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Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

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Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#291

Post by tezgon »

Sunspark wrote: post #256
bilsbie wrote: post #100

It’s not a one to one alternative but I’ve gradually moved from reddit to twitter to get my news and find interesting takes on whatever topics I’m interested in. I just follow a few interesting people for whatever topics I want to follow. In fact the “for you” page has been giving me decent recommendations lately.

Since Musk took over, I've been getting recommended a lot more right-wing topics and people. Maybe they were always there and just getting suppressed by the previous management, but I suspect there is a finger on the scale to try and push discourse in that direction. I barely use twitter these days. The platform is falling apart. If you aren't a paying subscriber you will be deboosted, blue checkmarks are the ones th…

It's changed so much in such a short time since the acquisition. The quality of responses that are boosted to the top are so poor that I frequently wonder just how those people get through the day. Not to mention that I constantly get notifications to subscribe to people who I've never once interacted with before. I've heard of BlueSky, do you know if it's any similar to the Twitter of the late aughts/early 2010s?

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#292

Post by wahnfrieden »

runjake wrote: post #78
sebstefan wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use https://raddle.me/ but it's small for now. They seem to have a much better approach to moderation; the moderation logs are open and admins don't let them go full authoritarian. But the API is lackluster. It's open source however so hopefully it should improve I always envisioned some kind of reddit where you could simply appeal moderation actions through a dedicated report system and if some mod goes above and…

I'll save a bunch of people some trouble. This is a politically-"leftist" site (top current thread is "How did you get into anarchism", along with something about ACAB). It's not really a general purpose Reddit alternative. So, if that's your thing, check it out. If it's not, probably not a good fit and the "better approach" to moderation probably won't go in your favor.

anarchism is not leftism

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#293

Post by steviedotboston »

jxcole wrote: post #220
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…

I disagree completely. Facebook was just Myspace without the terrible UX. Google was just Yahoo but better. Tech businesses can easily move in over each other if there is a way to make it noticeably better.

Facebook did not start as a competitor to MySpace. It started as a niche social network for universities, and then eventually branched off to be a competitor to myspace. By the time it did, it had already positioned itself as a unique product. That's quite different than say, people upset with Reddit over the Apollo situation looking for a Reddit clone with a better API policy, or people who like Blue Sky because it's "Twitter without Elon Musk".

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#294

Post by koreth1 »

MisterTea wrote: post #260
sharperguy wrote: post #44

I see reddit less as a website and more as a collection of communities. Each community has its own set of reasons for hosting itself on reddit vs other locations. Therefore I would predict that in the absence of reddit, not every community would move to the same place. 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 mo…

> I see reddit less as a website and more as a collection of communities. I always called it a low effort forum of forums. Low effort because all you need is one account and you can wander about and annoy people in any community. But that was reddits strength - you didn't need to register and keep track of different accounts and sites. > I also noticed that in recent years many subreddits have increasingly been taken…

That's less true for communities that are focused on things that change over time. For example, TV show subreddits have plenty to talk about each time a new episode is released. Or maybe a better example, the Java subreddit has its share of "how do I dive into X" questions but also plenty of discussions about new and upcoming language changes.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#295

Post by q1w2 »

awill wrote: post #223
sharperguy wrote: post #44

I see reddit less as a website and more as a collection of communities. Each community has its own set of reasons for hosting itself on reddit vs other locations. Therefore I would predict that in the absence of reddit, not every community would move to the same place. 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 mo…

But the magic of reddit is that I can browse all my communities in one place. Playstation, Audi, Cooking, Tennis. It's super convenient to have a single account for all of this. Before I used reddit, I had an account at an Audi forum, a different account at a tennis forum etc.. Reddit is so much better. I'd rather some 'bluesky'-like competitor vs every community going their own way.

Not just in one place, but sorted by popularity, so that you don't need to read 100 headlines per day - you can just review the top 5 posts for the day across ALL the communities you're interested in.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#296

Post by lb4r »

snisarenko wrote: post #270
lb4r wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I am not all too familiar with all the pitfalls of VC funding, so I don't feel confident in either agreeing nor disagreeing with you. Either way, there are other ways to both raise and make money.

I agree. I think the only successful alternative has to be a non-profit. Decentralized solutions don't scale.

Although I actually (and REALLY) hope you are right, I think a purely non-profit alternative would be doomed to fail. And my argument for this is pretty simple: How often do non-profits out-compete for-profits? Sometimes, maybe, but rarely.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#297

Post by nzealand »

stiltzkin wrote: post #289

There is no a one for all alternative to Reddit. There are few promising tech as Lemmy or Kbin because they work with ActivityPub as Mastodon. What I have seen many don't like the free speech nature of ActivityPub and run away if they see a tech with an instance not of their liking. But Reddit tipping point started because most of 3rd party clients are closing as Apollo, none of current alternatives have a good clien…

Tildes is invite only right now.

You can monitor the invite thread on reddit here https://www.reddit.com/r/tildes/

Alternatively you can contact the administrator of tildes here: https://docs.tildes.net/contact

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#299

Post by JSavageOne »

I have not found any serious alternatives. The main problem is the chicken and egg problem where no one cares unless other people are using it. I created my own alternative as a side project (https://zsync.xyz) with some differences (eg. tags instead of subreddits), but there are no users - and why should there be?

I used to use Reddit pretty heavily, but I stopped when I realized outside a few small use cases it wasn't benefitting my life and was mostly a time sink. I find that HN and Twitter is enough for my "social media" needs.

I do hope we see a better alternative to Reddit though, one focused on fostering high quality. Reddit was like that in 2008-9 when I joined, but in just a few years devolved into the meme dumpster and PC hivemind. The Reddit founders and their investors (cough YC *cough) should be embarrassed. It's like raising a child prodigy with the potential to cure cancer only for that kid to grow up into some grifting alcoholic bum who just smokes weed all day and survives off of fake disability benefits.

Re: Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit

#300

Post by bilsbie »

Sunspark wrote: post #256
bilsbie wrote: post #100

It’s not a one to one alternative but I’ve gradually moved from reddit to twitter to get my news and find interesting takes on whatever topics I’m interested in. I just follow a few interesting people for whatever topics I want to follow. In fact the “for you” page has been giving me decent recommendations lately.

Since Musk took over, I've been getting recommended a lot more right-wing topics and people. Maybe they were always there and just getting suppressed by the previous management, but I suspect there is a finger on the scale to try and push discourse in that direction. I barely use twitter these days. The platform is falling apart. If you aren't a paying subscriber you will be deboosted, blue checkmarks are the ones th…

I like the new opportunities to reach across the aisle.

It’s kind of fun to see the extremes of both sides get engaged by reality.

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