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Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#11

Post by throw_m239339 »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #2

Overcoming reddit as a startup has a massive obstacle, moderation and removal of unwanted content. It's something that's not well automated, and thus requires an enormous amount of labor (ie capital) This is why those who have tried have turned into racist pornography filled shit holes. Want to start a billion dollar startup? Figure out how to automate this problem.

> This is why those who have tried have turned into racist pornography filled shit holes.

While some reddit alternatives might qualify as "racist", they've done a very good job at not being "porn filled shit holes", unlike reddit. In fact, most of the porn spam on these websites are images or videos hotlinked from... reddit.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#12

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

phpisthebest wrote: post #4
RhodesianHunter wrote: post #2

Overcoming reddit as a startup has a massive obstacle, moderation and removal of unwanted content. It's something that's not well automated, and thus requires an enormous amount of labor (ie capital) This is why those who have tried have turned into racist pornography filled shit holes. Want to start a billion dollar startup? Figure out how to automate this problem.

That is not a technological problem, as what is one persons "hate speech" is another persons political speech, and no one can agree on where the line is For me the line is no line... All Speech should be allowed, the problem with moderation is attempting to do it in the first place at the platform level Give people their own personal controls to see or not see, to block, mute, or otherwise disassociate. Anything beyo…

Probably the line is decency, is what you are saying decent or nasty. Keep it simple, keep the nastiness to yourself (I’m not saying you, I’m saying everyone).

The world would be a kinder place.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#13

Post by fooqux »

phpisthebest wrote: post #6
mach1ne wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not even close to being the main problem in launching a Reddit competitor. Reddit moderators are unpaid. Content moderation not being automated is not a problem. People like to do it for free. The problem is the user base. Biggest obstacle for any social media site is attaining critical mass. In order to do that, you need to be an order of magnitude better than your competitors on some metric which makes the u…

>> Content moderation not being automated is not a problem. People like to do it for free. The old classic saying is "Anyone that wants to be a politician is not someone you want as a politician" Well that is true for reddit mods as well, people that like to moderate subreddits are drawn to the action because they like to have power over the others, this is generally not someone you want in charge of anything

There are technical solutions to that problem though. I remember a Reddit replacement from a couple years ago called Aether. It made all moderation public, allowed clients to ignore a certain mod's actions (basically, personally removing them as a mod as far as their view is concerned), and allowed votes of no confidence for mods.

No idea if that model would actually work, as the app itself was one of those cool-on-paper-but-not-in-reality P2P types which made everything slow and likely made it rough attracting users.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#14

Post by quickthrower2 »

RhodesianHunter wrote: post #2

Overcoming reddit as a startup has a massive obstacle, moderation and removal of unwanted content. It's something that's not well automated, and thus requires an enormous amount of labor (ie capital) This is why those who have tried have turned into racist pornography filled shit holes. Want to start a billion dollar startup? Figure out how to automate this problem.

Splitting might help:

* Open source reddit-like clone designed for a single sub.

* Hosting company specialising in hosting this clone for a small fee.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#15

Post by asim »

Not a competitor to Reddit but something for smaller private communities. It's called Micro Chat - https://micro.mu

Previously on HN https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36135683

I think the public community thing is interesting but it's now been done do death and people's solution for smaller subreddits is federation or self hosting which I don't really agree with. I'm leaning towards even smaller "micro" communities that are entirely private. Talk to 20 people you know and get on with. Create separate groups/communities for things you care about. That's it. I don't want to have the discussion in public, I don't want upvoting/downvoting. I don't even want karma.

If you're looking for something entirely public like HN here's a thing I built last year https://home.m3o.com. no search though.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#17

Post by senda »

I would happily build the discord equivalent of reddit, no general space just requested access spaces. The problem with reddit from a mod perspective is that it is inversely open, anyone can see it, but very few opinions are allowed on most subreddits. I'd rather the inverse as it allows for more range of opinion and less "omg why do i have to see X when i open my laptop".

Re: Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit?

#19

Post by giarc »

m3kw9 wrote: post #18

Also I wouldn’t be surprised investors are currently talking to Apollo about just this

I'd be surprised. Making (a few billion) API calls to someone else's database is much different than hosting and storing all that info (not to mention managing all the mods etc).
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