- Authentication: Fallback to GitHub's own signup/login flow..
- Identities and User Profiles: Users will be identified by their GitHub usernames, and their GitHub profiles act as their social profiles.
- Each group is a GitHub repository.
- The repo name represents the group name.
- The repo description can act as a tagline or group summary.
- Public vs. Private Groups:
- Public Repos → Open groups anyone can see.
- Private Repos → Invite-only groups.
- Each channel is a GitHub issue inside a repository.
- The issue title represents the channel/topic name.
- The issue description acts as the pinned message or purpose of the channel.
- Labels can categorize issues into topics (e.g., "General", "Events", "Announcements").
- Pinned Issues can be used for important or sticky posts.
- Users comment on issues to interact, similar to chat messages in a channel.
- Reactions (👍, 👎, ❤️) can be used as a lightweight engagement mechanism (like upvotes/downvotes).
- GitHub Discussions (if enabled) can be used for more structured conversations, like threaded conversations in platforms like Discord/Slack.
- Admins: Repo owners and collaborators.
- Moderators: People with write access, who can label, close, and lock issues.
- Members: Anyone with read/write permissions in the repo.
- Guests: Users with read access only.
For private groups, access control is handled via GitHub Teams (if an organization) or by manually inviting collaborators.
- Users can create new issues (channels) for topics.
- Users can comment on issues to discuss topics.
- Users can use Markdown formatting, attach images, and share links.
- GitHub already supports notifications via email, mobile app, and web.
- Mentions (
@username) work natively for tagging people.
- Users can "Watch" repositories to get updates on all activity.
- Users can "Subscribe" to issues to get notified about a specific channel.
To make the experience smoother, you can automate tasks:
- Auto-close old threads: A GitHub Action can auto-close inactive issues.
- Auto-label channels: Bot can categorize issues based on keywords.
- Daily digests: A bot can summarize daily/weekly activity and post it to a pinned issue.
- Use GitHub’s built-in issue search to find channels or discussions.
- Repository topics (e.g.,
social-group,tech-community) can help users discover relevant groups.
- Repos are easily clonable (
git clone https://github.com/user/repo.git), meaning anyone can create a local copy of all content. - Forking allows instant duplication, creating a new independent version of a group/channel.
- Self-hosting options: If GitHub bans or censors a repo, users can migrate to GitHub alternatives like GitLab, Codeberg, or Gitea.
- Archive options: Users can zip and share repositories as
.tar.gzor use decentralized storage (IPFS, torrents, or Arweave).
- No need for third-party identity verification (e.g., phone numbers, government IDs).
- GitHub's OAuth authentication system makes it difficult for governments to track users compared to platforms requiring phone-based logins.
- Leverages GitHub's security and authentication.
- Hosting on GitHub (a major global infrastructure provider) means takedowns attract media attention, making censorship attempts visible.
- Repositories can be mirrored on GitHub’s multiple data centers, making them resilient against government-level takedowns.
- GitHub Pages (static websites) can be used to provide read-only, decentralized information distribution.
- Search, notifications, and collaboration features are built-in.
- Markdown support, reactions, and threading available.
- No need to build a new backend.
- Private repositories allow encrypted discussions away from public view.
- GPG-signed commits allow cryptographic verification of content authenticity.
- GitHub Gists (private or public) can act as encrypted message drops.
- Open-source collaboration allows rapid migration and duplication of censored content.
- GitHub Actions can automate backups, ensuring that flagged repositories get instantly mirrored elsewhere.
- Steganographic techniques (hiding messages in code/comments) can be used to bypass censorship AI.
- Governments face legal barriers in forcing GitHub (a Microsoft-owned company) to comply with censorship requests.
- Microsoft has previously resisted mass censorship attempts (e.g., GitHub was banned in Russia and Iran, but workarounds emerged).
- Global media scrutiny makes unjustified censorship difficult since GitHub takedowns leave a digital footprint.
- Webhooks can push new content automatically to multiple locations, ensuring real-time mirroring of repositories in case of a takedown.
- Users can subscribe to RSS feeds of issues/comments, enabling alternative ways to follow discussions if GitHub gets blocked.
- Tor access: GitHub is accessible via the Tor network, adding an additional layer of anonymity.
- VPN-friendly: Most VPNs and proxies work well with GitHub, reducing geolocation-based censorship.
- No centralized moderation: Unlike traditional social platforms (e.g., Facebook, Twitter), GitHub does not proactively moderate discussions unless flagged.
- Every change is recorded: Even if an issue is deleted or edited, the full history remains available in the Git history.
- Undeletable contributions: Once a comment is fetched and stored locally, it cannot be erased retroactively.
- Diff-based monitoring: Tools like
git diffallow users to track exactly what changes are made, detecting censorship attempts.
- AI moderation tools used by governments struggle with code-based discussions.
- Obfuscation techniques (e.g., Base64 encoding, using comments inside code) allow sensitive discussions to avoid detection.
- GitHub's markdown formatting & code blocks can be used to encode messages in ways that bypass keyword-based censorship.
- ❌ Not real-time (no instant messaging)