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Show HN: Non.io, a Reddit-like platform Ive been working on for the last 4 years

• nickspag 3y ago
  I've always liked the idea of this monetization model. But have you thought about how to disincentivize content stealing? Feels like these models end up needing a very thorough verification system.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    It's a hard problem for sure. My hope is that paid users are easier to moderate than unpaid users, especially when Stripe Connect (what I use for payouts) verifies identity quite a bit.
• jjcm 3y ago
  Some other fun tidbits: I'm trying to make this an API-first service, with the frontend being just a representation of how to use it. Because of that, I wanted to make the frontend as reusable/refactorable as possible, regardless of frontend framework. I relied on webcomponents for everything, and the full app is a SPA built purely in vanilla js. I'd never recommend anyone take that approach, it was masochistic. Use react or something. It was a great learning experience, but writing everything in vanilla js does slow down dev time overall.
  • ehaughee 3y ago
    That is pretty interesting. Probably an solid blog post in and of itself.
• UmYeahNo 3y ago
  The UID/PW demo combo doesn't work for me. Tried to actually sign up and couldn't figure it out (maybe you can't yet?) It sounds interesting, but I can't figure it out.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Looks like someone's first action logging in was setting the password to something else. I've reset it back to "helloworld".
    • OldManRyan 3y ago
      This is something you should absolutely be prepared for and guard against if you are opening a public demo account.
      • jjcm 3y ago
        First launch learnings. It's something I'd definitely have done a bit more if I were more prepared, but I mainly launched today because of the current situation, not because I had thought through all aspects of launch and felt ready.
• darkstar999 3y ago
  The main page shouldn't be login-walled. I don't want to create an account just to find out what kind of content this community has and how active it is.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Fair. I removed login requirements for browsing. You should be able to see all posts here: https://non.io/#all https://non.io/#all As a disclaimer, this is truly me just launching today, there's only 4 posts currently.
    • afterburner 3y ago
      People want to see the UI, doesn't matter how few posts there are. The content will come later; most of the Reddit alternatives I've looked at look godawful, yours is the only one I've liked. So many people get the compact and minimal comments look wrong.
      • jjcm 3y ago
        Appreciate the kind words! I put a lot of sweat into the design details, so that really means a lot to me.
    • activiation 3y ago
      Maybe you should automatically cross post top posts from your favorite reddit subs and maybe HN... Just to have a bit of content
    • nomel 3y ago
      I just went to http://non.io http://non.io and see something that is/looks like an ad "a platform for supporting creators", and some documentation/sales pitch, rather than content. This is not remotely like reddit.com, or hacker news. Why don't I see content? This is a very bad user experience, for a main page to go directly to, what should be, http://non.io/about http://non.io/about. Don't give me a long pamphlet explaining mundane details that I can't comprehend who would care about, let me see what it actually is, and test drive it, without having to know/type some magic url. I suggest sitting someone new down, who isn't excited to be there, and have them type http://non.io http://non.io, and carefully observe what happens.
• rc_kas 3y ago
  bro there is a crazy high amount of bugs on your site.
• creamyhorror 3y ago
  I like the monetisation model, it'll hopefully incentivise and reward creators, while being cheap enough that a lot of people won't mind paying. Best of luck!
• gardenfelder 3y ago
  It's quite an interesting business model. Qudos... Happy to see it at github: go server, javascript frontside.
• f1shy 3y ago
  The rendering of the main page in my iphone 8 is pretty bad… Is bot designed for mobile? Maybe I’m doing something wrong?
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Sorry I don't have a mobile css yet. Working on some designs here however: https://www.figma.com/file/DStwulDd9Vd3TLjrMuxZ9y/nonio-designs?type=design&node-id=6-11072&t=g2be1crVsMumjcap-0 https://www.figma.com/file/DStwulDd9Vd3TLjrMuxZ9y/nonio-desi...
• jshreder 3y ago
  I like the idea and am curious to see how well / if this gains traction. Nice UI, although I'm having trouble actually subscribing on the financials page, and it seems to show demo data? Great job launching something! https://pasteboard.co/eRp2eCMwkExq.png https://pasteboard.co/eRp2eCMwkExq.png
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Yep, still working through the financial aspects. The financials page is definitely demo data! This link should let you subscribe: https://non.io/admin/first-time-signup https://non.io/admin/first-time-signup if you're really keen. That said, I've allowed all functionality on the free tier for the time being until I get things like that financials page complete.
    • jshreder 3y ago
      Ah, gotcha! I'll keep noodling around :)
• unshavedyak 3y ago
  Looks great! Silly question, but have you considered ActivityPub integration? I ask because while it may not benefit you directly, these days i'm liking the idea more and more of joining a community if they're in "the fediverse". Which is to say i don't need to worry about the instance being small and isolated, i get benefits of the fediverse regardless of where i am in it. Ie, i get friction currently when looking at alternatives not in "the verse". Eg Tildes, i have the same concern.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    I have, but I think the two of these feel like different models. I want to encourage people to contribute back to creators, and doing that across the fediverse is a very difficult problem to solve. A few platforms are trying to do it, but it does come with performance/payout barriers. I wrote up about reddit alternatives here https://non.io/reddit-has-platform-user-misalignment https://non.io/reddit-has-platform-user-misalignment , and one of the things I call out is that what we need is a better fundamental model. Federated approaches may very well be that, and if one "wins", I think we'll end up in a better spot. I personally prefer a standard hosting architecture along with aligning user and platform demands, as this comes with some benefits over a federated architecture. I may be wrong here though - each definitely has pros and cons.
    • prox 3y ago
      I would look for people who are already creators and want more sidegig. Say lots of creators are on Twitch who might want to have a paid community. Then they can organically grow in your space without starting from scratch. As others said, make the frontpage a contentpage. See if you can seed some creators to post there.
    • unshavedyak 3y ago
      Yea, i get your concern about fediverse and creators. I'm thinking in a similar space, though it feels like it's non-optional these days. Ie as a user i just don't want to be trapped into silos anymore. I think i'd still like a "best we can do" implementation that supported Fedi and supported creators in this manner.
• cryoz 3y ago
  You should post this on /r/RedditAlternatives/ as well if you haven't already. Also, clickable link: https://non.io/#all https://non.io/#all
  • jjcm 3y ago
    I did, but they weren't a fan of the paid model for interaction: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/147qzfb/tossing_my_own_into_the_mix_my_personal_project/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/147qzfb...
    • sosodev 3y ago
      Yeah, I suspect paid social media isn't going to work. It sucks because it's probably the only sustainable model. VC has really warped people's perception of software costs.
    • shmatt 3y ago
      I swear, the current protests have shined a very odd light on the average commenting Redditor, they want * The website to be free * The API to be cheap * The ability to use a 3rd party app that does not track, advertise, or monetize you in any way * VCs to continue to pour hundreds of millions of dollars to run the site and never ask for an ROI Good luck kids
      • sosodev 3y ago
        That's just the average internet user. They want something for nothing and often get it. If you do ask for a few dollars a month you have to provide a ton of perceived value. That's despite the fact that they would spend it on snacks without hesitation.
        • kcatskcolbdi 3y ago
          Then sell them snacks.
        • carlosjobim 3y ago
• Quikinterp 3y ago
  I like the subscription model. Wish Spotify worked like this
  • ericd 3y ago
    I think it basically does? I think they pay out a big chunk of the subscription fees to songs based on plays.
    • HellzStormer 3y ago
      From what I remember last time I checked on this. % of money goes to a pot. Money is then globally distributed based on time listened globally (nothing is specific to you for the distribution). So barely any of the money you put in goes to the artists you actually listen to.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    It's funny, I originally pitched this about 8 years ago to some VCs, and Spotify was the example I used as a platform that could do things much better. Turned down the funding offers I got, and kicked things off in more of a slow-burn sideproject style after that.
• BudaDude 3y ago
  Do you plan to support Activity Pub?
• knorker 3y ago
  Your site doesn't think "$&m22KPBeB$!7&^l" is a strong enough password. Uhm… okay?
  • john-radio 3y ago
    Obviously it isn't, when you've just posted it here!
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Interesting, I was able to sign up with it. Can I ask if you're using a password manager / what browser you're using? Also for context, instead of testing password length/number of characters, I look for overall entropy in the formula of [alphabet length for char set used]^(number of letters in password). The one you described is well above the limit.
    • alexb_ 3y ago
      > instead of testing password length/number of characters, I look for overall entropy in the formula of [alphabet length for char set used]^(number of letters in password). You should do none of this. It shouldn't be the websites concern if my account gets hacked - basic password requirements are fine, but anything that goes past a character count is just making the UX worse. The requirements increase friction, which you've already put at a high level due to requiring payment.
    • knorker 3y ago
      LastPass. I think maybe you're not detecting when LastPass fills it in, only when typed?
• binkHN 3y ago
  Make the API compatible with Reddit's and you'll have a bunch of third-party clients starting on day one!
  • jacobkranz 3y ago
    This is why I've been so curious as to exactly what Reddit is really trying to do with this api change. If the point of Reddit is to consume content then the content itself (and the amount of it consumed) is really their business model so all actions should support that vs. getting people to arbitrarily be on their site. If your business is content, it shouldn't matter if it's a third-party app or if it's on your main site. I just cannot figure out the long-term logic behind this move (ofc short-term it's about $$ and their IPO but this'll hurt their model in the long-run)
    • lm28469 3y ago
      You probably lose a lot of control on ads and tracking
  • googlryas 3y ago
    Do any 3P clients let you point their app to backends other than reddit.com? Or are you just saying it would be easy for app developers to quickly port their app to non.io?
    • binkHN 3y ago
      It would be easy for app developers to quickly port their app to non.io.
    • digging 3y ago
      The survivors are working on it. RedReader is allowed to continue using the API for free because it has accessibility features, but the creator has announced they do not plan to depend on that goodwill and will expand the app to connect to other APIs.
    • mburns 3y ago
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• alexb_ 3y ago
  I feel like having people get paid for upvotes is going to create a massive amount of bad incentives.
  • tgv 3y ago
    Anything you incentivize is going to be abused. That's the way it is. Begun the karma wars have.
