Aether – Free, privacy-sensitive public communities
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderHey guys - Burak here. Ouch, this was supposed to be a ‘soft’ launch. I’m here to answer any questions as usual. I’ll pick the best and try to add it to the FAQ on the site.
Persistent pseudonyms seem to be required for voting-based communities to work. Without them, what is a vote? Whose votes do I trust? Distributing reddit is a hard problem, but making it anonymous is even harder. It'll be easier to start with cryptographic identities and add anonymity later. In the meantime, users can generate new identities for every action. They will be ignored by other users, since reputation is the easiest way to separate signal from noise. Building this system will…
Interesting project though the ephemerality has big potential downsides. Alot of value from these communities comes from the long-tail historical data. But this has its uses for sure.
Great project... I'll be trying out Pro too.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 538
- Total comments
- 326
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-10-27 | Aether: Anonymous, Open-Source, Uncensorable, Peer-to-Peer Forums | milesf | 2 | 0 |
| 2015-07-03 | Anonymous Reddit without serversFirst breakout | vyrotek | 207 | 102 |
| 2015-07-05 | Aether as a Reddit alternative | ayberkt | 2 | 0 |
| 2018-11-03 | Aether – Free, privacy-sensitive public communitiesBest thread · Latest 20+ point return | HostFat | 290 | 221 |
| 2020-01-28 | Aether: Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communitiesHall induction | BerislavLopac | 2 | 0 |
| 2020-04-18 | Aether: Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities | nbrempel | 3 | 0 |
| 2021-01-31 | Aether: P2P Self-Governing Communities | 0x64 | 3 | 1 |
| 2021-03-16 | Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities | arunc | 18 | 0 |
| 2021-12-28 | Aether: Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities | RF_Savage | 3 | 0 |
| 2022-09-08 | Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities | pyinstallwoes | 4 | 0 |
| 2023-01-23 | Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities | FireInsight | 3 | 2 |
| 2025-11-20 | Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities | udev4096 | 1 | 0 |