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Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development

944 points by jasonbourne1901 6y ago

ScottFree 6y ago
I'm extremely disappointed your icon isn't a picture of Lemmy from Motorhead.
cateye 6y ago
There is huge need for such an application. Hope that it becomes moderately successful. If it becomes too successful, it will become victim of it's success like Reddit.
- notkaiho 6y ago
  It will absolutely need popular support to attain some sort of critical mass, and not just among the cast-offs from other platforms, such as Gab, Parler etc.
- pugworthy 6y ago
  What do you see as the need?
benbristow 6y ago
Looks nice. Really fast webapp too. Congrats team! Looking forward to tracking this project's development.
- vinay427 6y ago
  You're not kidding. This webapp is so fast (after the initial load) that I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if the Reddit mobile website intentionally adds sleeps/delays as some have jokingly suspected in the past. On this site, I can actually scroll through posts or collapse comment threads without wondering if my touch input and/or browser are frozen.
  - bserge 6y ago
    New Reddit doesn't need sleep/delays, it's already slow as molasses heh. If not for old.reddit.com, my time on Reddit would've gone way down :/
    - revnode 6y ago
      I wish that was the only problem with the new Reddit ... it frequently crashes my browser. No other website does this.
      - emersion 6y ago
        This sounds like a browser bug tbh.
    - takeda 6y ago
      My understanding was that s/he was referring to the new UI. Actually Reddit makes it hard to be on the old interface, I have to use browser extension to completely avoid the new UI.
      - bserge 6y ago
        There's a setting in preferences - as long as you're logged in, www.reddit.com links will still load the old design. Logged out though, yeah, I manually replace "www" with "old" whenever I open a link... Reddit is unavoidable these days since everyone's moved there and there's a lot of good content :/
  - arcturus17 6y ago
    Not my experience... Touching “Communities” on my iPhone takes a while to load. Edit: to add, while touching the buttons for the different sections, it seems sometimes my touches are not registering, requiring me to try again.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    A brand new site doesn't have many features yet. The more features you add the slower it'll get.
imrelaxed 6y ago
Seems to be crashing on my end.
- sq_ 6y ago
  Same here. Must be getting the HN hug of death.
  - gpm 6y ago
    > dessalines (mod, admin, creator) 23 minutes ago > We have > 2200 connections to the server right now, its a DDOS. Rust seems to be handling it fine, but the nginx is having issues. https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/35712 https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/35712 Sounds about right - I'm amused that whoever saw this thought it was a ddos though. dessalines - if you're reading this - I expect looking at referrers would be a good way to (manually) diagnose real attacks vs people becoming interested in your site.
readnews1 6y ago
"Reddit alternative" "open source federated" What is the difference between this and usenet
- generatorguy 6y ago
  You might be on to something! repackage an nntp server with a web front end in a docker container and away you go
  - readnews1 6y ago
    @zzo38computer (can you tag people on this website????)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - u801e 6y ago
    Dejanews did that many years ago. You can still access usenet via Google groups.
    - generatorguy 6y ago
      yes but undeniably the dejanews or google groups usenet experience was worse than with a proper news client like Forté Agent, except for search. These days a web based NNTP client could offer an equivalent if not superior experience. [1] http://www.forteinc.com http://www.forteinc.com
- takeda 6y ago
  I agree with you that Reddit basically overlaps this area, but I don't think access to Usenet is easy these days (ignoring paid services that are optimized for downloading files). Although if anyone knows good servers (ISPs no longer seem to offer them) or even better a way to connect own server to Usenet, I'm interested.
erulabs 6y ago
Congratulations! Just discovering Lemmy! Federated software is excellent - I’ll have to write a home-hosting tutorial for this!
badrabbit 6y ago
Sorry, don't like the name. Also, when you say a reddit alternative, to me it gives the impression that the redditor culture will remain so why would I sacrifice the content rich reddit for a new platform? Federation doesn't mean much to me as a user that justs wants [social]entertainment and news (and commentary on them). There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature. Edit: if you think this is irrelevant, consider how both reddit (until recently) and HN didn't require email for signup, also the majority lurker population and importance of lurker-> user conversion. If email is your hill to die on, it will also be mine and I hope a majority of lurkers' hill to die on against you. As a techie I support federated and decentralized systems but as a user, how the platorm is architected is irrelevant, my experience is all I care about. Also,how will it monetize? Ads? If so I will stay with reddit. Non-crypto payment? Yeah, crappy reddit is better.
- mahathu 6y ago
  >There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature. I'm not trying to play the devils advocate here, just genuinely curious: Why do you (or anyone else) have such a strong opinion on not using emails for signing up? Usually, when a service requires me to enter an email, I have no issue with using a service like 10minutemail and never checking that email account again.
  - notkaiho 6y ago
    Exactly, it's not like you can't create a genuinely anonymous email address for a one-off purpose.
    - badrabbit 6y ago
      Yes it's actully like that. Those services get blocked but why do I have to use a third party when you can just make emails optional. If many users dont feel comfortable giving up their email, just make it optinal. You cant expect my support when you don't care about forcing me to jump through hoops because you don't care about my privacy preferences.
MattGaiser 6y ago
How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.
- phoe-krk 6y ago
  See how the Fediverse works - it has largely avoided becoming like Voat. Most alt-right instances, such as Gab, are hugely defederated by instance admins and therefore isolated from most of the network.
  - fxtentacle 6y ago
    You speak in a language too cryptic for regular consumption ;) Which "Fediverse"? As I understand the concept, it applies to social networks in general. But it appears that you are referring to one specific network which contains the Gab server in it.
    - input_sh 6y ago
      "Fediverse" = federated universe. Basically a bunch of smaller social networks speaking together through common protocols. Think: being able to follow a YouTube channel straight from your Twitter account — no need to create a YouTube account. The most popular of such networks is Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/), which everyone can run on their own server (often referred to as an "instance"). By default, you create an account on one server and just speak to everyone like if you were on the same server. If one of such servers turns out to be a cesspool full of bigots (like Gab is), an admin can simply say "my server will no longer communicate with that server". When a bunch of servers do that, Gab is pretty much isolated, even though it's using an open protocol. To put it in layman's terms: if a lot of spam comes from user@example.com, Gmail can just dismiss the emails coming from all addresses that end in @example.com. Server owners are usually transparent and keep lists of servers they're not speaking to on GitHub or somewhere.
      - 6y ago
Afforess 6y ago
How is lemmy going to avoid the fate of the last reddit alternative (voat)? Voat attracted the communities banned from reddit, e.g the worst of the worst: jailbait, creepshots, beatingwomen, etc. The users most interested in an alternative to reddit are on average, the exact wrong type of user to help with the growth of a healthy community. I don't see any information on how being "federated" solves the hard problem of toxic communities, especially given that is the userbase it will attract.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jimbob45 6y ago
  Nothing wrong with communities like that as long as you keep them segregated like reddit does with each of its subreddits. If those start creeping into your politics, memes, and video game subreddits, then yeah you’ve got a rough problem.
  - marcinzm 6y ago
    >Nothing wrong with communities like that as long as you keep them segregated like reddit does with each of its subreddits. Which wasn't enough as I understand since those communities would en-mass attack other communities that they disagreed with.
    - nothal 6y ago
      To be fair, this seems like a generally true case of how subreddits work. Leftist subs brigade, Conservative subs brigade, star wars subs brigade, subs about watching other subs brigade still brigade. It's unsolvable so long as people that disagree are allowed to freely access each other's reddits (not that that's a bad thing).
    - Hedja 6y ago
      This is what happens all across the web, regardless of software. Raiding. IRC raids, forum raids, etc. Sometimes it's for fun, sometimes it's more malicious. Most software has ways to mitigate it. Temporarily closing new registrations, invite only registrations, throttling, IP bans, etc. Just like DDoS attacks, there is no true solution to this since that's how the public web and internet works.
FreeTrade 6y ago
member.cash is an interesting Reddit alternative. Not federated, but all the content is on a blockchain, so comments/users can't be censored, but users can filter them.
- ryeights 6y ago
