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

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