12 ms·

Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

167 points by joshuawitzer 3y ago

ggoo 3y ago
Lots of people seem to be going to Lemmy right now. https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/
- jibbit 3y ago
  i wonder if font sizes will continue getting bigger for ever
  - malfist 3y ago
    What?
    - jibbit 3y ago
      On my phone: old.Reddit ~15 posts/page, new.Reddit ~5 posts/page, lemmy ~2 posts/page
      - tester457 3y ago
        I don't see why people prefer these new slow web apps instead of something fast like HN.
FlyingSnake 3y ago
https://programming.dev https://programming.dev is a Lemmy instance started by r/ExperiencedDevs subreddit.
skilled 3y ago
- Why Reddit alternatives specifically? - What do you browse Reddit for now? - What is your goal when browsing/interacting with a different platform? I think it would probably go a long way to have answers to all these questions before any recommendations can be made. As far as "broad Reddit alternatives" go, there was a discussion on this already a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 (372 comments)
- joshuawitzer 3y ago
  [flagged]
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  @joshuawitzer : Since your account is new, FYI regarding why your sibling comment may have been downvoted to heavily: (1) It used hyperbole: "Anytime you post something that someone doesnt like ..." Especially in comments that are critical, avoiding hyperbole helps to keep the discussion grounded and on-track. (2) It used inflammatory language to describe people: "Reddit has gangs of goons/moderators". As with (1) above, this reduces the chance of having a productive discussion. (IMHO) that kind of insult also just makes conversation less enjoyable.
pc86 3y ago
Going outside is a really good one. Honestly, I was late to the Reddit train, didn't join until 2015 or 2016 or so. I noticed a marked decline in my overall mental well-being but I really did feel addicted to it. For several reasons I stopped using it a few years ago and I can't think of a single thing that's worse off than before. Unless you're running ads and using traffic from Reddit to fuel your business, you're not getting any value out of it. I'd see something on HN and it would be weeks at best before it would pop up on any of the technical/programming subs, and the conversation was always 1/10 the quality of here.
- mr_00ff00 3y ago
  Can suggest this enough. Getting outside of the internet has been great. Try replacing Reddit with the outdoors. Lock your phone so you don’t open it as often and your brain will find things outside of your phone to fill your time with.
- 2023throwawayy 3y ago
  > you're not getting any value out of it Speak for yourself. There are many great niche communities from which I have derived pretty tremendous value. The front page is generally worthless and toxic, yes, but that doesn't condemn the entire site.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - kaiken1987 3y ago
    Yeah I think that's something a lot of people miss because they never create accounts or only sub to the defaults. If you are in the subs with a million people then yeah they are typically pretty bad. But when you get into small niche hobby subreddits they are usually pretty great, with people who are there because they love the hobby and want others to enjoy it. As well with good advice for beginners. And what a lot of the alternatives are missing is those people. It's what makes it thrive or wither on the vine.
- _oce_ 3y ago
EA-3167 3y ago
I'd argue that checking out r/RedditAlternatives is a good move, they have a pretty exhaustive list and a lot of active discussion on the topic.
dsir 3y ago
It seems like a lot of the suggested alternatives are missing the mark a bit in regards to understanding what Reddit actually is (a community of communities). It seems like a lot of the platforms that are popping up are more akin to being just a huge bucket full of posts with tags opposed to being a collection of communities. They are sort of missing out on capturing the community part. I've been building a platform called Sociables which is intentionally not just a Reddit clone. We are trying to create an all in one place for people to create communities first and foremost and not just posts. Here's an example of a community: https://sociables.com/community/Sports/board/trending https://sociables.com/community/Sports/board/trending
- ykonstant 3y ago
  I like the UI a lot; how does the site fare as a long-form discussion place (capturing the forum-like qualities of old.reddit)? I am also interested in native LaTeX rendering in posts and comments; I have not found this anywhere, and lurking at r/math, r/physics and r/compsci has convinced me LaTeX rendering a la mathstodon.xyz is essential for math/physics communities.
  - dsir 3y ago
    Appreciate the feedback. So within each community, the admin can create an unlimited amount of different discussion boards related to the niche of the community. Each post within a board has threaded comment trees similar to reddit where it lends well to long form. We felt that in order to fully capture each aspect of the community space, we needed to include each different type of communication tool. What I mean by that is we have a twitch style IM chatroom, Discord style voice rooms, and Reddit style discussion boards for longer form communication. I'm not familiar with LaTeX rendering, but will definitely check it out to see if it's something that we could integrate into our platform.
- cephalization 3y ago
  Is the content crawable? Can it be discovered via search engines like reddit?
silisili 3y ago
It depends what you're looking for. For specific hobby/trade subs, plenty of fora still exist. For anything interesting in tech or medicine or law, I like this site. If you just want to replicate the intelligence and attitude of the larger subs, Twitter seems an apt replacement.
2023throwawayy 3y ago
https://lemmy.sdf.org/ https://lemmy.sdf.org/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
gman83 3y ago
I joined this instance: https://lemmy.world/ https://lemmy.world/ So far, so good.
- haunter 3y ago
  And it's already been defederated by others https://beehaw.org/post/567170?scrollToComments=true https://beehaw.org/post/567170?scrollToComments=true top 3 vs top 2 and top 7 [0] This is the main problem with the whole decentralized system and it won't go anywhere besides being a niche. 0, https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/
  - Matl 3y ago
    Not really, at least not if people who share your sentiment start their own instances instead of throwing in the towel. Also, who says it's a done deal? May just be temporary.
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      I think there's a good chance Beehaw.org refederates with lemmy.world assuming new moderation tools are created magically. But I don't think there's much of a chance that they refederate with sh.itjust.works. -------- So choice of server, as a user, absolutely matters in the Lemmy world. The more curated communities will be treated with a bit more welcoming than the fully 100% open instances like Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works.
  - gman83 3y ago
    That's fine, I really don't see a problem. They're having problems moderating their instances because of the unexpected explosive growth over the last couple of days, so they're temporarily defederating. I found all the communities I wanted on my local instance for the most part anyway. Even if Reddit decides not to ban third-party apps I'm done with that site.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    Oh, man. The thing about people creating a community where you must speak nicely or else they will disconnect you is that they will disconnect from people. It's actually great that they can. And if they think a slower gated community is the best for them, well, let them be. I can't imagine how this constitutes a failure of lemmy.
nofeelings 3y ago
[flagged]
codetrotter 3y ago
https://zapad.nstr.no/ https://zapad.nstr.no/ It’s my instance that I set up. Hoping to get some more people to join it. Here is a post with some info about the instance: https://zapad.nstr.no/post/31 https://zapad.nstr.no/post/31
- lucb1e 3y ago
  lemmy* instance, for those wondering what it is they set up
accrual 3y ago
I've been happy with Kbin so far. It has a pretty standard sign-up process (username, password, email, verify email), followed by subscribing to a few magazines (subreddit equivalents) and then you're free to browse and post. There's enough new content flowing that I personally don't feel I ever run out of things to browse. It's federated with Lemmy and Mastodon, so posts from those platforms seamlessly appear in the feeds, and they behave as though it's all under the one Kbin instance. https://kbin.social https://kbin.social
- joshuawitzer 3y ago
  Thanks for your recommendation.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  > so posts from those platforms seamlessly appear in the feeds But not vice versa. Lemmy users cannot visit kbin.social magazines with capital-letters. Lemmy doesn't understand that capital-letters could exist in a name.
  - gpm 3y ago
    Kbin is planning on fixing the case-sensitive-ness: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/81 https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/81 Kbin in general is super new software, there's a lot of nits that need fixing like this. It works surprisingly well considering how young it is.
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      Thanks for this. I'm new to the Fediverse, so I don't know if kbin was planning on fixing their processing or if Lemmy was planning to switch to case-sensitive. I guess devs are deciding upon case-insensitive largely across the Fediverse?
      - gpm 3y ago
        > I guess devs are deciding upon case-insensitive largely across the Fediverse? That's my understanding, but I'm just a spectator.
acrispino 3y ago
We must return to tradition and post only on niche phpBB forums
- nosecreek 3y ago