  What happens when illegal content is posted? Is it stuck on the blockchain forever?
  - hkt 6y ago
    Sure is!
markdown 6y ago
So many noob mistakes in the UI and I haven't even started using the site proper. I see a link "Create Community", this takes me to a form where I get to create a community. I spend time naming and describing this community, and then click the Submit button. At this point it decides to tell me that I need to use lowercase for the community name. So I fix that and hit Submit again. At this point I'm told I have to create an account first. WTF, why didn't you tell me earlier? If I leave this page to create an account, will you preserve what I've filled into this form for when I get back? Why didn't you just add the necessary username/password fields to this form at the same time you showed me the error? Anyway, so I click on the link that says Login/Signup and get a popup that says "Are you sure you want to leave?" Now I have to click again to remove this popup. Another wasted click and +1 to the "annoyed" meter. See above for how this could have been avoided by just adding the login/signup forms to the form I just filled out to reduce friction. Anyway, so I create an account. And it turns out the site forgot everything I'd done before that. Why ask me questions (make me fill out a "Create community" form) if you're going to immediately forget all my answers? Absolutely no respect for the users time. Why would you do that when your very existence depends on attracting more users?
- FailMore 6y ago
  Nice review of the UX... If you want to take a look at something different you can try my side project https://taaalk.co https://taaalk.co. It's a platform for interviews. (Sorry for the shameless plug, I just worked hard on my UX and would be interested to have it judged!)
- arcturus17 6y ago
  The problems in UX/UI in what I've tried span from fundamental interaction design down to code. I guess it's a young project, so lots can be improved. I think the problems you mention are bad but they sound fixable. I'd think about contributing or at least start by running my own instance and tweaking the interface to my liking. I'll also need to check if Inferno is worth learning.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
proc0 6y ago
Love the name, love Motorhead. Here's a Lemmy quote: "Apparently people don't like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. "
as1mov 6y ago
One thing that stands out to me is lemmy has public modlogs[1], this is a great feature in my opinion. Something that should be more common. Quite a few people on reddit are frustrated by how opaque moderation is, but looking at the meta community of power users that seems to mod the bigger subs, I doubt the devs will ever copy this feature. [1]: https://dev.lemmy.ml/modlog https://dev.lemmy.ml/modlog
- Traster 6y ago
  The entire moderation aspect of reddit is a disaster that only goes un-examined because there's so many other glaring issues with reddit. You can piss off a random guy with no affiliation or responsibility towards reddit and get banned from basically 90+% of reddit's content.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  I moderate a couple of subreddits and agree moderation is a disaster. For popular subs, moderators are basically swamped in a never-ending avalanche of shit. Even if you want to be a good mod, doing so for the long haul is an insane time commitment. The fact that being banned from one sub doesn't usually get you banned from another sub is totally understandable, but combined with how easy it is to make a new account, in practice it's just never-ending whack-a-mole with shithead posters.
  - justAnotherNET 6y ago
    The mods only have themselves to blame. They create insanely broad rules allowing them to ban anything and then limit mod positions to concentrate their power. The role of mods is to delete off topic submissions and remove illegal content. Nothing more.
    - chowells 6y ago
      The role of mods is to establish and maintain the community they wish to have in the space. That takes a lot more than deleting off-topic submissions and removing illegal content.
mfkp 6y ago
Not a good sign when the website doesn't load: https://i.imgur.com/Us1mwrD.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Us1mwrD.jpg
- bo1024 6y ago
  I had several problems trying to get the page to load. After allowing it to use lots of javascript-related resources, it eventually loaded but took a while to display the actual text, on a fast internet connection. Unfortunate.
- aeroplain 6y ago
  I've used Lemmy for a while, and I haven't had this issue with it. Either it's an HN hug of death, a DDOS, or something else.
nickdothutton 6y ago
I’m hopeful something good will come of this. I wrote this about LinkedIn but most of it could easily apply to a Reddit alternative, I love HN but would love to see a broader platform that didnt become cancerous. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/ https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
- ativzzz 6y ago
  > didnt become cancerous Ultimately any platform big enough becomes cancerous unless it has sponsors who are willing to fund the platform without turning a profit, like HN is funded by ycombinator (though notice how over time there are more and more hiring advertisements for ycombinator companies). The bigger a platform becomes, the more expensive it becomes to maintain; the people who were volunteers at first have to either monetize to be able to continue supporting the platform, or they have to sell the company to someone who can support it. Once money is brought into the equation, a community starts to slowly deteriorate, as money slowly starts taking over all aspects of the platform, which is nothing more than human nature.
  - Can_Not 6y ago
    The hiring ads here seem completely relevant and appropriate for this forum. Very few other websites can say the same for their ads. YC saves money on recruiter fees and job listing fees, you reach your target audience, and you don't need tons of analytics.
artembugara 6y ago
The website is down only for me
bennysonething 6y ago
The Reddit redesign made Reddit ridiculously unusable. Also like the web in general the more users it got the horrible it became. The stardard of content fell through the floor. The stanard of comments did the same. It went from be a pretty free market liberal types to angry left wing reactionaries over the course of a few years. It felt like the users got younger and younger until one day I saw a pic bunch of high school students egged on by their teachers holding a "socialism now" banner, this was front page.
- antepodius 6y ago
  I think the lesson might just to move on from sites whenever they get too big and cancerous.
companyhen 6y ago
I'm a fan of https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ - created by an ex-reddit employee (creator of AutoModerator)
stormdennis 6y ago
I'd like a "reddit" that wasn't a confusing mess to navigate on a browser on my phone and wasn't always trying to get me to use the app. It could do worse than take lessons from the design of HN. A separate HN clone for each subreddit.
- holler 6y ago
  check out the site in my profile, brand new and under active development, but it's a responsive web app with goal of simplicity/low-friction
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
superkuh 6y ago
> JavaScript is required for this page. Yeah, I'm out. That was a problem with the federated reddit-alike notabug.io too. It was just one giant javascript application, not html. And doing "pre-rendering" of the javascript on the host machine made the VPS costs too much to be tenable for people to federate.
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  Prerendering of the JavaScript? What do mean by that? Don't you mean prerendering HTML?
  - superkuh 6y ago
    I do. I just worded it badly. I meant "pre-rendering of the javascript" to mean executing JS on the server and then sending the resulting actual html/css.
shawndumas 6y ago
The “forgot password” link does not work. (On mobile so I did not dig in and see if there were any errors in the console.)
rolleiflex 6y ago
We have something similar to this, Aether. https://getaether.net https://getaether.net. (code at github.com/nehbit/aether) Always glad to see more eyeballs on the space, so I wish then the best. Here are a few differences I can see at the first glance: - Aether is decentralised (as in torrent) this appears to be federated. That means Aether truly has no servers and every user is a peer, while federated means there are smaller ‘Reddits’ as servers that talk to each other. - By proxy that means we can’t really have a web app unfortunately (working on it by the way of running a daemon on a raspberry pi) and they can - we need a native app running on your machine and seeding context to the network. - By another proxy, this means Aether avoids the issue of having a ‘middle management’ in the form of the ownership of your home server that federated networks have. You are the home server, so no one can control what you see. We call this user sovereignty - In Aether we have elections which elect mods based on popular vote and you control who is a mod, precisely because the ‘social compiler’ runs on your machine and allows you to compile it however you want. Two people with two different mod lists for the same community can see drastically different communities - We have a mod audit log and have had it for a while - everyone’s mod actions are visible to everyone (this I think they also have) - Lastly, we have made the decision to not monetise Aether itself and create a team communication app called Aether Pro, and monetise that. This creates a ‘Chinese wall’ between where we make our money and the P2P network, which means it’s a shield against drifting towards trying to make money from a social network. The code bases are separate but similar, so that also means work done on the Pro helps Aether as well. We have gotten some funding for the Pro, and we consider the P2P version a ‘marketing / goodwill expense’ in the context of that funding. That aligns us towards making sure Aether is long-term viable, well maintained and monetisation-free. In contrast I think they’ve gotten money to work directly on this, which has both good and more hazardous sides. In summary, we opted for a long term structure that has less moral hazard (in my opinion, of course), in favour of a more stable app without a need for monetisation that has fewer, more stable releases. For context, here's how a recent thread looks on my Aether client: https://i.imgur.com/45tXQEO.png https://i.imgur.com/45tXQEO.png
