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I’ll be honest, HN is the last place I’d expect to find people who underestimate the difficulty of creating a social network, but every single post about Reddit

I’ll be honest, HN is the last place I’d expect to find people who underestimate the difficulty of creating a social network, but every single post about Reddit lately has had one or more comments about how the creators of Reddit clients should “just” make their own backend and take their users with them.

raincole 3y ago
Is it hard? Yes. Is it harder than trying to influence Reddit by these "protests"? No, because the later has 0 chance of success.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  This. As it stands, third party clients are default dead due to Reddit’s decision. You can either accept the need to adapt or accept death. Is it easy? No! Is it necessary? Absolutely.
  - bongobingo1 3y ago
    I wonder if the short time frame on the API changes is influenced by not wanting to give any competitor a runway to spin up an API-compatible endpoint. I.e we want to kill third parties now, not let them run for 5 months and swap api.reddit.com to api.slashdot.com on the 6th month. Probably pretty tinfoil (on both sides) though.
- bryancoxwell 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s a bad idea, and I’m sure there are people who want to do it and also understand the challenges they’ll face. But a lot of people in the comments seem to express a frustration that it should be so easy for people who have created a good client to draw the rest of the fucking owl, if you will.
Pufferbo 3y ago
Dude, don’t kill my velocity. My `create-next-app` command just finished and I’m going to wrap up this side project by Sunday evening. I’ll be starting with the Frontend first. /s
- pokepim 3y ago
  [dead]
zerocrates 3y ago
The subreddit system makes this incrementally more doable for aggrieved subreddits: they have a better shot of uprooting enough of just their little community and convincing them to move. There's a decent number of users in those smaller subs that don't really have a wide membership in others so moving is more reasonable for them. But this: a) is only a little easier, it's still really hard to move even a tight-knit and smaller community like that, and b) really doesn't apply at all for third-party client developers, whose users surely use and belong to a wide spread of the subreddits, so the task for them is more like "replicate Reddit overnight."
- flyinghamster 3y ago
  Also, a move isn't really a move unless the content comes along for the ride. I hope ArchiveTeam is on the lookout. The smaller the subreddit, the easier the move, but there's still the discovery issue, especially since centralized "platforms" are starting to turn into centralized points of failure.
explaininjs 3y ago
The hard part of making a social network is the userbase accumulation. Apollo already has the userbase, if they switch all the api calls over to their own backend it truly wouldn’t be that hard. Especially considering the money involved. The only sticking point is in all the people who want things to be “federated” for whatever (generally bogus) reason. Better yet: cloudflare/etc’s preexisting backend.
- riku_iki 3y ago
  apollo has read only users mostly, you need to buy pro version to create posts. apollo is 20x times smaller than regular reddit according to app store stats.
  - explaininjs 3y ago
    Cool, should be even easier to get the ball rolling.
threetonesun 3y ago
It's hard if you want it to be a social network, and hard if you want it to be under one domain. If it's a forum to talk about hats for cats at hatsforcats.lol that's not hard, and that's pretty much what the web was pre-Facebook. Is Reddit/Twitter "better" because everything is in one place? Maybe. But then it's a hard problem that requires money, and we end up where Reddit/Twitter are today.
- deleted 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
Solvency 3y ago
I mean, it's 2023. Web-based simple threaded conversation platforms should be absolutely trivial to develop/clone/deploy. I'm not convinced building a Reddit is hard, at all. But getting a mass adoption of users to make it worth using is. Which is why I'm continually surprised some startup+VC combo doesn't just build it and then pay the top 1000 broad-to-niche influencers out there to sign up and start relentlessly hawking it on their various social medias.
- nightski 3y ago
  This gives me Mixer vibes.
- jacksnipe 3y ago
  Serving nearly-consistent content and ads to 1 Billion people worldwide is fucking hard!
  - fooqux 3y ago
    Not according to the marketers from Cloudflare I talked to awhile back.
    - jacksnipe 3y ago
      They’ll run an ad network for you?
- arp242 3y ago
  Building the software is the easy part. It's everything else that's hard.
- bryancoxwell 3y ago
  That’s the thing though. It’s not purely a technical problem. Building a Reddit clone may be easy (I don’t know, I’ve never tried), but building a social network is more than just building a web app!
- roncesvalles 3y ago
Merad 3y ago
Really? IME most devs are incredibly bad to underestimate the complexity of apps and problem domains where they don't have any experience. I'd say an app like Reddit is especially prone to this because most decent devs probably could recreate the core UX (subreddits, posts, comments) in a couple of weeks. The really hard part is all the features people don't usually think about (mod and admin tools, for example) plus scaling up to millions of concurrent users.
duped 3y ago
The hard part of building a tech company isn't the tech, its users, staff, and money. These 3rd party apps have the first two, and that would be enough to convince someone to find the third for them. The only limiting factor is ambition. And on a site with quite a few people from the startup world who see that the only thing in the way is the technical difficulty of building the service then it shouldn't be unexpected that people are saying they should take their users off to a new platform they build themselves. Because that's the kind of crazy thing that startup people think about.
tredre3 3y ago
Right? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. "Apollo dev should create his own backend and show them!" OK..? He'll take his 600k users, most of whom never contributed content, and do what exactly? Create his own little dead forum that runs only on iOS? It's not a technical problem, let's stop pretending there's a technical solution. Plenty of reddit clones exist already (many even open-source).
isocle 3y ago
Yeah, I don't understand why everyone seems so content to settle on imaginary solutions. Even if this was something he possessed the knowledge to do, he's bound by the timeline Reddit has laid out, and there is no way that is feasible, even if he did have 100x the users that Apollo actually has.
fknorangesite 3y ago
Ha are you joking? This site is exactly the place I expect to see that kind of sentiment. It precisely matches HN’s reputation; it’s been a cliche since Dropbox launched.

