Ask HN: Anyone Building a Competitor to Reddit? • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by dom96 » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:07 PM UTC

I have come up with a plan that might get a Reddit competitor up and running. I have also started to implement it.

Step 1. Create an alternative API for Reddit (I've created an MVP for this here: https://api.reddiw.com)

Step 2. Set up an alternative front-end for Reddit built on top of the alternative API (my plan is to host it at reddiw.com)

Step 3. Start implementing a custom back-end, with submissions showing up interspersed with existing Reddit content, perhaps on the very same alternative front-end to drive adoption or one on a separate URL.

How will I deal with costs/moderation? Same way as Reddit did at the beginning: text only. With images/videos hosted by imgur etc. and each thread linking directly to a separate host for images/videos.

While I do have step 1 complete and it has got some traction on Reddit I don't think any third-party app has adopted it yet. It would be nice to get that to show the demand is there. Otherwise I might not pursue the next steps.

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

#52

Post by that_guy_iain » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

SkipperCat wrote: post #27

My question is why would you want to do that? You're just going to come against the same issues and problems that Reddit has, especially if you want to achieve anything close to Reddit's scale. You'll need staff, money, legal and tech folks (not cheap). And to get the funds, you'll prob have to make the same decisions about ads and API fees. You could pull off something smaller, maybe by being distributed or whatnot,…

I have the same thinking you do. I think it's extremely unlikely anyone would invest seriously in a Reddit competitor for one simple reason - Reddit users will try and flee at any attempt to make a profit. The fact everyone knows this means a competitor is unlike and fleeing is unlikely since there would be nowhere to flee to.

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

#53

Post by kornhole » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

artisanspam wrote: post #20

Lemmy is a federated attempt at being a Reddit competitor but I think it has quite a bit of work to do before it’s viable. https://lemmy.ml/

That is just one instance. I believe the .ML stands for Marxist Leninist if that is the community you want to join. There are many other instances sprouting up, and you can spin up your own pretty easily. Like any fediverse instance, the amount of work to maintain and moderate it is dependent on the number of people on it. https://join-lemmy.org/instances

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

#54

Post by eugeniub » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:08 PM UTC

SkipperCat wrote: post #27

My question is why would you want to do that? You're just going to come against the same issues and problems that Reddit has, especially if you want to achieve anything close to Reddit's scale. You'll need staff, money, legal and tech folks (not cheap). And to get the funds, you'll prob have to make the same decisions about ads and API fees. You could pull off something smaller, maybe by being distributed or whatnot,…

Reddit used to have pretty low overhead. You couldn't upload/host videos directly on Reddit, you could only share links or create self-posts. They didn't have all these superfluous features that they have now like live chat, push notifications, cryptocurrency wallets, first-party mobile apps, etc. A "classical" version of Reddit would be a fraction of the development and hosting cost compared to modern Reddit, especially if you can continue to keep moderation the responsibility of individual subreddits.

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

#55

Post by kkfdkerpoe » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:09 PM UTC

throw_m239339 wrote: post #11

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.

How exactly is Reddit a "porn filled shit hole"? I don't see any porn in the vast majority of subreddits. Nobody forces you to visit the rest, and they are typically even marked adult-only.

Besides, are porn and racism really the only questionable things in social media? What about extreme violence, videos where real people get shot or blown up? Somehow messed up American society thinks that violence is quite okay thing for people to see, but nudity and porn are not.

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

#56

Post by that_guy_iain » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

Maxion wrote: post #46

SkipperCat wrote: post #27

My question is why would you want to do that? You're just going to come against the same issues and problems that Reddit has, especially if you want to achieve anything close to Reddit's scale. You'll need staff, money, legal and tech folks (not cheap). And to get the funds, you'll prob have to make the same decisions about ads and API fees. You could pull off something smaller, maybe by being distributed or whatnot,…

One big issue with Reddit is that it is mismanaged. With the revenue they are generating ($456 million USD), it should be more than enough to run a site like Reddit. Over the last few years they've invested heavily in things that are very unrelated to the core features of the site, such as NFTs and other odd things that are barely visible, while firing people (Victoria & the death of r/IAMA, and snackexchange) that b…

> One big issue with Reddit is that it is mismanaged. With the revenue they are generating ($456 million USD), it should be more than enough to run a site like Reddit.