- DevKoala 6y ago
  Excellent. I am trying this. Thank you.
omnimus 6y ago
There is also https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ that is also open-source.
- LockAndLol 6y ago
  Is it federated though?
golemiprague 6y ago
I don't know how it is in the US but outside it seems like messaging apps replace the functionality of reddit/twitter for the less lefty inclined people, Telegram is a good example. Unlike Gab/Voat messaging apps already got a huge user base so statistically they don't become a cesspool of the most extreme views, right or left, but they are not moderated so all voices can find a place to be heard.
embit 6y ago
Once upon a time, open source federated reddit was called Usenet.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Neat, but the big test for a discussion platform like this is what happens when they get big enough to matter, to get the attention of journalists looking for a scoop. It's easy to slide by with haphazard (or no) moderation when you're small. Discussion extremists (trolls, bigots, and the like) are less attracted to smaller platforms; they'd prefer bigger ones, if any would take them. I'm curious what will happen with the central listing of communities if a particularly vile community gains popularity. If there's a community unapologetically dedicated to, say, neo-nazism, and they like to do things like praise Hitler or discuss ways they can kill racial minorities, do they still get listed? How will others feel about that?
- justAnotherNET 6y ago
  The solution is protocols. How do you feel about illegal content hosted via BitTorrent? Will bittorrent stand for “giving a platform” to illegal content? For the technically inclined: exactly.
- newacct583 6y ago
  Yeah, exactly. I immediately knew when I saw "federated" in the title that my job was to drop this link in. This comment seems like the right spot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... Lacking global moderation, eventually every one of those subreddits will end up in Lemmy. Also somethingawful/4chan/8chan style "asshole feedback loops". Everyone at HN likes to claim they want free speech and hate moderation, but in fact moderation is the foundation of our discourse.
  - taylorlunt 6y ago
    I want subreddit-specific moderation. That way I can sub to a hatepost sub if I want and a mature tech sub if I want and get the best of both worlds. Everyone here who disagrees is just saying, "I don't want to join those communities, so they shouldn't even be allowed to exist."
    - 6y ago
TulliusCicero 6y ago
I have to say, at the very least, the UI is a breath of fresh air compared to new Reddit. New Reddit is just...I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels awful to look at.
- glenstein 6y ago
  Absolutely. It's not a bad interface, and for better or for worse I think this is critically important to get right, and was a huge part of Mastodon's success. I think so many other well-intentioned projects fail because of inscrutable interfaces, so it is good to see the UI taken seriously.
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Oh, has Mastodon been successful? I haven't heard much about that.
    - riffic 6y ago
      The ecosystem is very successful: https://twitter.com/freemancw/status/1276287684814594048 https://twitter.com/freemancw/status/1276287684814594048
      - codetrotter 6y ago
        It’s a little bit ironic that the post you link to was posted on Twitter though, isn’t it? :^) Teasing aside, I like Mastodon. I’ve used it a bit myself too, and I have a profile on an instance of it.
        buzzkillington 6y ago
        Success is not a meaningful metric. Gopher is a success when you browse wikipedia on it.
- ehsankia 6y ago
  While I agree that new reddit is awful, I still much prefer old reddit to this. Also what's up with this new trend of having the main content width-restricted, but not the header [0]? The new GitHub UI that went live this week has the exact same problem on wide screens. What kind of UX designer ever approved such a mess and why do so many sites do this? The main UI itself, again very width restricted, but also has strange paddings [1] which limit severely the area for the title (which is the most important UI element). Doesn't really make sense to me. The vertical centering is a bit of a mess, and the size of icons is also either way too big or way too small [2]. [0] https://i.imgur.com/gZEWEdJ.png https://i.imgur.com/gZEWEdJ.png [1] https://i.imgur.com/nayP548.png https://i.imgur.com/nayP548.png [2] https://i.imgur.com/XZPToxy.png https://i.imgur.com/XZPToxy.png EDIT: Huh, I hadn't used new reddit in a long time, I actually took a look now and it seems like it has improved significantly. I actually don't hate it as much, it looks much closer to old reddit now, with full width content and much less padding [3] [3] https://i.imgur.com/c1QBucR.png https://i.imgur.com/c1QBucR.png
taurath 6y ago
A federated reddit system needs ways to lock down user accounts. That it’s basically 4chan in terms of anonymity gives too much of an open door to extremists and trolls. I don’t see any difference between this and voat except the assumption of goodwill rather than being centered around right wing extremism.
- posguy 6y ago
  The fediverse has proven quite resilient to trolls, bots and numerous other challenges as users and instance operators can block other users and instances, (or mute/content warn media) among numerous other moderation tools to prevent bad actors from destroying the signal to noise ratio of each instance.
Aeolun 6y ago
Their 500 Exception homepage does not exactly inspire confidence.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  I don't think it is reasonable to judge whether a product in development currently scales well.
- aeroplain 6y ago
  If your eager to try it, Feddit Social is another (much smaller) instance. https://feddit.social/ https://feddit.social/
jwilber 6y ago
Nginx bad gateway when I visit. Reassuring I guess that I’ll face the same down issues I do now with or without funding.
1anna69 6y ago
Hello guys my hot photos are here .. http://vivy.us/isxxx http://vivy.us/isxxx username annaxx))
Kye 6y ago
This has ActivityPub (AP) support on its roadmap. I wrote a well-received[0] argument that AP could be the future: https://kyefox.com/2020/04/09/activitypub-could-be-the-future/ https://kyefox.com/2020/04/09/activitypub-could-be-the-futur... I softened on it a little over the years since, but I think that was just the dearth of new things coming out that ran on it. Now I'm starting to think that was just a reflection of the fact that the obvious, low-hanging fruit was handled (write.as/Pixelfed/PeerTube/Mastodon) and the next round will take a while as people who got on later get ideas and develop them into something like, for example, Lemmy. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864029
u801e 6y ago
I'm surprised not a single comment discussing Reddit alternatives mentioned Usenet (especially in terms of federation).
- zzo38computer 6y ago
  Well, now yours does, and thinking of federation, that is what I thought of, too. And, I think also, to be based on NNTP. I think at at least what should be done includes: Use NNTP, and avoid namespace collisions if you are defining your own newsgroups. I don't know how to request adding newsgroups to Big 8, or to the alt hierarchy, or others, but I invented the "Unusenet" convention for avoiding namespace collisions, which I use on my own NNTP server. Make the web pages contain the message ID, newsgroup name, and information to connect to the NNTP server, even if JavaScripts are disabled. Users who want NNTP can use it even if they do not have a compatible browser. If you want to use Markdown, add a "Content-type: text/markdown" header to articles that use Markdown (and do not try to render articles without such a header as Markdown), and preferably using a subset of Markdown without HTML.
cuddlecake 6y ago
I wonder why the developers of Lemmy decided to perform all the content requests via WebSocket instead of HTTP. Is there anyone out there who can answer this?
- holler 6y ago
  Obfuscation? I've seen this in other sites (discord comes to mind). Maybe there's a hypothetical efficiency from reusing the websocket connection for all requests? for the site sqowk.im Im working on I use http for content requests and websocket for realtime stuff
bitL 6y ago
Is it possible to make fonts smaller to resemble old.reddit.com? My perception field is vastly larger than the amount of text displayed (i.e. my brain can search for keywords without actually consciously focusing on them).
- t-writescode 6y ago
  command / ctrl + scroll-wheel?
  - bitL 6y ago
    Did you even try it? Give it a go and enjoy unexpected UX, then come back...
IgorPartola 6y ago
The problem with Reddit isn’t the technology. I mean, yes open source is good, and I want more of that. Even Android is a good thing even if only one company actively contributes to it. At least when you hit a bug or don’t understand how something works, you can go read the code. But the problem with Reddit is community management, and re-writing it won’t solve that. Reddit has been a mostly free for all in terms of moderation, and it is explicitly set up to allow thought bubbles, which gives rise to communities that dox activists, that incite violence, that promote conspiracy theories, etc. I love Reddit’s good parts and really detest its bad parts. Problem is that you can only solve that with strong application of content guidelines, or by not even pretending to be a good place a la 4chan. There is no model as far as I’ve seen, not even an academic one, that allows for mostly moderation free or self-moderated content while also not prominently featuring at least one neo-Nazi group using it to communicate and coordinate.