  • McAtNite 3y ago
    It absolutely will. I had toyed with the idea of something like this before, but wasn’t sure what the behavior would look like until I found the cryptocurrency subreddit. They have a system that rewards a monthly crypto amount based on the number of upvotes you received that surprisingly has an actual value that you can sell for. It’s largely led to a race to the bottom where comments and posts largely ignore any long form discussions or accuracy in favor of majority appeal.
    • nodespace 3y ago
      This is subtley different though. 1$ gets split between all upvotes a person made. So instead of posts getting a value amount directly proportional to upvotes recieved, it will be proportional to how often those users upvote. In theory I think this would encourage higher quality posts to attract those who upvote rarely.
      • McAtNite 3y ago
        I may be wrong, but I believe this is how the subreddit already works. They set a total amount of crypto to be released, and it goes in proportion to the total number of upvotes you receive in comparison to others in a given time window. I think the approaches are largely identical with the exception of the crypto vs direct fiat.
        • bowenjin 3y ago
          The difference is that the non.io model rewards more for upvotes from people who have a high bar for upvoting and upvote rarely.
• newman8r 3y ago
  I wasn't able to register initially due to some password strength requirements that aren't written anywhere, and got errors without an explanation of why. Generally I would have bailed at this point but wanted to give your project a look. Good luck, I think it's a cool idea.
  • bryan0 3y ago
    I just had this issue with lemmy today. caused me to bounce. maybe will try again later.
  • brk 3y ago
    Same. Seems to need "special characters" in the password, even though I got a green check mark when putting in a long/strong password with no special chars. No information in the error feedback, just a red X. As a side note, I'm tired of websites deciding that a password is not strong enough simply because it does not contain enough random subsclasses of basic ACSII characters.
    • stOneskull 3y ago
      > I'm tired of websites deciding that a password is not strong enough simply because it does not contain enough random subsclasses of basic ACSII characters me too. and i'd guess at least half of people put 1! at the end to fulfil the requirements anyway.
      • krageon 3y ago
        Of course, because such requirements are adversarial and make no sense. So they need an adversarial and nonsensical solution :)
• vinnymac 3y ago
  Mobile browser support is a little problematic. A couple of things I noticed immediately, that you may want to consider. - landing page is not responsive, hard to read on Safari on iOS - login screen in-app couldn’t be closed, had to navigate away to exit, perhaps a hidden icon somewhere? - comment threads seemed to have the same issues on iOS as the landing page Definitely like the direction you took for the UI, looks like with a little bit of work it’ll become a great platform though!
  • moffkalast 3y ago
    Ah yes, Webkit on mobile continues to be the bane of every web dev's existence.
    • OtomotO 3y ago
      Same for Firefox on Android
      • moffkalast 3y ago
        I didn't realize anyone cared about that one since unlike webkit, it's not something people are forced to use with no alternatives.
        • OtomotO 3y ago
          Well, with Firefox sync I am. I'll use ublock and noscript :)
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Definitely problematic. I have a local branch that has mobile css that's ~60% complete. Designs for it are here: https://www.figma.com/file/DStwulDd9Vd3TLjrMuxZ9y/nonio-designs?type=design&node-id=6-11072&t=g2be1crVsMumjcap-0 https://www.figma.com/file/DStwulDd9Vd3TLjrMuxZ9y/nonio-desi... Aiming to have mobile css in a couple weeks time. Apologies for the poor experience!
• mustacheemperor 3y ago
  A couple thoughts after trying to submit a post (on firefox): - no way to post a link/URL? But I can upload an html file? Am I supposed to make the URL the description of the post? - "audio" does not appear to have a file upload button (probably a bug) - the text submission box sometimes does that glitchy thing some javascript'd text boxes do where everything I type comes out backwards until a refresh Seems like a cool platform, glad I registered. I'm trying to post a video, and I think this would be better if the encoder worked in the background so I don't need to leave the page up. Console is also full of CORS errors. Edit: after waiting for a while with "480" checked, got an error message with a frowny face file icon Another edit: Seems posting of any kind is currently broken, at least as an unsubscribed account. Too bad, it's a nice idea with about the best timing it'll ever have, but this is a very soft launch.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Just patched the server - I opened up free account interactions last minute, seems post-creation was omitted in my sweep. Post creation should be working now on free accounts. Thank you for the detailed reports of issues you faced!
    • mustacheemperor 3y ago
      Working now, thank you!! Feels great to be in on the ground floor, haha.
• idiotsecant 3y ago
  The idea of posters getting real money instead of fake internet points when their posts do well seems interesting, but maybe an unintentional experiment in unintended consequences. Moderation will be extremely important to prevent low-effort memes and content regurgitation and the like from saturating your main channels. Have you considered how you will encourage moderation and keep it free from the corrosive influence of quid quo pro? (hey moderator, you overlook this spam post and maybe I cut you in on the profits) When real money is involved on the internet the worst kinds of stuff results, and it takes a lot of effort to avoid it. How's that going to work? None of this is to take away from your accomplishments here, by the way. The exact opposite in fact, you've got an interesting enough idea that it prompts interesting questions of the mechanics. P.S. do you have any long-term plans to IPO this if it becomes successful? If not, some kind of guarantee that this platform is immune to enshittification would probably be very, very popular.
  • wlesieutre 3y ago
    Another moderation risk is that whoever is moderating has an incentive to delete people’s potentially successful posts and repost under their own or a friend’s alt account
    • yieldcrv 3y ago
      when you dont rely on advertiser support you arent beholden to their desires of moderation when a sub-forum crosses a threshold of insensitivity, just remove it from search and let those fans direct link sub forums can remain popularity contests where community decides if anything there is a good fit. theyre already echo chambers and nobody is aiming to solve that so just run it that way
    • twic 3y ago
      People attach a lot of value to fake internet points, so these bad behaviours are already incentivised. What will be interesting is how they are incentivised differently. Different people attach different relative value to fake internet points and less-fake currency points, so you'll get different behaviour from different sets of people.
• searine 3y ago
  I tried to register, but my 30 character random letter password with numbers letter and characters "wasn't complex enough".
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Are you using a password manager? If so which? If you add the letter "a" at the end, and then delete it, does it work then? I'm using webcomponent form elements, the spec for which is relatively new. I suspect it isn't working well with auto-filled passwords from them.
• yett 3y ago
  Mobile experience is pretty bad right now.
• root_axis 3y ago
  Congrats on the hard work, and the idea is fine, but the problem is that tech like this is a cheap commodity in a massively oversaturated space, and without a hook that makes the platform exceptional (innovative/clever/beautiful design, unique aggregation features, inherently interesting content, reimagined user/content/moderation dynamics etc etc), this kind of thing is dead in the water because it lacks a network effect. Add in the upfront subscription model and failure to launch is basically assured. When I visit the root domain I shouldn't be greeted with a marketing splash page, you need interesting content in the user's face right away, entice their curiosity and drive the user to explore the site... even as a fellow developer, my first instinct is to abandon the page as soon as I'm greeted with the cliche startup marketing page. Consider the user experience when I visit reddit.com or news.ycombinator.com or any other link aggregation competitor. What you have now is a tech demo, not a platform. Sorry if that's a little harsh, but I mean well! Good luck!
  • SkyMarshal 3y ago
    Mostly agree. The screenshot in the top right looks good, like professional app I might actually use. But I want to actually browse the site and check it out without first slogging through a registration process. If it’s free to view/browse anyway, then enable doing that without registering. Register and pay if you want to post. Edit: You can browse without registering after all, here’s the link: https://non.io/#all https://non.io/#all (didn’t see it on the landing page or OP post).
    • neogodless 3y ago
      Oof, I clicked one of those posts and immediately lost all back-button functionality to an endless stream of history events.
      • jjcm 3y ago
        Was it the "Daniel's Site" post? There's some weird interactions I'm finding with that iframe'd html upload and the history events.
• akiranews 3y ago
  I hope this is the Reddit killer! Good luck <3
• chillbill 3y ago
  Mobile web needs to be addressed…
  • jjcm 3y ago
    100%. I'm still working on it. I announced today without it purely because of what's happening with Reddit. Mobile designs are here: https://www.figma.com/file/DStwulDd9Vd3TLjrMuxZ9y/nonio-designs?type=design&node-id=6-11072&t=g2be1crVsMumjcap-0 https://www.figma.com/file/DStwulDd9Vd3TLjrMuxZ9y/nonio-desi... Probs will be another month before I get the branch merged however.
    • chillbill 3y ago
      Very happy to hear that, I looked more into your service and I’m really hoping you can succeed!
• 58x14 3y ago
  My first 5 minutes have been positive. I've worked for years on a similar platform but never expected to have the time to ship, so I appreciate that you've implemented a few patterns/features that I was hoping for, namely tag-based subscriptions. Bug report: on latest Firefox with uBlock Origin, I have a strange UI bug on the root/home page: without any activity from cursor or otherwise, there is a dropdown that appears to show emails saved in my browser for form auto-fill. This is visible in the top left which seems to be in the same place where your registration sidebar is. I have quite a number of thoughts and questions which I'll move to the platform. Great job.
• novok 3y ago
  %98 lurk, %1.9 comment and %0.1 make content that make the rest of the group come in and lurk / comment in the first place. You probably want to invert the payment model in a way and still give money to content creators, or make it a platform which content creators can get paid and take a cut, like substack. But you have a chicken/egg issue there too, which is why coke when it was first getting started gave coke to various soda fountain places to bootstrap demand in the first place.
  • InCityDreams 3y ago
    Oh, that kind of Coke! #samebusinessmodel
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• jdlyga 3y ago
  What would be really powerful is an API compatible alternative to Reddit. There's a ton of already developed apps just itching for a new platform to use them with.
• twic 3y ago
  Cool project! For something like this to succeed at Reddit's scale, it should stay snappy under load (which admittedly Reddit doesn't). So clicked through to Github to see what it's written in: > Languages > Shell 100.0% I admired the absolute chadliness of this decision - until i realised this was just a top-level super-repo.
  • ZeroCool2u 3y ago
    I also saw this and was initially both equally horrified and impressed.
• bagels 3y ago
  On the landing page: "$2/mo min." is confusing, is it talking about minutes? consider "just $2/mo" or "from just $2/mo"
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Good call. Updated.
