Content Discovery
Bitsocial does not put one global feed, search index, or ranking algorithm in the protocol. It separates content discovery into two layers:
- Network lookup finds the peers currently serving a known community.
- App curation decides which communities, boards, lists, or posts a product shows first.
This keeps the protocol small while leaving room for many discovery experiences to compete.
Network lookup
Every community has a stable address derived from its public key. When a client already knows that address, it queries lightweight HTTP routers to find peers that announced themselves as providers for it.
The routers only return provider peer addresses. They do not store posts, metadata, user lists, or a human-readable directory of communities. After the client receives peer addresses, it connects to those peers and fetches the latest community metadata plus content pointers, then fetches the actual post data by hash.
This answers the protocol question: "Where can I fetch the latest state for this community?"
App curation
The separate product question is: "Which communities should a user see first?"
Bitsocial leaves that to apps, lists, and users instead of baking one answer into the network. Examples include:
- a client showing communities the user already follows
- a curated default list for a Reddit-style app
- directory slots for an imageboard-style app
- search or ranking indexes maintained by a specific app
- direct links shared by users
Apps can index, rank, filter, or highlight different things without turning those choices into protocol law. If one app's discovery surface is not useful, another app can build a different one on the same underlying communities.
Current apps
5chan currently uses familiar directory paths such as /b/ or /g/. Directory assignments are
managed through a public list today, with future versions expected to support in-app board creation
and voting for directory slots.
Seedit uses default community lists for its front page. Communities can still be created and shared outside that default list.
In both cases, the app-level list helps users find something to open, and the protocol-level lookup then resolves the chosen community to peers.
Why this split matters
A single decentralized network still needs good discovery, but the discovery layer should be replaceable. Bitsocial's core protocol focuses on addressability, peer lookup, publishing, and anti-spam. Curation lives above that layer, where apps can experiment with directories, default lists, feeds, search, voting, and moderation policies without requiring a network-wide migration.