Ericson2314 6y ago
NLNet, the source of funding, is a truly superb institution that should be better known in the US.
mrfusion 6y ago
I think simply having a Reddit clone run by a non profit (or owned by the members themselves) would go a long way in promoting freedom and fixing the issues. I guess use a people solution instead of a technical one.
- tennineeight 6y ago
  There is one made by previous Reddit admin/dev who understands how reddit works. It is nonprofit, developed in open and all policy discussions go through community. https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/
orthecreedence 6y ago
I think Lemmy needs to address this before it will get any wide acceptance: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816
- hoorayimhelping 6y ago
  >We are never going to remove the slur filter completely (or add an option to that effect), because we dont want to make it easy for right-wingers to use Lemmy. Welp, I just completely wrote off this site and I'm about as middle of the road as they come in America. What a short sighted and ignorant way to look at the world.
  - orthecreedence 6y ago
    That's the thing! It doesn't stop hate speech. "I think we should eliminate all of (((those people)))." I didn't use the k-word, but everyone knows what the sentence means. On the other hand, you can't post "tranny" or "bitch" but, bitch is contextual: it's definition is a female dog, but even in the context of "wow she's such a bitch" bitch is not a slur. "Tranny" is derogatory in the context when used against trans people, but it's also used quite often in mechanics to mean "transmission." There are so many different contexts in which these words aren't derogatory, and in some cases represent the power of people to reclaim what was previously a slur. Banning certain words is incredibly short-sighted, and punishes everyone who uses the platform while not addressing the real issue: extreme right-wingers can still use it just fine, and have absolutely no problem coming up with new dog whistles in order to get around your elementary word filter.
    - asdf21 6y ago
      In restaurants I worked in a long time ago, servers would just call black people "Canadians" -- for instance, "Nope, don't sit those Canadians in my section, they don't tip." Good luck filtering for stuff like that. And even if you did, people would just come up with new version. Re: The core problem... Why would having extreme right wingers use your site even be a problem? Presumably extreme left wingers are okay?
secondcoming 6y ago
As an non-American, Reddit is in general, awful. It's all "Trump, Trump, Trump" and tolerates anti-white sentiment. Actual conversations are rare, it seems to mostly be impressionable young people trying to out-do each other in taking offence to things and being angry. It seems you can't block subreddits like r/politics without making an account. /r/cpp has some good stuff sometimes. What would a reddit alternative bring? More of the same? No thanks.
OptionX 6y ago
"This is an Antifa instance" stickied on the front page by an admin no less. If I wanted a politicized cesspool reddit-clone I would just use Voat. Fail to see the point.
saltedonion 6y ago
Um. CSS isn’t loading on safari mobile. I hope this isn’t the actual experience ?
oskenso 6y ago
I currently use this to host https://emulator.news/ https://emulator.news/ the docker support is on point :D
jari_mustonen 6y ago
I hope that this will democratise political discourse. At the moment, people having opposing view to the main stream opinion are having exceedingly difficult time sharing their content. Reddit's main fault is their willingness to participate in politically motivated banning. I'm talking about the fate of The_Donald. (There are also other examples.) Reddit first persecuted and then effectively banned The_Donald because, in my opinion, Reddit is run by people who hate president Trump. It's important to understand that the hate is not something that will go away after Trump but it will be replaced by hate for the next guy. It's driven by political tribalism, not Trump. As basically all social media platforms are doing the exactly same thing as Reddit, we are not in a good place. We really can't allow our political discourse and views to be dictated by a handful of group thinking denizens of Silicon Valley blinded by political tribalism.
- sneak 6y ago
  > It's important to understand that the hate is not something that will go away after Trump but it will be replaced by hate for the next guy. This seems to presuppose that all presidents are equal in terms of the acts they perform that generate hate or upset in the supporters of their political opponents. I don’t think that is true. Not all presidents have been, or need to be, culture warriors. Indeed, it would appear that Americans are way more united on a number of huge issues now more than ever: COVID response, racial equality, economic recovery. Just based on circumstance, I think whoever next holds the office of POTUS, regardless of party, stands to polarize people less than they have been in the past due to the fact that many, many people are in agreement about federal government priorities right now. That seems, to me, relatively unprecedented in recent times.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
fernly 6y ago
So sad, nobody remembers Imzy, the "nice reddit" founded by Dan McComas. It really was nice, had highly varied, friendly communities and a pleasant UI. Couldn't get traction, apparently. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/imzy-the-nice-reddit-alternative-is-shutting-down.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/imzy-the-nice-reddit...
- zem 6y ago
  I was unaware of imzy, but reading between the lines of that article the cause of demise seems to be "not enough traction to be successfully run as a business". sounds like there were communities there who were using it and enjoying it, so the real failure was the expectation that it would get as large as reddit and sustain a business model, not in the lack of usefulness to its users.
- canofbars 6y ago
  Also https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ This has been tried and tried 1000 times. The problem is reddit is good enough for most people so an alternative will never take off until reddit starts being not good enough
kenrose 6y ago
“Open source federated Reddit” Maybe I’m old, but isn’t this what Usenet was / is?
- risho 6y ago
  I'm not sure that usenet could scale to the degree that reddit has. Part of what reddit does that makes it good(though it's both a blessing and a curse) is that a lot of the curation and moderation is handled by the community via the upvote downvote system. That means that you don't need as much dedicated moderation handling things which at the scale that some of the subreddits operate at is huge.
solarized 6y ago
I hate when reddit insist us to install mobile version from play store. Why you guys follow the mainstream ?. Browser version just enough.
dependenttypes 6y ago
There is also https://notabug.io/ https://notabug.io/ for anyone looking into decentralized reddit alternatives.
paulcole 6y ago
Ah, Diaspora 2.0.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
shse 6y ago
Another poorly crafted SPA app. Click on a post then go back and it jumps to the top on its own. Sometimes there is just a blank screen. Please make it a simple MVC app without JavaScript BS.
aabbcc1241 6y ago
How does Lemmy compare to Mastodon, Zero Talk, and ZeroMe?
ms4720 6y ago
I still miss nntp
est 6y ago
I think it tries to solve a problem reddit doesn't have. Reddit has a content parity problem, by making content distributed just makes the community stops growing. A new reddit alternative should think what makes Reddit useful in the first place. A community drive social bookmarking. Today's Internet have large volume of info hidden behind paywalls and walled gardens, something like Thread Reader App could replace Reddit from ground zero.
appleflaxen 6y ago
For anyone looking at this type of web application, I believe dev.to has similar functionality and licensing, but also has a mobile app on both iOS and android.
mynameishere 6y ago
So, on my first and last visit to "Lemmy" I observed the admin "nutomic" providing the world with his political philosophy: Any platform that emphasises “free speech” will be full of fascists sooner or later No, I don't want to have anything to do with a website controlled by an unusually foolish five year old.
thereyougo 6y ago
I tried few Reddit alternatives, most of them had the same problem: They attract many people who got banned from Reddit. A good solution will be to not allow (at least at the first few years) to open a sub around politics.
rospaya 6y ago
All this trouble instead of just ressurecting usenet.
frankzen 6y ago
I'm convinced that implementing so-called "free speech" sites in public doesn't work. Real free speech happens in closed networks, invite only. The only downside is those take more time to grow.
highmastdon 6y ago
Please, allow non-ws connection or fall back when it fails and stick to that alternative. When behind proxy/in VPN, I'm not able to use your website.
retpirato 6y ago
The fact that Reddit is an echo-chamber is one reason I never joined, & never will, but there are some communities that would be useful like the android & kustom subreddits, the former of which already exists on Lemmy. I'm only holding off with Lemmy because they don't (yet at least) have a privacy policy, which to me is essential especially considering the nature of the site. The fact that they didn't at least put up some sort of template of a privacy policy before the site was ever available to the public when that's a common part of any site that provides accounts, as a way of informing you how they will handle the data you give them, is very troubling to me.

