This post is written on https://normals.me/ and delivered to !fediverse@lemmy.world over #ActivityPub, so if you are reading it the basic plumbing works. Now let me explain what is this.
Normals is a forum with communities, threads, and questions with an accepted answer. It is a single instance, not software you can host, and the core is closed for anti-abuse reasons. The federation module will be published separately with implementation notes (FEP-67ff).
What federates today Every community is a Group actor following the Lemmy model (FEP-1b12). Follow @selfhosted@normals.me or any other community from Lemmy, PieFed, Mbin or Mastodon.
Posts and comments go both ways. Replies from your instance appear in the thread on Normals, replies from Normals go back to the origin.
Remote content is labelled with its origin, links back to it, and is never copied. Media loads from the source.
Signed fetches, so it works with instances that require authorized fetch. NodeInfo 2.1 is up.
Policies, in case they matter to you, it has no ads, and no paid reach, and of course no AI training on posts. AI crawlers blocked by default, public mod log with reasons, and no automated removals. Numbers at https://normals.me/transparency so please take a look.
If something from your instance shows up wrong here, or something from here shows up wrong on yours, reply with the URL and I’ll fix it. Andy Piper mentioned NodeBB uses the same group model, if anyone runs a NodeBB instance I’d like to test against it, if possible.
I hope we all have fun. Cheers!
Am I right in taking it as sort of a stackexhange alternative?
Hello! Good luck!
It’s weird running these things. Why was running a Lemmy or Piefed instance not right for your taste, if I may ask?
If your “anti-abuse” security requires your software to be closed source, then your software is not secure. Well built software can be open source, and still secure.
You imply that your code could not prevent abuse if it was known, so, no offense, but that code must be pretty bad!
I like the fediverse because it distributes power. I, as a user, have the power to choose my instance, choose my moderation, choose the structure that my social interactions are built upon (threads based, microblogs, etc) and if I dont like something, I have the power to change it. Thats why open source is such a perfect fit to that model. Closed source federation then, sounds to me like you didnt get it.
Added the “make no mistakes” to the prompt, but forgot the “make it secure”. Rookie mistake.
closed source and symmetric blocking. two strikes.
Symmetric blocking?
when you are blocked, you can’t respond. it’s how twitter, Facebook, and new reddit blocking works. it’s a great way to stop people from correcting misinformation, since they can’t see it when logged in, and couldn’t respond even if they could see it.
Ah yeah I’m aware of that anti-feature, though I hadn’t heard it called that before. Did OP mention that, though? I don’t see it in their post.
Hi, I got a couple questions that aren’t answered on your transparency page yet.
- Has AI been used to create this?
- Two AI communities are on top of your communities list. Your terms talk about preventing AI scraping, yet your platform seems to welcome “AI founders”. How does this go together?
- Where is the source code?
- Your terms talk about monetization through Normals Plus. Can you elaborate on this?
Has AI been used to create this?
Do you really need to ask? 😅
Please read the comment above.
Do I use AI to do everything? No, as a software engineer with over 15 years of experience in the industry, you can’t let AI do all the work any developer knows that at this point? It messes things up all the time, ignores design patterns, ignores best practices, writes code stupidly cloning functions already exists, ignores SOLID, ignores security vulnerabilities, and so on. But I did use it to run unit tests, integration tests, perform performance and speed tests, and even to hack my own app.
The communities are random, there’s no fixed order in them. Besides, they’re mirrored of other existing communities. As you can see, they come from other sources like Mastodon based on the hashtags.
Regarding the plus feature, it’s a way for users to decorate their profiles. I planned as source of income to maintain the project, otherwise, the project wouldn’t exist, unfortunately I would need to pay for the serves to host the app, the DB backups, the infrastructure, pipelines, buckets, well if you are developer you might understand how a platform actually works. But nothing is implemented yet, nor will it be in the near future regarding the plus.
It is a real shame that people think that this is vibecoded, without prior experience working as a developer and I am saying this because it more than enough to hit F12 and check the network tab, and the weird thing for me is that people judge because how it looks, but this is what the CSS Framework https://tailwindcss.com/ offers. However I appreciate your comment and I hope I answered your questions.
If you think choosing tailwind forces you into a certain style of website, you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
And you clearly haven’t just used AI for tests. I wonder if the source is closed because you know how obviously AI generated it would look if it was open source?
Why does your comment smell of elitism?
Yeah, it would be better if the code was FOSS. But at least it was released, the author seems to know the important parts of AP integration and is asking for constructive feedback. This is one million times better than developers who keep their purely organic, 100% fair trade software projects in a virtual shelf for fear of being criticized.
Is it elitism to call out vibe coding now? What a world.
Not to mention that their understanding of what tailwind is seems patchy at best, despite claiming that they have 15 years of experience.
The elitism is in thinking that using AI for some parts of the application (the frontend) nullifies the whole project.
I very much doubt the AI use is confined to the frontend. But I don’t see why the frontend is fine to vibe code while other stuff is not?
