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Isn't this just a walled garden?
It's the most common reaction to "peer-to-peer, identity-based":
"I'm used to discovering so much online. If everything is identity-based, doesn't this feel like a walled garden where you only see your friends?"
Worth unpacking, because Wish covers the entire spectrum — from "only my own devices" to "anyone in the world who finds it." What it adds isn't walls. It's provenance.
The spectrum
Fully private ←————————————————————→ Fully public
(only you) (your contacts) (anyone who finds it)Every document on Wish picks a point on this line. share: { self: true } is your private notes. share: { users: { ... } } is "these specific people." share: { public: { ... } } is "anyone who finds it." All three work, and all three are signed by the author.
What "open" actually means today
You don't browse the internet freely. An algorithm at Google, Facebook, TikTok, or Reddit decides what you see — optimised for engagement and ad revenue, not for what you were looking for. The "open internet" is a handful of gatekeepers deciding what's visible at any moment.
Try finding a small community on Facebook the algorithm hasn't decided to promote. Try seeing all posts from the people you follow, in the order they were posted. Try discovering an independent creator without the recommendation engine. The funnel was built to maximise something other than your discovery.
How discovery actually works on Wish
Directories. Anyone can publish themselves to a directory — like putting up a website today. Searchable, browsable, no algorithm filtering between you and the result.
Recommendations from people you trust. A friend shares "here are good cooking communities" as a signed list. You check it out. Another friend shares a different list. This is how discovery has always worked in real life — through people, not algorithms.
Friend-of-friend. You notice that someone interesting is in three communities with people you already know. The social graph does the suggesting — the way you'd find a new band because two of your friends independently mentioned it.
Public hubs. Anyone can run an open node that aggregates and indexes content. Think of it as a town square — fully open, anyone can post, anyone can browse. The difference from Reddit: the square doesn't own your content, doesn't mine your data, and can't ban you from all squares at once. Don't like this one? There are others. Or run your own.
Topic search. Communities tag themselves and become searchable. "Photography in Helsinki," "Rust programming," "sourdough bread." No platform decides which ones get visibility.
A more familiar analogy
Think about how you discover things in the physical world:
- You walk down a street and see shops — public browsing.
- A friend says "you should check this out" — recommendation.
- You go to a meetup and meet someone who knows someone — social discovery.
None of that needs a corporation deciding what you're allowed to see. The street is open. The shops are open. Your friends recommend things freely.
Wish is like the street. The shops that want to be public are public. The houses that want to be private are private. What's added is that when you walk into a shop, you can see the owner's identity, their real reputation, and who vouches for them. You don't need a platform to tell you what's safe — you can see it yourself.
What does get harder
The one thing that gets harder on Wish is being a fake account with no history pretending to be something it isn't. That's the trade. Much of what we currently call "the open internet" depends on that being free — bots, scams, fake reviews, look-alike storefronts, throwaway accounts that scale endlessly. Removing them doesn't shrink the open part. It removes the disguise.