Network Notes: This app uses Google for web hosting and domain management. View the source (view-source: https://www.asveora.social) to verify these statements!
IT IS TIME TO DIRECT YOUR DIGITAL LIFE!
No more crippling overreliance on proprietary and centralized online services. No more invasive ads and promos. No more stressful, unproductive, and chaotic conversations. No more just wishing things could be different. It is time to start making things different!
What Is Asveora?
Asveora (pronounced As·vee·o·ra) is an intricate digital network that operates on the unique model of a Decentralized Democratic Constitutional Republic (DDCR) and seeks to combat the glaring faults of centralized social media platforms that have become increasingly more visible in the wake of late-stage web 2. Staying appropriately cautious of web 3’s development, Asveora takes things back to the eras of early web 2 and late-stage web 1 in order to re-establish a sense of tech literacy, self-sustainability, and creative freedom. It looks to help individuals construct a healthier relationship with technology, foster a welcoming democratic digital society, and bring out creativity!
What Are Its Goals?
To not become another Reddit, Twitter, 4chan, Discord, Facebook, Friendster, Amino, Instagram, or some other waking social network nightmare. With that being the overaching goal of the project, there are six major goals that Asveora has set out to accomplish. Select one of the six options below to explore!
How Does It Work?
No longer do you have to worry about an online centralized nightmare of a
service doing everything for you and holding your digital life in limbo.
Asveora works by putting all the control in the hands of each Asveoran,
ranging from the way that they connect with others to the way that they
display content. The networks model starts with the means of giving an
Asveoran a digital presence (known as a “profile space”) and scales
upwards from there. Every Asveoran has their own profile space. In order
to generate a profile space, there must first exist something known as a
wheelcore.
A wheelcore functions as a designated digital neighborhood
where users are given plots of land. On those plots of land they can build
their houses, gardens, etc. Those plots of land are the profile spaces and
what is built on those plots of land is the content of those profile
spaces. With those profile spaces come the first component of the Asveora
User ID (AUID) which is the Asveora Profile Address (APA). It is easy for one to think
of the Asveora Profile Address as the home address of a specific piece of property in a
given neighborhood.
Wheelcores exist as root domains (top-level domains with their
second-level domains) and sometimes come bundled with web hosting
depending on the domain registrar. Profile spaces exist as sub-domains and
often use the web hosting of the domain registrar that the wheelcore’s
domain is registered with. However, users are free to pick services for
web hosting that are different than their wheelcore’s, assuming their
wheelcore comes with web hosting.
Wheelcores can be as small one person
and as big as an infinite number of persons depending on limitations of
the chosen domain registrar and how many people a wheelcore’s residents
are okay with having. Users then select one of the communication protocols
supported by Asveora and link a communication protocol account to their
profile space thus giving them the ability to both communicate with others
and publish content. Unique information from the protocol account is
combined with a color ID system that forms the second component of the
AUID which is the Asveora Profile Code (APC). The Asveora User ID is used
to by Asveorans to identify one another and keep the state of the network secure.
Wheelcores, communities, and content can be discovered throughout the
network with the utilization of landhubs (short for “landing hubs”) which
act as centers of exploration. Landhubs are web apps that serve as search
engines for wheelcores and communities while also offering neat features
such as event boards, landing pages, news boards, featured content boards,
and more! Every landhub runs its own data base or mirrors another.
Landhubs function like mix of a web browser with a search engine and can
be likened to a city where all the businesses, services, and activities
are.
Groups of landhubs can connect together thus forming a system.
Systems are collections of landhubs that may share similar policies,
interests, content, or other fragments of information and function similar
to states or provinces. Groups of systems can connect together thus
forming a federation. Federations are the largest entities of Asveora
which can be made up of wheelcores, landhubs, and systems. This means that
they are a more sophisticated version of what a system is, featuring a
more complex digital ecosystem and can be likened to what a country is in the real world.