  Asked this on another post as well, but is there something similar to phpBB, but using the Reddit/HN “tree” style for comments? I miss some of the old forums I used to be part of, but do think the tree style definitely has it’s advantages.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Lemmy. Except Lemmy also adds in the Fediverse stuff, so there's a bit of drama with Beehaw.org and whatever. But as far as Hacker News types go, you probably should just sign up at programming.dev and have fun. (Programming.dev is its own Lemmy). ----------- "Lemmy" is roughly the threaded-chat style PhpBB-like web-app where you can create your own users and create your own subreddits (now called communities), and talk with everyone. The Fediverse part comes in because programming.dev talks to beehaw.org, and both sides can crosspost, cross-comment, and seemlessly communicate with each other. But Beehaw.org is scared of new-users (such as those from Lemmy.world), and has cut off Lemmy.world visitors from their site. So there's a bit of drama to resolve in the "greater Fediverse". But as far as "unique new instance", programming.dev is probably what you want. If this whole federation / sharing of posts / sharing of communities works out, great. If not, programming.dev can sit by itself in a silo like the old phpbb forums.
    - nosecreek 3y ago
      Lemmy definitely looks interesting and I should really give it a shot, but while the fediverse stuff adds a lot of value I think it also makes it a lot more complicated. I think the tech stack matters too - running old forums on a LAMP stack made them pretty easy for a lot of people to setup on cheap hosting. When I go the "Run a Server" section in the Lemmy docs it immediately starts talking about Docker, etc. which I think is a much bigger barrier to entry for those who want to host an instance.
trostaft 3y ago
There's tildes, whose creator (guy who wrote reddit's AutoModerator) explains it better than I. https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Only thing is that it's invite only at the moment... And I seem to have too hastily deleted my reddit account to ask for an invite on their subreddit. EDIT: Got one, thanks!
- KMuncie 3y ago
  Indeed. I would love to get an invite if anyone has one to share.
  - anadem 3y ago
    you'll need to expose a way to send it to you
  - tungah 3y ago
    I got 10 invites. Tell me how I can sent one to you.
    - bawis 3y ago
      Hi man, can you send me an invite ??
    - tenaf0 3y ago
      I would like to receive one as well if you have, under my username@pm.me
- tungah 3y ago
  I got 10 invites. How can I sent you one?
  - pndy 3y ago
    I wouldn't mind having one
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
benjimouse 3y ago
All these alternatives people suggest are a full stack and have the same problems. 1. the network effect, 2. that users expect the client experience to be as complete as that they currently have. What I want is a drop in compatible replacement backend. That would mean the existing clients could be supported with a base url change, and some disabling of functionality until it's supported. Bring across those 10 million users on the 3PAs. Pay for it by serving topic targeted ads over the api.
dragontamer 3y ago
Lemmy seems like the front-runner, but wait. Wait wait wait. lemmy.world is perhaps the new instance where people are joining the fastest. But Lemmy.world was just defederated from Beehaw.org. I think this event is key and serves as a necessary discussion point for anyone jumping into the Fediverse. The rules are different. Beehaw.org has some of the most popular groups on all of lemmy right now (including !programming@beehaw.org). By defederating from lemmy.world, it means that anyone registering at lemmy.world can't access !programming@beehaw.org. Beehaw.org seems to me like tildes or Lobste.rs, where they're trying to create a carefully curated group of users. So the open-registration model at Lemmy.world is not currently compatible with Beehaw.org. ------------------ Lemmy.one however, is a more curated list of users. But unlike Lemmy.world, Lemmy.one (and Beehaw.org for that matter) cannot create new communities. Lemmy.one also has a simple interview process (you have to answer the question "Why do you want to join Lemmy.one" before you're allowed to join their group). My recommendation: try to join a "trusted" server, like Lemmy.one, that has broad access to different Lemmy-instances. Lemmy.one may not match your philosophy, but find one that does. Lemmy.world, and its "open registration" policy is likely best for any Reddit refugee who wants to play with Lemmy. Since registrations (and community-creation) is fully open, you can get started in less than 5 minutes (No interviews, no worried about online philosophies / political slants, etc. etc. Just create an account and go). But this laisse-faire has led to spam-bots being created on Lemmy.world, and those spam-bots coordinated a porn-invasion of some Beehaw.org groups. So Beehaw.org doesn't want to deal with users from that open instance. As is their right in the Fediverse. ---------------- So yeah. Its not quite as easy as people are making it sound. But its really not that complicated either. 1. Join a "trusted server" if you're into that. Lemmy.one could be a good starting point. I see others here are recommending programming.dev (also a Lemmy instance, and likely with "good behavior" rules to stay in Beehaw.org's good graces). 2. Join a "freeform server" if you're into that. Lemmy.world is one. But note that you'll be less trusted and less likely to access !programming@beehaw.org. Actually, there's no reason you can't joing #1 and #2 at the same time, because freeform servers like Lemmy.world have a much easier time on "creating new subreddits" (aka, easier to make new communities to experiment with). 3. Spin up your own instance. It seems like beehaw.org is still allowing most hobby-instances federate with them. This seems to be one of the better solutions, as your own instance can get all the large curated communities from beehaw.org, but also the freeform communities at Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works ------------- Sorry for exposing "Nerd Drama". But I think its important to think about how Lemmy and its community plans to deal with this problem. There will be more trolls (and coordinated trolls) from different servers attacking each other. I mean, I used to play video games where we launched DDOS attacks at enemy guilds. Online trolls are just assholes like that, and the question of how to build tactics to counteract hate-brigades is interesting. Even if I don't agree with anything Beehaw.org is doing, I still support them from the perspective of "I wanna see if they can figure out a solution to this online-hate / spam / trollfest problem" using Fediverse tools. And I think they have a shot at solving it. So this makes Lemmy _very_ different from Reddit. I think the ol' Reddit philosophy was to grow thicker skin and try to ignore the trolls, recruit more moderators to stand guard and click the ban user button 1000 times as 1000+ spam users bombarded you. But I'm glad that Fediverse offers a new tool (ie: Defederalize) that is between a "set instance to private" and "keep things public" mode. But its clear that the community is still learning how to use these tools, how to organize our community with those tools in mind, and what tools need to be built so that everyone's happy. ------- kbin.social is another Fediverse that's somewhere between Reddit and Twitter (or Lemmy and Mastodon). Due to case-sensitivity on kbin.social, Lemmy bugs out on CaPiTaLiZeD@kbin.social groups, but both are Fediverse and there's a degree of cross-comment activity. Ultimately though, kbin is likely to remain segregated from Lemmy due to these incompatibilities, and I don't see them fixing it unless they start from scratch and somehow get lemmy+kbin to agree on names (lowercase only vs case sensitive). I'd say give kbin.social a try as well, there's something to be said about trying to be compatible with Mastodon and maybe using the larger Mastodon instances to seed that community. There's curated communities like Tildes, Lobste.rs, and of course Hacker News. But I don't see these as Reddit replacements. Beehaw.org fits itself in a weird spot. Its Defederating, so its kinda-sorta like Tildes or Lobste.rs, setting itself as private and making it harder to join to help curate the users. But its still theoretically possible to federate to them (ie: through Lemmy.one, but not through Lemmy.world). I'm going to keep a close eye on this drama to see how the community resolves it.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
evdubs 3y ago
Maybe not the best, and certainly not as popular as some recommended federated services, but Aether (getaether.net) has been interesting to use. It: - is P2P. Everyone using the app sees the same network; no federation keeping communities separate. This also means that everyone receives information from the network, including posts, comments, and moderator actions. One feature here is that if a moderator is overbearing, you can ignore their actions. - features mod elections so that the default list of moderators can be selected by the community; mod actions are auditable since they're sent to all peers so you can see what the mod has done. - is text only by default. I think there's a feature to approve domains to have their content render in the app, but it is mostly a text based community - doesn't keep the whole history of posts to the network. I think this is probably a development choice to make sure clients don't have to download terabytes of history just to view recent posts. It's marketed as being ephemeral and won't keep track of your brain fart posts made years ago. - is mature. Posts on HN about Aether have been made as far back as 10 years ago. - features proof of work spam prevention. Every action you make takes a little bit of computing power to prevent network spam.
- slily 3y ago
  The ability to ignore moderation is an interesting idea.
- soared 3y ago
  I feel as though it’s not a good Reddit alternative if p2p/federation/pow/etc need to be explained in order to use it. > Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities From their homepage is god awful marketing - I don’t care about what’s under the hood I just want the content. Tbh also not a fan of deleting content that’s more than 6 months old - a lot of the value of Reddit comes from when you find a new hobby you can look through old top posts to find the best info.
