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It might soon be time for The Oatmeal to add a new panel to his famous "Digg vs. Reddit" cartoon: https://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/reddit_digg h

It might soon be time for The Oatmeal to add a new panel to his famous "Digg vs. Reddit" cartoon: https://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/reddit_digg https://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/reddit_digg I love Reddit and have no problem with this move in principle, though I do wish there was at least one social platform that would try to follow the Craigslist ethos and stay "proudly independent." I'm not a big believer in crypto, but Reddit seems like one of the few platforms that would allow a crypto economy to develop and provide an alternative to the dominant money-making models.

ForHackernews 8y ago
About 5 years ago, Reddit hired a crypto guy, Ryan X Charles, to make something called "reddit notes"[0] that they could never explain[1]. He wasted his time re-implementing bitcoin in Javascript[2], and was eventually fired.[3] I guess you could say they were already early pioneers of the "cryptocurrency scam flameout" pattern. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/redditnotes https://www.reddit.com/r/redditnotes [1] https://www.engadget.com/2014/12/19/reddit-notes/ https://www.engadget.com/2014/12/19/reddit-notes/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2uadvd/the_real_reason_ryan_charles_was_fired_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2uadvd/the_real_re... [3] http://fortune.com/2015/01/30/reddit-notes-is-not-going-to-happen/ http://fortune.com/2015/01/30/reddit-notes-is-not-going-to-h...
- bduerst 8y ago
  But why not mine bitcoins client-side with millions of mobile users? (/s)
  - jules-jules 8y ago
    If that would mean staying independent and free from economic/political interference, why not?
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      Because users like their batteries? Because trying to do crypto properly in a language without integers is recipe for disaster?
    - bduerst 8y ago
      That would require Bitcoin to be free from economic/political interference first, and given the the block size debacle and concentration of power with the Chinese miners, that's not the case.
jedberg 8y ago
The irony of that comic is that reddit had more traffic than Digg when Digg died. The "mass influx" from Digg to reddit wasn't all that massive, because most of those people were already reddit users too.
si1entstill 8y ago
(on the crypto note) is something like https://steemit.com/ https://steemit.com/ what you are envisioning? It does seem like we are stuck in a cycle where we are super into platforms until they become large and too beholden to investors, then we swap. Some kind of truly community driven (open source) federated service does seem like a real answer to this problem. Maybe we will all end up on Mastodon-like services pretty soon.
- xur17 8y ago
  Steemit is interesting to me, but I'm not sure I'd want something that's so focused on users making money to replace reddit.
Deimorz 8y ago
> I do wish there was at least one social platform that would try to follow the Craigslist ethos and stay "proudly independent." I worked at reddit for 4 years, but quit in 2016, largely because they were clearly beginning to switch from a small, fairly independent company (despite being owned by Advance/Conde) to one that was going to become completely dependent on venture capital and I knew what that would end up doing to the site. A few months later, I decided to start a non-profit and start working on a site that would be able to address a lot of the issues that I think are hurting online communities: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of the announcement here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093) It's in private alpha and is still fairly small, but it gets several hundred posts/comments a day and is progressing steadily. If you (or anyone else) is interested in an invite, send me an email at the address listed in the blog post and I'll be happy to give you one.
- dfed-mpls 8y ago
  Love what I've read so far and have sent an invite request. Thank you for your work, I was beginning to lament that all social media would fall into the toxic shitpost aggregator turned VC cash machine role. (I totally miss my old BBS too...)
- babypuncher 8y ago
  This sounds exactly like the kind of Reddit alternative we need. Most competitors right now seem to think Reddit's biggest problem is their policy against user harassment and hate speech (even though this is barely enforced at all). Just based on your blog post, you seem really in tune with what the real problems with Reddit (and social media as a whole) are in 2019.
- qgsrw3fd 8y ago
  Do you have any screenshots of what the website looks like? I'm curious. I'm not asking you to make them just for me, I want to know if they already exist. If they don't and you don't want to make them, that's fine.
  - 8y ago

ForHackernews 8y ago

About 5 years ago, Reddit hired a crypto guy, Ryan X Charles, to make something called "reddit notes"[0] that they could never explain[1]. He wasted his time re-implementing bitcoin in Javascript[2], and was eventually fired.[3] I guess you could say they were already early pioneers of the "cryptocurrency scam flameout" pattern. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/redditnotes https://www.reddit.com/r/redditnotes [1] https://www.engadget.com/2014/12/19/reddit-notes/ https://www.engadget.com/2014/12/19/reddit-notes/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2uadvd/the_real_reason_ryan_charles_was_fired_from/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2uadvd/the_real_re... [3] http://fortune.com/2015/01/30/reddit-notes-is-not-going-to-happen/ http://fortune.com/2015/01/30/reddit-notes-is-not-going-to-h...

bduerst 8y ago
But why not mine bitcoins client-side with millions of mobile users? (/s)
- jules-jules 8y ago
  If that would mean staying independent and free from economic/political interference, why not?
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    Because users like their batteries? Because trying to do crypto properly in a language without integers is recipe for disaster?
  - bduerst 8y ago
    That would require Bitcoin to be free from economic/political interference first, and given the the block size debacle and concentration of power with the Chinese miners, that's not the case.

jedberg 8y ago

The irony of that comic is that reddit had more traffic than Digg when Digg died. The "mass influx" from Digg to reddit wasn't all that massive, because most of those people were already reddit users too.

si1entstill 8y ago

(on the crypto note) is something like https://steemit.com/ https://steemit.com/ what you are envisioning? It does seem like we are stuck in a cycle where we are super into platforms until they become large and too beholden to investors, then we swap. Some kind of truly community driven (open source) federated service does seem like a real answer to this problem. Maybe we will all end up on Mastodon-like services pretty soon.

xur17 8y ago
Steemit is interesting to me, but I'm not sure I'd want something that's so focused on users making money to replace reddit.

Deimorz 8y ago

> I do wish there was at least one social platform that would try to follow the Craigslist ethos and stay "proudly independent." I worked at reddit for 4 years, but quit in 2016, largely because they were clearly beginning to switch from a small, fairly independent company (despite being owned by Advance/Conde) to one that was going to become completely dependent on venture capital and I knew what that would end up doing to the site. A few months later, I decided to start a non-profit and start working on a site that would be able to address a lot of the issues that I think are hurting online communities: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of the announcement here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093) It's in private alpha and is still fairly small, but it gets several hundred posts/comments a day and is progressing steadily. If you (or anyone else) is interested in an invite, send me an email at the address listed in the blog post and I'll be happy to give you one.

dfed-mpls 8y ago
Love what I've read so far and have sent an invite request. Thank you for your work, I was beginning to lament that all social media would fall into the toxic shitpost aggregator turned VC cash machine role. (I totally miss my old BBS too...)
babypuncher 8y ago
This sounds exactly like the kind of Reddit alternative we need. Most competitors right now seem to think Reddit's biggest problem is their policy against user harassment and hate speech (even though this is barely enforced at all). Just based on your blog post, you seem really in tune with what the real problems with Reddit (and social media as a whole) are in 2019.
qgsrw3fd 8y ago
Do you have any screenshots of what the website looks like? I'm curious. I'm not asking you to make them just for me, I want to know if they already exist. If they don't and you don't want to make them, that's fine.
- 8y ago