia")

If you've been around for a while, now is the time to share sofiechan with your most curious friends. If you're new, welcome and please make yourself at home.

All I ask at this point as we grow and test it out is that you all try to stay polite and interact in good faith, cooperate with administrator requests, and be patient if we break anything.

Today is launch day. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the concept and where we should take it from here.

I've been working on received

anon_nipo said in #1270 2y ago: received

Hello world

Hello world received

anon_diwi said in #1271 2y ago: received

This is a worthwhile endeavor- I'm hoping it has a chance to flourish.

This is a worthwhile received

anon_sefe said in #1272 2y ago: received

let a hundred flowers bloom - let a hundred schools of thought contend

let a hundred flower received

anon_wosy said in #1274 2y ago: received

Thus the gloomy World
At first began to shine,
And from the Power Divine
A Glory round about it hurl'd;
Which made it bright,
And gave it Birth in light.
Then were all Minds as pure,
As those Ethereal Streams;
In Innocence secure,
Not Subject to Extreams.
There was no Room then for empty Fame,
No cause for Pride, Ambition wanted aim.

Thus the gloomy Worl received

anon_mibu said in #1275 2y ago: received

Plato’s description and criticism of Democracy in the Republic is insanely relevant today.

referenced by: >>1288

Plato’s description received

anon_qyqa said in #1278 2y ago: received

Hello world!!!

Congretulations.

Hello world!!!... received

anon_bate said in #1283 2y ago: received

Is the taste-algorithm robust against circlejerk collusions?

referenced by: >>1288

Is the taste-algorit received

anon_foju said in #1285 2y ago: received

Congrats on the launch! Big fan of Palladium so I have high hopes for this one. Interesting design choice to have pseudonymity for the purposes of algorithmic ranking, but not exposing that to the users.

What's the Numbered vs Anonymous options about?

referenced by: >>1288

Congrats on the laun received

admin said in #1288 2y ago: received

>>1283
Yes, more or less. If a group of posters are only liked by each other, but others don't like them, they will all lose authority eventually to the point of even losing posting privilege. There may be additional vulnerabilities, but I won't speculate for obvious reasons. As the algorithm matures, there will be fewer and fewer opportunities to get away with bad faith behavior. But this all depends on you all making good faith judgements of quality and trustworthiness with the hide and endorse buttons (and your interactions).

>>1285
Yeah the primary purpose of anonymity as I see it is not protection from the platform but protection from hostile factions of cyberbullies and aspiring stasi agents. That said, the platform can be compromised by said cyberbullies, so in the long run we'll add features for more robust forms of anonymity.

>What's the Numbered vs Anonymous options about?
You are number 8 in this thread. You will always be number 8 in this thread, in case you wish to have your posts associated with each other for keeping track of discussion. In other threads, you will have different/unconnected numbers, so no one can track your posts between threads to deanonymize you. If you don't wish to be associated with yourself within the thread, you can choose "anonymous", as >>1275 did. So samefagging is allowed, but impersonation is avoidable.

As the platform matures, I'll add more gradations of anonymity. Maybe a weapons grade expunged anonymity where the server forgets everything ASAP but you eat a reputational cost, and also on the other end posting with a public profile, or a profile only visible to your friends. We'll try out various schemes and try to keep it simple, but I don't believe we can get away with one size fits all.

Yes, more or less. I received

anon_seco said in #1292 2y ago: received

Always glad to see new frontiers in poasting. Godspeed, you madmen.

Always glad to see n received

anon_jyvo said in #1307 2y ago: received

Taking a stance publicly can also be important for advocacy, accountability, and building a sense of community around shared values.

referenced by: >>1335

Taking a stance publ received

anon_xydo said in #1308 2y ago: received

>"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

referenced by: >>1335

>"When in the Course received

anon_lahw said in #1321 2y ago: received

I’ve been enjoying the anonymity here. Having a number which doesn’t persist across threads means I can have a conversation, but not a reputation. Sometimes I want a reputation. But not always. It’s nice to have a space for this.