  - evdubs 3y ago
    I feel that the whole P2P thing isn't necessary to explain just to get up and running with it, just that it's useful to know when you start digging in to figure out how things work. > Tbh also not a fan of deleting content that’s more than 6 months old Agreed. Aether's idea is that the community will hold on to material that is important, likely by reposting.
camel-cdr 3y ago
I've been quite happy with lemmy so far. I decided to go for the beehaw.org instance, because I like their moderation model. The only problem I had was the registration, because there currently is a bug, where you aren't notified if your application was rejected (I only wrote a short sentence per question in my first application) There is already work on improving the sign-up process, so hopefully this will be a smooth process in the future.
nologic01 3y ago
mastodon had a twitter moment and now lemmy seems to have a reddit moment? I can't see the two other "replica" fediverse platforms (pixelfed, peertube) getting such a break (instagram / youtube respectively) though. These being run by big tech and having an army of content creators that try to make a living there have a different dynamic which doesn't fit the non-commercial ideology. On the other hand some type of "commercial" fediverse might allow creators to keep a much bigger share of what consumers may pay. So you never know...
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
https://rdrama.net/ https://rdrama.net/
- robotnikman 3y ago
  This one really made me go wtf. It reminds me of those early web 1.0 websites with tons of random gifs and colors all over the place. Looks harmless at first but the contents are kinda toxic.
  - ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
    We have fun
    - robotnikman 3y ago
      Despite the content I will say this: It is much faster than the reddit website despite all the animations/gifs/cats everywhere Just go to show how bloated reddit has become
      - subsistence234 3y ago
        Interesting to see how much a single competent person can accomplish, versus a thousand full-time employees for a billion dollar company.
- none_to_remain 3y ago
  So ahead of the curve: effectively shut down the subreddit years ago to protest the Reddit admins, then in this recent drama temporarily reopened it to protest the Reddit mods
- tomato_123 3y ago
  It’s a pretty good site!
throwaway81523 3y ago
Someone said of programming languages that Algol 60 was so great that it improved not only on its predecessors, but also on its successors. I would say the same of Usenet when it comes to Reddit-like systems. In this day and age it could use a few updates but whenever I think of implementing forums, I always come back to Usenet and NNTP as the basic mechanism.
- floren 3y ago
  I'm delving back into Usenet again after a couple years and yeah, it really is good. Spam seems to be less of a problem every time I look in. Just find some groups that match your interests and if there's not much traffic, well, post! Just post. I'm on alt.ham-radio and some sub-groups, comp.misc, rec.crafts.brewing, rec.music.folk (pretty active!), alt.folklore.computers, and others. I'm running my own news server now, which is easier than you'd think. Even if you don't run your own server (there's no real reason to) there are plenty of free public servers out there.
ElectronBadger 3y ago
I've found https://kbin.social https://kbin.social to be quite ok.
FemmeAndroid 3y ago
It's a bit more work, but I do think that there have always been better communities for most niche topics, but they don't all live in one place. Finding out where the smart/interesting discussions are happening about a topic you're interested in can be a lot of work, but I do find it extremely rewarding. If you're looking for Reddit for big subreddits, or a way to get a broad overview of a lot of niche communities without necessarially engaging with the individuals in the community, then you'll probably have a hard time replacing reddit. But if you just want to find a place to discuss your 10 biggest interests, I am willing to bet most of them have at least 3 communities outside of reddit that are smaller yet still high quality. I am also willing to bet there are at least 10 that aren't as good. One of the things I love the most about some of the niche communities I'm a part of -- discords, forums, email groups, physical meetups -- is that I feel like I have a much stronger connection to the people and have a stronger appreciation for the intersection of the community's shared interest and our individual lives. Maybe this is all a bit too 'touch grass,' as far as advice goes. And if you really are just looking for a feed of good articles on interest X, Y, and Z, like a magazine personalized just for you, then you're going to have a rough time beating Reddit. I still try and curate a collection of high quality RSS feeds these days, but that's a pretty different suggestion.
- soared 3y ago
  Are there gaming communities for specific games? (Ie runescape or stardew). Tiktok seems like the only other option.
  - FemmeAndroid 3y ago
    Tons! I am in active discord communities for specific characters in various fighting games, some general fighting game discords, a local one. Plus two other smaller games that I’m interested in.
haunter 3y ago
I'm surprised "someone" haven't just deployed old Reddit already somewhere. https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
- Synaesthesia 3y ago
  Been a Redditor for a long time. Can only deal with old.reddit.com - it loads so much faster, such a better experience, even on my mobile phone.
soared 3y ago
Are there any sites for specific games? I primarily use Reddit for learning/discussing whatever video game I’m currently playing (stardew valley right now). I can’t seem to find a congregation of users discussing it anywhere besides Reddit and tiktok. Same goes for niche hobbies, Reddit seems to be by far the best option.
- camel-cdr 3y ago
  https://lemmy.ml/c/stardewvalley https://lemmy.ml/c/stardewvalley This obviously isn't big yet, but communities are forming. Imho, be the change you want to see, and contribute to the communities you are interested in, so that other people feel more inclines to stay.
  - soared 3y ago
    Oh that’s great, thank you!
- Zinu 3y ago
  I visit GameFAQs sometimes. But I also find that site can be very toxic and aggressive at times.
poorbutdebtfree 3y ago
[flagged]
- 1270018080 3y ago
  Wow. Pretty gross. Sarcasm?
O1111OOO 3y ago
I thought it would be a good exercise to see what was out there (give other sites a chance), so I started following suggestions others have made. This is the list I currently have compiled. https://lemmy.ml/ https://lemmy.ml/ (https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/) : ideal reddit replacement https://www.tiktok.com/ https://www.tiktok.com/ : from a purely entertainment value. This is number one. I was on TikTok last year and it was basically the only entertainment site I visited. I actually did not visit reddit last year - it felt like day old news since so much (entertainment) content was coming from TikTok. https://mastodon.social/ https://mastodon.social/ : I need to get use to Voices/People first over actual story. Reddit (HN) was always article/story first. Probably why I never did Twitter. https://kbin.social/ https://kbin.social/ : good reddit replacement. https://flingup.com/ https://flingup.com/ : I quite like this one as a reddit replacement. https://www.instagram.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ : created my first acct here. Not sure what to expect. Seems boring and fake. https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ : invite required: requested one - still waiting... Really quite nice: feels as if reddit and HN merged into one. https://www.4chan.org/ https://www.4chan.org/ : actually surprised that normal categories exist. I always thought it was just one giant cesspool. https://9gag.com/ https://9gag.com/ : lots of ads, tracking but captures the meme-aspect of reddit. RSS Feeds continues to be my personally best (and tailored) solution. --------- https://www.quora.com/ https://www.quora.com/ : did not like. https://hive.blog/ https://hive.blog/ : looks nice but do not like the crypto/payment aspect of it. https://imgur.com/ https://imgur.com/ : Will not let me browse while using a VPN. Bah! Fail. https://non.io/ https://non.io/ : pay to interact. I think many (like me) don't post enough to justify paying - when other sites deliver so much more. --------- I may start looking at BBSes again. Excited at the thought of this. I have been on IMDB for a couple of years. Writing reviews, creating lists, taking polls. Just saying there's a ton of stuff out there if you're looking to fill downtime and have fun. IMDB has been great fun for me. https://the-federation.info/ https://the-federation.info/ : good place to find Fediverse sites. --------- New ones I came across just now (for review): https://rdrama.net/ https://rdrama.net/ (seems wild at first glance) https://raddle.me/ https://raddle.me/ https://sqwok.im/ https://sqwok.im/ --------- Many of us (especially me) stopped looking for a while. We find one thing and stick with it. Reddit serves as a reminder that there are 'plenty of other fish in the sea'. Let's go fishing...
- 3y ago
unyttigfjelltol 3y ago
Why don't the core Reddit communities spin up a foundation so you all have a bit more continuity and control over your tech? Then bolt on whatever tech you want.
oDot 3y ago
It doesn't exist yet. The best way the solve the platform overreach problem is replicating the podcast model, and transitioning from those platforms to two utilities: (1) Content hosting (2) Content browsing This way, the /r/BikeShedding community can buy a domain, say, BikeShedding.gg, and connect it to a content hosting platform that delivers a standard API + web UI. This is (1). Users will have an app, let's call it FrontPage, in which they can put it a domain to subscribe to, or pick from a list, exactly like we can use podcasts app today to either add a manual RSS feed or choose from the library of feeds an app offers. Podcasts are the pinnacle of decentralization yet I haven't heard once the word "federation" or had to choose an "instance". If someone wants to talk about this more, email to anything at weedon and scott [dot] com. I did apply to YC with this, but it got rejected -- maybe the time is ripe. Edit: Important to note that this works for all platform overreach cases -- Avoiding YouTube censorship, exiting Twitter's echo chamber, and yes, for Reddit as well. The problem with federated platforms like mastodon is that they are still platforms, and platforms suck. You replace horses with cars, not with slightly better horses.