One of the most interesting characteristics of Asveora is the infinite
amount of ways which these classes of digital entities can interconnect or
exist a part from one another. Wheelcores can be set up in the structure
of a ring (in the manner of web rings), a wheel and spoke, or a mixed ring
and spoke model. They can exist independent of landhubs just like how
landhubs can exist independent of systems and systems can exist
independent of federations. With this in mind, an Asveoran and their
profile space have the ability to transfer to another wheelcore, use
various landhubs, switch systems, or even move to a completely different
federation. And just as an Asveoran can freely move about, so can
wheelcores, landhubs, systems, federations, and other network entities.
The way in which Asveora grows and organizes itself is wholly dependent
upon its inhabitants. Security of the network is handled in a plethora of
ways including relay warning systems, the usage of communication protocols
with optional end-to-end encryption, clearance checkpoints, common log
channels, local archive support, open mirroring policies, etc. Remember that Asveora is
all about you, the Asveoran!
More about Asveora
These next few sections are dedicated to discussing more details about Asveora. If you were hoping to learn more about how the network came to be or were looking for some frequently asked questions, then read on! If not then consider selecting the join button above!
How Did It All Start?
The seed of Asveora was planted in the summer of 2016 when AmzroSevca
(pronounced Am·zro·sehv·cah), the founder of Asveora, was exploring the
then new frontiers of Amino Apps and Discord. Both apps were founded
around the mid-2010s and many different people used both. Discord seemed
to be the modern sequel to IRC in its functionality and Amino Apps seemed
like a promising combination of Reddit and Tumblr with a little bit of Kik
sprinkled in for good measure. And while this was not AmzroSevca’s first
encounter with social media apps or social networking platforms, this was
arguably their first major encounter. Prior to the 2010s the only exposure
they had consisted of platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and
various forum board based communities.
As AmzroSevca used Amino Apps and
Discord throughout the years, things got worse and they began to watch as
what was once thought to be minor issues with the apps became glaring
faults. And they began to notice that these issues were not only unique to
just those two platforms, but most mainstream social media applications
and platforms.
There was no way for the average user to make a considerable change
because everything was proprietary, locked down, and incredibly opaque. On
different occasions they tried to find ways to make custom clients for
both platforms and even looked into reverse engineering them but failed
repeatedly. Custom clients either were incredibly hard to make or were
outright banned by the owners of each platform. As Discord began to pick
up steam in the late 2010s, Amino Apps began to tank. AmzroSevca witnessed
as one platform fell into the depths of hell while the other seemed to be
rising to the heights of heaven.
While one could argue that a shift in the
demographics of each platforms’ user base was a part of the changing
quality, many of the changes that turned Amino Apps from a promising
frontier to an abandoned wasteland came from the office. And while the
changes that lead Discord to its fame came from the office as well, it was
clear that any changes that were to be made in any situation on these
kinds of platforms could only come from the office. Users were completely
at the mercy of those who they had ignorantly given their data, content,
time, and connections to. Unwanted update after unwanted update left Amino
Apps crippled, directionless, and hollow.
Those running the platform were not listening to the cries of the user
base and eventually the original developers made a break for it. The
platform eventually saw its original founder jump ship and new management
moved in. Discord on the other hand, while still rising in its popularity,
became more apparent with how little control the end user had. And as the
late 2010s were concluding and the 2020s were beginning, it became more
widely known in casual tech circles that Discord was little more than
another centralized nightmare that was beginning to enforce questionable
policies on user created apps and continuing to uphold a stance that
banned the creation of alternative clients or the customizing of its
official one in anyway. Even something as simple as changing the colors of
the interface were prohibited (which eventually became a paywalled Nitro feature).
Eventually issues of horrible support team
response times, waving off of critical problems, automated bans,
pay-walling of basic features, disdain for federation, drama surrounding
vanity links, constant ill-fated side projects, and more features being
added than needed became more prevalent than ever. And while this may
sound horrific, Amino Apps was twice if not thrice as worse. It had a
painful downfall as it introduced micro-transactions, shoved invasive ads
into the mix, refused to fix its metadata leaks, allowed a dangerous
amount of geolocation sharing, added unnecessary features to stalk the app
usage of others, etc.