• birracerveza 3y ago
  Big mistake, I open non.io and I don't see content. I see you trying to sell me something. I haven't read a single word of it. If this wants to be a "reddit like" platform, it needs to be like reddit and actually present content on its homepage.
• keithasaurus 3y ago
  A few quick suggestions about the landing page: - less text - more spacing in your text - try not to let your text span the entire width of the window
• phildenhoff 3y ago
  Looks like an interesting model, I’d love to try it out. But signup on mobile didn’t have auto suggest for my password manager (1pass), and I’m not going to separately create a username/password in 1P and then copy it over. Maybe passkeys? Or better mobile support? Sorry to add on to comments from a few others — it does seem like an interesting model! Similar to FloatPlane, Patreon, etc. but in reverse.
• cridenour 3y ago
  Looks cool and I appreciate the different model. FYI - you mentioned letting free accounts post for now but that doesn't seem to work.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Just patched it. I very quickly reverted the free-tier interaction blocks, and I missed a final check on submissions. Should be working now.
• afterburner 3y ago
  Requiring a login to see anything at all is too much friction for this kind of thing. (Or at least I couldn't find a link that let to content from the main page without logging in.) The UI is nice though. Minimal dead space in the comments.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Going directly to a tag view will let you browse without logging in: i.e. https://non.io/#all https://non.io/#all or https://non.io/#dog https://non.io/#dog I've still got plenty of work to do on the UX of the site!
    • moffkalast 3y ago
      Hmm, is there a way to switch between tags without editing the url? I can't find any list of current ones.
      • jjcm 3y ago
        Logging into an account will get you the sidebar, which will let you navigate current tags. You can use the demo account hackernews pw=helloworld
        • moffkalast 3y ago
          Cool thanks, the account view shows a completely different picture. It would probably be a good idea to show that same sidebar to guests, aside from the subscribed tags. The HTML upload option is... very interesting.
          • jjcm 3y ago
            The html upload is my favorite part and the one I'm most scared about. This post is actually an html upload: https://non.io/reddit-has-platform-user-misalignment https://non.io/reddit-has-platform-user-misalignment One issue though is automatically resizing the iframe for the frontend. I have a protocol for iframes to request their own size, which this script leverages: https://html.non.io/nonio-embedded-page.js https://html.non.io/nonio-embedded-page.js I'll likely create a setting to automatically inject that script into html uploads.
• diegocg 3y ago
  You should have written a post describing your experience and the platform instead of a plain landing page
• graypegg 3y ago
  Using the # anchor in the url as the subreddit/tag/category etc is really clever!
• pythko 3y ago
  I really like this idea, and would love to subscribe when you’re ready! I think many commenters have pointed out reasons why this model is not suited to widespread user adoption, but I just want to say that may not be a bad thing. Meme content moderation is not a big problem if your users are not the type to submit or upvote a lot of low effort memes in the first place. A paywall will inherently limit your user growth, but if the users you get end up being people who are happy to create and support high quality content, that seems pretty ideal to me (unless you are looking for maximal growth, VC level returns, and/or an IPO). If there’s a mailing list or other way to get notified when you’re ready to do a full launch, I’d love to sign up for that!
• ZacnyLos 3y ago
  Is it part of fediverse?
• thih9 3y ago
  Congrats on the launch! How do you handle reposts and low effort content with this business model? I.e. what prevents me from repackaging popular content from elsewhere and farming votes?
  • stOneskull 3y ago
    votes aren't free. why would i upvote the low effort?
    • thih9 3y ago
      I don’t know. But I saw a post with a seagull standing on another seagull and the submission had votes, so I assume this is still going to happen.
• EGreg 3y ago
  Make it costly for creators to actually post something. They can recoup in upvotes. That's the proper incentive structure ... by posting you're imposing on other people actually, and their attention. If what you posted recoups and goes on to get you a lot of points, great! But if you posted crap, make that be costly. In fact, make "upvotes" be zero-sum transfers from the user to another. They have a limited amount and their upvotes will mean something. If you have downvotes then I guess the person is willing to lose that amount, just so the other guy does also. Here is the full tokenomics: https://community.qbix.com/t/preventing-spam-and-sybil-attacks/222 https://community.qbix.com/t/preventing-spam-and-sybil-attac...
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• benreesman 3y ago
  As others have said, congratulations on what is clearly a lot of solid work and a very interesting bet about how to dodge some of the traps e.g. Reddit is in all this grief over. And this is the kind of moment that projects like this get a chance: struggling incumbent, #1 on HN, this is a great moment! My 2c is that I’d stay flexible on the revenue model, even if you’re pretty sure you don’t want to do adds there are a variety of interesting variations on the paid model, there’s kinda left field stuff like Brave’s BAT thing (probably worth emailing their people for a fun chat either way) and lots of Patreon-style stuff. I’d really nail the simple-sounding but critical stuff (and you’re well on your way!) before I got too attached to a revenue strategy.
• lunaticneko 3y ago
  It's a strange concept, but interesting. You might need to ensure that the system is difficult to game, though.
• mvuijlst 3y ago
  Is there a way to actually pay yet?
• parker_mountain 3y ago
  For what it's worth, you should add openid/google/apple/etc auth. Registration friction is going to be one of the hardest things you face, especially on mobile, which is where a lot of people are these days.
• RaderH2O 3y ago
  Keylogger?
• TheCaptain4815 3y ago
  "A place for all content types - No matter what you make, Nonio is equipped to support it. With no advertisers, you aren’t at risk of having your content demonetized." How far are you willing to go to defend this? There's been lots of technical talk in this thread so far, but I'm curious on this portion. So far I'm LOVING the UI. I actually think you should drop the payment part ASAP and just push for more users in the standard social media format. I also think a staggered release of new "tags" is a fantastic idea, but needs to scale ASAP (until the site is ready for users to create their own hashtags/subreddits) EDIT: After using this more, it's so exciting and fun to see something so new and fresh. It really feels like I'm back in 2010.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Obviously I can’t defend “all content types” to the level that say, the darkweb can. I’ll still abide by the law. That said, I don’t have the pressure of ad networks to filter out content. I still have pressures however. Using Stripe and credit cards for payment processing means I have to ensure the sites primary purpose isn’t adult content, as if that content dominates its very likely Stripe will choose to no longer do business with me. I can still support it, but it can’t be the primary purpose.
    • all2 3y ago
      Are you going to Gab levels of defense? Their stance has been "if it is legal speech in the US, then it is allowed on the platform" is one that grates many people the wrong way. It allows for blatant racism, science denial, questioning of hallowed institutions, holocaust denial, and so on.
      • jjcm 3y ago
        Thats a great question, one that I suspect few of us aside from seasoned moderators (such as dang) or platform runners are an authority on. My current stance is to be a moderation centrist rather than an extremist. There are sharks in the waters of both unmoderated content and overmoderated content. What I'll optimize for is what will facilitate the health of the platform overall. In my eyes things like hate speech, science/holocaust denial, etc, aren't healthy for a platform. I'll almost certainly make errors along the way, like every platform does. While I believe my financial model is new and innovative, I don't have something similar for moderation. I'll be using similar tools as others, so I'll value any input anyone has here.
• jedberg 3y ago
  I signed up, but immediately lost my password because the password manager didn't save it. Your signup password field doesn't seem to play nice with password managers. Just thought you should know!
  • cridenour 3y ago
    Apparently me too. Hopefully the cookie expiration isn't short :)
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Well there's a name I wasn't expecting to see sign up for my side project. And yea, password managers right now aren't working great with the webcomponent inputs. Thank you for the report!
    • jedberg 3y ago
      I love trying new sites! I'll reserve judgement until it has more content, but it looks pretty so far. :)
• dom96 3y ago
  I really like the subtle animations in the UI. What do you use for the front-end/back-end tech stack?
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Thank you! A lot of sweat went into those. The frontend is pure vanilla js, and all of those animations are hand coded. Backend is in go. Source is here: https://github.com/jjcm/nonio https://github.com/jjcm/nonio
• FlyingSnake 3y ago
  I've spent enough time [Edit: on HN] to remember App.net¹ which was launched with similar fanfare but was shut down after few painful years of trying to find a PMF. The lesson I learned from that saga was HN might not be the best place to validate your product. We're too smart to diss even good ideas like DropBox. Go and talk to your potential customers and I hope the App.net story gives you some inspiration. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372985 2: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13387723
  • coldpie 3y ago
    "PMF"?
    • trufas 3y ago
      product-market fit
    • z3ugma 3y ago
      I assume "product-market fit"
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • jhatemyjob 3y ago
    I also want to add: HN is an especially bad place to validate this type of product because HN has the exact same interface as reddit. This post is popular because of its novelty, there is an incentive to upvote this post and say whatever OP wants to hear in order to get him to keep working on this project. Because "having alternatives never hurts". But it hurts the person developing the alternative. He already lost 4 years of his life to this. Hopefully he wises up and pivots before he wastes another 4 years.
    • mtrower 3y ago
      > He already lost 4 years of his life to this. Hopefully he wises up and pivots before he wastes another 4 years. I think it's up to him to decide whether that time had value or not.
• blhack 3y ago
  Please don't take this criticism harshly: You say that you've been working on this for 4 years, but there's no content here. Have you not been using it yourself for 4 years? Where is the content that you and your friends have been posting?
  • jjcm 3y ago
    I've been working on the code for 4 years. Only opened up posting to others today. Obviously have test posts, but I deleted many of them prior to this post.
    • iLoveOncall 3y ago
      Hum there's one commit end of 2022, a few end of 2021, 3 early 2021 and then the initial repository creation in 2018. You haven't been working on it for 4 years, you started it 4 years ago, have made disconnected updates here and there since, and are releasing a pre-alpha to capitalize on the Reddit story.
      • hombre_fatal 3y ago
        You should learn about git submodules before interpreting their git activity, especially if you're going to be so confidently judgmental. You've missed over 900 commits. Oops. :)
        • iLoveOncall 3y ago
          My bad, I was on mobile and seeing the commits is always a pain there.