- Phrodo_00 3y ago
  > Podcasts are the pinnacle of decentralization yet I haven't heard once the word "federation" or had to choose an "instance". This is due to the difference between one way vs 2 way communication. Blogs and podcasts chose the word "syndication" and you use an RSS client to subscribe instead of an instance that can talk back. What your story doesn't deal with is accounts (not just logins). If you add that you pretty much land in the fediverse model (except in your story every subreddit would run their own userless instance).
  - oDot 3y ago
    Very true. Still, it makes a big difference, to omit the jargon and the need to choose an instance. Even if under the hood the technology is the same, the users just know they sign in to an app and it works everywhere. The content creator/moderator knows that if the hosting service starts acting iffy, he exports everything to a different host, keeps the same domain, no one knows he even moved. Much smoother. The problem with federation is not the technology, is that the technology is packaged as a platform.
AussieWog93 3y ago
Surely, if anything, this whole shitshow has shown us that having a single website host the majority of the world's web forums is a bad idea. Perhaps the best way forward is to return to traditional, independently-hosted forums, perhaps with some sort of communally-maintained registry so that members of forum x can easily discover a new forum y.
MKais 3y ago
Books
ignite 3y ago
Going outside. Meeting with friends. Reading a good book.
downvotetruth 3y ago
Ask HN: Which Reddit-alternative open project should I contribute to? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36339680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36339680 4 points 8 hours ago 4 comments Hawker.social a Reddit/Twitter alternative that I launched earlier this year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36324953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36324953 16 points 1 day ago 6 comments Show HN: Non.io, a Reddit-like platform Ive been working on for the last 4 years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296695 1933 points 3 days ago 586 comments Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 541 points 3 days ago 220 comments Show HN: Sociables, A Reddit alternative that lets community owners monetize https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299095 12 points 3 days ago 4 comments Ask HN: What are the best Reddit alternatives? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299388 4 points 3 days ago 3 comments Ask HN: Is there any alternative to Reddit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36291618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36291618 1 points 3 days ago 3 comments Hubski – Another Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36300812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36300812 2 points 3 days ago 1 comment Thoughts on Lemmy Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301823 2 points 3 days ago 1 comment Show HN: Valme.io, another Reddit-like alternative with monetary applause https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299193 3 days ago Ask HN: What are current (viable) alternatives to Reddit? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36287915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36287915 20 points 4 days ago 7 comments Raddle – An open source Reddit alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36288509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36288509 4 points 4 days ago 1 comments Ask HN: How about a Reddit alternative where every community is a Git repo? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36282561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36282561 3 points 4 days ago 9 comments Kbin: Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270205 7 points 5 days ago Beehaw: Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270000 2 points 5 days ago List of Active Reddit Alternatives https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253594 8 points 7 days ago Ask HN: What would it take to build an OS Reddit alternative? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247323 1 points 7 days ago 2 comments Tildes.net – an open source Reddit alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237240 3 points 8 days ago Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610 316 points 10 days ago 231 comments Ask HN: Reddit alternatives (that aren't Mastodon) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36199403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36199403 29 points 10 days ago 32 comments Teddit – An alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144211 203 points 15 days ago 93 comments Lemmy: Federated Reddit alternative with Mastodon integration https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144761 3 points 15 days ago Consider Reddit Alternatives https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36000935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36000935 4 points 27 days ago Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16820036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16820036 154 points 5 years ago 123 comments
lee101 3y ago
[dead]
cwiggs 3y ago
I'm sad there isn't any talk about nostr on here. Even if Reddit dies and everyone moves to Lemmy or some other alternative it's only a matter of time before something similar happens to Lemmy. Sure with Lemmy it wouldn't be all controlled by one company, but your data is still locked behind whatever Lemmy instance you posted it on.
INTPenis 3y ago
The problem is our kicking off point is reddit the community and not reddit the link aggregator. We've forgotten its humble beginnings. What we need is to go back to basics and develop a simple link aggregator with basic federation. So that anyone with a federated node account can follow links posted to it, without having a local account. Then of course each link posted can spawn a discussion, but no need to have that in the first version of the software. These discussions can take place in a decentralized space for the time being. Giving the software the advantage of simplicity. For example the ActivityPub object Actor does not have to be a person, but rather a category of the link aggregator.
molave 3y ago
1. Lemmy 2. Going to a physical hobbyist club near you (if there's one)
friend_and_foe 3y ago
I've been checking out some of the reddit alternative software as of late, not so much the many different servers and communities around. Ones I've liked: Kbin https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core Lotide https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide Lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy Brutalinks https://sr.ht/~mariusor/brutalinks/ https://sr.ht/~mariusor/brutalinks/ Those all (are supposed to) federate. I don't think federation in these communities is always ideal, drive by posting and what not, I think a better approach would be a client that can read your followed stuff from a local list. But some non-federating options are: StackerNews https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news Comment Castles https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles freedit https://github.com/freedit-org/freedit https://github.com/freedit-org/freedit There are lots more, some are great some not. There have been quite a few posted on this site in recent days. Some communities really just need forums or wikis, link aggregation and content voting aren't really always necessary. I do believe communities should host their own sites. Some communities just don't have the interest to be viable long term, and Reddit was a way to externalize cost so that non viable communities can continue to exist. We see the results of that now, a company that isn't profitable due to bearing costs that nobody else is willing to bear squeezing users to try to stay afloat. This was always a temporary state of affairs. If you can't find a single community member dedicated enough to keep a VPS running, or with large communities, you can't scrounge up enough money from donations or whatever to keep the server running, that community simply isn't viable.
hn30000 3y ago
Many of my hobbies have equivalent boards on 4chan with about the same depth of knowledge. But signal:noise obviously quite poor and lots of abhorrent content to sift through
esxhan 3y ago
I'd suggest trying out a reddit alternative like https://spyke.social https://spyke.social its got a decent UI.
sharts 3y ago
Usenet
fattybob 3y ago
Best alternative I ever found was hacker news - rarely visit Reddit since finding hacker news
dr_pyser 3y ago
I’ve been thinking about this too, and recently came back across news.ycombinator.com, which I’ve had an account on since 2016 but haven’t looked at in ages. Have been finding it to be a fantastic alternative to Reddit actually, containing content that’s actually interesting, a much simpler structure and interface, and higher-quality discussion! Highly recommend.
- kaba0 3y ago
  Due to an inherent CS bias it can only substitute a tech/programming subreddit in my opinion. Also, unfortunately people in tech often fall into the trap of overvaluing their expertise in unrelated fields, so discussions outside the tech realm are often quite blindsided (guilty as charged). Of course there are the occasional gems of bioengineer or whatever chiming in on a relevant topic, but Reddit was very valuable at that simply due to its bigger size and more diverse audience.
www222www 3y ago
Hive or Quora
www222www 3y ago
[flagged]
djfrodo 3y ago
https://www.headcycle.com https://www.headcycle.com
BiggerBio2 3y ago
[dead]
BiggerBio2 3y ago
[dead]

Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

167 points by joshuawitzer 3y ago

Ask HN: What are some of the best Reddit alternatives?

ggoo 3y ago

Lots of people seem to be going to Lemmy right now. https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/

jibbit 3y ago
i wonder if font sizes will continue getting bigger for ever
- malfist 3y ago
  What?
  - jibbit 3y ago
    On my phone: old.Reddit ~15 posts/page, new.Reddit ~5 posts/page, lemmy ~2 posts/page
    - tester457 3y ago
      I don't see why people prefer these new slow web apps instead of something fast like HN.

FlyingSnake 3y ago

https://programming.dev https://programming.dev is a Lemmy instance started by r/ExperiencedDevs subreddit.

skilled 3y ago

- Why Reddit alternatives specifically? - What do you browse Reddit for now? - What is your goal when browsing/interacting with a different platform? I think it would probably go a long way to have answers to all these questions before any recommendations can be made. As far as "broad Reddit alternatives" go, there was a discussion on this already a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 (372 comments)

joshuawitzer 3y ago
[flagged]
CoastalCoder 3y ago
@joshuawitzer : Since your account is new, FYI regarding why your sibling comment may have been downvoted to heavily: (1) It used hyperbole: "Anytime you post something that someone doesnt like ..." Especially in comments that are critical, avoiding hyperbole helps to keep the discussion grounded and on-track. (2) It used inflammatory language to describe people: "Reddit has gangs of goons/moderators". As with (1) above, this reduces the chance of having a productive discussion. (IMHO) that kind of insult also just makes conversation less enjoyable.

pc86 3y ago

Going outside is a really good one. Honestly, I was late to the Reddit train, didn't join until 2015 or 2016 or so. I noticed a marked decline in my overall mental well-being but I really did feel addicted to it. For several reasons I stopped using it a few years ago and I can't think of a single thing that's worse off than before. Unless you're running ads and using traffic from Reddit to fuel your business, you're not getting any value out of it. I'd see something on HN and it would be weeks at best before it would pop up on any of the technical/programming subs, and the conversation was always 1/10 the quality of here.

mr_00ff00 3y ago
Can suggest this enough. Getting outside of the internet has been great. Try replacing Reddit with the outdoors. Lock your phone so you don’t open it as often and your brain will find things outside of your phone to fill your time with.
2023throwawayy 3y ago
> you're not getting any value out of it Speak for yourself. There are many great niche communities from which I have derived pretty tremendous value. The front page is generally worthless and toxic, yes, but that doesn't condemn the entire site.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- kaiken1987 3y ago
  Yeah I think that's something a lot of people miss because they never create accounts or only sub to the defaults. If you are in the subs with a million people then yeah they are typically pretty bad. But when you get into small niche hobby subreddits they are usually pretty great, with people who are there because they love the hobby and want others to enjoy it. As well with good advice for beginners. And what a lot of the alternatives are missing is those people. It's what makes it thrive or wither on the vine.
_oce_ 3y ago

EA-3167 3y ago

I'd argue that checking out r/RedditAlternatives is a good move, they have a pretty exhaustive list and a lot of active discussion on the topic.

dsir 3y ago

It seems like a lot of the suggested alternatives are missing the mark a bit in regards to understanding what Reddit actually is (a community of communities). It seems like a lot of the platforms that are popping up are more akin to being just a huge bucket full of posts with tags opposed to being a collection of communities. They are sort of missing out on capturing the community part. I've been building a platform called Sociables which is intentionally not just a Reddit clone. We are trying to create an all in one place for people to create communities first and foremost and not just posts. Here's an example of a community: https://sociables.com/community/Sports/board/trending https://sociables.com/community/Sports/board/trending

ykonstant 3y ago
I like the UI a lot; how does the site fare as a long-form discussion place (capturing the forum-like qualities of old.reddit)? I am also interested in native LaTeX rendering in posts and comments; I have not found this anywhere, and lurking at r/math, r/physics and r/compsci has convinced me LaTeX rendering a la mathstodon.xyz is essential for math/physics communities.
- dsir 3y ago
  Appreciate the feedback. So within each community, the admin can create an unlimited amount of different discussion boards related to the niche of the community. Each post within a board has threaded comment trees similar to reddit where it lends well to long form. We felt that in order to fully capture each aspect of the community space, we needed to include each different type of communication tool. What I mean by that is we have a twitch style IM chatroom, Discord style voice rooms, and Reddit style discussion boards for longer form communication. I'm not familiar with LaTeX rendering, but will definitely check it out to see if it's something that we could integrate into our platform.
cephalization 3y ago
Is the content crawable? Can it be discovered via search engines like reddit?

silisili 3y ago

It depends what you're looking for. For specific hobby/trade subs, plenty of fora still exist. For anything interesting in tech or medicine or law, I like this site. If you just want to replicate the intelligence and attitude of the larger subs, Twitter seems an apt replacement.

2023throwawayy 3y ago

https://lemmy.sdf.org/ https://lemmy.sdf.org/

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

gman83 3y ago

I joined this instance: https://lemmy.world/ https://lemmy.world/ So far, so good.

haunter 3y ago
And it's already been defederated by others https://beehaw.org/post/567170?scrollToComments=true https://beehaw.org/post/567170?scrollToComments=true top 3 vs top 2 and top 7 [0] This is the main problem with the whole decentralized system and it won't go anywhere besides being a niche. 0, https://lemmyverse.net/ https://lemmyverse.net/
- Matl 3y ago
  Not really, at least not if people who share your sentiment start their own instances instead of throwing in the towel. Also, who says it's a done deal? May just be temporary.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    I think there's a good chance Beehaw.org refederates with lemmy.world assuming new moderation tools are created magically. But I don't think there's much of a chance that they refederate with sh.itjust.works. -------- So choice of server, as a user, absolutely matters in the Lemmy world. The more curated communities will be treated with a bit more welcoming than the fully 100% open instances like Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works.
- gman83 3y ago
  That's fine, I really don't see a problem. They're having problems moderating their instances because of the unexpected explosive growth over the last couple of days, so they're temporarily defederating. I found all the communities I wanted on my local instance for the most part anyway. Even if Reddit decides not to ban third-party apps I'm done with that site.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Oh, man. The thing about people creating a community where you must speak nicely or else they will disconnect you is that they will disconnect from people. It's actually great that they can. And if they think a slower gated community is the best for them, well, let them be. I can't imagine how this constitutes a failure of lemmy.

nofeelings 3y ago

[flagged]

codetrotter 3y ago

https://zapad.nstr.no/ https://zapad.nstr.no/ It’s my instance that I set up. Hoping to get some more people to join it. Here is a post with some info about the instance: https://zapad.nstr.no/post/31 https://zapad.nstr.no/post/31

lucb1e 3y ago
lemmy* instance, for those wondering what it is they set up

accrual 3y ago

I've been happy with Kbin so far. It has a pretty standard sign-up process (username, password, email, verify email), followed by subscribing to a few magazines (subreddit equivalents) and then you're free to browse and post. There's enough new content flowing that I personally don't feel I ever run out of things to browse. It's federated with Lemmy and Mastodon, so posts from those platforms seamlessly appear in the feeds, and they behave as though it's all under the one Kbin instance. https://kbin.social https://kbin.social

joshuawitzer 3y ago
Thanks for your recommendation.
dragontamer 3y ago
> so posts from those platforms seamlessly appear in the feeds But not vice versa. Lemmy users cannot visit kbin.social magazines with capital-letters. Lemmy doesn't understand that capital-letters could exist in a name.
- gpm 3y ago
  Kbin is planning on fixing the case-sensitive-ness: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/81 https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/81 Kbin in general is super new software, there's a lot of nits that need fixing like this. It works surprisingly well considering how young it is.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Thanks for this. I'm new to the Fediverse, so I don't know if kbin was planning on fixing their processing or if Lemmy was planning to switch to case-sensitive. I guess devs are deciding upon case-insensitive largely across the Fediverse?
    - gpm 3y ago
      > I guess devs are deciding upon case-insensitive largely across the Fediverse? That's my understanding, but I'm just a spectator.

