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I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Every year for the last 12+ years there has been some alternative to Reddit. The code to the old version of Reddit is even

by dimmke 3y ago

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Every year for the last 12+ years there has been some alternative to Reddit. The code to the old version of Reddit is even open source. The problem is most solutions want to go back to decentralized, which is problematic. I do think that the technical problem could be solved. Point and click solutions for installing open source software has been around forever (like cPanel and PHPBB) so I’m sure some value added cloud provider could do something similar (I think Digital Ocean already has this with their App Marketplace.) For one, there’s no check on mods. So if someone spins up a Reddit specifically for [TOPIC] they’re the God of that server basically. Like old school IRC. Second, there’s no built in user base. Third, any app would be subject to inconsistently applied restrictions on things like porn that Reddit gets a pass on because of its size. I think a compelling alternative to Reddit would be a non venture capital backed company that is small headcount wise (think 50 people) and very straightforward about how it earns a profit, is sustainable, and focused on direct pay. No blockchain, no fediverse, etc… That means no worrying about advertisers (or headcount associated with wooing them, managing them, etc…), creating a “subreddit” would cost a flat monthly fee and then being a user of the site might also incur a fee. Like $2 a month. It’d preserve what I feel is the real value of Reddit which is smaller communities. And I would be willing to pay $2 a month knowing it’s helping sustain a platform I get value from.

Maxion 3y ago
> I think a compelling alternative to Reddit would be a non venture capital backed company that is small headcount wise (think 50 people) and very straightforward about how it earns a profit, is sustainable, and focused on direct pay. No blockchain, no fediverse, etc… > That means no worrying about advertisers (or headcount associated with wooing them, managing them, etc…), creating a “subreddit” would cost a flat monthly fee and then being a user of the site might also incur a fee. Like $2 a month. With a business model like .e.g King Arthur flour where the employees own the business. I would be so down to try to make something like this.
- dimmke 3y ago
  Yes I think a co op model could be good. I think because we are software engineers, we think some novel technology will fix this issue. But the real problem is that companies take on too much money and are then distorted by it. There has to be a change in software away from VC funding outside of where it’s actually necessary. You don’t need 30 million dollars to build this idea. You could take out a small business loan instead. We need to stop thinking of small businesses that create and sell software as “startups” and placing them into a special category in our heads.
  - blaise57 3y ago
    Funny you say this, I incorporated a worker co-op to build a reddit-esque platform with democracy and data-driven tools for communities late last year. Our team is pretty inexperienced, but conceptually and organizationally we've got a lot lined up.
    - DeltaCoast 3y ago
      Do you have a link to share? Btw I'm surprised you just made a HN account to share that? Seems kind of suspicious but I don't know why.
albrewer 3y ago
> The code to the old version of Reddit is even open source. I actually took an hour to look through the old reddit source code to see what it would take to spin up an alternative and add features quickly. From what I can tell, Reddit open source code is very tightly bound into Pylons and Cassandra (and Python 2.7), so if you don't like those choices... too bad. It relies on global in-process locking of data store transactions. There are no allowances to separate queries/reads from commands/writes, or specify which models reside in which data store. No good way to make DTOs for lower network overhead. The whole thing is also an untyped mass of code (due to it being Python 2.7), so making any modification requires reading and mentally executing anything you're modifying. Granted, to start out, all of this is fine. But feels like it will fall over as soon as it gets big. It would be a large undertaking to even get the old Reddit source to a state where a dev could get up to speed and make changes without a month of study. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but I suspect that's the reason nobody's ever just forked Reddit and made their own.
- dimmke 3y ago
  >but I suspect that's the reason nobody's ever just forked Reddit and made their own. People have absolutely made sites that have been described as "Reddit clones" - I never investigated enough to know if they were actually using a fork of the actual codebase. But yeah, I wasn't suggesting that people use Reddit's source code to build a new Reddit. My point was, the functionality isn't difficult to build and certainly not a big "moat" - the difficulty in producing a better version of Reddit would almost certainly be in the softer side of things. Although Reddit's modern interface is really bad. Like, really bad. And I am not one of those people who hates new stuff for being new or thinks SPAs are the devil or whatever. The performance is so bad it legitimately feels like something a coding bootcamp graduate cobbled together as a capstone project than something built by a team of skilled professional developers. From things not loading. Like you bring up a post and the comments don't load. To the horrendous "video player". It's a complete fucking mess. So while I would say in a macro sense, there isn't a "moat" around the functionality they've done such a poor job that a well built front-end would go a long way. But yeah, it would be a waste of time to actually try to use their backend code that has been open sourced, beyond referencing some business logic they added around fuzzing votes etc...
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