• Aicy 3y ago
  I just created a new account using the free tier, and then afterwards decided I would like to play. I went to my profile, clicked on "view financials", but when I press "Change Subscription Amount" the page just freezes. Why won't you let me give you my money? Having a look in the console... Every time I press the "Change Subscription Amount" button there is a 500 API error from https://api.non.io/stripe/subscription https://api.non.io/stripe/subscription and this is printed: {error: 'no customer for the user'}
  • Aicy 3y ago
    I also tried paying at this link https://non.io/admin/first-time-signup https://non.io/admin/first-time-signup I entered my card details, and now it is stuck on a loading system where the "Subscribe" button used to be
    • Aicy 3y ago
      Ok... I managed to pay. It might not have been working because I was entering my post code wrong, although I got no feedback from the UI about this. Now I'm trying to make a post, but it similarly has gotten stuck as soon as I press the submit button. (I figured out that I need to actually upload a picture, video etc and not just write a description. This was not clear and I got no feedback from the UI that this was the problem - instead it implied it was just waiting for something with the loading icon)
• jazzyjackson 3y ago
  Reminds me of retroshare, which is fully peer to peer and anonymizing. Anyone here try it before? Meant for closed communities and not open/global so a different niche I suppose https://retroshare.cc/ https://retroshare.cc/
• PUSH_AX 3y ago
  You know I often daydream of creating a social media site that has a small monthly subscription, a way to show users they are not the product, a way to maintain integrity and not have to appease any VCs. But when faced with it here I couldn't help but recoil a bit, and I'm not sure why.
  • DANmode 3y ago
    Because you're not the party with whom the trust lies.
• alekratz 3y ago
  You're asking me to sign up before I can even see what I'm signing up for. Let me look at the content first.
• carlosjobim 3y ago
  I think the subscription and redistribution idea is the future of a sustainable internet. You will need some way to make sure this money given to the original content creators, or the website will be completely overrun by spammers re-posting other people's material that they know will net them the most money. Or am I tripping? It's a bad choice to have all images in Google file format if you want your website to be accessible to as many people as possible. Not everybody is on Chrome browsers. Why haven't you seeded your platform with high quality content before launching? Now it is a desert. I assume self promotion for people and businesses is allowed and encouraged, since it costs money to post?
  • ColoursofOSINT 3y ago
    Moderation is a big concern for me, as well as the rules should be better clarified, but I can understand the lack of content as it just launched - I agree, however, with the proposals in not having the google file format.
• codingdave 3y ago
  It is a nice start, but I cannot image that tags are sufficient organization of the content to scale this idea. And while the UI looks nice, it is incomplete. I saw no tag options when posting, and before logging in I didn't even see sufficient navigation to understand how to find and filter content. The monetization idea also feels like it won't scale - the more someone is active, the less their vote is going to mean. Seems like an odd incentive, as creators then will be targeting those users who pay for the site, but don't use it much. Overall, this looks like a well-coded but half-baked idea of a site.
• ljdawson-sync 3y ago
  I'm the developer of Sync for Reddit. If you want to explore making an Android app I'm about to have a lot of time on my hands...
  • capnjngl 3y ago
    Listen to this guy. Sync is a fantastically well-designed app.
  • hbn 3y ago
    I haven't been on Android for a few years now, but the years I was, your client was my favorite. Thanks for making it!
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Extremely interested in talking. I was actually going to reach out to you/RIF/Apollo. Do you mind sending me an email at j@jjcm.org? Would love to talk more. I have some plans for 3rd party app revenue sharing I'd love your thoughts on. What I'm thinking is that with the $1/mo server fee I charge users, I'd carve out 30c of that as the "frontend fee", which I would distribute evenly between the frontends that user was using that month. If they were only using an app, I'd pay that app $0.30 for the month for that user. If they were using the app and the website, each would get $0.15 for the month.
• SignalM 3y ago
  Fantastic idea and great work!
• numlock86 3y ago
  > went to non.io > no mobile view Instand turn off. I don't get why these kind of platforms aren't "mobile first".
• SignalM 3y ago
  Awesome idea, great work
• dbg31415 3y ago
  60% of web users are phone users. Probably more for a site like this. Would be better if it supported mobile screens. Not just supported but that should be the default.
• rhyme-boss 3y ago
  Why can posts not be links/URLs? Isn't that a pretty huge part of reddit posts? When submitting a post, why do I need to come up with a URL like non.io/example-i-made-up? If I leave that blank I would expect it to just assign a random or UUID URL.
• go_prodev 3y ago
  I like the monetization model and wish you the best of luck. IIRC, the get paid to post model can make users feel like they are working which can have negative consequences. Deal with that later... hopefully you can get traction/network effect.
• cwdz1 3y ago
  I don't think this can be successful as an alternative to reddit. I'm a broke unemployed person from a third world country who's not gonna pay to ask a question on /r/work to find a job. Just the thought that I have to pay for talking is alien to me.
• ln_00 3y ago
  At least on iOS Safari its not responsive. Kind of a no go, sorry.
• kernal 3y ago
  Is there any written guarantee that all of the user created content is public domain in perpetuity and can be exported by anyone? Because if not than this is just another Reddit wannabe clone that will flip on a dime once it gets a sniff of user traction a potential exit.
• tjoff 3y ago
  Really hope it succeeds! Maybe there could be an low-effort area where you don't get paid. I get the site is targeting creators, but I also get the impression that it is about general discussions etc? As a user it feels weird to give equal money to a discussion as someones awesome multi-month project, especially since there will probably be more discussions than awesome multi-month projects. I really like the lurk for free but pay to participate approach. Getting paid however feels like a possible distraction that might just overcomplicate things, both technical and moderation+incentives. I don't think most people would be doing it for the money (and for most people it would at best be pocket change anyway). Getting rid of ads is the killer-feature that hopefully builds a good community, I guess/hope. Getting people to enter their credit cards is probably harder than the actual amount, so the appeal of getting the money back is still red in the balance-sheet for pocket-change amounts. My biggest gripe is that payments kills anonymity (which some might see as a big thing).
  • bee_rider 3y ago
    It could be interesting to be able to mark a bits of content as dependents, and have them pay a portion of their reward to the parent. This could be recursive.
• afterburner 3y ago
  I don't see a scroll bar in the feed window?
• Jzush 3y ago
  This seems like a great idea, I'd consider popping in and registering but I would have to wonder how you would handle things like NSFW content? I don't know what payment processor you're using but I have to assume it'd fall prey to the same issues that onlyfans and others had. What about keeping objectively terrible content off the platform? I won't name it but we all know what I'm talking about. I think spelling out API usage from the get-go would be a good idea.
  • InCityDreams 3y ago
    >objectively terrible content off the platform? I won't name it but we all know what I'm talking about. When the politicians arrive you will have a runaway success. Unfortunately politicians tend to be followed by more 'objectively terrible content'. Funny how that works.
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
  I am now imagining endless rows of North Korean inmates posting cat pictures.
• bdcravens 3y ago
  Seems like this is a great way to monetize content theft, since almost every single post in high traffic subs is currently a repost of a recycled meme or Tiktok.
• ln_00 3y ago
  Loving the ui. A bit more rich text features for the comments might be nice.
• goncalomb 3y ago
  So posts need to have a unique/custom path directly under the main domain? https://non.io/avo-jump https://non.io/avo-jump Sounds like a recipe for disaster. At least it should be in a sub-path (/post/?), and probably include some sort of unique id.
  • replwoacause 3y ago
    I don’t think users should get any input on the URL. I’m failing to see the upside in allowing this.
• stickfigure 3y ago
  Depending on how fast you can execute it may be too late, but right now you have a brief window of opportunity to get a seedbed of users. Reproduce the Reddit API exactly such that these soon-to-be-defunct client apps can work with minimal changes (ideally, just a configurable root domain). Reach out to the client authors and see if they will enable your site. Maybe you'll capture some of those user communities.
  • JustBreath 3y ago
    Definitely, two killer features: - Nearly plug-n-play with the Reddit API - Support for subreddits with mod management
• the_gipsy 3y ago
  The back button doesn't remember scroll position, it always takes me to the top. Can't really use this as is.
• diarized 3y ago
  I recently found that more sites has Stripe code on pages that actually don't require payment. First it was a calendar site to schedule meetings, now this. As many of you, I have a bunch of blockers installed in my web browser and I strip off the Strip code when I am opening non.io 'register' page. Unfortunately, it prevents me from registering. I believe the code there is to build my profile and start using metrics/features about who I am. I am not sure if it is really necessary at that point. Would you consider removing Stripe snippets on registering page?
  • collaborative 3y ago
    what payment method would you prefer? I find Stripe to be one of the least invasive payment SDKs. Am I wrong?
    • danudey 3y ago
      It's not about which payment method is used, it's about Stripe's payment SDK being embedded on every page (or at least, more pages than it needs to be on).
      • collaborative 3y ago
        I misunderstood. Yes, that's not ok
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Just for clarification, the site is a SPA. There’s no difference in the frontend package between the registration page or viewing a post.
• collaborative 3y ago
  I love it. I hope the internet one day will move to paid models. The current state of affairs is untenable. Ads, privacy issues, the lot. One thing I have tried doing recently is using a pre-paid model + free tier. Perhaps I am in the minority, but I absolutely dislike subscriptions. They make me stay up at night wondering if I have some subscription still active I no longer need. With a pre-paid model, users can pay for usage and not have to worry until next time they come back. It can be very cheap, too ps. text box background colors look better when they are different than main page background colors (slightly darker or brighter)
• bdcp 3y ago
  I like the name. Non.io
• Zetice 3y ago
  You should scrape the popular posts off of Reddit's /r/all and post them on here as well. And, IMO, you should ignore (and possibly even actively flaunt) any of Reddit's TOS.
• jhatemyjob 3y ago
  I dont mean to sound harsh but I believe this project is a waste of your time. If you want to make money, I would abandon this immediately. Cut your losses and start something new.
• DomRao04 3y ago
  i love how you divy up all the funds for upvotes. thats so creative
• dotancohen 3y ago
  ‪I logged in using the loginless browsing link. I could not see where to create a new post, nor where the "subs" are, if they exist. I tried to reply to a post, but instead of a functional HTML textarea I got some javascipt box that seemed to add two newlines after every character that I typed in.