I'm extremely disappointed your icon isn't a picture of Lemmy from Motorhead.

There is huge need for such an application. Hope that it becomes moderately successful. If it becomes too successful, it will become victim of it's success like Reddit.

notkaiho 6y ago
It will absolutely need popular support to attain some sort of critical mass, and not just among the cast-offs from other platforms, such as Gab, Parler etc.
pugworthy 6y ago
What do you see as the need?

benbristow 6y ago

Looks nice. Really fast webapp too. Congrats team! Looking forward to tracking this project's development.

vinay427 6y ago
You're not kidding. This webapp is so fast (after the initial load) that I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if the Reddit mobile website intentionally adds sleeps/delays as some have jokingly suspected in the past. On this site, I can actually scroll through posts or collapse comment threads without wondering if my touch input and/or browser are frozen.
- bserge 6y ago
  New Reddit doesn't need sleep/delays, it's already slow as molasses heh. If not for old.reddit.com, my time on Reddit would've gone way down :/
  - revnode 6y ago
    I wish that was the only problem with the new Reddit ... it frequently crashes my browser. No other website does this.
    - emersion 6y ago
      This sounds like a browser bug tbh.
  - takeda 6y ago
    My understanding was that s/he was referring to the new UI. Actually Reddit makes it hard to be on the old interface, I have to use browser extension to completely avoid the new UI.
    - bserge 6y ago
      There's a setting in preferences - as long as you're logged in, www.reddit.com links will still load the old design. Logged out though, yeah, I manually replace "www" with "old" whenever I open a link... Reddit is unavoidable these days since everyone's moved there and there's a lot of good content :/
- arcturus17 6y ago
  Not my experience... Touching “Communities” on my iPhone takes a while to load. Edit: to add, while touching the buttons for the different sections, it seems sometimes my touches are not registering, requiring me to try again.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  A brand new site doesn't have many features yet. The more features you add the slower it'll get.

imrelaxed 6y ago

Seems to be crashing on my end.

sq_ 6y ago
Same here. Must be getting the HN hug of death.
- gpm 6y ago
  > dessalines (mod, admin, creator) 23 minutes ago > We have > 2200 connections to the server right now, its a DDOS. Rust seems to be handling it fine, but the nginx is having issues. https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/35712 https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/35712 Sounds about right - I'm amused that whoever saw this thought it was a ddos though. dessalines - if you're reading this - I expect looking at referrers would be a good way to (manually) diagnose real attacks vs people becoming interested in your site.

readnews1 6y ago

"Reddit alternative" "open source federated" What is the difference between this and usenet

generatorguy 6y ago
You might be on to something! repackage an nntp server with a web front end in a docker container and away you go
- readnews1 6y ago
  @zzo38computer (can you tag people on this website????)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- u801e 6y ago
  Dejanews did that many years ago. You can still access usenet via Google groups.
  - generatorguy 6y ago
    yes but undeniably the dejanews or google groups usenet experience was worse than with a proper news client like Forté Agent, except for search. These days a web based NNTP client could offer an equivalent if not superior experience. [1] http://www.forteinc.com http://www.forteinc.com
takeda 6y ago
I agree with you that Reddit basically overlaps this area, but I don't think access to Usenet is easy these days (ignoring paid services that are optimized for downloading files). Although if anyone knows good servers (ISPs no longer seem to offer them) or even better a way to connect own server to Usenet, I'm interested.

erulabs 6y ago

Congratulations! Just discovering Lemmy! Federated software is excellent - I’ll have to write a home-hosting tutorial for this!

badrabbit 6y ago

Sorry, don't like the name. Also, when you say a reddit alternative, to me it gives the impression that the redditor culture will remain so why would I sacrifice the content rich reddit for a new platform? Federation doesn't mean much to me as a user that justs wants [social]entertainment and news (and commentary on them). There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature. Edit: if you think this is irrelevant, consider how both reddit (until recently) and HN didn't require email for signup, also the majority lurker population and importance of lurker-> user conversion. If email is your hill to die on, it will also be mine and I hope a majority of lurkers' hill to die on against you. As a techie I support federated and decentralized systems but as a user, how the platorm is architected is irrelevant, my experience is all I care about. Also,how will it monetize? Ads? If so I will stay with reddit. Non-crypto payment? Yeah, crappy reddit is better.

mahathu 6y ago
>There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature. I'm not trying to play the devils advocate here, just genuinely curious: Why do you (or anyone else) have such a strong opinion on not using emails for signing up? Usually, when a service requires me to enter an email, I have no issue with using a service like 10minutemail and never checking that email account again.
- notkaiho 6y ago
  Exactly, it's not like you can't create a genuinely anonymous email address for a one-off purpose.
  - badrabbit 6y ago
    Yes it's actully like that. Those services get blocked but why do I have to use a third party when you can just make emails optional. If many users dont feel comfortable giving up their email, just make it optinal. You cant expect my support when you don't care about forcing me to jump through hoops because you don't care about my privacy preferences.

MattGaiser 6y ago

How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat? Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

phoe-krk 6y ago
See how the Fediverse works - it has largely avoided becoming like Voat. Most alt-right instances, such as Gab, are hugely defederated by instance admins and therefore isolated from most of the network.
- fxtentacle 6y ago
  You speak in a language too cryptic for regular consumption ;) Which "Fediverse"? As I understand the concept, it applies to social networks in general. But it appears that you are referring to one specific network which contains the Gab server in it.
  - input_sh 6y ago
    "Fediverse" = federated universe. Basically a bunch of smaller social networks speaking together through common protocols. Think: being able to follow a YouTube channel straight from your Twitter account — no need to create a YouTube account. The most popular of such networks is Mastodon (https://joinmastodon.org/ https://joinmastodon.org/), which everyone can run on their own server (often referred to as an "instance"). By default, you create an account on one server and just speak to everyone like if you were on the same server. If one of such servers turns out to be a cesspool full of bigots (like Gab is), an admin can simply say "my server will no longer communicate with that server". When a bunch of servers do that, Gab is pretty much isolated, even though it's using an open protocol. To put it in layman's terms: if a lot of spam comes from user@example.com, Gmail can just dismiss the emails coming from all addresses that end in @example.com. Server owners are usually transparent and keep lists of servers they're not speaking to on GitHub or somewhere.
    - 6y ago

Afforess 6y ago

How is lemmy going to avoid the fate of the last reddit alternative (voat)? Voat attracted the communities banned from reddit, e.g the worst of the worst: jailbait, creepshots, beatingwomen, etc. The users most interested in an alternative to reddit are on average, the exact wrong type of user to help with the growth of a healthy community. I don't see any information on how being "federated" solves the hard problem of toxic communities, especially given that is the userbase it will attract.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jimbob45 6y ago
Nothing wrong with communities like that as long as you keep them segregated like reddit does with each of its subreddits. If those start creeping into your politics, memes, and video game subreddits, then yeah you’ve got a rough problem.
- marcinzm 6y ago
  >Nothing wrong with communities like that as long as you keep them segregated like reddit does with each of its subreddits. Which wasn't enough as I understand since those communities would en-mass attack other communities that they disagreed with.
  - nothal 6y ago
    To be fair, this seems like a generally true case of how subreddits work. Leftist subs brigade, Conservative subs brigade, star wars subs brigade, subs about watching other subs brigade still brigade. It's unsolvable so long as people that disagree are allowed to freely access each other's reddits (not that that's a bad thing).
  - Hedja 6y ago
    This is what happens all across the web, regardless of software. Raiding. IRC raids, forum raids, etc. Sometimes it's for fun, sometimes it's more malicious. Most software has ways to mitigate it. Temporarily closing new registrations, invite only registrations, throttling, IP bans, etc. Just like DDoS attacks, there is no true solution to this since that's how the public web and internet works.