acrispino 3y ago

We must return to tradition and post only on niche phpBB forums

nosecreek 3y ago
Asked this on another post as well, but is there something similar to phpBB, but using the Reddit/HN “tree” style for comments? I miss some of the old forums I used to be part of, but do think the tree style definitely has it’s advantages.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  Lemmy. Except Lemmy also adds in the Fediverse stuff, so there's a bit of drama with Beehaw.org and whatever. But as far as Hacker News types go, you probably should just sign up at programming.dev and have fun. (Programming.dev is its own Lemmy). ----------- "Lemmy" is roughly the threaded-chat style PhpBB-like web-app where you can create your own users and create your own subreddits (now called communities), and talk with everyone. The Fediverse part comes in because programming.dev talks to beehaw.org, and both sides can crosspost, cross-comment, and seemlessly communicate with each other. But Beehaw.org is scared of new-users (such as those from Lemmy.world), and has cut off Lemmy.world visitors from their site. So there's a bit of drama to resolve in the "greater Fediverse". But as far as "unique new instance", programming.dev is probably what you want. If this whole federation / sharing of posts / sharing of communities works out, great. If not, programming.dev can sit by itself in a silo like the old phpbb forums.
  - nosecreek 3y ago
    Lemmy definitely looks interesting and I should really give it a shot, but while the fediverse stuff adds a lot of value I think it also makes it a lot more complicated. I think the tech stack matters too - running old forums on a LAMP stack made them pretty easy for a lot of people to setup on cheap hosting. When I go the "Run a Server" section in the Lemmy docs it immediately starts talking about Docker, etc. which I think is a much bigger barrier to entry for those who want to host an instance.

trostaft 3y ago

There's tildes, whose creator (guy who wrote reddit's AutoModerator) explains it better than I. https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes https://blog.tildes.net/announcing-tildes Only thing is that it's invite only at the moment... And I seem to have too hastily deleted my reddit account to ask for an invite on their subreddit. EDIT: Got one, thanks!

KMuncie 3y ago
Indeed. I would love to get an invite if anyone has one to share.
- anadem 3y ago
  you'll need to expose a way to send it to you
- tungah 3y ago
  I got 10 invites. Tell me how I can sent one to you.
  - bawis 3y ago
    Hi man, can you send me an invite ??
  - tenaf0 3y ago
    I would like to receive one as well if you have, under my username@pm.me
tungah 3y ago
I got 10 invites. How can I sent you one?
- pndy 3y ago
  I wouldn't mind having one
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

benjimouse 3y ago

All these alternatives people suggest are a full stack and have the same problems. 1. the network effect, 2. that users expect the client experience to be as complete as that they currently have. What I want is a drop in compatible replacement backend. That would mean the existing clients could be supported with a base url change, and some disabling of functionality until it's supported. Bring across those 10 million users on the 3PAs. Pay for it by serving topic targeted ads over the api.

dragontamer 3y ago

Lemmy seems like the front-runner, but wait. Wait wait wait. lemmy.world is perhaps the new instance where people are joining the fastest. But Lemmy.world was just defederated from Beehaw.org. I think this event is key and serves as a necessary discussion point for anyone jumping into the Fediverse. The rules are different. Beehaw.org has some of the most popular groups on all of lemmy right now (including !programming@beehaw.org). By defederating from lemmy.world, it means that anyone registering at lemmy.world can't access !programming@beehaw.org. Beehaw.org seems to me like tildes or Lobste.rs, where they're trying to create a carefully curated group of users. So the open-registration model at Lemmy.world is not currently compatible with Beehaw.org. ------------------ Lemmy.one however, is a more curated list of users. But unlike Lemmy.world, Lemmy.one (and Beehaw.org for that matter) cannot create new communities. Lemmy.one also has a simple interview process (you have to answer the question "Why do you want to join Lemmy.one" before you're allowed to join their group). My recommendation: try to join a "trusted" server, like Lemmy.one, that has broad access to different Lemmy-instances. Lemmy.one may not match your philosophy, but find one that does. Lemmy.world, and its "open registration" policy is likely best for any Reddit refugee who wants to play with Lemmy. Since registrations (and community-creation) is fully open, you can get started in less than 5 minutes (No interviews, no worried about online philosophies / political slants, etc. etc. Just create an account and go). But this laisse-faire has led to spam-bots being created on Lemmy.world, and those spam-bots coordinated a porn-invasion of some Beehaw.org groups. So Beehaw.org doesn't want to deal with users from that open instance. As is their right in the Fediverse. ---------------- So yeah. Its not quite as easy as people are making it sound. But its really not that complicated either. 1. Join a "trusted server" if you're into that. Lemmy.one could be a good starting point. I see others here are recommending programming.dev (also a Lemmy instance, and likely with "good behavior" rules to stay in Beehaw.org's good graces). 2. Join a "freeform server" if you're into that. Lemmy.world is one. But note that you'll be less trusted and less likely to access !programming@beehaw.org. Actually, there's no reason you can't joing #1 and #2 at the same time, because freeform servers like Lemmy.world have a much easier time on "creating new subreddits" (aka, easier to make new communities to experiment with). 3. Spin up your own instance. It seems like beehaw.org is still allowing most hobby-instances federate with them. This seems to be one of the better solutions, as your own instance can get all the large curated communities from beehaw.org, but also the freeform communities at Lemmy.world or sh.itjust.works ------------- Sorry for exposing "Nerd Drama". But I think its important to think about how Lemmy and its community plans to deal with this problem. There will be more trolls (and coordinated trolls) from different servers attacking each other. I mean, I used to play video games where we launched DDOS attacks at enemy guilds. Online trolls are just assholes like that, and the question of how to build tactics to counteract hate-brigades is interesting. Even if I don't agree with anything Beehaw.org is doing, I still support them from the perspective of "I wanna see if they can figure out a solution to this online-hate / spam / trollfest problem" using Fediverse tools. And I think they have a shot at solving it. So this makes Lemmy _very_ different from Reddit. I think the ol' Reddit philosophy was to grow thicker skin and try to ignore the trolls, recruit more moderators to stand guard and click the ban user button 1000 times as 1000+ spam users bombarded you. But I'm glad that Fediverse offers a new tool (ie: Defederalize) that is between a "set instance to private" and "keep things public" mode. But its clear that the community is still learning how to use these tools, how to organize our community with those tools in mind, and what tools need to be built so that everyone's happy. ------- kbin.social is another Fediverse that's somewhere between Reddit and Twitter (or Lemmy and Mastodon). Due to case-sensitivity on kbin.social, Lemmy bugs out on CaPiTaLiZeD@kbin.social groups, but both are Fediverse and there's a degree of cross-comment activity. Ultimately though, kbin is likely to remain segregated from Lemmy due to these incompatibilities, and I don't see them fixing it unless they start from scratch and somehow get lemmy+kbin to agree on names (lowercase only vs case sensitive). I'd say give kbin.social a try as well, there's something to be said about trying to be compatible with Mastodon and maybe using the larger Mastodon instances to seed that community. There's curated communities like Tildes, Lobste.rs, and of course Hacker News. But I don't see these as Reddit replacements. Beehaw.org fits itself in a weird spot. Its Defederating, so its kinda-sorta like Tildes or Lobste.rs, setting itself as private and making it harder to join to help curate the users. But its still theoretically possible to federate to them (ie: through Lemmy.one, but not through Lemmy.world). I'm going to keep a close eye on this drama to see how the community resolves it.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

evdubs 3y ago

Maybe not the best, and certainly not as popular as some recommended federated services, but Aether (getaether.net) has been interesting to use. It: - is P2P. Everyone using the app sees the same network; no federation keeping communities separate. This also means that everyone receives information from the network, including posts, comments, and moderator actions. One feature here is that if a moderator is overbearing, you can ignore their actions. - features mod elections so that the default list of moderators can be selected by the community; mod actions are auditable since they're sent to all peers so you can see what the mod has done. - is text only by default. I think there's a feature to approve domains to have their content render in the app, but it is mostly a text based community - doesn't keep the whole history of posts to the network. I think this is probably a development choice to make sure clients don't have to download terabytes of history just to view recent posts. It's marketed as being ephemeral and won't keep track of your brain fart posts made years ago. - is mature. Posts on HN about Aether have been made as far back as 10 years ago. - features proof of work spam prevention. Every action you make takes a little bit of computing power to prevent network spam.

