Stumbled upon this (disclaimer, I'm not affiliated and don't hold any special interest):
Aether is an app you install to your computer to connect to Aether network. This network is made of different boards (forums) where people post and discuss things. On the surface, it's fairly similar to Slashdot, Metafilter, Reddit, or any other community site on the Internet.
The different thing about Aether is that it doesn't have a server somewhere. The only thing the app does is that it finds and connects to other people using Aether. In other words, it's a distributed, peer-to-peer network.
This makes it impossible to censor, and renders its users anonymous. It's useful for people concerned about privacy, or pretty much anyone who doesn't want to be watched and catalogued for every word they write on the Internet (so, pretty much everybody).
It's also temporary. Whatever you post disappears after six months. It's designed to be an ephemeral space, and it's focused on now, rather than the past. Other people can still keep copies of what you wrote, but it won't last forever in the network itself. They also won't know who you are.
Community moderated, distributed and anonymous. Almost to good to be true, but... how do you know it is actually _gewg that's posting?
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Monday July 06 2015, @01:40PM
USENET isn't completely decentralized. The technical term for it is store-and-forward. News has to be stored on a central server, and then fed to other servers, it's not like P2P where shit goes from user to user directly. If you want a local USENET feed, you need to either suck it down from an upstream server, or get a peering agreement from another. The best way to think of it is as a massive mirroring system.
Still always moving
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2015, @03:01PM
What is the difference between a locally installed server that can peer with other servers (including other locally installed servers), and a locally installed client that does the same? Apart from the word used to describe it, I'd say nothing.