Sometimes I see a post and I think “Oh, that sounds like my friend Mr. P---.” And maybe it’s him, or maybe I’m imagining things. Maybe Mr. P--- doesn’t even use this forum. It seems better not to ask.

referenced by: >>1322 >>1335

I’ve been enjoying t received

xenophon said in #1322 2y ago: received

>>1321

I think there is (computed) reputation within the system, just not known to others by name. Admin could explain better.

referenced by: >>1335

I think there is (co received

anon_powo said in #1324 2y ago: received

Hello world.

This is an interesting idea for a social media platform, I wish you luck

Hello world.... received

anon_tema said in #1327 2y ago: received

Posting for posterity. -CH

Posting for posterit received

anon_niji said in #1331 2y ago: received

The high reputation poster is a bore and a lout of the highest order. As his reputation trends upwards the amount of information conveyed per post trends to zero. “On this topic the Socratics has this to say—” I can barely stomach this already. See how his finger hovers over the vote buttons, calculating the desires of his fellow onastic strivers. He contradicts only when he knows it furthers his place among the Judge-Moderators—a position, it goes without saying, that comes with no compensation. I can only hope to read new ideas before the belching of our cognitive elite becomes too much to bear.

referenced by: >>1333

The high reputation received

admin said in #1333 2y ago: received

>>1331
Good post anon. Updooted

referenced by: >>1411

Good post anon. Updo received

admin said in #1335 2y ago: received

>>1307
>>1308
All in good time gentlemen.

>>1321
>>1322
You guys get the idea. I will add pseudonyms and outright nameposting at some point probably. Also anonymous DMs so you can privately reveal yourself to other posters you find interesting.

referenced by: >>1422

All in good time gen received

anon_guko said in #1421 2y ago: received

FYI, my verification email was in my spam folder. I marked it as not spam, but you may wish to inform others when they sign up.

referenced by: >>1424

FYI, my verification received

anon_veri said in #1422 2y ago: received

>>1335
> I will add pseudonyms and outright nameposting

It's over.

It's over. received

admin said in #1424 2y ago: received

>>1422
you can always bully them anonymously, and are never stuck with nameposting

>>1421
Ok. I'll add a note and try to get more info on why that's happening to some people.

you can always bully received

anon_difu said in #1464 2y ago: received

Greetings. Been a fan for a long time, but always just as an observer, until now. This seems like an interesting project!

Greetings. Been a fa received

anon_jutw said in #1635 2y ago: received

Hi. I'm new here. Stumbled across the forum completely on accident, but it looks like it will develop a very interesting culture.

referenced by: >>1636

Hi. I'm new here. St received

admin said in #1636 2y ago: received

>>1635
welcome. don't let the flame go out.

welcome. don't let t received

anon_ruxo said in #1991 2y ago: received

So am I correct in understanding that choosing greater anonymity (not numbered posts) lead to a hit on score or reputation? It was implied here (#1288) but I didn't see it spelled out specifically. I kind of pick at random which way to post but if it comes with a hit I wouldn't choose anonymous so often.

referenced by: >>1992

So am I correct in u received

admin said in #1992 2y ago: received

>>1991
Nope. The only difference between "Anonymous" vs "Numbered" is whether your posts are visibly associated with each other in the thread. It's just to make discussion easier between anons, while also allowing you to dodge association with your own posts if you want.

I will probably have to streamline and clarify the way anonymous ids work when I add DMs, vouching, profiles, etc. The reason being that each anon identity will conceptually be addressable, even the full anons. The full anons will just have only one post to their name. Then it will be clear that the only difference is how many posts are publicly visibly associated with each other.

The hit to reputation for anonymity is a hypothetical feature for a hypothetical even more anonymous form of anonymity where the server actively forgets who made the post so that even in the event of a data breach the poster could not be identified. That "expunged" anonymity" doesn't exist (yet?). When it does, the reputation cost of using it will be well documented and warned. Currently, in all cases the server remembers who made what post so that it can recompute reputations. (Though even now posters and all other information are forgotten for deleted posts once they are no longer needed for any statistical or user-facing reason).

