#interactive content distribution platform

The Pitch

Noterook is a social platform where your content lives on YOUR computer, not mine. The server is a phonebook - it knows who you are and helps you find people, but it never stores your posts. This model has proven functional with carrion.chat after some growing pains and I think it could scale nicely to a microblogging platform.

You have a Book. It's yours. You write in it, you staple other people's posts into it, and anyone who visits your profile can flip through it and staple things they like into their own Book. Content spreads because people copy it, not because a server distributes it.

There is no algorithm. There are no engagement metrics.

How It Works

Writing You write a post. Markdown, images (hotlinked - paste a URL, we're not hosting your files), tags. No meaningful character limit. It goes in your Book and exists on your device.

Stapling You see a post you like on someone's Book. You staple it - now you have a copy in your Book. The original author is always credited and linked. Anyone who visits your Book can staple it from you. That's how content spreads: person to person, copy to copy.

If the original author deletes their account, your copy stays. Their name becomes a dead link. You own your copy. That's the deal.

Additions You can add commentary when you staple - just like a Tumblr reblog with a comment. This creates a chain: the original post, plus everyone who added something. When you staple a post, you get the whole chain as it exists at that moment. It forks naturally just like tumblr reblogs can fork.

Other people can add to the chain after you, and those additions spread through the network the same way everything else does.

Tags & Search Tags work. That's the whole selling point.

You tag your posts. When you come online, your tags are registered in the search index. When someone searches a tag, they see everyone who's currently online with matching posts. Search only shows live results - if someone's offline, their stuff is unreachable (it's on their device, which is off). This is honest. No dead ends, no ghost results.

You search, you find people, you visit their Book, you staple what you like.

Reconciliation Here's the magic: when two users interact (you visit someone's Book, you staple something, etc.), your clients silently sync in the background. Posts you see will be reconciled to live in your database ephemerally, being hosted for other people, until you log off. Posts you staple get put into your database permanently (until unstapled by you). If you already have that post, it doesn't get re-added, unless it's a fork in a chain.

Basically, you are all hosting everything for me. This not only keeps costs basically bottom-floor dirt cheap, but also means there's literally no physical way I can sell your information. The database system we are using (IndexedDB) can hold up to a couple of gigabytes of text. That's about 400 million words. You're not gonna run out of room.

This also means popular content is naturally resilient. If a thousand people stapled a post, it exists in a thousand places. It literally cannot be lost.

Following If you follow someone, you get their Book squeezed into your feed as long as they're online or as long as you've been online with them long enough to reconcile.

Moderation

You Control Your Space Your Book is yours. You decide what's in it. You can remove any addition from a chain on your copy. You can block users so their content never appears in your Book and they can never see yours.

Tombstones (The Nuclear Option) For content that is unambiguously illegal (CSAM, doxxing, etc.), admins issue a tombstone - a cryptographically signed kill order that spreads through the network the same way content does. When your client receives a tombstone, it deletes the targeted content before you ever see it. Tombstones are permanent and irreversible.

This is reserved for zero-tolerance content only. Regular moderation (harassment, spam, TOS violations) is handled through account-level actions: warnings, mutes, temp bans, permanent bans. Your stapled content survives your ban - only tombstones kill content network-wide.

Reporting When you report something, you submit a snapshot of the content as evidence. This is the only time post content touches the server. Admins review the snapshot and decide whether action is warranted.

What the Server Knows About You

Your username, avatar, and bio

That you're online right now

What tags your posts have (while you're online)

Who you've blocked (stored as hashed records - the server can enforce it but can't easily enumerate your block list)

Who you've followed (same)

Your reports and any moderation actions against you

What the Server Does NOT Know

What you've written

What you've stapled

What's in your Book

Who you interact with (reconciliation is relayed but not read)

How many staples anything has (some other numbers metric or view graph will be available in its place)

What's NOT in V1 (But Coming)

Asks - anonymous/named questions you can answer publicly

Queue/Scheduling - drip-feed posts on a timer

Sideblogs - multiple Books per account

Custom Themes - make your Book look like your weird little corner of the internet

Likes/Feed - lightweight bookmarking without stapling (a reference, not a copy)

DMs - maybe. I already built a whole chat platform, so, we'll see

Archive View - grid/calendar view of your Book history

Complex Tag Search - "show me posts tagged A and B but not C"

V1 is the core: write, staple, browse, follow, search. Everything else gets layered on once the foundation is solid.

FAQ (Anticipated)

Where do my posts go if I clear my browser? They're gone from your device. If other people stapled them, their copies still exist. You should export your Book regularly. We'll make this easy.

