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Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

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Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#11

Post by UpToTheSky »

pgwhalen wrote: post #8
UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

There are many reddit clones. The value is completely in the communities and not in the technology. r/all subs like r/pics are completely replaceable, but something like r/personalfinance is an institution that is not easy to replicate elsewhere.

What are some of those Reddit clones?

Any of them decentralized, so there is no "one ruler" who can close down the thing in the future?

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#13

Post by bobthepanda »

UpToTheSky wrote: post #9
blendergeek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardest part is going to be the community itself. Reddit (the board and shareholders) are betting that the community is too large to migrate to a better alternative.

Do we really need a big part of the community to have a good "forums for everything" site? To me it seems, that 99% of Reddit is just "content fast food" and low quality comments. If we would get just 1000 HN users to use an alternative, that could already be something.

The issue is also that the right people need to come.

Generally speaking, the issue with new startup competitors for social networks is that the first people they attract a critical mass of are people who got banned from the other sites for spam or excessive toxicity, and once they’re there they spook potential new people. It’s the online version of the “Nazi bar” problem.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#14

Post by tiedieconderoga »

UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

Three big issues off the top of my head:

* Hosting costs. Reddit was very lucky to have imgur pick up a lot of its bandwidth in its early days, but free image/video hosting sites are cyclical: absent a benevolent billionaire, the costs will rise with popularity, and the site will eventually need a source of revenue, which will introduce friction and start its inevitable decline in popularity.

* Moderation. Always a highwire tightrope act. Most Reddit spin-offs of the past several years have been focused on minimizing moderation, which ends up attracting people who tend to get banned from other places before the site gets a chance to form its own identity and pick up steam.

* Network effects, which are basically a lottery. You can have a scalable service with great UI, and a solid moderation story, but you still need to get lucky and catch lightning in a bottle to take off. This is common knowledge, which makes it even harder to justify starting to develop or use a new social medium.

Personally, I like places like HN, which focus on good moderation without trying to scale up. We are blessed to have dang, but if the site were structured more like Reddit or a forum with different boards, I bet it would become unmanageable very quickly.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#15

Post by [deleted] »

UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

[deleted]

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#16

Post by UpToTheSky »

tiedieconderoga wrote: post #14
UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

Three big issues off the top of my head: * Hosting costs. Reddit was very lucky to have imgur pick up a lot of its bandwidth in its early days, but free image/video hosting sites are cyclical: absent a benevolent billionaire, the costs will rise with popularity, and the site will eventually need a source of revenue, which will introduce friction and start its inevitable decline in popularity. * Moderation. Always a h…

Hosting costs: Let's start with text only.

Moderation: True, that's hard. But maybe piggybacking on HN's karma points could solve it?

Network effects: Do we really need many users to make something useful?

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#17

Post by UpToTheSky »

bobthepanda wrote: post #13
UpToTheSky wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need a big part of the community to have a good "forums for everything" site? To me it seems, that 99% of Reddit is just "content fast food" and low quality comments. If we would get just 1000 HN users to use an alternative, that could already be something.

The issue is also that the right people need to come. Generally speaking, the issue with new startup competitors for social networks is that the first people they attract a critical mass of are people who got banned from the other sites for spam or excessive toxicity, and once they’re there they spook potential new people. It’s the online version of the “Nazi bar” problem.

That's why I suggested piggybacking on HN's karma points.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#18

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

The days of MySpace losing to Facebook or Digg losing to Reddit are over. We reached a phase where the biggest networks are too big to die quickly. It no longer seems possible to replace these sites wholesale.

Their decline will look like Craigslist's. They'll still be around a decade from now, but having slowly and steadily lost traffic and cultural relevance.

I fully welcome Twitter and Reddit suddenly sacrificing their future for short term gain. It's the only path to being eventually rid of them.

And instead of replacing them with new single winners like Mastodon, I'm hopeful the new trend will be to spread our activity to multiple sites, and to be a bit less online in general.

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#19

Post by [deleted] »

UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

[deleted]

Re: Popular Subreddits are organizing a strike on 2023-06-12 b/c high API prices

#20

Post by jrnichols »

UpToTheSky wrote: post #2

What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative? Hosting the posts shouldn't be that hard. Storage is so cheap these days. Is it the legal aspects of handling user generated content? Ranking the posts is another issue. Is that where the value of Reddit lies? Maybe one could build some hybrid thing which capitalizes on existing structures? I could imagine a frontend which only shows pos…

> What is the hard thing about building an open, user-friendly Reddit alternative?

One already exists in Lemmy.

I suspect a big hurdle is dealing with all of the laws & regulations that exist in the United States. I've already seen one good sized mastodon instance vanish forever because hostile actors flooded it with actual child abuse material. And despite #fediblock, new instances with hate speech spring up all the time.

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