AmzroSevca was largely involved with Amino until 2018 when their activity
on the platform began to taper off and they became more involved with
using Discord. While they interacted with all of the other major social
media platforms such as Facebook, Reddit, Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram,
Snapchat, etc., to different degrees during the 2010s, they were also
exploring alternatives such as Minds, Pillowfort, Okuna Social (originally
Open Book), Aether, Spectrum, Matrix, Ripcord, Ruqqus, Revolt, Rocket
Chat, FineFriends, Lemmy, Steemit, and many others. Over the years they
made countless communities alongside digital ecosystems as they
progressively became more familiar with the construction of online
communities and even became an investor in Okuna Social before it
tragically collapsed.
Eventually in the summer of 2020 they completely
renounced their involvement with mainstream platforms after witnessing the
repeated missteps of YouTube and struggling to build a stable channel. It
was not the epicenter of the earthquake, but it was rather the final straw
that broke the camel’s back. During the late summer and into the fall,
AmzroSevca called it quits with Discord and moved to Matrix while also
quitting YouTube and moving to a then new video hosting alternative known
as LBRY.TV which is now more popularly known as Odysee. Moving to Matrix
and inviting a few friends along they made a small but lively
community.
Fast forward to the summer of 2021 and things are looking wildly
different. The development of Matrix’s child client, Element (which
AmzroSevca had interfaced with in 2016 along with Aether), had seemingly
flat-lined and one of the biggest game-changing features was never given a
definitive release date. Many people became impatient and the community
disbanded in the summer of 2021 after a disastrous experiment that
involved bridging Matrix to Discord for an E3 2021 event. Part of the
disgruntlement came from the lack luster participation from Discord’s end and the
general disappointment surrounding E3 2021, but most of it came from the
unknown release date of this feature that was supposed to push Element
beyond Discord in terms of featured capabilities and interface
flexibility.
During that same summer, LBRY.TV became irrelevant as its
successor, Odysee, took the stage with some web 3 integrations which
changed the style of the platform. Going into the fall of 2021, AmzroSevca
returned to both Discord and YouTube, despite the issues that both
possessed, in order to focus on their own creative endeavors. However
after operating primarily on Discord for another year, AmzroSevca decided
that it was time for a change after once again growing weary of the way
that Discord operated by the summer of 2022. After revisiting Amino Apps
simply to see how far downhill things had gone since the upheaval of the
late 2010s, they began work on Asveora and sought to make it an open
source version of the terribly dead app.
However what started out as an
Amino Apps successor project soon became a thing of its own and Asveora
transformed into a social network that upheld security, privacy, and
decentralization. By 2023 Asveora was something entirely different. It was
now a complex digital network with an emphasis on making individuals more
technologically independent while also offering an environment to build a
democratic and open source digital universe.
How Does Asveora Make Money?
Simple! It doesn’t. The day that Asveora generates money will be the day that everything ceases to exist. It is not a service and it never will be. Asveorans manage their own digital property. They are given a wide variety of ways to get their content on the internet and keep it there. Being a part of Asveora can cost as little or as much as an Asveoran wants since they determine what client, registrar, hosting service, servers, comment system, etc., that they want to use. For instance if a user joins an existing wheelcore that has web hosting services bundled in with the domain services (which most do), then they most likely will have to pay nothing out of pocket unless the wheelcore defines a split-payment policy to fund the registration and storage of the wheelcore. Chances are, the wheelcore owner will pay for the hosting services and root domain, but every wheelcore has details about how it operates on its core site so be sure to read them. Asveora does not sell the data of its members, have corporate investors, rely on obtuse subscription plans, or function on any monetary scheme and it never will.
Who Owns Asveora?
Asveorans own Asveora. No single figure owns it since it is composed of digital content made, maintained, and shared by the individuals who make up the network. Asveora operates on a system of common collective ownership. The open source values surrounding web objects and other digital content encourages a strong sense of digital socialism that gets everyone involved, ensuring that no single entity begins monetizing the experience of the network which Asveorans have constructed. It will be forever a group effort.
Who Made Asveora?
Asveora was and is made by Asveorans. The network was drafted up by AmzroSevca in 2022 and all of the initial design work was done by them. However, Asveorans collectively develop and maintain Asveora so no single person has made Asveora what it is today.
