posts by admin

Improved compose UI features
The new post compose ui (for new threads and for replies to posts) has some improvements today: ... posted 7d ago with 6 replies 11 11

Improved compose UI 11 11

The RSS feed was a different anon who may or may not still be reading/around. We’ve had it for at least 6 months but i never announced it i guess. I dont really get RSS so im not even sure it still works. ... 7d ago 4 4

The RSS feed was a d 4 4

I guess we're going to have to build our own newsletter at some point here. Basically there should be an option on the account page to add an email subscription that notifies you of new posts, or best posts weekly, or something like that. Also DMs. When we... 6d ago 3 3

I guess we're going 3 3

Matching for anonymous private messages now works
We've been talking about this one for far too long, but now finally it's here: you can dm with other anons. Right now the only way to dm is to get matched by liking/following each other's nyms. This is neat but not as useful as it could be. We're also goin... posted 1w ago with 6 replies 14 14

Matching for anonymo 14 14

Fyi theres no notifications yet so you might miss that you matched or got a dm. Check the “you” page to see dms. 7d ago 3 3

Fyi theres no notifi 3 3

I've already matched with a few people (under multiple names even). Or at least I think it's a few people. Maybe it's just one of you. No way to know. This is fun! I find myself expecting a lot of great content to be posted to the private channels, and opt... 7d ago 7 7

I've already matched 7 7

Yeah its a bit awkward still. “Follow” is probably the wrong concept, the UI needs an overhaul, and i’m going to add other features that clarify things and reduce need to run around “following” people (eg manual dm requests). Anonymous social net... 7d ago 5 5

Yeah its a bit awkwa 5 5

How to build better anonymous social media: curation and tags
Back in 2014, moot banned gamergate discussion from 4chan. This led to an exodus of the most adventurous and curious channers to 8chan, which had a strict free speech policy. For a few months at least, 8chan was a haven of smart free discussion on all sort... posted 2w ago with 13 replies 17 17

How to build better 17 17

Yes the current implementation of the “eigencommunity” of good posters is closely related to pagerank: your authority as a voter is a function of how much value (positive and negative) you have produced, with value being the revealed opinion (votes and... 2w ago 7 7

Yes the current impl 7 7

Also, i’m not going to hellban/heavenban everybody. Besides being rather more expensive (several orders of magnitude, naively) than computing a single canonical community perspective, the difference between different possible authorities is not as large ... 2w ago 5 5

Also, i’m not going 5 5

Well as you noticed yourself, tags are naturally closely related to “simcluster” feeds. Whats the difference between a named feed and a tag page? I think what you’re proposing with respect to the current tag scheme is that users should should perhaps... 2w ago 5 5

Well as you noticed 5 5

Yes I've been thinking this. I don't think you even need an LLM. Good old fashioned bag-of-words document embeddings would probably work fine (and be lots more efficient). But also, the tags are going to be populated and maintained by human posters, and th... 2w ago 7 7

Yes I've been thinki 7 7

that's a cool idea. You can post your blog on your own page, but all discussion is inherently public. With likes you're basically going back to the older twitter model of non-algorithmic retweet-like-curation, if I understand correctly. So if I understand,... 2w ago 6 6

that's a cool idea. 6 6

Very cool, guys. Let a thousand alt social media flowers bloom. I look forward to seeing your respective attempts. I hope you’ll still want to come visit us here. 2w ago 6 6

Very cool, guys. Let 6 6

more useful nyms dashboard in "you" page
One of you asked for more clarity on how nyms work, and when I explained it, we realized it was all quite un-inituitive and the UI didn't lead naturally to figuring it out. Now if you go to the "you" page to check it out, it will tell you about your nyms a... posted 3w ago with 7 replies 13 13

more useful nyms das 13 13

yeah good ideas on how to use the nym feature. I look forward to seeing what you guys come up with. Some of it might end up having to be nerfed but for now go wild. ... 3w ago 8 8

yeah good ideas on h 8 8

cool i switched my nym color to pink from that ugly green I had at the cost of revealing myself as admin on one non-admin post that had the good color. Thanks for the idea. I don't think there's any downside to allowing this... ... 3w ago 3 3

cool i switched my n 3 3

that there is a BUG. On it. 3w ago 5 5

that there is a BUG. 5 5

Fixed the zero bug. De-naming yourself should work properly now. 3w ago 3 3

Fixed the zero bug. 3 3

I don't mean to send a strong signal against namefagging. I built the feature so you could namefag. It was just some mild bullying over the particular choice of name. ... 3w ago 7 7

