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I really hope a decent Reddit replacement shows up soon; my impression is that HN is mostly webdevs, so surely some of y'all are on it?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
missedthecue 3y ago
deploying a reddit clone online takes 10 minutes getting 500 million monthly users like Reddit is the hard part
- fluidcruft 3y ago
  500 million monthly users isn't a community. I certainly don't have any subreddits that are this large nor do I give a shit about how many users are on a particular website. My reddit communities are niche and skill-based. We'll go wherever we go. Oh no! The giant horde of September stays behind on Reddit! Quelle horreur.
  - johannes1234321 3y ago
    The thing is: By being on reddit the barrier to enter a small niche community is low. Having to register with a new account, when maybe the favorite username is taken already is a barrier, even if it takes just few minutes.
    - JCharante 3y ago
      You only need 1 account on lemmy though, and then you can access any community that your instance federates with.
    - colinsane 3y ago
      wait that’s the opposite: reddit uses a flat username space, whereas the federated ones have a hierarchical namespace that reduces collisions. there can only be one “johannes” on Reddit, but right now there can be 200-300 “johannes” on Lemmy (rendered “johannes@<remote_instance>” when viewed from a foreign instance).
      - johannes1234321 3y ago
        Assuming Lemmy will be "the winner" currently it is a small player, where differ etc instances already stop federating each other, thus splitting the community early. If not at each forum I have to decide which variant of my name I pick and then remember. On reddit I could take that choice once for a huge number of forums. (as long as I was willing to share identity over different subreddits)
        colinsane 3y ago
        > Assuming Lemmy will be "the winner" there's also kbin, and you can post/read from either with any Mastodon/Pleroma/Misskey account just with a worse UI. i'd be surprised at this point if the winner isn't just Activity Pub with some thin layer on top. > different instances already stop federating each other, thus splitting the community early. instances usually provide at least some reason when they defederate with each other. maybe users will learn to be cognizant of who they're associating with when they pick an instance. i've seen that with tech-literate friends joining Mastodon who pick a 4chan-like unfiltered/unhinged instance as their home without understanding that such an instance causes outsized complaints compared to the "average" instance and will have less access to outside communities as a result. i'm sure there's an opportunity for better admin/mod tooling -- hopefully some of the defeds that have happened in Lemmy recently will reverse once things settle down -- but i think even with that it has to be a new way of thinking both for users and operators about what it means to be a member of an instance. it seems that when you hand someone a magic knob they can turn between "less toxicity/abuse" and "broader reach", most will turn it further toward that "less toxicity" edge than Twitter or Reddit do themselves -- even if the tooling for it's so crude. i get why that worries people, but honestly, the benefits of that in other federated systems i use so far have been incredibly worth it (and the cost of migrating to a different instance overblown).
- pixelpoet 3y ago
  Makes sense, but at least Reddit are doing everything in their power to help drive users to alternative platforms right now!
dsir 3y ago
Lots of the alternatives seem to be missing the core idea of what Reddit really is (a community of communities). I think first and foremost it's the community aspect of Reddit that makes it appealing. 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 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
- crdrost 3y ago
  To be fair Reddit also is missing the core idea of what it itself is Just think, one of Reddit's features for years was the "trending subreddits" list. Someone made that, someone else approved it. It got put on the front page, it became a core part of the experience. There were meetings!! Meetings where this was discussed. It was an OKR, maybe even of multiple people, was there a whole team? But you and I understand that the essence of community is that you get a small group of people who interact and re-interact and who get used to seeing each other and who have fun doing this thing, whether it's shitposting memes or discussing God or something else. You grow past a certain size and now you are shouting into the void, which is the same experience you have every day, just go to your local pub and shout your hilarious comments at the TV and you'll have more listeners than your comments on a large subreddit. "Trending subreddits," people literally came into daily stand-up, "Hi Jessica, how is the 'suddenly destroy Reddit communities just when they start growing and thereby make Reddit suck more' feature going?" "Well I ran into some roadblocks as the sudden influx of new users makes the statistics very hard to pull, I'm thinking of changing to a cron job that reassembles the list every hour." "Jessica, we've talked about this, making Reddit suck more is of top priority to my manager and my director, I don't care how you do it, just GET IT DONE and we can get a big bonus at the end of quarter" "I won't let you down, boss! Reddit WILL suck more by the end of this quarter." I don't think it's still a thing anymore as-is but I don't think it was deleted for the fact that it was the make Reddit suck feature? I think they're still basically doing the same thing but just basically temp-autojoining users into those subreddits, "Reddit wasn't sucking fast enough when people had to opt-in to flashmobbing a promising community, now we're just going to shove the people in the door and scream 'you're a flashmob get to sucking!' and hope that works." More meetings were had on this!
