Aether

Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities Open source, self-governing communities with auditable moderation and mod elections

Ephemeral

It keeps 6 months of posts by default. It's gone after. If something is worth keeping, someone will save it within six months — but not from beyond that. If you screw up, argue for the wrong opinion, and then think otherwise, that's okay. No one is going to come after you — it gives you the freedom to be wrong, and move on.

Privacy-sensitive

It's peer-to-peer, and it has no servers. It's privacy sensitive because of that, source IP of any specific public post cannot (easily) be determined. Aether is private by default, so that you can choose to be fully private, or fully public yourself. Most people use pseudonyms, though you can use your real name, or company.

Transparent

Actions of moderators are visible to users. No content can just 'disappear', if something gets deleted, you'll know who did it, why they did it, and if you want, how to get it back. Everyone watches the watchmen. Moderation is important for healthy communities, and Aether adds onto it some checks-and-balances.

Democratic

Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. If a mod behaves inappropriately, users can disable that mod locally as well. Doing so reverts all changes by that moderator for the user, and counts for one impeachment vote.