tinyweb-forum

A decentralized link-sharing forum for TinyWeb. Share URLs and discuss them with other TinyWeb instances over the Reticulum mesh. No accounts, no sign-up, no central server.

Install

pip install tinyweb-forum

Enable the forum in TinyWeb's customize page (/style).

Development

git clone https://git.derickphan.com/lichenblankie/tinyweb-forum
pip install -e .

How it works

• Each TinyWeb instance stores forum threads and posts in its own forum.db
• Instances auto-discover each other on the mesh via RNS announces — no manual setup
• You click "sync now" to exchange content; auto-sync every 5 minutes is optional (toggle on moderation page)
• At scale, sync uses epidemic gossip: each cycle picks 20 random peers instead of all peers, converging within ~O(log N) cycles
• Authors are identified by a short pseudonymous hash (no names, no accounts)
• No global server, no algorithms, no tracking

Features

• Threads — share a URL or start a discussion with text
• Replies — reply to threads, with inline URL extraction and "+ save" links
• Upvotes — toggle upvote/downvote, scores propagate via sync
• Edit — edit your own threads (new version syncs to peers)
• Retract — retract your own threads and posts (retraction signal gossips to peers)
• Peer discovery — instances share known peers during sync, growing the network organically

Moderation

All moderation is local — you control your view:

• Block author — [block] link on posts and thread meta hides all content from that identity across your instance
• Auto-block — when 3+ of your peers have blocked the same identity, it's auto-blocked for you too (threshold is 3)
• Mute thread — hide a thread from the listing
• Keyword filters — hide threads matching keywords
• Instance sync — choose which peers to sync with; unsync at any time

Sync

• Instances auto-discover each other via RNS announces — just run the forum and any other forum on the mesh finds you
• Content is exchanged as JSON over RNS links
• Manual by default — click "sync now" on the forum listing or moderation page
• Auto-sync every 5 minutes can be enabled on the moderation page
• Auto-discovery can also be disabled on the moderation page (manual instance add only)
• Peer discovery propagates through gossip — each instance shares its known peers during sync
• Block lists and retractions are gossiped alongside content
• Only new/updated content is transferred (timestamp-based)
• When >20 peers, each cycle syncs with a random 20 — content converges epidemically

Storage

• Threads older than 30 days are auto-pruned (configurable on the moderation page)
• Set retention to 0 to keep everything indefinitely
• Forum DB is stored at ~/.tinyweb/forum.db