• Zamicol 3y ago
  I'm concerned about the `#` character in the URL. # means fragment and that's kept local and not sent to the server unless client side Javascript sends it to the server. I would use an identifier that doesn't already mean something to the URL. See the URL spec here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986#section-3.5 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986#section-3.5 We are using this in a lot of our projects, like https://github.com/Cyphrme/URLFormJS#query-parameters-fragment-anchors-and-fragment-query-parameters https://github.com/Cyphrme/URLFormJS#query-parameters-fragme... (and https://github.com/Cyphrme/Path https://github.com/Cyphrme/Path) For an example where this is relevant: https://cyphr.me/ed25519_tool/ed.html#?msg_encoding=Text&msg_type=Msg&seed=This_is_a_private_key https://cyphr.me/ed25519_tool/ed.html#?msg_encoding=Text&msg...
• v7n 3y ago
  Ha, I had almost the exact same idea but just today. In my version though the subscription fee minus the dollar would be split evenly between all the subcommunities you follow, and within them by votes (by anyone). This would incentivize creating communities that people would like to follow, not only for the content but also for the moderation.
• sanjeevverma1 3y ago
  replace the homepage with loginless site dude
• sanjeevverma1 3y ago
  replace the homepage with the loginless feed dude
• renewiltord 3y ago
  The site is surprisingly fast. It's unlikely I'll use it since I'm not an early adopter of social media, but I do like that it's fast. The animations are slow, which could be changed, but each page loads fast.
• glonq 3y ago
  Nice work! I love the idea of requring $ to subscribe, but expect that sharing $ based on upvotes will corrupt the system.
• herpdyderp 3y ago
  Can't open links in new tabs :/
• hbarka 3y ago
  Sorry for the trivial nitpic but in the interest of reducing ambiguity the login asks for email and "hackernews" is literally not an email address.
• danudey 3y ago
  I like the concept, though I agree with a lot of the comments about people content farming and reposting comments for upvotes and I think that would kill the site (since Reddit already has enough of a problem with this and that's just for fake internet points). The thing that I think a lot of people are missing about Reddit is that it's not a content aggregation site like HN or Digg or your site, Non.io; it's a community of communities. I've seen so many reddit-likes which switch from 'subreddits' to hashtags, but that doesn't work for what makes Reddit great. On Reddit, you can create your own communities and control who is in them, set rules for them, moderate them how you want, and so on. For example, /r/AskHistorians has some extremely specific rules and moderation; /r/GirlGamers is a community of like-minded (typically female) individuals. /r/Trans is (in theory?) a safe place for the trans community to interact with one another. /r/BreakingMom is a place where mothers can vent without repercussions and non-mothers are not welcome to contribute content. None of that is possible in this hashtag design. The #trans hashtag will be a shitshow of offensive, triggering, and deliberately abusive content, and there's nothing the trans community could do about that. Toxic users on your platform will drive out anyone they don't like, and the only recourse users will have is to ask you (the admins/moderators) to ban those users - and now you have to make the decision of all of the content that is allowed on the site. Are you going to allow transphobic jokes on the site? If so, you're going to drive away trans people (and anyone with a sense of decency). If not, you're going to have to constantly be banning people from the whole site and not just part of it. I think it's a cool site, but I think this software could be used to replace only one subreddit and not all of Reddit itself.
  • JustBreath 3y ago
    Yeah one key missing feature is subreddit creation and moderation. Without all the free labor from moderators curating content for topics with different tastes and ideas about what the community should be, it's going to be a struggle to build a community.
    • demizer 3y ago
      Maybe that extra dollar should go to the mods? And the communities get to elect their mods so they can be held accountable. Maybe we won't get the MrBabyMan or POTATO_IN_MY_ANUS situation.
• galaxyLogic 3y ago
  Cool. Can you shed some light on how you handle the logistics of charging for it? Which payment processor etc. ?
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Stripe subscriptions for subscriptions, stripe connect for payouts
• mvdtnz 3y ago
  Four years of work and I instantly nope out when you can't keep my scroll position when I click Back. Don't mess up the basics.
• leeoniya 3y ago
  on a desktop display i would expect some kind of limit on content width, plus centering. right now the content is left-aligned to about 15% of the full page width: https://non.io/#all https://non.io/#all
• rogual 3y ago
  Are signups working? I tried to sign up, but the login form shook at me and said "X", which is not among the most informative error messages I've seen.
• wellthisisgreat 3y ago
  this is a much better experience then Lemmy for sure. Congrats!
• jrflowers 3y ago
  The model of users paying money for the site means that there probably can’t be any discussion about file sharing or piracy at all. I remember this becoming an issue for the Something Awful forums a point time ago.
• blacklight 3y ago
  Is it open-source? Is it based on open protocols? Does it support federation? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then your product is irrelevant. It's nothing personal. It's just that I'm sick and tired of centralized solutions running on somebody else's computers. At least this product makes its business model clear (a $2/month subscription fee for interacting). But hey, I'm a guy who used to run phpBB forums on a Pentium 1 under my bed 20 years ago. Back then there were tons of those forums, most of us didn't ask users for any subscription money, there was no centralized gatekeeper, and everybody was happy. All of us used to curate our own small gardens and the model was sustainable at all levels. Can I just get that back, with some federation protocols on top to allow multi-instance interactions? Seriously, everything else is pointless, it's a waste of time, and it doesn't make the digital world any better. I won't jump from a centralized platform to another, and probably nobody should.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    The github link is in the post.
• bardak 3y ago
  The use of tags vs discrete communities keeps it from being a viable alternative to Reddit for me. I have a real disdain for tags for user generated content. Every site I have seen use tags I end up having to wade through a ton of spam or vaugly related content to whatever tag I am looking for. The only exception I can think of is Hashtags for twitter but that is due to the character limit. I understand that people see tages as a solution to crossposting but I think people overlook the benefits of crossposting. Being able to have seperate conversations on AI art in an art community vs programming community is more useful to me than having a single post that both communities comment on.
  • GordonS 3y ago
    I like hashtags - but, like you, I don't think they work as the primary means of content discovery.
    • bardak 3y ago
      Honestly I believe that hashtags only work on twitter due to the character limit. If hashtags were exempt from the character limit it would be a complete mess.
  • kraftman 3y ago
    I think an option to only show comments from people subscribed to the same communities as you, or the community you're viewing the content from could solve this.
    • bardak 3y ago
      What do you do when there are comment threads between subscribers of different tags. Or what if somebody is subscribed to both tags but wanting to comment based more on the viewpoint of one of the tags. I'm not saying it couldn't work but I don't think it would be as trivial as that. I also like that subreddits were able to foster their own communities with different expectations and cultures. I feel like using tags you are more or less forced to have a single overall community vs many smaller ones.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• gpmcadam 3y ago
  First of all thanks for sharing this! Secondly, not sure if anyone has mentioned this before but in Safari on macOS there's something odd happening. On the page I see a small '1Password' popup and when I click it, it asks me to to unlock 1Password. However I don't see any login form on the page and I don't see any other text input fields so I'm not sure why this would be. I'm sure it's a perfectly innocent bug but it's probably something you want to address otherwise maybe it might put some people off. See screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/3CcDFcg https://imgur.com/a/3CcDFcg Best of luck with the app!
  • IceDane 3y ago
    I saw the same thing, it seems to be because the login form is hidden off screen or something but still gets focused.
• prng2021 3y ago
  I applaud any attempt to compete with existing social networks. That said, user expectations are very high these days. The site looks awful on a phone, and I completely lost interest after about 5 seconds of trying to read the contents. Given how easy to make a site responsive these days and how relatively simple the main page is, that was quite disappointing. Still, I hope you keep working on improving it!
• wellthisisgreat 3y ago
  Dude you need to figure out your landing page ASAP. The marketing splash thingie isn't doing you any favors. Route the root to /all and allow a simple registration. This is the moment when you can get the users, the current splash page is horrible for it.
• AegirLeet 3y ago
  Hm, I don't really see how this is Reddit-like. It doesn't seem to have anything like subreddits. If I wanted to recreate a subreddit on non.io, how would I do that? How would I enforce rules?
• wkat4242 3y ago
  I like the idea and the price is fine. But I'd rather pay $2 for the servers instead of rewarding posters. The problem is that once they start making money it will become too clickbaity/commercial. I strongly dislike the mass content most "pro" YouTubers like Linus tech tips and the like generate. Reddit never really had this because all you could give was subscription time. Paying causes this mainstream focus and clickbaiting. Maybe you feel the need to attract content generators to your platform but it will only create more mediocre content IMO. What was so great about Reddit was that people created amazing content that they were passionate about, regardless of whether it paid well or not.
• courseofaction 3y ago
  Congratulations on your work, but I think society needs to wake up to platforms. Given the repeated destruction of public squares by corporations, there is zero reason to trust centralized social media. It's still a business, it exists in this psychopathic market system, and will still succumb to financialization. No matter who started it. If a for-profit platform is providing value, it's because it's at the beginning of the enshittification cycle. Ignore the shiny, people. Use your brain.
• kranke155 3y ago
  As a heavy Reddit user - love it. But can’t seem to register on iOS
• bloopernova 3y ago
  Hello OP, I haven't read all the comments in this thread, please forgive me if I duplicate someone else's ideas: First off, I really like what you've done so far, this is fantastic and I dig the idea despite some of the potential payout exploits that you'll need to guard against. My suggestion is to find the moderators who have wishlists of features that they want reddit to implement. Don't try and entice them onto your platform, just ask them for advice on what features the moderation tools should have. Implement those tools and ask for feedback. Places like AskHistorians, AskScience, gonewild, and other specialist subject subreddits will all have very specific requirements for their mod tools. If you can support those requirements, or at least make it so that it's easy for someone else to build those tools, then I think you'll have a headstart over others. A couple of other items: reddit has edited user's comments in the database before. Perhaps consider implementing public key signing of comments on the backend, such that once a comment is made, it can be verified. Hide the gory details from the users unless they're a power user and want to see that stuff. Being able to say "I wrote this and it hasn't been modified", well that's pretty powerful in my opinion. Allow users to set their profiles such that when someone buys gold for them or otherwise rewards them, the money is instead donated to a charity of their choice. Said charity can be displayed in their profile, comments, or neither. Talk to lots of people, watch how they use reddit and other sites that include moderation, learn from what they say. Mods are going to be an important customer for you, they manage the communities that will create content and draw people in. Decide very early on what your personal values are and what the values of the site are. Not in a corporate useless bullshit kind of way, but instead to clearly state what people should expect. Decide what rules mods must follow vs those that are optional. Same for users. Transparency and clear open communication is something people are really missing right now. Allow people to display the site in multiple different ways that suit them. For example I use ublock origin rules to display hackernews comments no wider than about 8 to 10 words. Some people like old.reddit.com, others hate it. Give people options and make it easy to switch between them. Allow people to not see advertising if they don't want to, as long as those costs are covered via a subscription (which you seem to be doing, nice!) If you haven't already, implement a rich text github markdown text entry widget. Don't bait and switch. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress, I hope you succeed and that I'm using your site in 5 years! Good luck! EDIT: I also wanted to add, make your site as fast as hackernews. Can you load the text first, then the rest of the stuff, without reflowing and shifting content around? Speed keeps the site feeling snappy and doesn't "punish" people for clicking discussion links etc.
