This is just a random idea I had, and I’m curious what others think.

Has anyone ever considered potentially attempting a federated, anonymous imageboard/message board—something in the spirit of 4chan, 8chan, or Plebchan, but using ActivityPub or another decentralized protocol?

What technical, social, or legal obstacles would need to be overcome?

Would federation (like ActivityPub or something custom) actually help, or would it just replicate the same problems at scale?

I know these platforms have reputations that turn people off (and often for good reason), but I still think there’s value in the format—especially for niche or “grey zone” communities that often get booted from mainstream platforms.

Plebchan already shows that decentralization can work in this space. It’s serverless, adminless, and built on the Plebbit protocol, which itself is a decentralized, peer-to-peer social media protocol. Plebchan just acts as a frontend for Plebbit, which uses IPFS for data distribution.

I’d honestly love to try building something like this myself, but I don’t have the dev skills or the time.

Still, I wonder:

Has anyone tried federating something like Plebchan or building an ActivityPub-compatible client like it?

What challenges would something like this face, both technically and socially?

Would there be room for such a project in the Fediverse, or would it be rejected outright due to associations?

Genuinely curious to hear others’ thoughts.

Plebchan: https://plebchan.org/

Plebchan Github: https://github.com/plebbit/plebchan

Plebbit: https://plebbit.com/