Decentralized Social Network

A: The question itself assumes a binary opposition, that social networks have only two choices: to be either anti-censorship or not. We think this assumption is overly simplistic and extreme, so we won't simply answer yes or no. Our stance on censorship is that there should be no censorship in the private domain, but in the public domain, everyone should abide by the relevant laws and regulations of their countries.

Specifically for epress, point-to-point communication between nodes should not be subject to censorship, regardless of the content you publish, as long as there are nodes willing to receive it and you take responsibility for your speech. For example, if your node is hosted in the United States and you use it to publish drug sales information that violates local laws, you are aware of the consequences, and until being discovered, no one has the right to interfere with your continued dissemination of this information. This is the meaning of no censorship in the private domain.

In the public domain, such as pushing node information to public networks like epress.world, certain rules and laws must be followed, just as in real-world public places. Although third-party service nodes like epress.world are positioned as public networks, they are still bound by the laws of the website administrator and the server's location. For example, piracy is explicitly prohibited in almost all countries, so storing and distributing pirated content on servers is illegal. Similarly, the laws of many countries explicitly prohibit the dissemination of child pornography, violent and bloody content, which are not in line with the progress of social civilization. Therefore, moderate censorship is necessary in the public domain to maintain network order and public interest.

In conclusion, regarding censorship, epress depends on each individual user, while epress.world will abide by relevant laws of the administrators and the country where the server is located. This is our basic stance on censorship.

A: Yes, before epress, there have been several decentralized social networks, including Diaspora and Mastodon, which gained widespread attention. Bluesky, founded by Twitter's Jack Dorsey, and his support for Nostr are particularly notable. However, decentralized social networks are not a new concept. Prior to Jack Dorsey's founding of Bluesky, various solutions such as Diaspora and Mastodon had already gained fame.

Returning to the question, they are not our competitors but rather partners in exploring the path towards decentralizing social networks. We are exploring different directions to achieve the goal of truly decentralized social networks, and we have great respect for all teams dedicated to this goal.

A: Quoted revisions can be used, which involves quoting the original text to be revised, making the necessary changes, and then re-signing and sending it back to the network. This is similar to amending contracts in real life by covering the old content with new content and re-signing to make it effective.

A: No, you don't. epress only uses Ethereum accounts for user authentication and does not involve any on-chain operations, so you don't need to spend ETH.

A: Yes, this is an open-source software, but the source code has not yet been released. This is a decentralized network that relies on an efficient and stable protocol for operation. Currently, the protocol that supports the operation of the epress network, the epress world protocol (EWP), is in the early draft stage and may have significant and disruptive changes. Therefore, we are primarily inviting early users to participate on an invitation-only basis. We plan to gradually expand the size of the beta testing user base, and as the user base grows, we will gradually discover and solve problems until the EWP reaches a relatively stable state. At that time, we will release the stable EWP protocol and epress source code. During the beta testing period, we will cover all costs, including domain names, virtual servers, bandwidth, etc. All users who participated in the beta testing period can seamlessly migrate their personal data to private servers after the source code is open for download.

A：Maintaining your own server and giving up the use of personal data or accepting advertisements are mutually exclusive options. Everything comes with a cost, it's just that the form of payment is different.

A: epress has two layers of protection to ensure node security. Firstly, professional firewalls, such as Cloudflare, are available on the market and can meet the security needs of most users. In simple terms, the node is hidden behind the firewall and security is managed by a third party. Secondly, even if the firewall is breached and the node is hacked, there is no need to worry as the node does not have usernames, passwords, or sensitive information that could be leaked. To impersonate and publish information to followers, an Ethereum wallet signature is required, but the Ethereum private key is stored offline, so intruders cannot impersonate and publish any information to followers. Private information is encrypted with high strength by default, and intruders cannot read it. Therefore, in the event of a firewall breach, the worst-case scenario is that protected content that should only be accessible to high-level nodes is viewed by intruders without authorization. There will be no sensitive information leakage or impersonation issues.