• loufe 3y ago
  I love the business model. Have you checked in with credit card processors yet regarding "no content type demonitization"? Cool in principal but many sites like onlyfans have gone through hell with credit card issuers playing the moral police. Also, have you considered making it a foundation or non-profit as a business model? IMO the for-profit nature of Reddit is behind its troubles right now. You could pay yourself a handsome salary as the foundation's CEO while still keeping things pro-user.
• krm01 3y ago
  I think with some very basic UI/UX tweaks this can very quickly look, feel and perform 10X better. I applaud your efforts and if you need help. Just ask (details in bio). Happy to lend a helping hand or give you a few quick wins. Congrats on the launch.
• 1270018080 3y ago
  Is it pronounced nonio?
• coding123 3y ago
  What are you serving it using? It's surviving what I imagine to be a huge hug of death.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Served off a small $10/mo vultr VPS. Today it's transferred about 200GB of content across 6m requests. I'm quite happy with how it's handling it!
• ddtaylor 3y ago
  The homepage had no content on it so I closed the tab.
• phendrenad2 3y ago
  There's no way to get from https://non.io/#all https://non.io/#all back to https://non.io https://non.io without manually editing the browser URL? Is this a real project or another collect-HN-users-IP-addresses scheme?
• meltedcapacitor 3y ago
  Has the cost of lawyers and moderation been modelled? At $2/month spammers break even if they get like 5 clicks from all their posting on the platform, huge magnet for them, and content copypasters, if the platform gets some traction.
• ColoursofOSINT 3y ago
  Others may have covered this but I think you should have the landing page be the site itself, that will be an good advertisement rather than a product sell page. Also, the tags are interesting, but I find them distracting and would rather a single 'upvote' count with specific tags. The navigation needs some improvements, the submit button is somewhat hidden near the top and should be made more prominent (grey on darker grey is hard to see). Other than that, I have been interested in a similar payment model for sometime.
• jonplackett 3y ago
  I love this idea but I cannot figure how to sign up. On mobile the site does not really work at all. Everything’s scrolled off the page and then way to small. When I zoom out. I click sign up, nothing happens… I guess I’ll have to go see if my laptop is charged up
• prakhar897 3y ago
  Great Work!! I'd say to give yourself room and charge atleast 99$ per year.
• doublerabbit 3y ago
  So, I signed up, paid and I am already concerned by the financial information page. 1: Within the financial page, I have a wallet of $844.33 -- Can you elaborate on what this is? 2: https://non.io/admin/financials https://non.io/admin/financials appears accessible by all. a: I selected $7 for my monthly subscription, however the financial page displays as $9. b: I can't amend the amount nor can I cancel my subscription. The UI buttons are not working on Chromium & Firefox on FreeBSD. c: What are all these other contributions? 3: Your support page leads me to GitHub, I don't own a GitHub account. 4: Text editor is so very broken: https://non.io/itsverybroken https://non.io/itsverybroken Maybe maintenance mode is required? Good for the first stress test and I've learnt a lesson of maybe not paying for something that's not a final product ;) Although hope to see these improvements.
• shermix011 3y ago
  This reminds me of Coil subscriptions that was built on a similar micropayments concept for paying out creators. Sadly they shut down. Worth looking into their efforts, what went wrong...
• bonestamp2 3y ago
  > everything left gets split evenly between everything you upvote that month Does that include comments that are upvoted? I mean, in some cases the submission itself is just a question and all the value is in the contribution from the users in the comments.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    No, comments are outside the contribution model. I have some early designs that show a user setting that lets you allocate a % split between comments and posts, but for now I wanted to preserve the simplicity of the model.
    • bonestamp2 3y ago
      Fair enough, but for some submissions (like questions), all of the value is in the comments. Also, I think a lot of long time users contribute a lot of value in the way of: helpful comments, upvotes, downvotes, spam reports, tech support, etc and they're not recognized for the value that they add. I'm happy to see that your product has the opportunity to recognize that and hopefully that will be enabled in the future.
• ConanRus 3y ago
  [dead]
• jonplackett 3y ago
  You need to put some content in here even if you have to add it all yourself under a few different accounts. All I can see are blank messages and testing123
• rashthedude 3y ago
  Mobile version is pretty much unusable
• statsstats 3y ago
  Love it. Will be big. But most VCs again won't get it
• fidla 3y ago
  I tried to register by clicking multiple times and nothing is happening. I tried to register in Brave, Firefox and Chrome
• ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
  I like the idea, but it's almost like your sales model and distribution model is conflicting with itself. You realize how important the content creators/submitters are to the platform so you agree to split money with them, but you also are charging them to use the platform. If anything the most valuable members are the contributors. Stats on this very, but something like 1% of users ever make a submission, and only 10% or so comment.
• aziis98 3y ago
  Wow, it looks like this has a Vanilla JS frontend
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Confirmed! Vanilla js SPA because I’m a masochist.
• cwkoss 3y ago
  - test login doesn't work - loginless browsing drops user into New which is full of garbage - when I click popular, I still don't see any interesting content. :-| - i think you have a chicken and egg problem. Why pay to post somewhere without readers? why read when there isn't any interesting content?
• vxNsr 3y ago
  I gotta say I’m impressed, this thread has over 300 comments and everything still feels smooth, for a dynamic site that’s quite the feat to escape the hn hug of death.
• abhibeckert 3y ago
  > hope it's a better [model] than the freemium model we've been relying on for the last few years. It may be a better model for something, but it's impossible for this to be used on a "reddit-like" site. Reddit is a large community where many users are anonymous. A paid model means it will never be a large community and posters will never be anonymous. And while reddit has tried to make freemium work, I'm pretty sure it has never worked and their real business model is ad based. Advertisements are a centuries old model that has proven to work well, I encourage you to switch to that (and on your API, make it a requirement to show ads). Also don't allow people to remove the ads by paying - you need to show ads to people with enough money to buy the stuff you're advertising. Exclusively showings ads to poor people does not work. Just make sure your ads aren't annoying. It's your site, you can do what you want with it, but it won't be like reddit with your proposed business model.
  • lucb1e 3y ago
    > Reddit is a large community where many users are anonymous ...to you. Not to reddit themselves in virtually all cases. Maybe 1% browses through seven proxies but if the 99% is okay with "public anonymity", it'll work for the masses so long as you don't show everyone's payment details on their profile pages. (Whether excluding this particular 1% desirable, is a different question.)
  • mtrower 3y ago
    > Also don't allow people to remove the ads by paying - you need to show ads to people with enough money to buy the stuff you're advertising. Exclusively showings ads to poor people does not work. Just make sure your ads aren't annoying. I would definitely not pay money to a site that wanted to show me ads, regardless of my preferences, as a subscription member. Full stop.
• thedeepself 3y ago
  [dead]
• Endy 3y ago
  I find the concept interesting, but I see no reason to spend money when platforms with larger communities only want easily-obfuscated personal data or easily-blocked advertising impressions. If anything, the number of sites which are advertising themselves as "like Reddit, except..." today is proof that Advance Media (and Spez) are right in exerting their influence over Reddit's users and their channels of engagement.
• heleninboodler 3y ago
  Note: I think someone changed the hackernews pw
• RileyJames 3y ago
  I like the idea of paid to comment / interact. I mostly lurk reddit / read. But understanding its balance between sustainability and popularity, is there a lower bound to free that can ensure the content is posted to seo the space popular? 1-3 free submissions per month would be enough for me.but if I started a sub (which I’ve considered a few times) I’d see enough value to pay. Love the idea. Good luck. The timing is great. The audience is ready for a new model.
• pxoe 3y ago
  so, people would have to pay in order to do the thankless "job" of sorting through content. "pay for the ability to rank and moderate!". great sales pitch. very enticing. seems like a failure to understand why 'upvotes/downvotes/points' exist and what do they accomplish.
• i_like_apis 3y ago
  Hey how did you do the tilted / perspective effect on the browser window screenshots on the landing homepage?
  • jjcm 3y ago
    I just transformed screenshots in Figma.
• sepbot 3y ago
  https://html.non.io/.well-known/Motherfucking%20Website.html https://html.non.io/.well-known/Motherfucking%20Website.html
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• MaximilianEmel 3y ago
  My first thought is that there should be something like a star system, so I could also upvote something simple, without having to be afraid of lowering the value I gave to a complex, interesting, high-effort post I upvoted.
• dehugger 3y ago
  To be blunt, this had enough bugs out of the gate that I nearly didn't even finish registering! It feels like you rushed this out to capitalize on the reddit collapse, which I understand, but it may flop entirely because of these problems. The registration kept failing with no indication as to why, just a red X on the button. I finally figured out that it simply didn't like my email address, trying a different one worked. Then I tried to change my profile picture. That was failing completely silently; I guess .PNG files aren't excepted? I tried the same avatars that I use on every other site without issue. I did try a random .JPG, and that worked. Opening the videos tab, none of the posts show the video, clicking on them doesn't expand anything, and the text isn't aligning, some of them randomly have the title in the center of the bar. I can't even figure out how to view the video. This is on Firefox, latest version, no extensions. EDIT: On further exploration, the submission description box has a bug. The first letter I wanted to type somehow got stuck as the last letter, and there was no way to delete/move it. "y description looked like this.M"
  • sudobash1 3y ago
    The fact that I had to register at all to see the content (unless I am missing something obvious) was nearly a turn-away point for me. But I ran into the same thing. But it seems to be an issue with the site on Firefox. I was able to register with Chrome just fine.