What if nobody has a post I'm looking for? If nobody online has it stapled, you can't find it. That's by design. The network remembers what people cared about and organically forgets what nobody saved. If you want something to survive, staple it.

Can the original author edit a post after I stapled it? No. Your staple is a snapshot. If they edit, your copy stays as it was. They can publish an updated version that people can re-staple, but your copy is yours.

Can the original author delete my copy of their post? No. Only admin-issued tombstones can remove content from your Book, and those are reserved for illegal content. Your copy is yours.

How do you handle NSFW? The server doesn't store your content, so there's nothing to police at the hosting level. NSFW posts should be tagged appropriately so people can filter, but the platform doesn't ban adult content. Content filtering (v1.1) will let you hide tags you don't want to see.

Is there an algorithm? No. Your feed is your Book, displayed chronologically. There is nothing between you and the content you chose to keep.

How do you make money? TBD. Likely a Dreamwidth-style model: optional paid accounts with cosmetic perks, no ads. The server costs are low because we're not storing anyone's content, and the content we are storing is very slim. We could run this on a 15-dollar VPS forever.

What's stopping someone from stapling my art and removing my credit? Attribution is baked into the data structure. The original author's name and link are part of the post, not a removable tag. They can't be stripped by stapling. (They could screenshot it, but that's true of literally every platform.)

The Name

It's called Noterook because Notebook + Rook the bird species.

okay im going to post this on tumbler as well cos i think its important for artists to know, if you like having control over your oc never enter a official WOD art competition like the one they have announced recently this is the big issue "Give Paradox Interactive a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to display, reproduce, distribute and publicly communicate the artwork on any platform (or list the platforms) for an unlimited duration." it gets worse " Intellectual property

By submitting your content to us you hereby grant Paradox a non-exclusive, perpetual, transferable, irrevocable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to use, modify, reproduce, publish, perform, display, distribute, make derivative works of and otherwise commercially and non-commercially exploit all content submitted by you in any manner or medium now existing or hereafter developed, without separate compensation to you or any other person or entity. "

so yep "make derivative works" = your OC belongs to us, so "cool design its ours now" transferable = that they can give to another company at any time this all includes for Ai training btw

on top of their base licensing shit that lets them sell your art or put it in books use it to advertise and never pay you a cent even if you don't win, just submitting it if you are okay with your oc being used for profit, and going uncredited by a giant company that could easily pay you if they wanted to, go a head submit... but if your not okay with that yeah don't enter the "prize" is a PDF and discord role btw

It is generally a rule in the modern media that "if you don't like it, don't interact with it" or "let people have fun" and while I personally agree with it, I think that it is still important to call out and talk about worrying trends that get a free pass because we are so taught to mind our business. We can have a discussion about the straight-in-your-face military propaganda, but we also should have a discussion about how our fellow fic writers romanticise the hell out of literal war criminals purely out of them being a conventionally attractive males. To each their own, my point is not to police what anyone enjoys, but to spark a discussion why those exact types of male characters get so much attention and why we see it as acceptable and even encourage it. I feel like with bashing and dismissing the male part of the fandom we also have to ask ourselves if by accepting that romanticization from the female part of the fandom we are willingly desensitizing ourselves to violence and mysoginy. Because oh the raging, casual mysoginy in that fandom genuinely drives me crazy. We are literally inflicting it on ourselves.

Nobody wants to be a hater, but I feel like it is important to say that disagreeing and questioning something doesn't make you a hater right away. By questioning why so many fics are based on dubious consent, breeding kinks and overall very conservative (that so happens to correlate with the increasingly conservative politics in the world), you don't turn into a hater. I think it is overlooked that once a piece of fanfiction or fanart is posted it's no longer the creator's personal business, it's a piece of media that is distributed to other people and consumed by other people. I just think it is worth asking why so many young women are lusting over these very much hyper masculine, military based characters while admittedly not knowing and not caring for the contexts. Should everyone be pressured into knowing every little thing about the fandom/character they enjoy? Absolutely not. But forming the habit of perception solely based on aesthetics, vibes or even sexual appeal is going to harm us in a long run because it goes way above just fandom matters.

m.list below 🦌 recent 🍓 ao3 🎀 archive 💌 ko-fi 🐇 faqs requests: closed for now!

all works are fictional and not a reflection of reality. I DO NOT ALLOW REPOSTS ON OTHER PLATFORMS! DO NOT REPOST OR TRANSLATE OR FEED TO AI.