Using AI as a tool is fine. It can be very useful for programming. But “vibe coding” is using it to an extreme degree where the AI is producing almost the whole thing, with a very small amount of guidance or design from the user. That’s what I would object to. Such a thing has very little value, anyone can vibe code such a thing.
I very much doubt the AI use is confined to the frontend.
We can only be sure if/when they open the backend code.
why the frontend fine to vibe code while other stuff is not?
Many reasons:
- frontend code has a lot less variability than backend
- users already expect some common UI/UX, and AI has been trained on these so much that it rarely gets the basics wrong.
- UI code is not part of the core business
- buggy frontends may be bad to users, but they are a lot less likely to cause catastrophic errors in the whole system.
- lots of developers do not care about frontend and think that it’s s just about “making it pretty”, so they are happy to delegate this work to a clanker.
Tailwind it’s a utility first framework with no pre built components, I think you are the one that does not know what are you saying, you build whatever you want and can fully customize the theme that’s literally the point of it, and it’s in the official docs.
On the AI and closed source speculation, the auth, signatures, permissions, input handling is standard and went through an OWASP review before launch I said it before. I said I used AI for unit tests, integration tests, performance work, and even to attack my own app. I did not say I let it write the product. After 15+ years writing software, most of us already know AI still ignores SOLID, duplicates existing functions, and introduces security issues if you hand it the whole job. But you’re free to dislike the design or the decision to keep the anti-abuse parts private. The transparency page is public if you want the actual policies and review status instead of the theory.
Again, if you don’t like the UI or think this is all robots, you can always join X, Reddit, or any other platform that steals your data and helps big corporations, or you can develop your own and invite me, but for that you need to be developer first. I thought people were different in the Fediverse.
Its strange how hostile people are being. And people are assuming everything is vibecoded at this point.
Even if it was completely vibecoded, who cares? It’s another funnel to bring people into the Fediverse. You don’t need to use it yourself, just be glad that there’s more ways to get people in here. It’s a different design with different UX, there’s always the chance that this will hook people who didn’t enjoy Lemmy/PieFed/Mbin/etc. The more the merrier.
I’m in the same position, I mean, I worked really hard to get MVP done, and I’m just a full stack developer, with 15 years of experience in the industry, and they say it’s vibecoded because the UI looks well done haha. That’s amazing, but in certain way I see it funny to be honest. It feels more like people those haters tried, failed and they have nothing better but attack XD.
I told one of them, ok, try to create one and see how it goes. An AI cannot do what it has been done here that’s why it is so ridiculous when they say it is vibecoded.
the ui looks extremely generic, like everything llms spit out. and no, i’ve not tried to create my own fediverse software. you don’t have to be a director to critique a movie.
Polish law requires the operator of a web service to include the following information on it:
- Full legal/registered business name
- Registered address
- Identification numbers (such as NIP, REGON, or KRS entry for Polish businesses)
- Direct contact details (email/phone)
Failing to provide this means your TOS and Privacy Policy are unenforceable.
Thanks, noted. Operator details will be added once the business registration is done.
.me is Montenegro, not Poland.
The privacy policy mentions the page is from Poland and references Polish law though.
ACK !
Closed source and clearly completely vibe coded? Just look at the site, it reeks of AI. Even this post has so much AI-speech.
Yea, no thanks.
It’s a shame you see it this way, Andy Piper disagrees but you’re free to think as you wish, it’s an open forum :)
In fact, the UI is purely Tailwind, and the design is based on the best of each platform. I’m sorry if you don’t like the Tailwind CSS. But it’s the framework I know best. I considered Bootstrap, but honestly, it felt too rigid. Thanks for the comment any way :)
who, or what, is “andy piper”?
He’s watching. Do not speak to andy piper, andy piper speaks to you only if he wishes.
Andy Piper is the new Ronnie Pickering
tailwind doesn’t have the centered highlights, on container borders, but every vibecoded site does.
if the core is closed for the stated reason, does that mean you are unsure about the safety of the system?
Good question, however the security model doesn’t depend on the code being secret, and it shouldn’t. The auth, signatures, permissions and input handling are standard and went through an OWASP review before launch.
What’s closed is the anti-abuse layer, spam, rate-limit tuning, the signals for detecting ban evasion and coordinated accounts. Those work partly because spammers don’t know the exact numbers. Lemmy’s and Mastodon’s are public and they get played for exactly that reason. Hope it helps :)
Nothing stops those being adjustable tunables.
Yes. They could just not set them at all in the published source, and just set them in their deployment. They are at least dishonest about the reasons for keeping the source closed, which is sad.
not really, no.
Hello from RetroLemmy! Always fun to see a new platform join in
Yay! Thank you, I appreciate the comment! It seems to work!
Also hi from Retrofed! Welcome to federation.
hi from jlai.lu!
Just popping in to say hi :3
Hi!
But what if I can’t? 😢
Hi from Fedia.io!
https://activitypub.space/ run a NodeBB, maybe you can ask to test against them?
