Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#241

Post by PrimeMcFly » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:08 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #48

SillyUsername wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much older than Reddit but used to be as popular early/mid 2000s. There are topics and the front page automatically tailors to you location (or at least I think that's why I keep seeing UK news). The community has a number of in-jokes that have been running decades, it also has FP comment spam, usually a racist or similar ASCII art comment. That was my takeaway from it...

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for letting me know. But in saying that, I'm in the Netherlands and 100% of the stories on my frontpage were about things happening in the US.

Big Tech is still US centric, so it's not surprising a tech focused site would have US focused stories.

Having said that a lot of the stuff isn't US centric, like recent stories being "Linux Foundation Announces Collaboration for 'Open Radio Access Network' Prototypes" or "Debian 12 'Bookworm' Released" or "OpenAI, DeepMind Will Open Up Models To UK Government"

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#242

Post by ilyt » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:09 PM UTC

setgree wrote: post #47

My ideal reddit alternative is spending less time on my computer and more time on in-person interactions. We can look for and/or build Reddit substitutes, but just my 2c, this is a fine prompt to question not just the instantiation but the concept itself.

Niche hobbies are not that easy to find local groups for.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#243

Post by lb4r » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:10 PM UTC

RandallBrown wrote: post #234

lb4r wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean the usage of Apollo in particular, but my understanding from what I've read is that according to some metrics, almost 50% of Reddit have gone dark, partly in support of Apollo. It's already the unofficial alternative to Reddit, except also kind of being Reddit at the same time. Correction: I did a quick check, and around 40% went dark according to this source, so not quite the 'almost 50%' that I proclai…

Ah, that makes more sense. 40% going dark is actually way higher than I would have thought.

It also depends on how you interpret it. 22% of submissions, 38% of comments, 48% of authors, 43% of karma went dark.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#244

Post by AnotherGoodName » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:11 PM UTC

redmerchant2 wrote: post #118

dabluecaboose wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I also noticed that in recent years many subreddits have increasingly been taken over by memes and other low quality posts and so users looking for more substantial content have already moved elsewhere. It's incredibly frustrating to discover a potential new hobby, check out the subreddit, and go to the top posts all time, only to find pages on pages of low-effort crossposted memes that are often barely relatable. I…

But what can you do beyond draconian moderation? One niche hobby sub I’m part of grew over 120x due to the pandemic. The mods cracked down hard but it had the side effect of suppressing quality conversations as well. I think they found a good balance but you forget how big the sub is now until some meme slips through the cracks, and has 10x the number of upvotes compared to usual posts.

Communities tend to end up with a memes allowed and strictly meme free version of the community once they grow to a certain size.

It splits the community and the meme version will tend to have 100x the users but that's ok imho. You'll find the meme free offshoot will have the same feel as the early smaller community and will be much better if the topic really does interest you.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#245

Post by shanecleveland » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

Many niche topics I have an interest in are still better represented by standalone forums, I have found.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#246

Post by sebstefan » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

jstarfish wrote: post #218

sebstefan wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just how the community developed. Reddit was spicy as well at the start You can have righto subs on it, nobody is going to stop you or ban you. For example in the past they removed moderators of f/communism for excluding users pushing the libertarian flavors of it Here's TOS Content Policy Content is prohibited if it is bigotry i.e. Promotes white supremacy, queerphobia, transphobia, misogyny, classism, ableis…

> Promotes [...] speciesism What the fuck? > Apologizes for violence towards children. What is this sub for?

It means you can tackle kids but you have to own it, pretty nice I think

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#247

Post by D13Fd » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

rkangel wrote: post #230

D13Fd wrote: post #167

What do you use Reddit for? The answer is going to be subject-matter dependent. For me, Discord has already replaced 95% of my Reddit use -- and not because I'm anti-Reddit, but just because community activity has migrated to Discord naturally. The remainder of my Reddit use is mostly "a search engine sent me there."

Yeah, but that last bit is so valuable . How often have I answered a technical question by adding "Reddit" to the search query. Having discussion indexable raises the value of any community.

Completely agreed - that's definitely where Discord falls down.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#248

Post by Camisa » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

Subreddits related to development and programming tried to create programming.dev, which is a federated alternative, but the registering is failing for some reason, possibly because of too many accounts being generated. Anyways aside from that it has good content.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#249

Post by shusaku » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

hazebooth wrote: post #3

I’ve seen https://tildes.net/ pop up but it’s invite only atm I think, would totally be down for an invite from anyone here though :)

The discussion there looks very good

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#250

Post by comex » Mon, Jun 12, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

steviedotboston wrote: post #180

Whenever a site does something "bad" (Twitter and musk's BS, Reddit with their API nonsense, etc) people's initial reaction is to look for a site JUST like it but without the bad thing. That feels like stage 1 of grief: denial. Denial that the thing you loved is no longer the same. Maybe it's dead, or maybe its changed in such a drastic way thats its no longer the same thing. Regardless, I have never seen a successfu…

> Regardless, I have never seen a successful website or service start from the premise of "we will be just like thing X, but without the bad thing".

Reddit itself received a massive influx of users from Digg after the unpopular Digg v4 change. For me and many others, it was just like Digg but without the bad thing. Admittedly that’s not how Reddit started - in fact, Reddit had been around for 5 years already at that point - but you could say the same thing about Mastodon, which was started in 2016(!), or Lemmy, which was started in 2019.