The “debate me bro” playbook is simple and effective: demand that serious people engage with your conspiracy theories or extremist talking points. If they decline, cry “censorship!” and claim they’re “afraid of the truth.” If they accept, turn the interaction into a performance designed to generate viral clips and false legitimacy. It’s a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition that has nothing to do with genuine intellectual discourse. The fundamental issue with “debate me bro” culture isn’t just that it’s obnoxious, it’s that it creates a false equivalence between good-faith expertise and bad-faith trolling. When you agree to debate someone pushing long-debunked conspiracy theories or openly hateful ideologies, you’re implicitly suggesting that their position deserves equal consideration alongside established facts and expert analysis. This is exactly backwards from how the actual “marketplace of ideas” is supposed to work. Ideas don’t deserve platforms simply because someone is willing to argue for them loudly. They earn legitimacy through evidence, peer review, and sustained engagement with reality. Many of the ideas promoted in these viral “debates” have already been thoroughly debunked and rejected by that marketplace—but the “debate me bro” format resurrects them as if they’re still worth serious consideration. Perhaps most insidiously, these aren’t actually debates at all. They’re performances designed to generate specific emotional reactions for viral distribution. Participants aren’t trying to persuade anyone or genuinely engage with opposing viewpoints. They’re trying to create moments that will get clipped, shared, and monetized across social media. Kirk perfected this grift. As a recent detailed analysis of one of Kirk’s debates demonstrates, when a student showed up prepared with nuanced, well-researched arguments, Kirk immediately tried pivoting to culture war talking points and deflection tactics. When debaters tried to use Kirk’s own standards against him, he shifted subjects entirely. The goal was never understanding or persuasion—it was generating content for social media distribution. And, of course, this broader “debate me bro” culture has become so commonplace and expected online that it has now been fully industrialized into content farming.

The open source community is clashing with the OS age verification laws

“this year, Colorado lawmakers introduced a proposal to make operating systems collect users’ ages and pass them to app developers.

bill, SB26-051, had clearly been designed for commercial platforms like iOS and Android — one of numerous plans to age-gate the internet through users’ devices.

It was intended to provide information that would let developers disable age-inappropriate experiences for kids.

But as it made the rounds online, Linux laptop maker Carl Richell read the proposal with dismay.”

“Carl Richell is the founder and CEO of Denver-based System76, which also develops the Pop!_OS Linux distribution.

The law, he realized, would likely apply to his own small business.

Without the resources of a company like Apple and Google, complying with Colorado’s bill would be a major logistical headache. More broadly, Richell believed it would betray the principles of open source and limit its potential.”

He says that [about learning from open source}

“There is nothing like learning from example, and the Linux desktop is a free, open-source example of how to build an entire operating system.”

“A system that can restrict how children use it — by blocking their ability to interact with certain apps or denying them root access, both possible outcomes of an age-gating system — “breaks that.”

He worked with state legislators to adapt and change the laws

He testified at the Colorado House of Representatives

“Everyone should have access to the ability to create with a computer,” “Open-source software makes that possible. It ensures that everyone, regardless of age or background, can learn, experiment, and build at the most fundamental level.” In its original form, the bill, he warned, “unintentionally swept that world into its scope.”

open source is still alive

His work did pay off

“SB26-051 passed with an exemption he’d pushed for — excluding open-source operating systems like Linux from its rules.

“We have created a template that I hope other legislatures adopt,” Richell told The Verge.”

While it’s not a full on win, it’s something for us to be happy about

Open source and age verification has recently been at odds because of the recent age verification on the OS level laws being considered

why these laws don’t work well with open source

Michael Dolan, SVP of strategic programs at the Linux Foundation has gone record to say

“Protecting children online is absolutely important, “However, age verification mandates imposed on open source systems create new privacy risks while remaining easily circumvented. This is security theater, not improved child safety.”

New York is also considering this, with their S8102A right now in committee

Which would require “would require age assurance measures on “any desktop, laptop, smartphone, tablet, or other device” that can access content on the internet.”

Developers for the most part are unsure what they would do in the face of these laws

“The developers of open-source OS MidnightBSD, for instance, posted a significantly more adversarial response on X in February: “Until we have a better plan, we modified our license to exclude residents of California from using MidnightBSD for desktop use, effective January 1, 2027.” There’s nothing technically stopping Californians from downloading and using it anyway, but by formally banning access, the developers hope to avoid liability without changing their OS for the time being.”

“Some developers are loudly, openly defying the law.

Ageless Linux, which describes itself as “software for humans of indeterminate age,” is a conversion script for Debian that replaces the existing “birthDate” field in the user database with “a stub age verification API that returns no data.” Created in protest of the new laws, it doesn’t record any age for any user.