raincole 3y ago

Is it hard? Yes. Is it harder than trying to influence Reddit by these "protests"? No, because the later has 0 chance of success.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
This. As it stands, third party clients are default dead due to Reddit’s decision. You can either accept the need to adapt or accept death. Is it easy? No! Is it necessary? Absolutely.
- bongobingo1 3y ago
  I wonder if the short time frame on the API changes is influenced by not wanting to give any competitor a runway to spin up an API-compatible endpoint. I.e we want to kill third parties now, not let them run for 5 months and swap api.reddit.com to api.slashdot.com on the 6th month. Probably pretty tinfoil (on both sides) though.
bryancoxwell 3y ago
I don’t think it’s a bad idea, and I’m sure there are people who want to do it and also understand the challenges they’ll face. But a lot of people in the comments seem to express a frustration that it should be so easy for people who have created a good client to draw the rest of the fucking owl, if you will.

Pufferbo 3y ago

Dude, don’t kill my velocity. My `create-next-app` command just finished and I’m going to wrap up this side project by Sunday evening. I’ll be starting with the Frontend first. /s

pokepim 3y ago
[dead]

zerocrates 3y ago

The subreddit system makes this incrementally more doable for aggrieved subreddits: they have a better shot of uprooting enough of just their little community and convincing them to move. There's a decent number of users in those smaller subs that don't really have a wide membership in others so moving is more reasonable for them. But this: a) is only a little easier, it's still really hard to move even a tight-knit and smaller community like that, and b) really doesn't apply at all for third-party client developers, whose users surely use and belong to a wide spread of the subreddits, so the task for them is more like "replicate Reddit overnight."

flyinghamster 3y ago
Also, a move isn't really a move unless the content comes along for the ride. I hope ArchiveTeam is on the lookout. The smaller the subreddit, the easier the move, but there's still the discovery issue, especially since centralized "platforms" are starting to turn into centralized points of failure.

explaininjs 3y ago

The hard part of making a social network is the userbase accumulation. Apollo already has the userbase, if they switch all the api calls over to their own backend it truly wouldn’t be that hard. Especially considering the money involved. The only sticking point is in all the people who want things to be “federated” for whatever (generally bogus) reason. Better yet: cloudflare/etc’s preexisting backend.

riku_iki 3y ago
apollo has read only users mostly, you need to buy pro version to create posts. apollo is 20x times smaller than regular reddit according to app store stats.
- explaininjs 3y ago
  Cool, should be even easier to get the ball rolling.

threetonesun 3y ago

It's hard if you want it to be a social network, and hard if you want it to be under one domain. If it's a forum to talk about hats for cats at hatsforcats.lol that's not hard, and that's pretty much what the web was pre-Facebook. Is Reddit/Twitter "better" because everything is in one place? Maybe. But then it's a hard problem that requires money, and we end up where Reddit/Twitter are today.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Solvency 3y ago

I mean, it's 2023. Web-based simple threaded conversation platforms should be absolutely trivial to develop/clone/deploy. I'm not convinced building a Reddit is hard, at all. But getting a mass adoption of users to make it worth using is. Which is why I'm continually surprised some startup+VC combo doesn't just build it and then pay the top 1000 broad-to-niche influencers out there to sign up and start relentlessly hawking it on their various social medias.

nightski 3y ago
This gives me Mixer vibes.
jacksnipe 3y ago
Serving nearly-consistent content and ads to 1 Billion people worldwide is fucking hard!
- fooqux 3y ago
  Not according to the marketers from Cloudflare I talked to awhile back.
  - jacksnipe 3y ago
    They’ll run an ad network for you?
arp242 3y ago
Building the software is the easy part. It's everything else that's hard.
bryancoxwell 3y ago
That’s the thing though. It’s not purely a technical problem. Building a Reddit clone may be easy (I don’t know, I’ve never tried), but building a social network is more than just building a web app!
roncesvalles 3y ago

Merad 3y ago

Really? IME most devs are incredibly bad to underestimate the complexity of apps and problem domains where they don't have any experience. I'd say an app like Reddit is especially prone to this because most decent devs probably could recreate the core UX (subreddits, posts, comments) in a couple of weeks. The really hard part is all the features people don't usually think about (mod and admin tools, for example) plus scaling up to millions of concurrent users.

duped 3y ago

The hard part of building a tech company isn't the tech, its users, staff, and money. These 3rd party apps have the first two, and that would be enough to convince someone to find the third for them. The only limiting factor is ambition. And on a site with quite a few people from the startup world who see that the only thing in the way is the technical difficulty of building the service then it shouldn't be unexpected that people are saying they should take their users off to a new platform they build themselves. Because that's the kind of crazy thing that startup people think about.

tredre3 3y ago

Right? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. "Apollo dev should create his own backend and show them!" OK..? He'll take his 600k users, most of whom never contributed content, and do what exactly? Create his own little dead forum that runs only on iOS? It's not a technical problem, let's stop pretending there's a technical solution. Plenty of reddit clones exist already (many even open-source).

isocle 3y ago

Yeah, I don't understand why everyone seems so content to settle on imaginary solutions. Even if this was something he possessed the knowledge to do, he's bound by the timeline Reddit has laid out, and there is no way that is feasible, even if he did have 100x the users that Apollo actually has.

fknorangesite 3y ago

Ha are you joking? This site is exactly the place I expect to see that kind of sentiment. It precisely matches HN’s reputation; it’s been a cliche since Dropbox launched.