So who gets fired? How many people are you willing to make unemployed? What services get removed? What improvements stop? Realistically, the reason they don't make a profit is they're aiming for growth and they're getting the growth.

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

#57

Post by dimmke » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

Maxion wrote: post #50

dimmke wrote: post #24

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Every year for the last 12+ years there has been some alternative to Reddit. The code to the old version of Reddit is even open source. The problem is most solutions want to go back to decentralized, which is problematic. I do think that the technical problem could be solved. Point and click solutions for installing open source software has been around forever (like cPanel and PHP…

> I think a compelling alternative to Reddit would be a non venture capital backed company that is small headcount wise (think 50 people) and very straightforward about how it earns a profit, is sustainable, and focused on direct pay. No blockchain, no fediverse, etc… > That means no worrying about advertisers (or headcount associated with wooing them, managing them, etc…), creating a “subreddit” would cost a flat mo…

Yes I think a co op model could be good.

I think because we are software engineers, we think some novel technology will fix this issue. But the real problem is that companies take on too much money and are then distorted by it.

There has to be a change in software away from VC funding outside of where it’s actually necessary. You don’t need 30 million dollars to build this idea. You could take out a small business loan instead.

We need to stop thinking of small businesses that create and sell software as “startups” and placing them into a special category in our heads.

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

#58

Post by SkipperCat » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

Maxion wrote: post #46

SkipperCat wrote: post #27

My question is why would you want to do that? You're just going to come against the same issues and problems that Reddit has, especially if you want to achieve anything close to Reddit's scale. You'll need staff, money, legal and tech folks (not cheap). And to get the funds, you'll prob have to make the same decisions about ads and API fees. You could pull off something smaller, maybe by being distributed or whatnot,…

One big issue with Reddit is that it is mismanaged. With the revenue they are generating ($456 million USD), it should be more than enough to run a site like Reddit. Over the last few years they've invested heavily in things that are very unrelated to the core features of the site, such as NFTs and other odd things that are barely visible, while firing people (Victoria & the death of r/IAMA, and snackexchange) that b…

But isn't making awful business decisions part of the human condition? They happen so often that I think they're not exceptions but the norm for almost all large companies.

Its almost impossible to name any company that has not created at least a handful of major flops. And there are plenty of companies that continue to bungle and make multi-million dollar mistakes almost constantly.

What boggles my mind is that there are so many companies that continue to thrive while blowing millions of dollars on stupid decisions. Must be the power of having cash-cow products (and maybe some monopolistic traits too).

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

#59

Post by zirgs » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:16 PM UTC

skilled wrote: post #21

It's a lot harder than it sounds. Moderation is hard, and these days I don't think it's free either, unless you have a very, very niche community with people who are passionate. This wasn't a problem back in phpBB days. You could have a forum with 100k users, and 500 people on at any given time, and moderation was extremely easy because people wanted to do it - it made the community better. Reddit also has many users…

People who want to browse /r/all can just stay on reddit.

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

#60

Post by nickdothutton » Wed, Jun 07, 2023, 1:18 PM UTC

I wrote a little on the subject of content moderation, or as I think of it as a user... just filtering. How can _I_ take charge of what I see, and how can _I_ deploy tools, features, functionality to improve the signal to noise ratio for my own preference. How can other users with similar tolerance/threshold help me get the most out of social media/forums/etc. It was written after being particularly annoyed with LinkedIn, but it applies to all sorts of user generated content sites. Maybe someone will implement the ideas contained within.

https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/