tinyweb-forum

A decentralized link-sharing forum for TinyWeb. Share URLs and discuss them with other TinyWeb instances over the Reticulum mesh.

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 sync content with each other over RNS every 5 minutes
• 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)

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 (configurable threshold)
• 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

• Forum instances auto-discover each other via RNS announces
• Content is exchanged as JSON over RNS links every 5 minutes
• Peer discovery propagates through gossip — each instance shares its known peers
• At scale (>20 peers), sync uses random gossip: each cycle picks 20 random peers instead of all peers
• This ensures content converges epidemically regardless of network size (content reaches all nodes within ~O(log N) cycles)
• Block lists and retractions are gossiped alongside content
• Only new/updated content is transferred (timestamp-based)
• Auto-discovery can be disabled in the moderation page

Storage

• Threads are pruned after 30 days by default (configurable in moderation page)
• Set retention to 0 to keep everything indefinitely