by dimmke 3y ago

Maxion 3y ago

> I think a compelling alternative to Reddit would be a non venture capital backed company that is small headcount wise (think 50 people) and very straightforward about how it earns a profit, is sustainable, and focused on direct pay. No blockchain, no fediverse, etc… > That means no worrying about advertisers (or headcount associated with wooing them, managing them, etc…), creating a “subreddit” would cost a flat monthly fee and then being a user of the site might also incur a fee. Like $2 a month. With a business model like .e.g King Arthur flour where the employees own the business. I would be so down to try to make something like this.

dimmke 3y ago
Yes I think a co op model could be good. I think because we are software engineers, we think some novel technology will fix this issue. But the real problem is that companies take on too much money and are then distorted by it. There has to be a change in software away from VC funding outside of where it’s actually necessary. You don’t need 30 million dollars to build this idea. You could take out a small business loan instead. We need to stop thinking of small businesses that create and sell software as “startups” and placing them into a special category in our heads.
- blaise57 3y ago
  Funny you say this, I incorporated a worker co-op to build a reddit-esque platform with democracy and data-driven tools for communities late last year. Our team is pretty inexperienced, but conceptually and organizationally we've got a lot lined up.
  - DeltaCoast 3y ago
    Do you have a link to share? Btw I'm surprised you just made a HN account to share that? Seems kind of suspicious but I don't know why.

albrewer 3y ago

> The code to the old version of Reddit is even open source. I actually took an hour to look through the old reddit source code to see what it would take to spin up an alternative and add features quickly. From what I can tell, Reddit open source code is very tightly bound into Pylons and Cassandra (and Python 2.7), so if you don't like those choices... too bad. It relies on global in-process locking of data store transactions. There are no allowances to separate queries/reads from commands/writes, or specify which models reside in which data store. No good way to make DTOs for lower network overhead. The whole thing is also an untyped mass of code (due to it being Python 2.7), so making any modification requires reading and mentally executing anything you're modifying. Granted, to start out, all of this is fine. But feels like it will fall over as soon as it gets big. It would be a large undertaking to even get the old Reddit source to a state where a dev could get up to speed and make changes without a month of study. I'm not saying it's not worth it, but I suspect that's the reason nobody's ever just forked Reddit and made their own.

dimmke 3y ago
>but I suspect that's the reason nobody's ever just forked Reddit and made their own. People have absolutely made sites that have been described as "Reddit clones" - I never investigated enough to know if they were actually using a fork of the actual codebase. But yeah, I wasn't suggesting that people use Reddit's source code to build a new Reddit. My point was, the functionality isn't difficult to build and certainly not a big "moat" - the difficulty in producing a better version of Reddit would almost certainly be in the softer side of things. Although Reddit's modern interface is really bad. Like, really bad. And I am not one of those people who hates new stuff for being new or thinks SPAs are the devil or whatever. The performance is so bad it legitimately feels like something a coding bootcamp graduate cobbled together as a capstone project than something built by a team of skilled professional developers. From things not loading. Like you bring up a post and the comments don't load. To the horrendous "video player". It's a complete fucking mess. So while I would say in a macro sense, there isn't a "moat" around the functionality they've done such a poor job that a well built front-end would go a long way. But yeah, it would be a waste of time to actually try to use their backend code that has been open sourced, beyond referencing some business logic they added around fuzzing votes etc...

deleted 3y ago

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