FreeTrade 6y ago

member.cash is an interesting Reddit alternative. Not federated, but all the content is on a blockchain, so comments/users can't be censored, but users can filter them.

ryeights 6y ago
What happens when illegal content is posted? Is it stuck on the blockchain forever?
- hkt 6y ago
  Sure is!

markdown 6y ago

So many noob mistakes in the UI and I haven't even started using the site proper. I see a link "Create Community", this takes me to a form where I get to create a community. I spend time naming and describing this community, and then click the Submit button. At this point it decides to tell me that I need to use lowercase for the community name. So I fix that and hit Submit again. At this point I'm told I have to create an account first. WTF, why didn't you tell me earlier? If I leave this page to create an account, will you preserve what I've filled into this form for when I get back? Why didn't you just add the necessary username/password fields to this form at the same time you showed me the error? Anyway, so I click on the link that says Login/Signup and get a popup that says "Are you sure you want to leave?" Now I have to click again to remove this popup. Another wasted click and +1 to the "annoyed" meter. See above for how this could have been avoided by just adding the login/signup forms to the form I just filled out to reduce friction. Anyway, so I create an account. And it turns out the site forgot everything I'd done before that. Why ask me questions (make me fill out a "Create community" form) if you're going to immediately forget all my answers? Absolutely no respect for the users time. Why would you do that when your very existence depends on attracting more users?

FailMore 6y ago
Nice review of the UX... If you want to take a look at something different you can try my side project https://taaalk.co https://taaalk.co. It's a platform for interviews. (Sorry for the shameless plug, I just worked hard on my UX and would be interested to have it judged!)
arcturus17 6y ago
The problems in UX/UI in what I've tried span from fundamental interaction design down to code. I guess it's a young project, so lots can be improved. I think the problems you mention are bad but they sound fixable. I'd think about contributing or at least start by running my own instance and tweaking the interface to my liking. I'll also need to check if Inferno is worth learning.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

proc0 6y ago

Love the name, love Motorhead. Here's a Lemmy quote: "Apparently people don't like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. "

as1mov 6y ago

One thing that stands out to me is lemmy has public modlogs[1], this is a great feature in my opinion. Something that should be more common. Quite a few people on reddit are frustrated by how opaque moderation is, but looking at the meta community of power users that seems to mod the bigger subs, I doubt the devs will ever copy this feature. [1]: https://dev.lemmy.ml/modlog https://dev.lemmy.ml/modlog

Traster 6y ago
The entire moderation aspect of reddit is a disaster that only goes un-examined because there's so many other glaring issues with reddit. You can piss off a random guy with no affiliation or responsibility towards reddit and get banned from basically 90+% of reddit's content.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
I moderate a couple of subreddits and agree moderation is a disaster. For popular subs, moderators are basically swamped in a never-ending avalanche of shit. Even if you want to be a good mod, doing so for the long haul is an insane time commitment. The fact that being banned from one sub doesn't usually get you banned from another sub is totally understandable, but combined with how easy it is to make a new account, in practice it's just never-ending whack-a-mole with shithead posters.
- justAnotherNET 6y ago
  The mods only have themselves to blame. They create insanely broad rules allowing them to ban anything and then limit mod positions to concentrate their power. The role of mods is to delete off topic submissions and remove illegal content. Nothing more.
  - chowells 6y ago
    The role of mods is to establish and maintain the community they wish to have in the space. That takes a lot more than deleting off-topic submissions and removing illegal content.

mfkp 6y ago

Not a good sign when the website doesn't load: https://i.imgur.com/Us1mwrD.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Us1mwrD.jpg

bo1024 6y ago
I had several problems trying to get the page to load. After allowing it to use lots of javascript-related resources, it eventually loaded but took a while to display the actual text, on a fast internet connection. Unfortunate.
aeroplain 6y ago
I've used Lemmy for a while, and I haven't had this issue with it. Either it's an HN hug of death, a DDOS, or something else.

nickdothutton 6y ago

I’m hopeful something good will come of this. I wrote this about LinkedIn but most of it could easily apply to a Reddit alternative, I love HN but would love to see a broader platform that didnt become cancerous. https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/ https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/

ativzzz 6y ago
> didnt become cancerous Ultimately any platform big enough becomes cancerous unless it has sponsors who are willing to fund the platform without turning a profit, like HN is funded by ycombinator (though notice how over time there are more and more hiring advertisements for ycombinator companies). The bigger a platform becomes, the more expensive it becomes to maintain; the people who were volunteers at first have to either monetize to be able to continue supporting the platform, or they have to sell the company to someone who can support it. Once money is brought into the equation, a community starts to slowly deteriorate, as money slowly starts taking over all aspects of the platform, which is nothing more than human nature.
- Can_Not 6y ago
  The hiring ads here seem completely relevant and appropriate for this forum. Very few other websites can say the same for their ads. YC saves money on recruiter fees and job listing fees, you reach your target audience, and you don't need tons of analytics.

artembugara 6y ago

The website is down only for me

bennysonething 6y ago

The Reddit redesign made Reddit ridiculously unusable. Also like the web in general the more users it got the horrible it became. The stardard of content fell through the floor. The stanard of comments did the same. It went from be a pretty free market liberal types to angry left wing reactionaries over the course of a few years. It felt like the users got younger and younger until one day I saw a pic bunch of high school students egged on by their teachers holding a "socialism now" banner, this was front page.

antepodius 6y ago
I think the lesson might just to move on from sites whenever they get too big and cancerous.

companyhen 6y ago

I'm a fan of https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ - created by an ex-reddit employee (creator of AutoModerator)

stormdennis 6y ago

I'd like a "reddit" that wasn't a confusing mess to navigate on a browser on my phone and wasn't always trying to get me to use the app. It could do worse than take lessons from the design of HN. A separate HN clone for each subreddit.

holler 6y ago
check out the site in my profile, brand new and under active development, but it's a responsive web app with goal of simplicity/low-friction

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

superkuh 6y ago

> JavaScript is required for this page. Yeah, I'm out. That was a problem with the federated reddit-alike notabug.io too. It was just one giant javascript application, not html. And doing "pre-rendering" of the javascript on the host machine made the VPS costs too much to be tenable for people to federate.

LockAndLol 6y ago
Prerendering of the JavaScript? What do mean by that? Don't you mean prerendering HTML?
- superkuh 6y ago
  I do. I just worded it badly. I meant "pre-rendering of the javascript" to mean executing JS on the server and then sending the resulting actual html/css.

shawndumas 6y ago

The “forgot password” link does not work. (On mobile so I did not dig in and see if there were any errors in the console.)

rolleiflex 6y ago

We have something similar to this, Aether. https://getaether.net https://getaether.net. (code at github.com/nehbit/aether) Always glad to see more eyeballs on the space, so I wish then the best. Here are a few differences I can see at the first glance: - Aether is decentralised (as in torrent) this appears to be federated. That means Aether truly has no servers and every user is a peer, while federated means there are smaller ‘Reddits’ as servers that talk to each other. - By proxy that means we can’t really have a web app unfortunately (working on it by the way of running a daemon on a raspberry pi) and they can - we need a native app running on your machine and seeding context to the network. - By another proxy, this means Aether avoids the issue of having a ‘middle management’ in the form of the ownership of your home server that federated networks have. You are the home server, so no one can control what you see. We call this user sovereignty - In Aether we have elections which elect mods based on popular vote and you control who is a mod, precisely because the ‘social compiler’ runs on your machine and allows you to compile it however you want. Two people with two different mod lists for the same community can see drastically different communities - We have a mod audit log and have had it for a while - everyone’s mod actions are visible to everyone (this I think they also have) - Lastly, we have made the decision to not monetise Aether itself and create a team communication app called Aether Pro, and monetise that. This creates a ‘Chinese wall’ between where we make our money and the P2P network, which means it’s a shield against drifting towards trying to make money from a social network. The code bases are separate but similar, so that also means work done on the Pro helps Aether as well. We have gotten some funding for the Pro, and we consider the P2P version a ‘marketing / goodwill expense’ in the context of that funding. That aligns us towards making sure Aether is long-term viable, well maintained and monetisation-free. In contrast I think they’ve gotten money to work directly on this, which has both good and more hazardous sides. In summary, we opted for a long term structure that has less moral hazard (in my opinion, of course), in favour of a more stable app without a need for monetisation that has fewer, more stable releases. For context, here's how a recent thread looks on my Aether client: https://i.imgur.com/45tXQEO.png https://i.imgur.com/45tXQEO.png

DevKoala 6y ago
Excellent. I am trying this. Thank you.

omnimus 6y ago

There is also https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ that is also open-source.