slily 3y ago
The ability to ignore moderation is an interesting idea.
soared 3y ago
I feel as though it’s not a good Reddit alternative if p2p/federation/pow/etc need to be explained in order to use it. > Peer-to-peer ephemeral public communities From their homepage is god awful marketing - I don’t care about what’s under the hood I just want the content. Tbh also not a fan of deleting content that’s more than 6 months old - a lot of the value of Reddit comes from when you find a new hobby you can look through old top posts to find the best info.
- evdubs 3y ago
  I feel that the whole P2P thing isn't necessary to explain just to get up and running with it, just that it's useful to know when you start digging in to figure out how things work. > Tbh also not a fan of deleting content that’s more than 6 months old Agreed. Aether's idea is that the community will hold on to material that is important, likely by reposting.

camel-cdr 3y ago

I've been quite happy with lemmy so far. I decided to go for the beehaw.org instance, because I like their moderation model. The only problem I had was the registration, because there currently is a bug, where you aren't notified if your application was rejected (I only wrote a short sentence per question in my first application) There is already work on improving the sign-up process, so hopefully this will be a smooth process in the future.

nologic01 3y ago

mastodon had a twitter moment and now lemmy seems to have a reddit moment? I can't see the two other "replica" fediverse platforms (pixelfed, peertube) getting such a break (instagram / youtube respectively) though. These being run by big tech and having an army of content creators that try to make a living there have a different dynamic which doesn't fit the non-commercial ideology. On the other hand some type of "commercial" fediverse might allow creators to keep a much bigger share of what consumers may pay. So you never know...

ThrowawayTestr 3y ago

https://rdrama.net/ https://rdrama.net/

robotnikman 3y ago
This one really made me go wtf. It reminds me of those early web 1.0 websites with tons of random gifs and colors all over the place. Looks harmless at first but the contents are kinda toxic.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
  We have fun
  - robotnikman 3y ago
    Despite the content I will say this: It is much faster than the reddit website despite all the animations/gifs/cats everywhere Just go to show how bloated reddit has become
    - subsistence234 3y ago
      Interesting to see how much a single competent person can accomplish, versus a thousand full-time employees for a billion dollar company.
none_to_remain 3y ago
So ahead of the curve: effectively shut down the subreddit years ago to protest the Reddit admins, then in this recent drama temporarily reopened it to protest the Reddit mods
tomato_123 3y ago
It’s a pretty good site!

throwaway81523 3y ago

Someone said of programming languages that Algol 60 was so great that it improved not only on its predecessors, but also on its successors. I would say the same of Usenet when it comes to Reddit-like systems. In this day and age it could use a few updates but whenever I think of implementing forums, I always come back to Usenet and NNTP as the basic mechanism.

floren 3y ago
I'm delving back into Usenet again after a couple years and yeah, it really is good. Spam seems to be less of a problem every time I look in. Just find some groups that match your interests and if there's not much traffic, well, post! Just post. I'm on alt.ham-radio and some sub-groups, comp.misc, rec.crafts.brewing, rec.music.folk (pretty active!), alt.folklore.computers, and others. I'm running my own news server now, which is easier than you'd think. Even if you don't run your own server (there's no real reason to) there are plenty of free public servers out there.

ElectronBadger 3y ago

I've found https://kbin.social https://kbin.social to be quite ok.

FemmeAndroid 3y ago

It's a bit more work, but I do think that there have always been better communities for most niche topics, but they don't all live in one place. Finding out where the smart/interesting discussions are happening about a topic you're interested in can be a lot of work, but I do find it extremely rewarding. If you're looking for Reddit for big subreddits, or a way to get a broad overview of a lot of niche communities without necessarially engaging with the individuals in the community, then you'll probably have a hard time replacing reddit. But if you just want to find a place to discuss your 10 biggest interests, I am willing to bet most of them have at least 3 communities outside of reddit that are smaller yet still high quality. I am also willing to bet there are at least 10 that aren't as good. One of the things I love the most about some of the niche communities I'm a part of -- discords, forums, email groups, physical meetups -- is that I feel like I have a much stronger connection to the people and have a stronger appreciation for the intersection of the community's shared interest and our individual lives. Maybe this is all a bit too 'touch grass,' as far as advice goes. And if you really are just looking for a feed of good articles on interest X, Y, and Z, like a magazine personalized just for you, then you're going to have a rough time beating Reddit. I still try and curate a collection of high quality RSS feeds these days, but that's a pretty different suggestion.

soared 3y ago
Are there gaming communities for specific games? (Ie runescape or stardew). Tiktok seems like the only other option.
- FemmeAndroid 3y ago
  Tons! I am in active discord communities for specific characters in various fighting games, some general fighting game discords, a local one. Plus two other smaller games that I’m interested in.

haunter 3y ago

I'm surprised "someone" haven't just deployed old Reddit already somewhere. https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit

Synaesthesia 3y ago
Been a Redditor for a long time. Can only deal with old.reddit.com - it loads so much faster, such a better experience, even on my mobile phone.

soared 3y ago

Are there any sites for specific games? I primarily use Reddit for learning/discussing whatever video game I’m currently playing (stardew valley right now). I can’t seem to find a congregation of users discussing it anywhere besides Reddit and tiktok. Same goes for niche hobbies, Reddit seems to be by far the best option.

camel-cdr 3y ago
https://lemmy.ml/c/stardewvalley https://lemmy.ml/c/stardewvalley This obviously isn't big yet, but communities are forming. Imho, be the change you want to see, and contribute to the communities you are interested in, so that other people feel more inclines to stay.
- soared 3y ago
  Oh that’s great, thank you!
Zinu 3y ago
I visit GameFAQs sometimes. But I also find that site can be very toxic and aggressive at times.

poorbutdebtfree 3y ago

[flagged]

1270018080 3y ago
Wow. Pretty gross. Sarcasm?

O1111OOO 3y ago

I thought it would be a good exercise to see what was out there (give other sites a chance), so I started following suggestions others have made. This is the list I currently have compiled. https://lemmy.ml/ https://lemmy.ml/ (https://join-lemmy.org/ https://join-lemmy.org/) : ideal reddit replacement https://www.tiktok.com/ https://www.tiktok.com/ : from a purely entertainment value. This is number one. I was on TikTok last year and it was basically the only entertainment site I visited. I actually did not visit reddit last year - it felt like day old news since so much (entertainment) content was coming from TikTok. https://mastodon.social/ https://mastodon.social/ : I need to get use to Voices/People first over actual story. Reddit (HN) was always article/story first. Probably why I never did Twitter. https://kbin.social/ https://kbin.social/ : good reddit replacement. https://flingup.com/ https://flingup.com/ : I quite like this one as a reddit replacement. https://www.instagram.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ : created my first acct here. Not sure what to expect. Seems boring and fake. https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ : invite required: requested one - still waiting... Really quite nice: feels as if reddit and HN merged into one. https://www.4chan.org/ https://www.4chan.org/ : actually surprised that normal categories exist. I always thought it was just one giant cesspool. https://9gag.com/ https://9gag.com/ : lots of ads, tracking but captures the meme-aspect of reddit. RSS Feeds continues to be my personally best (and tailored) solution. --------- https://www.quora.com/ https://www.quora.com/ : did not like. https://hive.blog/ https://hive.blog/ : looks nice but do not like the crypto/payment aspect of it. https://imgur.com/ https://imgur.com/ : Will not let me browse while using a VPN. Bah! Fail. https://non.io/ https://non.io/ : pay to interact. I think many (like me) don't post enough to justify paying - when other sites deliver so much more. --------- I may start looking at BBSes again. Excited at the thought of this. I have been on IMDB for a couple of years. Writing reviews, creating lists, taking polls. Just saying there's a ton of stuff out there if you're looking to fill downtime and have fun. IMDB has been great fun for me. https://the-federation.info/ https://the-federation.info/ : good place to find Fediverse sites. --------- New ones I came across just now (for review): https://rdrama.net/ https://rdrama.net/ (seems wild at first glance) https://raddle.me/ https://raddle.me/ https://sqwok.im/ https://sqwok.im/ --------- Many of us (especially me) stopped looking for a while. We find one thing and stick with it. Reddit serves as a reminder that there are 'plenty of other fish in the sea'. Let's go fishing...

