Show HN: Bitbanter, an anonymous bitcoin-reddit-McSweeneys mashup.

http://www.bitbanter.com/

by FlailFast • 13 years ago

9 1 13 years ago

FlailFast• 13 years ago

OP and Chief Bitbanterer here. For more background on the site, click on 'pi' in the header (I hope it's a mildly entertaining read). Some other details below:

1) Built with Meteor (using Coinbase API for bitcoin transfers). Loved it, especially as a noobish web developer, but not without its challenges. Some examples: no server-side URL routing/static page model in the official packages, had some trouble with HTTP calls/callbacks, and I sincerely hope no one ever sees the horrible mess that is my home-spun single-application Twitter OAuth implementation. Most of these issues will probably resolve themselves as Meteor/I grow.

2) The lofty goal behind Bitbanter: reduce barriers between (potentially anonymous) satirists and consumers while forgoing the traditional data collection/ad model. Besides the data a user voluntarily submits, zero data collection goes on (even bitcoin amounts come straight from the blockchain). I'm not 100% opposed to Big Data, but to me there's a strong philosophical argument for unbundling content from advertising and trying something "pure."

3) The less lofty goal behind Bitbanter: I love making people laugh, and wanted a place to showcase and scale my satire. But blogs are boring, so I made this instead.

4) Yes, I'm aware that at scale there are some huge problems with the way articles are promoted (e.g. spam, someone with big pockets could push an article to the top and my whole anti-bundling-ads argument goes to shit). Still thinking through those issues, but figured they wouldn't matter as long as the site was tiny.

5) I know bitcoin elicits mixed feelings, but man, it's cool. Without bitcoin, it would have been much, much more difficult (I think impossible, but I have a small mind) to build a platform where people can post things anonymously and get value from others seamlessly (another example: reddit's bitcoin tipper bot). Even if this f(l)ails, I'm pretty excited about bitcoin's future. If nothing else, I hope my experiment gets the HN gears turning. There are more nascent bitcoin ideas on Earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy...and I'd love to see them.

Show HN: Bitbanter, an anonymous bitcoin-reddit-McSweeneys mashup.

Related Stories