LockAndLol 6y ago
Is it federated though?

golemiprague 6y ago

I don't know how it is in the US but outside it seems like messaging apps replace the functionality of reddit/twitter for the less lefty inclined people, Telegram is a good example. Unlike Gab/Voat messaging apps already got a huge user base so statistically they don't become a cesspool of the most extreme views, right or left, but they are not moderated so all voices can find a place to be heard.

embit 6y ago

Once upon a time, open source federated reddit was called Usenet.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

Neat, but the big test for a discussion platform like this is what happens when they get big enough to matter, to get the attention of journalists looking for a scoop. It's easy to slide by with haphazard (or no) moderation when you're small. Discussion extremists (trolls, bigots, and the like) are less attracted to smaller platforms; they'd prefer bigger ones, if any would take them. I'm curious what will happen with the central listing of communities if a particularly vile community gains popularity. If there's a community unapologetically dedicated to, say, neo-nazism, and they like to do things like praise Hitler or discuss ways they can kill racial minorities, do they still get listed? How will others feel about that?

justAnotherNET 6y ago
The solution is protocols. How do you feel about illegal content hosted via BitTorrent? Will bittorrent stand for “giving a platform” to illegal content? For the technically inclined: exactly.
newacct583 6y ago
Yeah, exactly. I immediately knew when I saw "federated" in the title that my job was to drop this link in. This comment seems like the right spot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversial_Reddit_communiti... Lacking global moderation, eventually every one of those subreddits will end up in Lemmy. Also somethingawful/4chan/8chan style "asshole feedback loops". Everyone at HN likes to claim they want free speech and hate moderation, but in fact moderation is the foundation of our discourse.
- taylorlunt 6y ago
  I want subreddit-specific moderation. That way I can sub to a hatepost sub if I want and a mature tech sub if I want and get the best of both worlds. Everyone here who disagrees is just saying, "I don't want to join those communities, so they shouldn't even be allowed to exist."
  - 6y ago

TulliusCicero 6y ago

I have to say, at the very least, the UI is a breath of fresh air compared to new Reddit. New Reddit is just...I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just feels awful to look at.

glenstein 6y ago
Absolutely. It's not a bad interface, and for better or for worse I think this is critically important to get right, and was a huge part of Mastodon's success. I think so many other well-intentioned projects fail because of inscrutable interfaces, so it is good to see the UI taken seriously.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Oh, has Mastodon been successful? I haven't heard much about that.
  - riffic 6y ago
    The ecosystem is very successful: https://twitter.com/freemancw/status/1276287684814594048 https://twitter.com/freemancw/status/1276287684814594048
    - codetrotter 6y ago
      It’s a little bit ironic that the post you link to was posted on Twitter though, isn’t it? :^) Teasing aside, I like Mastodon. I’ve used it a bit myself too, and I have a profile on an instance of it.
      - buzzkillington 6y ago
        Success is not a meaningful metric. Gopher is a success when you browse wikipedia on it.
ehsankia 6y ago
While I agree that new reddit is awful, I still much prefer old reddit to this. Also what's up with this new trend of having the main content width-restricted, but not the header [0]? The new GitHub UI that went live this week has the exact same problem on wide screens. What kind of UX designer ever approved such a mess and why do so many sites do this? The main UI itself, again very width restricted, but also has strange paddings [1] which limit severely the area for the title (which is the most important UI element). Doesn't really make sense to me. The vertical centering is a bit of a mess, and the size of icons is also either way too big or way too small [2]. [0] https://i.imgur.com/gZEWEdJ.png https://i.imgur.com/gZEWEdJ.png [1] https://i.imgur.com/nayP548.png https://i.imgur.com/nayP548.png [2] https://i.imgur.com/XZPToxy.png https://i.imgur.com/XZPToxy.png EDIT: Huh, I hadn't used new reddit in a long time, I actually took a look now and it seems like it has improved significantly. I actually don't hate it as much, it looks much closer to old reddit now, with full width content and much less padding [3] [3] https://i.imgur.com/c1QBucR.png https://i.imgur.com/c1QBucR.png

taurath 6y ago

A federated reddit system needs ways to lock down user accounts. That it’s basically 4chan in terms of anonymity gives too much of an open door to extremists and trolls. I don’t see any difference between this and voat except the assumption of goodwill rather than being centered around right wing extremism.

posguy 6y ago
The fediverse has proven quite resilient to trolls, bots and numerous other challenges as users and instance operators can block other users and instances, (or mute/content warn media) among numerous other moderation tools to prevent bad actors from destroying the signal to noise ratio of each instance.

Aeolun 6y ago

Their 500 Exception homepage does not exactly inspire confidence.

MattGaiser 6y ago
I don't think it is reasonable to judge whether a product in development currently scales well.
aeroplain 6y ago
If your eager to try it, Feddit Social is another (much smaller) instance. https://feddit.social/ https://feddit.social/

jwilber 6y ago

Nginx bad gateway when I visit. Reassuring I guess that I’ll face the same down issues I do now with or without funding.

1anna69 6y ago

Hello guys my hot photos are here .. http://vivy.us/isxxx http://vivy.us/isxxx username annaxx))

Kye 6y ago

This has ActivityPub (AP) support on its roadmap. I wrote a well-received[0] argument that AP could be the future: https://kyefox.com/2020/04/09/activitypub-could-be-the-future/ https://kyefox.com/2020/04/09/activitypub-could-be-the-futur... I softened on it a little over the years since, but I think that was just the dearth of new things coming out that ran on it. Now I'm starting to think that was just a reflection of the fact that the obvious, low-hanging fruit was handled (write.as/Pixelfed/PeerTube/Mastodon) and the next round will take a while as people who got on later get ideas and develop them into something like, for example, Lemmy. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864029 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864029

u801e 6y ago

I'm surprised not a single comment discussing Reddit alternatives mentioned Usenet (especially in terms of federation).

zzo38computer 6y ago
Well, now yours does, and thinking of federation, that is what I thought of, too. And, I think also, to be based on NNTP. I think at at least what should be done includes: Use NNTP, and avoid namespace collisions if you are defining your own newsgroups. I don't know how to request adding newsgroups to Big 8, or to the alt hierarchy, or others, but I invented the "Unusenet" convention for avoiding namespace collisions, which I use on my own NNTP server. Make the web pages contain the message ID, newsgroup name, and information to connect to the NNTP server, even if JavaScripts are disabled. Users who want NNTP can use it even if they do not have a compatible browser. If you want to use Markdown, add a "Content-type: text/markdown" header to articles that use Markdown (and do not try to render articles without such a header as Markdown), and preferably using a subset of Markdown without HTML.

cuddlecake 6y ago

I wonder why the developers of Lemmy decided to perform all the content requests via WebSocket instead of HTTP. Is there anyone out there who can answer this?

holler 6y ago
Obfuscation? I've seen this in other sites (discord comes to mind). Maybe there's a hypothetical efficiency from reusing the websocket connection for all requests? for the site sqowk.im Im working on I use http for content requests and websocket for realtime stuff

bitL 6y ago

Is it possible to make fonts smaller to resemble old.reddit.com? My perception field is vastly larger than the amount of text displayed (i.e. my brain can search for keywords without actually consciously focusing on them).

t-writescode 6y ago
command / ctrl + scroll-wheel?
- bitL 6y ago
  Did you even try it? Give it a go and enjoy unexpected UX, then come back...

IgorPartola 6y ago

The problem with Reddit isn’t the technology. I mean, yes open source is good, and I want more of that. Even Android is a good thing even if only one company actively contributes to it. At least when you hit a bug or don’t understand how something works, you can go read the code. But the problem with Reddit is community management, and re-writing it won’t solve that. Reddit has been a mostly free for all in terms of moderation, and it is explicitly set up to allow thought bubbles, which gives rise to communities that dox activists, that incite violence, that promote conspiracy theories, etc. I love Reddit’s good parts and really detest its bad parts. Problem is that you can only solve that with strong application of content guidelines, or by not even pretending to be a good place a la 4chan. There is no model as far as I’ve seen, not even an academic one, that allows for mostly moderation free or self-moderated content while also not prominently featuring at least one neo-Nazi group using it to communicate and coordinate.