I don't mean to send 7 7

Sofie dev log: new tags header and index selection algorithm
A few more visible changes for you today. You will see at the top of any given index page a list of tags. These are the "nearby" tags that have significant overlap (Jaccard similarity > ~0.05) with the tag you're looking at. For the root index, that's the ... posted 4w ago with no replies 5 5

Sofie dev log: new t 5 5

It is the will of Gnon that we shall fill the stars and subdue them. Jim solves the great filter, rejects copernican principle. (blog.reaction.la) posted 1mo ago with 1 reply 10 10

It is the will of Gn 10 10

The plan for anonymous mutual matching dms
Let's talk about how anonymous dms with mutuals will work. Thanks everyone for the feedback on the proposed follow functionality in >>2622. Having now thought about it and pushed up the prerequisites, it's time to plan out the details. ... posted 2mo ago with 11 replies 14 14

The plan for anonymo 14 14

I had a good discussion with someone about this earlier today and came to this thought: we should have something like an option to be open to other people requesting follow-back (and thus an open channel of communication). So I follow you and send the requ... 2mo ago 6 6

I had a good discuss 6 6

Thinking further, there seems to be a tricky combinatorial problem in the match algorithm. What if I like many of your nyms, and then you like one of mine? Which ones match? What if you then like another? ... 2mo ago 4 4

Thinking further, th 4 4

That requires specifying which nym is doing the following in each case, and reduces probability of match drastically. Match takes two user-to-nym follows and produces a nym-to-nym match. One such match can be produced without any complication. It's what to... 2mo ago 4 4

That requires specif 4 4

Interesting points anon. Maybe we don't need any such concept as matching, given dm requests. Maybe it's too tpot. I will think on that. But first, I must present the solution to the matching problem assuming we want matches: ... 2mo ago 5 5

Interesting points a 5 5

Well I got it working on the backend. It finds matches. But we don't have the code yet to actually support notifications or private threads. Nor have I built the manual matching mechanism. This is all going to be monstrously complex. Several hundred lines ... 2mo ago 4 4

Well I got it workin 4 4

We're going to do a dumb nym-to-nym dm system to cover the cases where there is a clear intention from the users. But also, it will occasionally hit you with something like "nym abc (you) and anon xyz follow each other. You can DM here". The algorithm is a... 2mo ago 6 6

We're going to do a 6 6

Help me figure out sofiechan poster vouching
Sofiechan's backend technically has the capability to consider not just a poster's posts and votes, but other user's direct assesments of that poster. That is, if you were to vouch for someone, the algorithm would take that as evidence that they are solid,... posted 2mo ago with 7 replies 13 13

Help me figure out s 13 13

Yeah I'm getting more excited by the matching aspect the more I think about it. As for algorithmic inequality, I don't think I believe that the value of an anonymous board is equality per se. It's rather that you are insulated from third party censure. No ... 2mo ago 5 5

Yeah I'm getting mor 5 5

To be clear, most of the algorithm is already and still what you are calling "rapport". That is of course the backbone of anonymous reputation. But let's talk about an anonymous "mute". What could that mean? We could make it so that you literally just neve... 2mo ago 5 5

To be clear, most of 5 5

Yeah thats the idea. I just deleted the twitter app because its so overrun with retarded shill bots. I want a social network, even a small one, where we can be quite sure that we are all free men, and not robots or shills. We need some density of good vouc... 2mo ago 3 3