mjamesaustin 3y ago
I was confused at first by the federated nature of Lemmy, but making an account was easy and I'm thoroughly enjoying it now. The important thing to note – even though you join a particular Lemmy "instance", it doesn't particularly matter which one, because you can subscribe to communities (subreddits) from any instance. The instance I joined – vlemmy.net An aggregator of communities to join – https://lemmyverse.net/communities https://lemmyverse.net/communities
- deelowe 3y ago
  Isn't there an issue with instances blocking certain communities on other instances?
  - BudaDude 3y ago
    Yes but if I recall correctly, whatever you are subscribed to you still see in your feed, even if it’s blocked by the instance. I may be incorrect and if so please correct me.
    - Stephen304 3y ago
      I think you're thinking about "limiting" another instance, where content from the limited instance is excluded from public feeds but still shows up in personal feeds to those who are subscribed. Sadly limiting instances like mastodon can do isn't available in lemmy or kbin afaik, so highly moderated instances like beehaw are resorting to complete disconnection (defederation) for now until moderation tooling improves. One caveat about the current implementations is that a defederated instance doesn't seem to know it's been defederated from, so a stale copy of the remote content still exists and can be interacted with (users can post in the remote community that defederated and comment on stale posts, or even new posts in the remote community that are made by local users, however none of that will get synced to the remote communities / instance that defederated).
  - JCharante 3y ago
    Isn't there an issue with reddit banning certain communities? With the fediverse you can choose to be on an instance that doesn't block others or be on an instance that does block. For example, the instance I'm on defederates from 4 instances while beehaw defederates from 100+
slipheen 3y ago
There's quite a few, and most of them federate with one another. What's interesting is that Reddit isn't really a single community - Each individual subreddit has it's own moderators, editorial voice, group of people, etc. They can each move independently. For example, /r/startrek and the related startrek websites have all moved to https://startrek.website https://startrek.website This federates with Lemmy, kbin, etc - So if a user posts to startrek.website it shows up everyone else's servers, and people can reply from whatever federated site they use
root_axis 3y ago
There are dozens of alternatives to reddit, the issue is that the vast majority of reddit users don't care at all about this drama. Reddit is not going anywhere.
- colinsane 3y ago
  i’m less certain than i was. the two people in my life who actively use reddit have both told me “it’s over”. one of them joined lemmy.blahaj.zone after r/196 reformed over there: he told me that it’s the community he was most active in and i got the impression that unless the Lemmy one folds he’s more or less done with Reddit — even though it means he’s interacting with the other communities via different mediums than he was before (chat instead of forums). as someone who stopped using Reddit a year ago, i get it. topical communities no longer exist in just one place. if you’re interested in 3d printing, say, you can join a reddit, join a chat group (in Discord, Telegram, Matrix — whatever app of choice), join a FB group or explore the topic on TikTok, find a 3d-printing themed Mastodon instance, …: and each one of these hosts adjacent communities. Reddit is no longer the only “community of communities” on the internet. if you zoom out, it’s been losing that moat for a while. users can get by decently well these days by choosing from 5+ apps they might already have installed when exploring a topical community. reddit killing their share of that app space doesn’t really help them.
- mrtranscendence 3y ago
  I think Reddit faces more potential downside here than other similar platforms might, because of the popularity of third-party apps among key contingents of the site (particularly moderators), and also because of the missteps that management has taken dealing with the API changes. If they lose even 5% of their traffic to this debacle they've made a bad decision, IMO.
GreenWatermelon 3y ago
I've started browsing https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ recently. For now, since the community is small, it feels like hackernews2, but I hope it gets bigger.
- scrollaway 3y ago
  Tildes in general will be pretty in line with the HN community. If anyone wants an invite, find my email and say hi :)
kimjoaoun 3y ago
Me either, but like we saw on every twitter-clone attempted until now, it's really hard to make people move to another platform if the first one still online.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