3y ago

unyttigfjelltol 3y ago

Why don't the core Reddit communities spin up a foundation so you all have a bit more continuity and control over your tech? Then bolt on whatever tech you want.

oDot 3y ago

It doesn't exist yet. The best way the solve the platform overreach problem is replicating the podcast model, and transitioning from those platforms to two utilities: (1) Content hosting (2) Content browsing This way, the /r/BikeShedding community can buy a domain, say, BikeShedding.gg, and connect it to a content hosting platform that delivers a standard API + web UI. This is (1). Users will have an app, let's call it FrontPage, in which they can put it a domain to subscribe to, or pick from a list, exactly like we can use podcasts app today to either add a manual RSS feed or choose from the library of feeds an app offers. Podcasts are the pinnacle of decentralization yet I haven't heard once the word "federation" or had to choose an "instance". If someone wants to talk about this more, email to anything at weedon and scott [dot] com. I did apply to YC with this, but it got rejected -- maybe the time is ripe. Edit: Important to note that this works for all platform overreach cases -- Avoiding YouTube censorship, exiting Twitter's echo chamber, and yes, for Reddit as well. The problem with federated platforms like mastodon is that they are still platforms, and platforms suck. You replace horses with cars, not with slightly better horses.

Phrodo_00 3y ago
> Podcasts are the pinnacle of decentralization yet I haven't heard once the word "federation" or had to choose an "instance". This is due to the difference between one way vs 2 way communication. Blogs and podcasts chose the word "syndication" and you use an RSS client to subscribe instead of an instance that can talk back. What your story doesn't deal with is accounts (not just logins). If you add that you pretty much land in the fediverse model (except in your story every subreddit would run their own userless instance).
- oDot 3y ago
  Very true. Still, it makes a big difference, to omit the jargon and the need to choose an instance. Even if under the hood the technology is the same, the users just know they sign in to an app and it works everywhere. The content creator/moderator knows that if the hosting service starts acting iffy, he exports everything to a different host, keeps the same domain, no one knows he even moved. Much smoother. The problem with federation is not the technology, is that the technology is packaged as a platform.

AussieWog93 3y ago

Surely, if anything, this whole shitshow has shown us that having a single website host the majority of the world's web forums is a bad idea. Perhaps the best way forward is to return to traditional, independently-hosted forums, perhaps with some sort of communally-maintained registry so that members of forum x can easily discover a new forum y.

MKais 3y ago

Books

ignite 3y ago

Going outside. Meeting with friends. Reading a good book.

downvotetruth 3y ago

Ask HN: Which Reddit-alternative open project should I contribute to? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36339680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36339680 4 points 8 hours ago 4 comments Hawker.social a Reddit/Twitter alternative that I launched earlier this year https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36324953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36324953 16 points 1 day ago 6 comments Show HN: Non.io, a Reddit-like platform Ive been working on for the last 4 years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296695 1933 points 3 days ago 586 comments Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36293789 541 points 3 days ago 220 comments Show HN: Sociables, A Reddit alternative that lets community owners monetize https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299095 12 points 3 days ago 4 comments Ask HN: What are the best Reddit alternatives? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299388 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299388 4 points 3 days ago 3 comments Ask HN: Is there any alternative to Reddit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36291618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36291618 1 points 3 days ago 3 comments Hubski – Another Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36300812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36300812 2 points 3 days ago 1 comment Thoughts on Lemmy Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301823 2 points 3 days ago 1 comment Show HN: Valme.io, another Reddit-like alternative with monetary applause https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299193 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36299193 3 days ago Ask HN: What are current (viable) alternatives to Reddit? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36287915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36287915 20 points 4 days ago 7 comments Raddle – An open source Reddit alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36288509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36288509 4 points 4 days ago 1 comments Ask HN: How about a Reddit alternative where every community is a Git repo? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36282561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36282561 3 points 4 days ago 9 comments Kbin: Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270205 7 points 5 days ago Beehaw: Reddit Alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36270000 2 points 5 days ago List of Active Reddit Alternatives https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36253594 8 points 7 days ago Ask HN: What would it take to build an OS Reddit alternative? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247323 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36247323 1 points 7 days ago 2 comments Tildes.net – an open source Reddit alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237240 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36237240 3 points 8 days ago Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610 316 points 10 days ago 231 comments Ask HN: Reddit alternatives (that aren't Mastodon) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36199403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36199403 29 points 10 days ago 32 comments Teddit – An alternative Reddit front-end focused on privacy https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144211 203 points 15 days ago 93 comments Lemmy: Federated Reddit alternative with Mastodon integration https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36144761 3 points 15 days ago Consider Reddit Alternatives https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36000935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36000935 4 points 27 days ago Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16820036 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16820036 154 points 5 years ago 123 comments

lee101 3y ago

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cwiggs 3y ago

I'm sad there isn't any talk about nostr on here. Even if Reddit dies and everyone moves to Lemmy or some other alternative it's only a matter of time before something similar happens to Lemmy. Sure with Lemmy it wouldn't be all controlled by one company, but your data is still locked behind whatever Lemmy instance you posted it on.

INTPenis 3y ago

The problem is our kicking off point is reddit the community and not reddit the link aggregator. We've forgotten its humble beginnings. What we need is to go back to basics and develop a simple link aggregator with basic federation. So that anyone with a federated node account can follow links posted to it, without having a local account. Then of course each link posted can spawn a discussion, but no need to have that in the first version of the software. These discussions can take place in a decentralized space for the time being. Giving the software the advantage of simplicity. For example the ActivityPub object Actor does not have to be a person, but rather a category of the link aggregator.

molave 3y ago

1. Lemmy 2. Going to a physical hobbyist club near you (if there's one)

friend_and_foe 3y ago

I've been checking out some of the reddit alternative software as of late, not so much the many different servers and communities around. Ones I've liked: Kbin https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core Lotide https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide https://sr.ht/~vpzom/lotide Lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy Brutalinks https://sr.ht/~mariusor/brutalinks/ https://sr.ht/~mariusor/brutalinks/ Those all (are supposed to) federate. I don't think federation in these communities is always ideal, drive by posting and what not, I think a better approach would be a client that can read your followed stuff from a local list. But some non-federating options are: StackerNews https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news https://github.com/stackernews/stacker.news Comment Castles https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles https://github.com/ferg1e/comment-castles freedit https://github.com/freedit-org/freedit https://github.com/freedit-org/freedit There are lots more, some are great some not. There have been quite a few posted on this site in recent days. Some communities really just need forums or wikis, link aggregation and content voting aren't really always necessary. I do believe communities should host their own sites. Some communities just don't have the interest to be viable long term, and Reddit was a way to externalize cost so that non viable communities can continue to exist. We see the results of that now, a company that isn't profitable due to bearing costs that nobody else is willing to bear squeezing users to try to stay afloat. This was always a temporary state of affairs. If you can't find a single community member dedicated enough to keep a VPS running, or with large communities, you can't scrounge up enough money from donations or whatever to keep the server running, that community simply isn't viable.

hn30000 3y ago

Many of my hobbies have equivalent boards on 4chan with about the same depth of knowledge. But signal:noise obviously quite poor and lots of abhorrent content to sift through

esxhan 3y ago

I'd suggest trying out a reddit alternative like https://spyke.social https://spyke.social its got a decent UI.

sharts 3y ago

Usenet

fattybob 3y ago

Best alternative I ever found was hacker news - rarely visit Reddit since finding hacker news

dr_pyser 3y ago

I’ve been thinking about this too, and recently came back across news.ycombinator.com, which I’ve had an account on since 2016 but haven’t looked at in ages. Have been finding it to be a fantastic alternative to Reddit actually, containing content that’s actually interesting, a much simpler structure and interface, and higher-quality discussion! Highly recommend.

kaba0 3y ago
Due to an inherent CS bias it can only substitute a tech/programming subreddit in my opinion. Also, unfortunately people in tech often fall into the trap of overvaluing their expertise in unrelated fields, so discussions outside the tech realm are often quite blindsided (guilty as charged). Of course there are the occasional gems of bioengineer or whatever chiming in on a relevant topic, but Reddit was very valuable at that simply due to its bigger size and more diverse audience.

www222www 3y ago

Hive or Quora

www222www 3y ago

[flagged]

djfrodo 3y ago

https://www.headcycle.com https://www.headcycle.com

BiggerBio2 3y ago

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BiggerBio2 3y ago

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