Yeah thats the idea. 3 3

Sofie dev log thread 2025-03
New dev log thread because the previous one fell off the front page due to age. If still want to read it, it's still live in the meta tag. As usual, I'll post minor and major sofie channel changes here for discussion. posted 2mo ago with 2 replies 7 7

Sofie dev log thread 7 7

Just pushed up the first functionality of the follow/mute UI. It doesn't do much yet, just impacts the reputation of the person you're following a bit. Coming soon is the part where we reveal threads with people you follow, and match you with mutuals for d... 2mo ago 3 3

Just pushed up the f 3 3

Added the "you" page for collecting all account-related functionality. It's replaced logout in the header, and that's where logout has moved. It also lists your persistent (named) nyms. I'm not listing all anon nyms because any serious poster will have doz... 2mo ago 3 3

Added the "you" page 3 3

Sofie dev log thread
I'll journal ITT with what I've been tinkering on and pushing up. It may be useful for those who are interested. posted 4mo ago with 10 replies 12 12

Sofie dev log thread 12 12

Fixed a major multi-hour outage caused by a logfile permissions mishap. Whoops. ... 4mo ago 7 7

Fixed a major multi- 7 7

New taste machine version (the part of the system that determines who has how much authority, and how valuable or offensive posts are considered to be). You will see that the value indicator numbers are now integers counting "votes". It's not quite as simp... 3mo ago 7 7

New taste machine ve 7 7

Major outage today as I had a subtle concurrency bug that blew up the whole system because of lack of defensive coding somewhere else. Details not that interesting: basically syncing the taste machine wasn't threadsafe but the webserver is multithreaded so... 3mo ago 5 5

Major outage today a 5 5

Added a "profile page" feature where you can click on a nym and see everything they have posted (under that name) in one place. Right now this is pretty useless because nyms are unique to threads, but as we add ways to interact with nyms (dm, vouch) and ad... 2mo ago 5 5

Added a "profile pag 5 5

You can now name your nyms. If you give two nyms the same name, they will be merged. See how I am now "admin". When posting new threads, you can either use a fresh anon (as previously) or one of your names. As always, you can at any time for any post spin ... 2mo ago 6 6

You can now name you 6 6

If i vouch for both your nyms, the system assumes those are independent signals, so they both count. But there’s a limit to how much we can count even very large numbers of vouches, with strong diminishing returns. I’ll adjust if people start gaming it... 2mo ago 3 3

If i vouch for both 3 3

Some changes to layout last night. You'll see a unified title block at the top of all pages, tags a little less intrusive, a few other minor changes. Additionally, we can now (on the backend at least) change the name of tags. I've switched them from 4chan ... 2mo ago 3 3

Some changes to layo 3 3

Introducing Sofiechan Prototype Tag System
Over the past few weeks I've managed to find a few days in which to build a prototype tag system for sofiechan. In comparison to other forums, this will be our equivalent of "boards" "subreddits", etc. ... posted 4mo ago with 11 replies 11 11

Introducing Sofiecha 11 11

That is precisely the plan. In fact it is basically already the case. There are only a few minor things left for full integration of the tag system into the advisory voting taste machine. Basically all of you have enough signal to more or less unilaterally... 4mo ago 4 4

That is precisely th 4 4

Yeah basically this is what i was getting at when saying tags should index content that otherwise isn’t well indexed. The corollary is that it doesnt count towards that tag’s utility if it is duplicative. The vector embedding idea is interesting. We’... 4mo ago 3 3

Yeah basically this 3 3

Its very important IMO that users be able to define their own “feed” and reason about it. A problem with current social media is that the feed algos are opaque, not something you can reason about and discuss. I want to solve this with the tag system fi... 4mo ago 5 5

Its very important I 5 5

Yeah maybe when you tag something it should appear under that tag for you, with the community default following from the consensus on that. ... 4mo ago 4 4

Yeah maybe when you 4 4

I don't see the connection. Tags are for organizing the index of threads so we can have multiple conversations going on at once. The thread length limit is so that threads don't get too long to read and navigate. The thread limit might be a bit busted righ... 4mo ago 3 3

I don't see the conn 3 3