Nope. The only diffe received

anon_siwi said in #3294 11mo ago: received

Thank you for creating this site - it's tiring having to find good discussions on twitter or 4chan without it devolving into babbling chimps hurling shit at each other & calling others Jewish.

Thank you for creati received

anon_rawu said in #3477 10mo ago: received

thanks for making this. I had a similar ambition but we never worked out the admin logistics so kudos for adding the layer of bayesian feedback.

referenced by: >>3485

thanks for making th received

admin said in #3485 10mo ago: received

>>3477
Thanks. So far so good and i have a lot of ideas for how to improve the taste machine further. The main bottleneck at this point i think is we have to bootstrap a network of good discussion here. Then with scale we will see more clearly the problems requiring refinement of the algorithm.

Thanks. So far so go received

anon_peny said in #5297 2w ago: received

I am interested in hosting the sofiechan software for my own circle. Any chance the sofiechan software is made open source so that it can be self-hostable?

referenced by: >>5321

I am interested in h received

admin said in #5321 2d ago: received

>>5297
Maybe some day. I would want to prove that it works and finish development first.

referenced by: >>5324

Maybe some day. I wo received

anon_peny said in #5324 26h ago: received

>>5321
> Maybe some day.
Thanks. This gets my hopes up.

> I would want to prove that it works and finish development first.
I think its basic functionality is working quite well. By "basic functionality", I mean: replies, threading, log-in/-out, adding image files to posts, cross replies and references, along with anonymous login and posting infrastructure. These all work well, and I would be happy with hosting sofiechan for my own mannerbund in its current form

I think by "finisihing development", you have in mind features related to post approve/disapproval and reputation systems, right? This part gets my high hopes down again as I would guess it might be another year at least for you to iron these out.

In the meanwhile, I would be open to suggestions about sofiechan-like forum platform that I can self-host for sofiechan-like discussions.

referenced by: >>5326

Thanks. This gets my received

admin said in #5326 16h ago: received

>>5324
well what's wrong with sofiechan itself? I guess you would want to have data sovereignty etc, insulation from my whims? I'm curious to learn more about your needs.

I'm not that interested in just becoming a volunteer maintainer of open source forum software. It doesn't sound fun unless I was really satisfied that it was the right thing to do. So you are right to not get your hopes up too high. That's why I say maybe some day.

My fear with open sourcing the current system is that it just results in an expectation to support the prototype software as the product, which if it goes well just results in a bunch of disconnected individual forums with no obvious funding model or network effect. That way lies disappointment all around. Better open source forum software would be nice but existing solutions like https://www.discourse.org/ are leagues ahead of the old forums and better than anything we've got here as a product.

The thing I'm much more interested in is using sofiechan as a prototype for a larger semi-universalistic platform on the scale of 4chan but with better content, trustlessness, data sovereignty, etc. Like if you want to have your own corner of the network where you have your own rules and data sovereignty I want to support that, but I want it to work in a way that participates in a larger network effect that could actually get our extended intellectual scene off twitter etc with its own real development funding model. This is what I've been trying to think through recently and where I'd like to take the project. Just copying the software doesn't achieve that and possibly makes it harder.

referenced by: >>5327 >>5328

well what's wrong wi received

anon_peny said in #5327 5h ago: received

>>5326
> well what's wrong with sofiechan itself? I guess you would want to have data sovereignty etc, insulation from my whims? I'm curious to learn more about your needs.

We are a group of young men from Turkiye. We are looking for an online forum that we can use to apply various techno-ideological concepts (like Effective Acceleration, Technology and Society (Ellul, Kaczynski, et. al) but also the effects of Managerialism, Peter Thiel -style techno entrepreneurship, plus other "fringe but right", "redpill" topics), *to our local, geographical corner on this Earth* (while not losing the sight on the global scope, of course). That's why many of the topics we would start here on sofiechan

1) might be in Turkish language (even though we are well capable of discussing these things in English language, but then, the specificities of our case that stem from our culture and geography might be lost if we don't use the Turkish language to express those)

2) might be very specific in scope, pertaining to local Turkish tech industry, startup scene, venture capital-sphere, and political assessments, that might not interest (and in fact, might bother if it gets too frequent) other posters and readers here.

