on being anonymous
I am convinced that having the option of anonymous speech is extremely valuable to the modern development of free culture and society.
When people do not have to fear personal repercussion, they can reveal corruptions and admit truths they otherwise never would. Their words are insightful and stupid, convincing and hurtful, hilarious and ridiculous. It's fun!
Nearly all forums and social networking platforms use the same pseudonymous username/password system, and nearly all of them have the same problems with drama, sockpuppets, and egotistical mods. Sometimes the price is worth it, and sometimes it is not.
I think people should have the option to interact with others anonymously if they wish, and further should always have the choice to filter or entirely block anonymously submitted content (or anything else!). I want people to decide for themselves what they see, not anyone else.
There are several online platforms that support anonymity, usually through a web browser, but most have terribly inefficient code, and their actual anonymity is unreliable. Logs of IP addresses are kept routinely, available for any admin (or anyone else who gains access to the server) to peruse.
I think we can do better.
the hydrus network
So! I'm developing a program that helps people manage their files together anonymously. I want to help you do what you want with your stuff, and that's it. You can share tags and files with other people, but you don't have to connect to anything if you don't want to. The default is no sharing. I don't plan to ever record metrics on users, nor serve ads, nor charge for my software.
There are a number of new concepts involved, and it can get as complicated as you like. If you are totally new to the idea of personal media collections and tagging, I advise you start slow, walk through the getting started guides, and experiment doing different things. You'll be importing thousands of files and applying tens of thousands of tags in no time.
The client is chiefly a file database. It manages your media far better than an explorer window or some online gallery. Here's a screenshot of one of my test installs with a very general search:
As well as the client, there is also a server that anyone can run to store files or tags for sharing between many users. I run a tag service with several million tags that you are welcome to access and contribute to.
I'm working on adding peer-to-peer anonymous communication.
statement of principles
- No speech should be outlawed.
- Everyone should be able to control their own media diet.
- Computer data and network logs should be absolutely private.
None of the above are currently true, but I would love to live in a world where they were. My software is an attempt to move us a little closer.
I try to side with the person over the authority, the distributed over the centralised. I still use gmail and youtube just like pretty much everyone, but I would rather be using different systems, especially in ten years. No one seemed to be making what I wanted, so I decided to do it myself, and here we are.
I'd like to eventually set up a paypal/kickstarter-similar way for people to gibe moni plos, but it'll be totally voluntary.
license
These programs are free software. They come without any warranty, to the extent permitted by applicable law. You can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License, Version 2, as published by Sam Hocevar. See http://sam.zoy.org/wtfpl/COPYING for more details.
Do what the fuck you want to with my software, and if shit breaks, DEAL WITH IT.