• mitch_thunder 3y ago
  How do you prevent users from posting other peoples artwork and stealing money from the actual content creators?
• artisanspam 3y ago
  I have to recommend that this platform doesn't give users a profit motive. It encourages quantity over quality and only "front-page" worthy content. Niche communities won't get traction this way. A few Gallowboob-level posters will be making most of the profit. That's not to say that a financial incentive is a bad idea, though. If you capped the amount that a user made per month to the cost of their subscription - $1, then there's no profit for users to make. They're just saving money on the subscription cost.
• mitch_thunder 3y ago
  How do you prevent users from posting artwork by other people and stealing money from the real content creators?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• andersrs 3y ago
  I just tried it and it could do with improvement. * How do I post a link. I just want to post a damn link. Images, audio, blogs not no link option... The page I'm trying to post already has meta tags with a the description and thumbnail so I want you to suck that content down. * So whatever I posted an 'image' with a link in the content. The link didn't actually turn into an <a href> * I clicked on some post and a video started playing WITH SOUND! * The financials page says I have over $800 in my wallet. Lol OKAY let's go! * I connect my stripe only to find that it won't work for non-US people. * I guess I'll just cancel now but the cancel sub button is broken.
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Do you mind emailing me at j@jjcm.org? Can confirm the cancel button is indeed broken. I’ll refund you and cancel your sub asap.
    • andersrs 3y ago
      No worries. I'll let it be for now. I'm sure you'll have it fixed soon anyway.
• highmastdon 3y ago
  In concept very similar to https://steemit.com/ https://steemit.com/
• subless 3y ago
  Title seems oddly similar to another “Reddit-like” post from today! Show HN: FlingUp, a Reddit-like platform Ive been building for the last 2 years (https://flingup.com https://flingup.com)
• bogwog 3y ago
  I really like the idea of a place where a creator can post anything. The upvotes = money angle makes me skeptical, but idk, maybe it could work. I know you just launched, so you're probably thinking about this already, but from what I've seen in the loginless browsing link, discoverability is nothing like reddit. It just feels like an unorganized dump of content, like I accidentally opened a link to a spam blog, or opened the "federated" tab on a mastodon server. If I was looking to join a community, I wouldn't know where to start. I see tags under random posts, but it seems like some posts don't have tags, and I can even add tags to other peoples' posts myself. It all seems too fluid and ephemeral, and I have to spend too much time trying to connect stuff together in my head. By contrast, it's obvious how a subreddit works to most people, and it's easy to find the content you're interested in.
• brody_hamer 3y ago
  How will you combat plagiarism? I wouldn’t want to see someone else profiting off my content. I’m guessing you’d place a hold on any payout, until you’ve reviewed their content? But I’m thinking about the claims / reporting process.
• poopsmithe 3y ago
  I gotta point out a UI issue on account registration. Firefox generated a random password for me, and filled in the password fields. When I clicked the Create Account button, the button changed to red, and shook as if to say, "NO." There was no message indicating the problem. I had to retry with my dev tools open to see that the response code from the request triggered by clicking Create Account contained a message about username, e-mail, and password being required. This error was presented even though I had all fields with valid data, and I was unable to create an account until I manually edited both password fields, which I had not dirtied myself previously.
• resonator 3y ago
  I wonder if this could be used to launder money for a cost of $1 per month. :)
• ERUIONKP 3y ago
  [flagged]
• ajkjk 3y ago
  Thanks for building this and I hope you don't get discouraged by HN's tendency to shoot stuff down. It's best to pretend like it's the hottest new thing, for the highest chance of that actually being true.
• d10486fa91eb46 3y ago
  > 1. Free to browse, paid to interact. This is exactly what I have been pondering recently about maintaining a website with useful content not prone to some of the problems we are seeing from all of the "free to interact" websites. Only serious contributors would pay for the ability to aggregate and interact with a community. Thank you for your work on this, will be looking into this further.
• update 3y ago
  Looks like the website has been overwhelmed with spam, and, possibly hacked/exploited [1]. It looks like someone has been able to create directories & upload scripts [2]? I do bug bounty in my spare time so this was an interesting live find. [1] https://non.io/expoity https://non.io/expoity [2] https://html.non.io/upload-demo.html https://html.non.io/upload-demo.html
  • jjcm 3y ago
    Scripts are permitted in html uploads (all content is iframed and served from a separate domain), though I will go through and remove blank directories for now. I’ll likely add checks for an index.html for any upload and turn off indexing in the future to prevent these.
• benjaminsky2 3y ago
  I’m willing to give this a try if you can clean it up a bit. UX is rough on mobile. I also prefer subs to hashtags but whatever, I’m easy. I bailed on Reddit like 2yrs ago and there’s really no alternative that I can find except HN.
• kunley 3y ago
  Please gzip-encode javascripts and css. They are transmitted raw (also: not minified, but that'd be more acceptable if you gzipped them) and also they are returning Accept-Ranges header. That's IMO not a sensible default; they are not big resources supposed to be downloaded with retries - they are needed as a whole, in a fastest way possible. Gzipping them will shorten the page load - which is actually quite good already - congrats for that!
• yeison 3y ago
  Please allow password generator to be used when creating my account.
• sltkr 3y ago
  [dead]
• ranger_danger 3y ago
  it looks more like slack to me than reddit
• kyle-rb 3y ago
  Pretty cool! I would consider changing your URL patterns though. It's not ideal to change them after launch, but it will be harder to change them a year from now if/when you run into issues. 1. Using '#' in URLs is not great. - When requesting a page, the browser doesn't include anything after the hash, which means: - Tag pages rely solely on client-side routing — they'll never work with JS disabled. You might not support no-JS right now, but if you ever want to allow for it in the future, it's incompatible with hash-based routing. - SEO will probably be impacted; not sure how well crawlers deal with hash-based routing. - If someone links to non.io/#dog on social media, I think the opengraph preview will also ignore the hash. If you want client-side routing, you should use a library or the JS history API[0]. That way you can use normal URLs and potentially support server-side rendering to allow for no-JS clients. 2. Putting user-generated URLs at the root of your site could be bad. - Keep that namespace for yourself: what if you want to make a page at non.io/support but someone already named their post 'support'? - Some stuff needs to be at the root (currently non.io/robots.txt 404s and seems to be trying to render a post). - There are other standards that look for specific URLs, or non-standards: e.g. BlueSky was authenticating domain names in a dumb way [1] To be fair, Twitter does put usernames at the root (not sure if they regret that), but they have some careful exceptions (/home, /i/, etc). If you don't want to switch your post URLs away from the root, you should at least set aside some of the useful URL real-estate. If you do decide to make these changes, you should try and set up redirects for any existing URLs, at least for a while. [0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35820368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35820368
• siddbudd 3y ago
  I command clicked (on a Mac, equivalent to Ctrl click on Win) on a link. It did not open in a new tab, but the same tab. That alone makes me not want to test it further, because 1) that should be default and 2) whenever I see a list of links, I would like to be able to open more than one of them in the background before actually checking them out.
• callamdelaney 3y ago
  Karma farming, but now for money.. cant end well.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• _asrm 3y ago
  Give me a preview of whats inisde without logging in
• ikanade 3y ago
  I had to login to upvote and hopefully get it to 1337.
• germanbini 3y ago
  Please work on the area for setting up bio and picture. I've paid $2 - I believe in you and want this to work! :) Thank you for all that you're doing!!
• zmmmmm 3y ago
  I really like the idea of a micro-subscription. I want to contribute to online content but nearly always people are asking north of $5/month, and I have massive subscription fatigue at that level. I wish the UI was more basic. All the work to create fancy UIs just makes them worse. Just clone old Reddit and stop there, it was nearly perfect.
• LachlanHunt 3y ago
  The poor mobile experience, and the seeming inability to even find the content without manually adding #all to the URL, makes this a non-starter. When looking at #all, there doesn't appear to be any way to register or login without removing that from the URL and going to the splash screen. It's not clear what posts are videos, and when I clicked one that happened to be, having it auto-play with sound is terrible.
• aerio 3y ago
  You should probably have a responsive homepage. Being greeted by a static page that gives me sideways scroll on mobile doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.
• dllthomas 3y ago
  You should probably visually distinguish posts from the test account(s), and delete them after a short time, or content from actual users will be drowned out. Or maybe move test accounts to a separate instance?
• sltkr 3y ago
  [flagged]
• j45 3y ago
  Neat idea. Can it just open to the front page of articles in view mode instead of first signing up? That would be a little more like Reddit.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 3y ago
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• sltkr 3y ago
  [dead]
• sltkr 3y ago
  What is your content policy? Will this be another leftist echochamber like reddit, lemmy.ml, lobste.rs and so on, or do you plan to allow more diverse opinions to be posted? Is it possible to create opt-in communities that do not appear on the frontpage by default? This is required for minority communities to thrive. The $2/month fee sounds quite reasonable to me, but I don't plan to pay for a service where I have to kowtow to leftist political activists like the ones that rule reddit.
• mikemai2awesome 3y ago
  Awesome! I added a post about accessibility. Since the accessibility community is getting hit hard by the reddit API cost. Let's see a more accessible platform than reddit. https://non.io/a11y https://non.io/a11y For anyone not aware, read about r/blind here: https://twitter.com/rumster/status/1668004686610178048 https://twitter.com/rumster/status/1668004686610178048
• zouhair 3y ago
  I don't want to belittle your work, but there is zero chance for me to register just to check the place. If someone sent me that link I would open and close the tab immediately.
• dopidopHN 3y ago
  Hey, that looks nice but I can’t look at it on a older, small iPhone. The page resize in loop. But from what I can see it’s a landing page; I would need to see conversation and links right away.
• Invictus0 3y ago
  I clicked your link but you didn't sell me. I closed it and didn't register.
• bitwize 3y ago
  Everybody's been working on a Reddit-like platform, including Paul Graham, who called his Hackernews. I think it's fine if you realize that the value lies in the community, not the platform itself. Online communities used to cluster around the 31 flavors of forum/web BBS, so if you have interesting topics to build a small community around your software may flourish based on those.