missedthecue 3y ago

deploying a reddit clone online takes 10 minutes getting 500 million monthly users like Reddit is the hard part

fluidcruft 3y ago
500 million monthly users isn't a community. I certainly don't have any subreddits that are this large nor do I give a shit about how many users are on a particular website. My reddit communities are niche and skill-based. We'll go wherever we go. Oh no! The giant horde of September stays behind on Reddit! Quelle horreur.
- johannes1234321 3y ago
  The thing is: By being on reddit the barrier to enter a small niche community is low. Having to register with a new account, when maybe the favorite username is taken already is a barrier, even if it takes just few minutes.
  - JCharante 3y ago
    You only need 1 account on lemmy though, and then you can access any community that your instance federates with.
  - colinsane 3y ago
    wait that’s the opposite: reddit uses a flat username space, whereas the federated ones have a hierarchical namespace that reduces collisions. there can only be one “johannes” on Reddit, but right now there can be 200-300 “johannes” on Lemmy (rendered “johannes@<remote_instance>” when viewed from a foreign instance).
    - johannes1234321 3y ago
      Assuming Lemmy will be "the winner" currently it is a small player, where differ etc instances already stop federating each other, thus splitting the community early. If not at each forum I have to decide which variant of my name I pick and then remember. On reddit I could take that choice once for a huge number of forums. (as long as I was willing to share identity over different subreddits)
      - colinsane 3y ago
        > Assuming Lemmy will be "the winner" there's also kbin, and you can post/read from either with any Mastodon/Pleroma/Misskey account just with a worse UI. i'd be surprised at this point if the winner isn't just Activity Pub with some thin layer on top. > different instances already stop federating each other, thus splitting the community early. instances usually provide at least some reason when they defederate with each other. maybe users will learn to be cognizant of who they're associating with when they pick an instance. i've seen that with tech-literate friends joining Mastodon who pick a 4chan-like unfiltered/unhinged instance as their home without understanding that such an instance causes outsized complaints compared to the "average" instance and will have less access to outside communities as a result. i'm sure there's an opportunity for better admin/mod tooling -- hopefully some of the defeds that have happened in Lemmy recently will reverse once things settle down -- but i think even with that it has to be a new way of thinking both for users and operators about what it means to be a member of an instance. it seems that when you hand someone a magic knob they can turn between "less toxicity/abuse" and "broader reach", most will turn it further toward that "less toxicity" edge than Twitter or Reddit do themselves -- even if the tooling for it's so crude. i get why that worries people, but honestly, the benefits of that in other federated systems i use so far have been incredibly worth it (and the cost of migrating to a different instance overblown).
pixelpoet 3y ago
Makes sense, but at least Reddit are doing everything in their power to help drive users to alternative platforms right now!

dsir 3y ago

Lots of the alternatives seem to be missing the core idea of what Reddit really is (a community of communities). I think first and foremost it's the community aspect of Reddit that makes it appealing. 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 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

crdrost 3y ago
To be fair Reddit also is missing the core idea of what it itself is Just think, one of Reddit's features for years was the "trending subreddits" list. Someone made that, someone else approved it. It got put on the front page, it became a core part of the experience. There were meetings!! Meetings where this was discussed. It was an OKR, maybe even of multiple people, was there a whole team? But you and I understand that the essence of community is that you get a small group of people who interact and re-interact and who get used to seeing each other and who have fun doing this thing, whether it's shitposting memes or discussing God or something else. You grow past a certain size and now you are shouting into the void, which is the same experience you have every day, just go to your local pub and shout your hilarious comments at the TV and you'll have more listeners than your comments on a large subreddit. "Trending subreddits," people literally came into daily stand-up, "Hi Jessica, how is the 'suddenly destroy Reddit communities just when they start growing and thereby make Reddit suck more' feature going?" "Well I ran into some roadblocks as the sudden influx of new users makes the statistics very hard to pull, I'm thinking of changing to a cron job that reassembles the list every hour." "Jessica, we've talked about this, making Reddit suck more is of top priority to my manager and my director, I don't care how you do it, just GET IT DONE and we can get a big bonus at the end of quarter" "I won't let you down, boss! Reddit WILL suck more by the end of this quarter." I don't think it's still a thing anymore as-is but I don't think it was deleted for the fact that it was the make Reddit suck feature? I think they're still basically doing the same thing but just basically temp-autojoining users into those subreddits, "Reddit wasn't sucking fast enough when people had to opt-in to flashmobbing a promising community, now we're just going to shove the people in the door and scream 'you're a flashmob get to sucking!' and hope that works." More meetings were had on this!

