Show HN: Endless – An attempt to unify the social media experience

Show HN: Endless – An attempt to unify the social media experience(github.com)

88 points by kaangiray26 2 years ago | 33 comments

Hey guys,

Endless is an open-source mobile app that curates posts from your favorite websites in one place with a common interface. The application uses custom extractors specifically written for each website. This way you can endlessly scroll through posts and save the ones you like without having to deal with ads.

With the Endless server I am hosting you can also upvote and leave comments on posts without creating an account! With random tokens linked to your actions you basically use your device as your account and undo your actions in the future without spoiling your identity.

I hope to add more extractors in the future. Feel free to install the app and check out the extractors yourself or contribute to the project! I always love to hear your comments and feedback.

GitHub: https://github.com/kaangiray26/endless

APK Releases: https://github.com/kaangiray26/endless/releases

gochi 2 years ago |

You could probably separate the extractors into their own repo for easier contribution, and less of a reliance on you having to manually create and validate them.

Great job otherwise!

binkHN 2 years ago |

Love the idea! And kudos to releasing on Android first, which tends to be rare. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the app seems to be mostly JavaScript with a small Android wrapper?

kaangiray26 2 years ago | |

Thank you kind stranger!

Actually I was planning to make a web app but then I realized not all news websites have APIs for requesting their content. Then I've come across CapacitorJS which allows you to convert your web projects into mobile apps and they have a plugin called "CapacitorHttp", which patches the usual fetch function to use native libraries instead. This way it is possible to make http requests that do not get blocked by CORS-related problems. So, all the requests are made on the client-side, which takes so much work from my shoulders :)

binkHN 2 years ago | | |

Neat! Thanks for the details!

tourmalinetaco 2 years ago |

I wouldn’t call this a “social media curator”. Looks more like a formatted pseudo-RSS aggregator with some project-specific social media elements tacked on.

For one, I don’t see any actual curation going on. Additionally, I’m not sure any of the websites being pulled are “social media”, considering most are news in some capacity.

It’s absolutely an interesting project, but unless it can target Reddit/Twitter I’m not sure how it could supplement RSS feeds for me, let alone replace them. I mean I follow most of these websites through my RSS already, and don’t need to wait for some custom extractor to be built for the websites I want to target.

jtriangle 2 years ago |

> This way you can endlessly scroll through posts

I can't decide if I love this or hate it because I like content and also spend too much time consuming it. I do like the google reader (rip) vibe to this idea though.

mydriasis 2 years ago |

*AWESOME* idea. Nice work, can't wait to see where this goes. I was discussing this same idea with my brother the other day, looks like you're well on the way!

gremlinsinc 2 years ago |

Crazy idea - add threaded reddit-like comments. Add reddit also, but just use the rss endpoints, then only have local/stored comments, moving all the comments off reddit. Then create a web version, so people can use a chrome extension or userscript that replaces reddit comments with your links, add an ad or two or a server fund ticker and it might get people off reddit.

laurent123456 2 years ago |

Love the idea, but I'm wondering if the backend could leverage one of the fediverse technologies?

For example when someone comments or upvotes a page, a post for that page is automatically created on a Lemmy instance, and that will be used to manage the comments and upvotes.

That way you don't need a server backend and you take advantage of a decentralised architecture

ipaddr 2 years ago | |

Aren't you centralizing on Lemmy?

laurent123456 2 years ago | | |

Lemmy is decentralised so... no?

adr1an 2 years ago |

Nice project, very much needed. I wonder, Is there an option to backup and recover accounts? Also, this sounds very much like centralization of diverse platforms. If the server had ActivityPub compatibility, it would be a great addition to the fediverse! :O.. Do you think it would be possible to do such a thing?

earlyriser 2 years ago |

I always wonder how this kind of services show images. Do they hot-link them or they are saved in their own servers? One approach violates web etiquette and the only seems over engineering (save an image that maybe just one use is going to see).

jasfi 2 years ago |

I had a similar idea, but no time to implement it. Hopefully a web version coming soon.

dancedar 2 years ago |

Was expecting FriendFeed based on consolidating the social medias, but more akin to rss

tqi 2 years ago |

This is basically Cambridge Analytica, isn't it? If one of your friends / followers use this service, it will be able to access all of your shared content?

kaangiray26 2 years ago | |

Sorry, I don't understand. Everyone on this service is anonymous as no account creation is needed. Upvotes and comments are not tied to users.

hn_throwaway_99 2 years ago | | |

I haven't looked through the repo in depth yet, but does that mean that upvotes and comments made through Endless only live in Endless, but aren't pushed to the upstream site?

For example, if I leave a comment on an HN article through Endless, is that comment only visible to other Endless users (because otherwise you'd need an HN account to post comments).

imiric 2 years ago |

Interesting idea, but how do you fight spam, prevent abuse and moderate comments? A reminder to "be nice" is too naive for the modern internet.

chaxor 2 years ago | |

I would imagine simply creating a scoring function that down-weights posts that only one demographic agrees with, while up-weighting posts that all demographics agree with would be one way of achieving this.

Jeff_Brown 2 years ago |

I know someone who briefly had a startup that sold a service like this. Facebook sued them and they folded.

mattigames 2 years ago | |

The trick for such a start-up to succeed is to not be US-based, even better if its on rival countries (e.g. Russia, China)

Jeff_Brown 2 years ago | | |

Interesting. He's Colombian, and we met here -- but he went to San Francisco to start the business.

donio 2 years ago |

To ask the obvious question: Why use this over my favorite RSS reader?

kaangiray26 2 years ago | |

With all respect to RSS, Endless allows for users to interact with posts. Which means you can upvote and leave comments for posts on websites that initially do not implement a way to do this. Thus, you don't have to create an account for that. Besides, with custom extractors you can see posts from pages with no RSS support. Also you will be able to see trending and controversial posts based on upvotes and comments on your front page in the upcoming versions.

donio 2 years ago | | |

The votes and comments are local to the Endless instance, not forwarded or federated anywhere, correct? So for example if I run a personal one I'd only ever see my own voting history?

quickthrower2 2 years ago | | |

You could support arbitrary RSS feeds though. Then your list of supported sites grows to millions.

mxuribe 2 years ago | |

I'm not the author, but my guess would be that some of the suppoorted websites do not offer an RSS/atom feed to be leveraged by an RSS reader app. So, at a glance, it seems this app aggregates content for those sites/app which lack rss feeds...as well as includes sites which might already have rss feeds. At least, i think.

thepangolino 2 years ago | |

Probably the social aspect allowing for comments and upvotes/downvotes

hackernewds 2 years ago |

awesome idea. great implementation of what Jack has been claiming BlueSky or nostr will do