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Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

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Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#61

Post by predictabl3 »

previnder wrote: post #25
mjs7231 wrote: post #11

A lot the post above boils down to "Trust me bro." As early users of a new website, what assurances can be put in place to help us believe the motives here? As the site grows, and costs exponentially more, your mindset and desires are sure to change. One of the big issues I see with Reddit right now, is that we the community never "owned" the data. Now that the site owner's motives changed, we're stuck in this weird…

> A lot the post above boils down to "Trust me bro." As early users of a new website, what assurances can be put in place to help us believe the motives here? As the site grows, and costs exponentially more, your mindset and desires are sure to change. Looking at this from your perspective, you have a really good point here. And I don't know exactly what to say to you except that, at the end of the day, with anything…

> And I don't know exactly what to say to you except that, at the end of the day, with anything with network effects, you have to trust someone

I don't trust anyone running my Matrix, Kbin, Mastodon, or email servers. Well, they're me, and I guess I trust me. (My family trusts me too, I suppose)

Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#62

Post by previnder »

lovvtide wrote: post #21

I think it looks really clean and it's awesome that you're actually building something instead of just complaining. Growing a community is going to be a huge challenge. I'm working on something similar, but based on Nostr. Good luck man.

Thanks. I checked out your site. Cool, unique design. And the back button works!

Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#63

Post by Gualdrapo »

prakhar897 wrote: post #16

The problem isn't Clean UI. The problem isn't Sensible vision. The problem is getting enough users to make your community interesting.

My humble two cents:

I won't say that a clean ui is not part of the problem. Just in this very thread there's people despising Reddit's redesign. The HN hivemind and others like UIs with information crammed on every pixel (for some reason) so I guess if there were an alternative that offered some "information density" setting, that very thing can do much to attract users.

About how to get said users. The 4 years I've been using Reddit and have seen the popular page, you're left with the sensation that much of it is just a giant aggregator of curated content from TikTok/Twitter/Instagram, in that order (and how almost everything is centered about the USA, but that's another story). I think people would engage to that new platform if there were a way to improve that process of bringing new and trending stuff from those other platforms (and Reddit itself) to a new alternative.

Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#64

Post by quickthrower2 »

Can it have some kind of legal charter and non-profit (and not the openai farcical one) status so we can trust you wont be spoiled by capitalism?

Not against capitalism but for some things - especially free as in beer for everyone things — it doesn’t work well for users.

Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#65

Post by quickthrower2 »

previnder wrote: post #25
mjs7231 wrote: post #11

A lot the post above boils down to "Trust me bro." As early users of a new website, what assurances can be put in place to help us believe the motives here? As the site grows, and costs exponentially more, your mindset and desires are sure to change. One of the big issues I see with Reddit right now, is that we the community never "owned" the data. Now that the site owner's motives changed, we're stuck in this weird…

> A lot the post above boils down to "Trust me bro." As early users of a new website, what assurances can be put in place to help us believe the motives here? As the site grows, and costs exponentially more, your mindset and desires are sure to change. Looking at this from your perspective, you have a really good point here. And I don't know exactly what to say to you except that, at the end of the day, with anything…

With the classic early 2000s model of PHPBB at least you only trust each “sub” individually and they don’t have enough power or resources to fuck you up. That is why say, random example: https://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php has not introduced all the reddit shit despite being just as old. If it were a sub or on your alternative it would be subject to all that.

What would be good is a modern enough Reddit clone, open source, that you can selfhost once per subreddit and one or more places that will host that (like you can get wordpress hosting from 1000 places). Maybe have some free ones that run ads but still run the same basic software and do it free.

What you will have is some localised issues but no one has the power to change everything and pull the rug on millions.

Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#66

Post by hakfoo »

dmje wrote: post #27
BudaDude wrote: post #13

Meh, I disagree with point 1. Any platform that is not federated or at the minimum open source will go the same way as Twitter, Reddit, or Myspace. The idea of reddit is bigger than one site, it's a replacement for the internet forums. We don't need another platform lock in. I applaud the dev work, but this isn't going attract the tech crowd.

Hard disagree on point 1. I mean, yeh, you'll maybe win a hardcore niche of nerds with federated services, but the usability / understandability of federation is absolutely awful, per my AskHN recently [0]. That's not to say it couldn't be improved with some good UI and maybe some thoughts about how to communicate it, but right now your average Reddit / Insta / Facebook user is gunna be running a mile. It's absolutel…

The thing is that federation is a non-user facing feature if you do it right. The whole point is that you don't need to care where a specific service is. Email, arguably the most successful federated app, exposes the servers as a disambiguation mechanism (which hakfoo do you want to message?) but that's not really that important when you're consuming content.

I could see a "polished" Fediverse app that abstracted away the server concept-- you'd say "I want to read the $subject Lemmy community / $person Mastodon account" and it would aggregate and deduplicate data on multiple servers automagically for a rich feed. Maybe track the emergence or discontinuation of servers and refine the lists.

Then, if you want to be particularly precise about which providers you're working with, you can go in and micro-manage the automatic selections.

Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#68

Post by dmje »

hakfoo wrote: post #66
dmje wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree on point 1. I mean, yeh, you'll maybe win a hardcore niche of nerds with federated services, but the usability / understandability of federation is absolutely awful, per my AskHN recently [0]. That's not to say it couldn't be improved with some good UI and maybe some thoughts about how to communicate it, but right now your average Reddit / Insta / Facebook user is gunna be running a mile. It's absolutel…

The thing is that federation is a non-user facing feature if you do it right. The whole point is that you don't need to care where a specific service is. Email, arguably the most successful federated app, exposes the servers as a disambiguation mechanism ( which hakfoo do you want to message?) but that's not really that important when you're consuming content. I could see a "polished" Fediverse app that abstracted aw…

100% on this. Maybe we're just too early - I'm still waiting for this kind of UI so I don't have to think too hard about providers or the weirdness of the whole thing.

Re: Show HN: Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision

#69

Post by dmje »

predictabl3 wrote: post #60
dmje wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree on point 1. I mean, yeh, you'll maybe win a hardcore niche of nerds with federated services, but the usability / understandability of federation is absolutely awful, per my AskHN recently [0]. That's not to say it couldn't be improved with some good UI and maybe some thoughts about how to communicate it, but right now your average Reddit / Insta / Facebook user is gunna be running a mile. It's absolutel…

1. Matrix is growing so fast that I can't take seriously people that dismiss federation. 2. Name me something that has outlived reddit and not gone through enshitification (it's a term, I'm not being crass). Name one single product or platform.

1. Yeh - but what sets Matrix aside is that you're abstracted away from the conceptual side of federation. As I said, this is about UI as much as anything else. Non nerds are used to "going to InstaFaceTubeDdit and seeing the stuff they want to read" - not having to wrangle with the conceptual stuff about instances, weird looking addresses and usernames, etc.

2. I mean, Wikipedia, but it's not the point. Yes, us tech people are maybe concerned about things being shit, lock-in, etc - but literally no-one else cares. So our best approach isn't to make something perfect from the tech point of view, but perfect enough that there is mass migration to it - because, as we all know, it ain't about the tech, it's about the momentum, content and growth. And in order to get these into a serious shape, we need migration. And to get migration we need slick, beautiful, easy to use UIs.

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