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Hi Deimorz, are you the same /u/Deimorz who used to be an admin on reddit? I'm very interested to read this perspective from you. Do you think there is a viable

Hi Deimorz, are you the same /u/Deimorz who used to be an admin on reddit? I'm very interested to read this perspective from you. Do you think there is a viable third way forward for companies like Medium and reddit?

Semaphor 7y ago
He is. And he is currently running the tildes.net non-profit, so I guess that says a bit ;)
Deimorz 7y ago
That's me, yes. And you're setting me up so perfectly here that I almost feel guilty about it: A few months after I left reddit, I started a non-profit and have been building a new HN/reddit-like community site that can stick to the principles I believe are important (including being entirely user-supported with no investors or ads). The announcement post is probably still the best explanation overall: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093) The site's been public to view (but still needs an invite to register) for a few months now, so anyone can have a look: https://tildes.net https://tildes.net Feel free to email me for an invite if anyone's interested, the address is in the blog post. It's not intended to be difficult to get an invite, I just want to keep the growth under control while we keep building up a base site culture and features.
- perfectstorm 7y ago
  > including being entirely user-supported with no investors or ads What are your plans when user-supported revenue is not enough to keep the servers running?
  - Deimorz 7y ago
    The current level of donations is already over 5x what's needed to pay for the server expenses, and it can probably handle 100x the traffic. "Sustainable" is a much easier goal than needing to be worth billions of dollars to make your investors happy.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    I’m still surprised that I can’t donate my resources toward a distributed DB/web server for this kind of content. E.g. by subscribing, I automatically start serving content and/or augmenting other mirrors. As some channels I subscribe to become stale, I automatically start re-assigning my resources to keep it alive. Basically a BitTorrent/Tor-like decentralized system for distribute DBs with a web front end. The amount of server resources I consume from fora must be 1/10000th the excess CPU/HD/bandwidth capacity I have. I’m sure some cryptocoin project is working on something like this.
    - rolleiflex 7y ago
      Ha, I’m working on this. It’s called Aether: http://getaether.net http://getaether.net. You contribute bandwidth / cpu / storage by being a peer on the network. It’s less Medium and more Slashdot / Reddit though.
cr0sh 7y ago
If you're looking for a replacement to reddit - there's https://saidit.net/ https://saidit.net/ - it's still fairly new, and if you sign up (well, happened to me - maybe it's changed since a few weeks ago?) they subscribe you to all of the subs (so you have to manually unsub from those you don't want to be in - and yes, several of the "ugly" subs from reddit migrated there after the last "great purge"). I don't know how sustainable it will be or can be, if it will stay ok or devolve into a weird "4chan-like" mess, or go the same way as reddit (if it gets popular, gets money, or what). I'm not even sure who's really behind it (that probably isn't a good thing). But - it's one option that I know of (and if you find out more about it or others, let me know if you can or want to).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Semaphor 7y ago

He is. And he is currently running the tildes.net non-profit, so I guess that says a bit ;)

Deimorz 7y ago

That's me, yes. And you're setting me up so perfectly here that I almost feel guilty about it: A few months after I left reddit, I started a non-profit and have been building a new HN/reddit-like community site that can stick to the principles I believe are important (including being entirely user-supported with no investors or ads). The announcement post is probably still the best explanation overall: https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes (HN discussion of it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17103093) The site's been public to view (but still needs an invite to register) for a few months now, so anyone can have a look: https://tildes.net https://tildes.net Feel free to email me for an invite if anyone's interested, the address is in the blog post. It's not intended to be difficult to get an invite, I just want to keep the growth under control while we keep building up a base site culture and features.

perfectstorm 7y ago
> including being entirely user-supported with no investors or ads What are your plans when user-supported revenue is not enough to keep the servers running?
- Deimorz 7y ago
  The current level of donations is already over 5x what's needed to pay for the server expenses, and it can probably handle 100x the traffic. "Sustainable" is a much easier goal than needing to be worth billions of dollars to make your investors happy.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  I’m still surprised that I can’t donate my resources toward a distributed DB/web server for this kind of content. E.g. by subscribing, I automatically start serving content and/or augmenting other mirrors. As some channels I subscribe to become stale, I automatically start re-assigning my resources to keep it alive. Basically a BitTorrent/Tor-like decentralized system for distribute DBs with a web front end. The amount of server resources I consume from fora must be 1/10000th the excess CPU/HD/bandwidth capacity I have. I’m sure some cryptocoin project is working on something like this.
  - rolleiflex 7y ago
    Ha, I’m working on this. It’s called Aether: http://getaether.net http://getaether.net. You contribute bandwidth / cpu / storage by being a peer on the network. It’s less Medium and more Slashdot / Reddit though.

cr0sh 7y ago

If you're looking for a replacement to reddit - there's https://saidit.net/ https://saidit.net/ - it's still fairly new, and if you sign up (well, happened to me - maybe it's changed since a few weeks ago?) they subscribe you to all of the subs (so you have to manually unsub from those you don't want to be in - and yes, several of the "ugly" subs from reddit migrated there after the last "great purge"). I don't know how sustainable it will be or can be, if it will stay ok or devolve into a weird "4chan-like" mess, or go the same way as reddit (if it gets popular, gets money, or what). I'm not even sure who's really behind it (that probably isn't a good thing). But - it's one option that I know of (and if you find out more about it or others, let me know if you can or want to).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]