Look into https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/
this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2026
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I have built a network that can be used for that, the tenfingers sharing network. It's completely decentralised, and each user can host or share its own webpage/presence.
HMU if you try something.
PS. It solves 'the offline user' among other things, and would be perfect for a distributed social network.
You may want to lookup Freenet(Hyphanet) first.
The main problem here is persistance. Most users are on machines that get turned off. I could kinda see it for chat. If you think about walkie talkies people on on or not. A chat where each instance was a user would be like that. You get on and participate or not. CB's even have channels yeah.
I did not mean to run locally. Every user has to deploy somewhere (like Hetzner) with public domain, tls, etc. Deployment should be simplified with a single command. But still the user has to create an account, buy a domain and needs to be somewhat familiar with command line.
Sounds like a good idea if you want to have around 5 active users.
Sorry for the sarcasm but I don't like the idea that only people privileged with a VPS can join.
No worries :) it is very likely true. Alternatively I could think of a managed option where each user has an instance in a separate container with separate sqlite database and with different subdomain.
The main problem here is persistance. Most users are on machines that get turned off.
This! It only works if you have a server that's online 24/7. Can be a VPS in a data centre, can be some Raspberry Pi running at your home with a DNS name pointing to it.
I think the idea is perfectly fine and if you want to learn more about these apps and about designing decentralized architecture then you should try it out!
I'm personally a fan of the "dumb pipe smart endpoint" microservice style of approach.
It does have client/server separation but allows all processing, authentication, etc to be done on the users device with servers basically acting as relays for routing that cant access any actual information and Id love to see it used more but for a variety of non-technical reasons, I doubt it
If your interested I'd love to chat more about either of these concepts :v
The difficulty is always groups, trustworthiness, and what to do when people are offline.
If there are no groups, everyone has to be their own mod. The amount of shit will quickly overwhelm any one persons abilities to deal with, so people will share their blocklists.
This recreates similar structures to what we have now, except the moderation power is even less transparent. (Ask your local email admin how much fun it is to get un-blacklisted)
I was thinking more like WhatsApp / Signal in the beginning with individual and group chats.
Im replying to your reply of another person. I have to say what they describe is exactly what I would like to see. sharing and even subscribing to blocklists. Sure its a recreation of a similar structure but thats fine because the user controls it and the transparency thing to me is not an issue because again the user controls it. I really don't see an issue in what they said. That being said I think I looked into nostr before and might again. Honestly I think keeping track of the key is the main thing.
You should check out Nostr and its keypair and relays architecture
Thank you, will look into it.
Gotosocial is basically that.
I ended up going with akkoma for my instance, its not just for single user setups but its simpler then mastodon with more customizability.
Nostr is also something you might want to look into, its a pretty neat system.
Sounds almost but not quite like what holos is working on
Also to answer your question, there are other projects that exist that offer a better single-user instance experience (gotosocial comes to mind). But unless you can make the setup as easy as installing an app on your phone, actually running a single-user instance will still be something for hobbyists and enthusiasts. Far be it from me to dissuade someone from starting a project, I'm the proud owner of two partial activitypub server implementations myself, but unless you're doing it for fun I'd suggest contributing to an existing project instead.
Thank you, will check holos.
Setup is my biggest concern...