[gregmfoster]

I love the idea of more book-focused social networks! Curious what the motivation here is to make it federated, instead of focusing on high-velocity user-focused product development. My greatest gripes with existing book-social-media-networks aren't the federation, but rather the dated UX.

[morisy]

It’s got a very ideologically-driven focus, including an anti-capital source license:

https://github.com/bookwyrm-social/bookwyrm/blob/main/LICENS...

I think the focus on federation is to encourage small, decentralized and communally operated sites that play well with the broader fediverse. I can see that working well for a lot of book communities!

Also, spent a bit of time a few weeks ago and it already seemed to have the nicest UX of the open social book services, at least that I could see (would love recs - mostly interested in a personal tracker).

[jeroenhd]

Well, that's a license I've never seen before! This makes it entirely unpractical for any company to host a server, which is an... interesting approach.

I'm not sure why the police or military wouldn't be allowed to host a book reading website, though. I guess this was written as some kind of anti-government protest.

[thebooktocome]

> I'm not sure why the police or military wouldn't be allowed to host a book reading website, though.

Many religions have an injunction against killing or otherwise contributing to the harm of sentient beings.

[bluefishinit]

One benefit to federation in book-focused social media is it helps stop Amazon from buying the centralized services. They bought Goodreads and Shelfari. It's great to know they won't be buying the book-iverse.

[briandear]

What’s wrong with Amazon? They made it possible for self published writers to actually make a living. They disrupted the big five publishers and have done a lot for independent writers. Even the indy bookstores require an author to go through corporate publishing gatekeepers. Amazon gives literally any writer an opportunity to sell books.

[izzydata]

Amazon is too big. It attracts too many bots and fake reviews. They also have no incentive to remove fake positive removes as it is a conflict of interest for them to sell as many books as possible.

[bluefishinit]

I buy tons of books through Amazon and own a Kindle. That being said they're horrible at running book social networks. Of the two they bought they killed one and froze development on Goodreads. A federated book community will stop them from swooping in and killing the whole party.

[guerrilla]

It's a blatant conflict of interest for the book store and the book review to be the same company.

[vidarh]

I use Amazon a lot, but that doesn't change the rot that set in for Goodreads after Amazon bought them.