mjamesaustin 3y ago

I was confused at first by the federated nature of Lemmy, but making an account was easy and I'm thoroughly enjoying it now. The important thing to note – even though you join a particular Lemmy "instance", it doesn't particularly matter which one, because you can subscribe to communities (subreddits) from any instance. The instance I joined – vlemmy.net An aggregator of communities to join – https://lemmyverse.net/communities https://lemmyverse.net/communities

deelowe 3y ago
Isn't there an issue with instances blocking certain communities on other instances?
- BudaDude 3y ago
  Yes but if I recall correctly, whatever you are subscribed to you still see in your feed, even if it’s blocked by the instance. I may be incorrect and if so please correct me.
  - Stephen304 3y ago
    I think you're thinking about "limiting" another instance, where content from the limited instance is excluded from public feeds but still shows up in personal feeds to those who are subscribed. Sadly limiting instances like mastodon can do isn't available in lemmy or kbin afaik, so highly moderated instances like beehaw are resorting to complete disconnection (defederation) for now until moderation tooling improves. One caveat about the current implementations is that a defederated instance doesn't seem to know it's been defederated from, so a stale copy of the remote content still exists and can be interacted with (users can post in the remote community that defederated and comment on stale posts, or even new posts in the remote community that are made by local users, however none of that will get synced to the remote communities / instance that defederated).
- JCharante 3y ago
  Isn't there an issue with reddit banning certain communities? With the fediverse you can choose to be on an instance that doesn't block others or be on an instance that does block. For example, the instance I'm on defederates from 4 instances while beehaw defederates from 100+

slipheen 3y ago

There's quite a few, and most of them federate with one another. What's interesting is that Reddit isn't really a single community - Each individual subreddit has it's own moderators, editorial voice, group of people, etc. They can each move independently. For example, /r/startrek and the related startrek websites have all moved to https://startrek.website https://startrek.website This federates with Lemmy, kbin, etc - So if a user posts to startrek.website it shows up everyone else's servers, and people can reply from whatever federated site they use

root_axis 3y ago

There are dozens of alternatives to reddit, the issue is that the vast majority of reddit users don't care at all about this drama. Reddit is not going anywhere.

colinsane 3y ago
i’m less certain than i was. the two people in my life who actively use reddit have both told me “it’s over”. one of them joined lemmy.blahaj.zone after r/196 reformed over there: he told me that it’s the community he was most active in and i got the impression that unless the Lemmy one folds he’s more or less done with Reddit — even though it means he’s interacting with the other communities via different mediums than he was before (chat instead of forums). as someone who stopped using Reddit a year ago, i get it. topical communities no longer exist in just one place. if you’re interested in 3d printing, say, you can join a reddit, join a chat group (in Discord, Telegram, Matrix — whatever app of choice), join a FB group or explore the topic on TikTok, find a 3d-printing themed Mastodon instance, …: and each one of these hosts adjacent communities. Reddit is no longer the only “community of communities” on the internet. if you zoom out, it’s been losing that moat for a while. users can get by decently well these days by choosing from 5+ apps they might already have installed when exploring a topical community. reddit killing their share of that app space doesn’t really help them.
mrtranscendence 3y ago
I think Reddit faces more potential downside here than other similar platforms might, because of the popularity of third-party apps among key contingents of the site (particularly moderators), and also because of the missteps that management has taken dealing with the API changes. If they lose even 5% of their traffic to this debacle they've made a bad decision, IMO.

GreenWatermelon 3y ago

I've started browsing https://tildes.net/ https://tildes.net/ recently. For now, since the community is small, it feels like hackernews2, but I hope it gets bigger.

scrollaway 3y ago
Tildes in general will be pretty in line with the HN community. If anyone wants an invite, find my email and say hi :)

kimjoaoun 3y ago

Me either, but like we saw on every twitter-clone attempted until now, it's really hard to make people move to another platform if the first one still online.