3) and, yeah, we also want our own data soeverignty in the sense that we operate the server, VPS, we decide on who to let in to our gentleman's club, we want to mirror our own sofiechan to the Tor darknet, maybe also to the new Freenet 2.0 (https://freenet.org), plus, we want to have a say in the artistic direction and the look of the site we operate (not that we are saying sofiechan looks ugly, we just want to have our own distinct, aesthetic character). Provided the sofiechan codebase becomes open source, we also pretty much want to introduce a better email/mailing list integration (with the help of coding LLMs, probably), very similar to how https://discourse.org forum software allows you to follow all the discussions via email, and post replies to them via email.

We have looked at all the alternative forum/community/etc software like:
1. discourse
2. flarum
3. phpBB
4. generic chan software like vichan/etc.

but none of these satisfy us with the thing we are seeing in sofiechan itself. The forum softwares we mentioned put a big distance between the discussions and the visitors. With sofiechan it is front and center, readily avialable, visiting sofiechan.com is like opening a very niche, interesting and inviting magazine, and immediately getting lost in the posts in there. The forum software above introduce too many layers, buttons, complexties, menus, clicks in order to get to the place where the visitors start reading something and get a whiff of the community's spirit.

The generic chan software, as opposed to the sofiechan, invites low effort shitposts and temporary discussions. We want, like sofiechan provides, thoughtful discussions that do not get archived after a few days which get deleted, or become invisible, or become un-reply-able.

> I'm not that interested in just becoming a volunteer maintainer of open source forum software.

I definitely understand this notion. Most of the open source software development is unpaid and thankless work, plus you have to tolerate the naggings of many nobodies who drop by to dictate you feature requests, half-assed bug reports, etc., and in general be a nuisance in their interaction with the codebase maintainership.

We are a group of yo received

anon_peny said in #5328 4h ago: received

>>5326
> which if it goes well just results in a bunch of disconnected individual forums with no obvious funding model or network effect.

So, that's an interesting thing to hear from you. Not that I am a long time sofiechan reader, but I've been lurking around, around a year now, and I didn't get the impression that sofiechan had this "global" ambition, the goal to become something "big". I always got the impression that this place is for a niche discussion group, with its own prestiguous looks and feel, that seek to discuss and promote ideas that are too gauche for the normiedom. Given this impression of mine is more or less accurate, why would you seek to be this humongous, "globohomo" place with lots of normies clutching their pearls when they see the topics discussed here?

> The thing I'm much more interested in is using sofiechan as a prototype for a larger semi-universalistic platform on the scale of 4chan but with better content, trustlessness, data sovereignty, etc.

That's interesting to hear.

> Like if you want to have your own corner of the network where you have your own rules and data sovereignty I want to support that[...]

Yes, we want to have that, and thank you for expressing your good will at wanting to support that.

> [...]but I want it to work in a way that participates in a larger network effect that could actually get our extended intellectual scene off twitter etc with its own real development funding model.

that's interesting as well, and goes back to my previous reply that, the ideas we discuss, while very much aligned with the online "redpill" spheres like reactionism, accelerationism, etc., WILL have a Turkish bent to them (because we want to apply those ideas to IRL (and our IRL is Turkiye) and not just to discuss them theoretically). Therefore, I fail to see, or grasp the importance our discussions directly on sofiechan contributing to its network effect.

> with its own real development funding model.

Also to note, we are pretty much Monero (XMR) users and supporters, and in our imaginaries, we discuss a scenario where we might gatekeep the participation in the forum with a small donation to the server in XMR. So that the posters get to post 50 posts per (I don't know) 5 bucks paid in XMR -- which goes to pay the server costs and also act as a DDoS/bot/shilling shield.

So, that's an intere received

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