In addition to highlighting how easy it is to bypass age check measures in Linux”

some like Apple and META seem to be quite happy to see these things pass

Privacy advocates are already against these laws, but bringing open source into the mix causes more issues

I am not going to do very extensive deep dives on the promotional timeline and other CG related topics (as often) anymore, as I mentioned in my pinned post. The reason: I am going through a pretty difficult period in my life and I don't have as much energy to put into this, unfortunately!

Posts that you can expect from me in the future, but possibly with some delays:

1. What happened on Feb 20 exactly and what can we expect from Stranger Things promo going forward?

In my pinned post, I posed the question in the end: A puzzle needs to be solvable, so if it isn't, what's the point? The short answer: CG is not a puzzle, it's a social experiment at its core. We are data, not players. We can't win, because the fandom's (predictable) behavior is used to make a point.

2. What's wrong with the Netflix video distribution system and the platform's backend?

Lol, I really want to talk about the HTML code still, @fixthehyper and I have stared too long at it to not share our findings with the class.

3. #bunnygate 🐇🐇

This is a very obscure puzzle that lives on DeviantArt that also surprisingly relates to the Stranger Things ARG. You can expect childish drawings of cartoon animals with secret Mind Flayer shadows and lots and lots of symbolism. I'll tag anyone here, who wants to be exposed as a #bunnygate truther.

4. Why do mathematicians like CG? Self-explanatory ^^ #mathgate

I hope y'all stick around even if I can't post as frequently.

One thing remains for sure: My fellow CG theorists and I proved without a shadow of a doubt that CG is real and that interactive content is coming with E2-E8 as a base. #bandersnatchgate

The only thing we don't know is when the new content is coming out. I knew from the start that we would never be able to predict an exact release date, but just because it's not here yet, doesn't mean it's not going to happen :)

Hey you! Yeah you!

Do you ever feel like there’s barely any real support for writers anymore? Like you’re creating alone and wishing for actual feedback and encouragement?

We want to change that.

We’re building a group for writers who want help with their writing / writers who want to help others grow. Beta readers, co-writers, idea bouncing, feedback, and encouragement.

Our goal is to help writers improve their skills, feel confident in their work, grow their platforms, and make the writing/fanfic community feel like a community again.

Message me!

1. Respect each other.

If you are interested here are the rules!

2. Clarify any serious tags and check an editor’s preferences before asking them to read your work.

This includes respecting boundaries and civil language. Putting yourself and your work out there is hard enough and we will not tolerate any bullying on this platform. If anyone feels they are being treated poorly or spoken to in a poor way, PM either Deirdre or Gwynn.

Some editors/commenters may not feel comfortable reading dead dove, non-con or smut. Please be as clear as possible with your writing tags before asking an editor to read your work.

3. Agree on a level of edit or what you are asking for from the feedbacker/editor before starting.

We are also aware that long form content tags can change. So long as the editor/commenter is informed of the new tags prior to the next chapter, and is comfortable, then everyone can have a good time.

If you want to know what people like and that it is, tell us! If you want a harder critique also make that clear. These boundaries are to keep both parties comfortable and clear with intention. Writing is precious and sensitive and we aim to treat everyone with the care it deserves.

4. Feedback is a suggestion, not an order.

If you like, you can agree to change these levels at a later date but just be clear what you would like.

5. Distribution of documents must have explicit permission from the author.

Any advice given is considered at the discretion of the author. However unless explicit or excessive, the advice of the feedbacker is not a personal attack either. If you feel discussions are too harsh or are in need of assistance, please PM Deirdre or Gwynn for assistance.

6. Plagiarism will not be tolerated.

Some authors are ok with sharing to a group, however not everyone. We take this trust in your work seriously and will respect your level of privacy.

If an idea is come up with in the group chat and several people use that idea for a prompt then is not plagiarism, because this is fanfiction we are writing, but lifting lines or writing directly from another persons work is not ok.

8. Editors/commenters have the right to refuse or pass on a work at any time.

7. Don’t harass the editors. Whilst we are a passionate group we unfortunately have full time school/jobs as well. If you are curious you can ask for a time, as we all are excited to interact, however if we have deadlines, finals, holidays, tests or undisclosed life issues please give us the time we need.

9. An author can request the removal of an editor from their work at any time.

Whilst it is polite to give a reason, they are also not obligated to give one. Please respect boundaries of the folks that give their time to form this community. Any indication that an author is not respecting the boundaries of a reader/commenter/editor at any time will result in a warning or removal from their server.

Ok, now that the serous stuff is out of the way, let’s have some fun.

Again, whilst it is polite, an author is not obligated to give a reason should they be uncomfortable sharing their work. Any indication that an editor does not respect that wish will result in a warning or removal from the server.

Let us warmly welcome you to the Writer’s Guild!