Ericson2314 6y ago

NLNet, the source of funding, is a truly superb institution that should be better known in the US.

mrfusion 6y ago

I think simply having a Reddit clone run by a non profit (or owned by the members themselves) would go a long way in promoting freedom and fixing the issues. I guess use a people solution instead of a technical one.

tennineeight 6y ago
There is one made by previous Reddit admin/dev who understands how reddit works. It is nonprofit, developed in open and all policy discussions go through community. https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/

orthecreedence 6y ago

I think Lemmy needs to address this before it will get any wide acceptance: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816 https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816

hoorayimhelping 6y ago
>We are never going to remove the slur filter completely (or add an option to that effect), because we dont want to make it easy for right-wingers to use Lemmy. Welp, I just completely wrote off this site and I'm about as middle of the road as they come in America. What a short sighted and ignorant way to look at the world.
- orthecreedence 6y ago
  That's the thing! It doesn't stop hate speech. "I think we should eliminate all of (((those people)))." I didn't use the k-word, but everyone knows what the sentence means. On the other hand, you can't post "tranny" or "bitch" but, bitch is contextual: it's definition is a female dog, but even in the context of "wow she's such a bitch" bitch is not a slur. "Tranny" is derogatory in the context when used against trans people, but it's also used quite often in mechanics to mean "transmission." There are so many different contexts in which these words aren't derogatory, and in some cases represent the power of people to reclaim what was previously a slur. Banning certain words is incredibly short-sighted, and punishes everyone who uses the platform while not addressing the real issue: extreme right-wingers can still use it just fine, and have absolutely no problem coming up with new dog whistles in order to get around your elementary word filter.
  - asdf21 6y ago
    In restaurants I worked in a long time ago, servers would just call black people "Canadians" -- for instance, "Nope, don't sit those Canadians in my section, they don't tip." Good luck filtering for stuff like that. And even if you did, people would just come up with new version. Re: The core problem... Why would having extreme right wingers use your site even be a problem? Presumably extreme left wingers are okay?

secondcoming 6y ago

As an non-American, Reddit is in general, awful. It's all "Trump, Trump, Trump" and tolerates anti-white sentiment. Actual conversations are rare, it seems to mostly be impressionable young people trying to out-do each other in taking offence to things and being angry. It seems you can't block subreddits like r/politics without making an account. /r/cpp has some good stuff sometimes. What would a reddit alternative bring? More of the same? No thanks.

OptionX 6y ago

"This is an Antifa instance" stickied on the front page by an admin no less. If I wanted a politicized cesspool reddit-clone I would just use Voat. Fail to see the point.

saltedonion 6y ago

Um. CSS isn’t loading on safari mobile. I hope this isn’t the actual experience ?

oskenso 6y ago

I currently use this to host https://emulator.news/ https://emulator.news/ the docker support is on point :D

jari_mustonen 6y ago

I hope that this will democratise political discourse. At the moment, people having opposing view to the main stream opinion are having exceedingly difficult time sharing their content. Reddit's main fault is their willingness to participate in politically motivated banning. I'm talking about the fate of The_Donald. (There are also other examples.) Reddit first persecuted and then effectively banned The_Donald because, in my opinion, Reddit is run by people who hate president Trump. It's important to understand that the hate is not something that will go away after Trump but it will be replaced by hate for the next guy. It's driven by political tribalism, not Trump. As basically all social media platforms are doing the exactly same thing as Reddit, we are not in a good place. We really can't allow our political discourse and views to be dictated by a handful of group thinking denizens of Silicon Valley blinded by political tribalism.

sneak 6y ago
> It's important to understand that the hate is not something that will go away after Trump but it will be replaced by hate for the next guy. This seems to presuppose that all presidents are equal in terms of the acts they perform that generate hate or upset in the supporters of their political opponents. I don’t think that is true. Not all presidents have been, or need to be, culture warriors. Indeed, it would appear that Americans are way more united on a number of huge issues now more than ever: COVID response, racial equality, economic recovery. Just based on circumstance, I think whoever next holds the office of POTUS, regardless of party, stands to polarize people less than they have been in the past due to the fact that many, many people are in agreement about federal government priorities right now. That seems, to me, relatively unprecedented in recent times.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

fernly 6y ago

So sad, nobody remembers Imzy, the "nice reddit" founded by Dan McComas. It really was nice, had highly varied, friendly communities and a pleasant UI. Couldn't get traction, apparently. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/imzy-the-nice-reddit-alternative-is-shutting-down.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/imzy-the-nice-reddit...

zem 6y ago
I was unaware of imzy, but reading between the lines of that article the cause of demise seems to be "not enough traction to be successfully run as a business". sounds like there were communities there who were using it and enjoying it, so the real failure was the expectation that it would get as large as reddit and sustain a business model, not in the lack of usefulness to its users.
canofbars 6y ago
Also https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ This has been tried and tried 1000 times. The problem is reddit is good enough for most people so an alternative will never take off until reddit starts being not good enough

kenrose 6y ago

“Open source federated Reddit” Maybe I’m old, but isn’t this what Usenet was / is?

risho 6y ago
I'm not sure that usenet could scale to the degree that reddit has. Part of what reddit does that makes it good(though it's both a blessing and a curse) is that a lot of the curation and moderation is handled by the community via the upvote downvote system. That means that you don't need as much dedicated moderation handling things which at the scale that some of the subreddits operate at is huge.

solarized 6y ago

I hate when reddit insist us to install mobile version from play store. Why you guys follow the mainstream ?. Browser version just enough.

dependenttypes 6y ago

There is also https://notabug.io/ https://notabug.io/ for anyone looking into decentralized reddit alternatives.

paulcole 6y ago

Ah, Diaspora 2.0.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

shse 6y ago

Another poorly crafted SPA app. Click on a post then go back and it jumps to the top on its own. Sometimes there is just a blank screen. Please make it a simple MVC app without JavaScript BS.

aabbcc1241 6y ago

How does Lemmy compare to Mastodon, Zero Talk, and ZeroMe?

ms4720 6y ago

I still miss nntp

est 6y ago

I think it tries to solve a problem reddit doesn't have. Reddit has a content parity problem, by making content distributed just makes the community stops growing. A new reddit alternative should think what makes Reddit useful in the first place. A community drive social bookmarking. Today's Internet have large volume of info hidden behind paywalls and walled gardens, something like Thread Reader App could replace Reddit from ground zero.

appleflaxen 6y ago

For anyone looking at this type of web application, I believe dev.to has similar functionality and licensing, but also has a mobile app on both iOS and android.

mynameishere 6y ago

So, on my first and last visit to "Lemmy" I observed the admin "nutomic" providing the world with his political philosophy: Any platform that emphasises “free speech” will be full of fascists sooner or later No, I don't want to have anything to do with a website controlled by an unusually foolish five year old.

thereyougo 6y ago

I tried few Reddit alternatives, most of them had the same problem: They attract many people who got banned from Reddit. A good solution will be to not allow (at least at the first few years) to open a sub around politics.

rospaya 6y ago

All this trouble instead of just ressurecting usenet.

frankzen 6y ago

I'm convinced that implementing so-called "free speech" sites in public doesn't work. Real free speech happens in closed networks, invite only. The only downside is those take more time to grow.

highmastdon 6y ago

Please, allow non-ws connection or fall back when it fails and stick to that alternative. When behind proxy/in VPN, I'm not able to use your website.

retpirato 6y ago

The fact that Reddit is an echo-chamber is one reason I never joined, & never will, but there are some communities that would be useful like the android & kustom subreddits, the former of which already exists on Lemmy. I'm only holding off with Lemmy because they don't (yet at least) have a privacy policy, which to me is essential especially considering the nature of the site. The fact that they didn't at least put up some sort of template of a privacy policy before the site was ever available to the public when that's a common part of any site that provides accounts, as a way of informing you how they will handle the data you give them, is very troubling to me.