• daniel_iversen 3y ago
  IOS registration window is broken - it pops up for a split second and then disappears. On the latest iOS 16 (not 17)
• daniel_iversen 3y ago
  I’ve noticed people are entering a lot of test content on the app which ruins the experience for new users. Why don’t you force people to enter a title and either a picture or a description? And block posts with the word “test” that are under 20 characters or something? Just to make the front page better and not ruin the conversion rate for new people.. just a thought!
• A6gYPfxNas 3y ago
  man i want to like it, but had I not scrolled to the comments, i wouldn't have seen the link to view all without registering. also, when I watched a video, no video controls appeared until the video ended and then they didn't work anyways.
• temon 3y ago
  nice, https://ibb.co/w72r31d https://ibb.co/w72r31d
• rifty 3y ago
  This is cool, but I actually feel right now it leans more towards being twitter-like in a reddit UI than a reddit-like. The analogy to tagging on Reddit is posting to a subreddit, but it differs on Reddit in that posting isn't inclusive but exclusive to the discretion of the moderators(owners) of the subreddit(tag). The creates distinguishably different cultures in the comment sections between subs sharing the same content. How you go about approaching how moderation and classifying works will have a major effect on how the commenting and reaction experience will feel.
• webprofusion 3y ago
  Definitely make it browseable without signing in. When reddit launched they used fake accounts to create posts and engagement and avoid empty-site syndrome, not saying you should/could do that with an AI.
• p-e-w 3y ago
  The fundamental problem with Reddit isn't ads, or freemium, or venture capital, or who is CEO, or even the API changes. The fundamental problem is lock-in. Once a site becomes big enough, its "users" effectively become owned by the site, because everything they care about is there, and the site controls access to it. Preventing another Reddit/Tumblr/Digg disaster entails solving this problem. And with all due respect for the work you did on Non.io, I fail to see how it represents even the tiniest amount of progress in that regard. Notably, the payment model does not solve the problem, because if the site ever takes off, the temptation to milk the userbase for all they can give will become irresistible. And that means ads, dark patterns, blocking of third-party clients, censorship to appease advertisers and the mainstream press, etc. And then we're back to zero.
  • DoryMinh 3y ago
    totally agree, what makes me hesitant to contribute is whether the site is going to defunct next year.
• enema_bag_jones 3y ago
  Awesome. I've had a very similar idea for about as long, the main difference is you did something about it and I navel gazed. Awesome to see this idea of paying into this instead of users being the product.
• muzani 3y ago
  [dead]
• Ninovdmark 3y ago
  I applaud upur efforts, and hope it catches on! However, the current top post is NSFW and the preview is rendering in the timeline, that would be something to change so folks can safely browse on the job.
• greenSunglass 3y ago
  great effort! Do you think can you remove the css animations when loading any page? It's a bit annoying to see the fading in at each load.
• vladstudio 3y ago
  Can https://non.io/#all https://non.io/#all just become a part of https://non.io https://non.io homepage? So that the marketing goes first, and #all goes after it.
• adastra22 3y ago
  You are charging the people who volunteer content for your site. You’ve got this completely backwards. PAY money for the privilege of giving you value? No thanks.
• dcoupl 3y ago
  I love this. And I would like to say that I think many of the highest-voted comments have it wrong: I WANT TO PAY for using the app in exchange for good privacy/ethical practices of the app/company making it. I don't even comment here on HN much but I was moved to speak out about your post. (And its the right day to post this, given the protest of so many subreddtits due to their API pricing and terms) That said, yes you may still get a "network effect" from not enough people registering/using the app. But hey, I applaud the attempt and hopefully it will get some users/traction. Last question I would have is: how does it compare/contrast/integrate with other, possibly federated, social services such as Mastodon?
• ajani 3y ago
  I think this is a great idea! I'm surprised by the vaguely shrouded negativity in the comments. It's so easy to poke holes. This is great work and whatever problems arise can be dealt with at that time. Here are some of the lazy thinker comments: - If there's money involved, things go askew!! Yes, well look: Google, FB, "open"AI etc. etc. What's new? The difference is this is a new approach and could potentially work. - You make me sign up without showing me the stuff?! The gall.. Sigh... - It's not pixel perfect on my special unique Moto-galaxy-iphone! Really? You realize it's in the process of being made right? Soft launch it says. Recall how shit ChatGPT UI was, and it's not significantly improved since.
• klntsky 3y ago
  You need to hire people to "create" content, and do it soon, if you want capture the feedback loop that could make it a success.
• janandonly 3y ago
  There is a platform that has some similar ideas, it's called Stacker News. I especially like the idea of splitting income between the builers/hosters and posters and voters of posts. Furthermore, each comment under a post can earn by being upvoted. See: https://stacker.news/faq https://stacker.news/faq
  • krageon 3y ago
    I think non.io is significantly more accessible and less fringe than stacker.news, which is very heavy on the "love crypto" thing and appears to be a bastion for fairly fringe right-wing thinking. It's so coloured by cultural dogma I would at least not join it out of hand, until it becomes a little more palatable. The people there are not inviting.
• Yizahi 3y ago
  I suggest decluttering main view. Hide all tags or make them visually hidden (e.g. grey on white, no outlines etc.), also make a headline at the top, and all the service metadata like date, comment counter, author name at the bottom and to the side. Also as a nice to have next improvements make actual fixed categories/subreddits/subforums thing. Because used based tags doesn't work at all at scale. At best they are a secondary thing helping in search and used by 0.1% of all users. Categories should be more fixed, maybe initially user created but not changing (existing ones). Otherwise you will get an endless scroll of doom/memes page with everything dumped there, and we already have tons of networks in such format - facebook, twitter etc.
• noduerme 3y ago
  I'm blaming it on a lack of originality that everyone's been working on a Reddit-like system for the last 2-4 years. But the real kicker is everyone announcing theirs today, with how many years they've been working on it in the subject.
• junon 3y ago
  I searched for a random tag and it showed me all of the front page content. Seems it's not allowed to simply return "Nothing found" anymore. I don't want blackbox algorithms serving me stuff it thinks I want. I like the design. I like the domain. I don't understand grouping of content at all. People want siloed communities. If this is just tags, I'm not interested. Twitter had that and it was a nightmare. EDIT: also, yeah. Parroting other answers. non.io should take me directly to content. I went there to take a look as I got home and it's... a marketing page, with no information (at least, from a cursory glance) as to how to get to the content.
• MagicMoonlight 3y ago
  This is why you build a MVP and test it before working on it for 4 years
• reneberlin 3y ago
  If there is money to make then anti-fraud and anti-spam is a topic besides gpt-bots / ai-agents that will be coming up. I like the idea of course but i see dark clouds coming up.
• al_be_back 3y ago
  Well done for launching! Kudos for using Web Components. RE: Landing Page. Keep the marketing side, after all you've a paid Model. I'd split the Landing Page on non-mobile devices: ----33% Marketing ----|----66% Endless FEDD----| Could hide Marketing pane after some time / or button. RE: Paid Subscription. Re-think the model you've got, won't scale (direct wealth-distribution by vote) as it's presented (e.g tipping creators by vote: could be done/seeded by Agents/Affiliates etc), unless I'm missing a twist to this. You've done the right thing to not accept money atm (while you iron out platform/user issues)
• louissan 3y ago
  mmmr no DOCTYPE? :)
• rvz 3y ago
  Lets see if this will eventually take in VC cash. Bitwarden did the same thing.
• mudiadamz 3y ago
  Back when I don't even know what PHP is, i was dreaming of creating this Facebook like social media. Now 7 years later, I have the knowledge of creating. I was not even interested in creating another social media, just because I know I am nobody, I am not an MIT graduate, I don't have a network, my social/communication is terrible. Now I am settled on a working day job, those big ambitions are buried when I fully grasp the reality that I am not gonna be that one lucky enough to launch a successful billion dollar social networking app.
• chrisshroba 3y ago
  When I load the all page, I get an alert that just says "1", which feels like it's probably a successful XSS attack. Given that, I can't justify putting my credit card number directly into the site. If it took Paypal, Apple Pay, or similar I would absolutely give it a try for a few months. Screenshot of the alert (imgur marked it as nsfw because it includes a thumbnail of a post that is mildly nsfw): https://imgur.com/a/TmwO1jg https://imgur.com/a/TmwO1jg The likely culprit: https://imgur.com/a/rJrLxfn https://imgur.com/a/rJrLxfn
  • Psychotherapist 3y ago
    It appears that it is the post at https://non.io/xss https://non.io/xss
• pietz 3y ago
  Wow, we almost had a name collision with the service nonan.io I'm currently launching :) (not really related. It's a data cleaning app)
• yashthakker 3y ago
  [dead]
• have_faith 3y ago
  Nothing against paying to take part in something but having money paid out to people you upvote seems to set up a very perverse incentive structure. There's now a direct monetary incentive for clickbait. I would much rather 50% to the running of the site, 50% to a charity chosen by the sub that I'm posting in. Anything but rewarding people for drama creation.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 3y ago
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• southEastRon 3y ago
  There are window.alert() popping up, the website is vulnerable to XSS.
• byteware 3y ago
  what is gonna prevent someone from upvoting their own (or alt accounts', or friends') hundreds of post, inflating away the value of a single upvote?
• literallyroy 3y ago
  On the provided link I’m unable to register on safari, the pop up shows up for a second then goes away.
• wez470 3y ago
  I'd like to be able to view content when not logged in. Also, the site is not mobile friendly, which is my primary method of access for these types of sites.
• thrownaway561 3y ago
  I click the link and get to a landing page with ZERO way I can see in 5 seconds to browse the content... Nothing to see here, moving on
• spookthesunset 3y ago
  The homepage needs to be the content. Without doing that you are gonna be dead in the water because only a small fraction of people are going to bother registering just to test the water. Also look at how the current and past generations of forums grew up. Lots of time it was their site owner linking to the content on whatever site they are on...
• timothyduong 3y ago
  Congrats on the soft launch Jake! Did not realise this was yours, I share some similar feedback on the front page as per others here. Wish you all the best from Australia!
• OpFour 3y ago
  pay to post? Naaa bruh... naaa
• cyberinferno 3y ago
  [dead]
• qwertfisch 3y ago
  Would be great if one could have at look at the site without being forced to register.