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.
This is not a good take for the things that Reddit really excelled at: niche hobbies. Mechanical keyboards, mushroom cultivation, home brewing, just to name a few of my interests. None of that gets much traction on HN, nor outside unless your friends happen to have the same interests. Discord has a bit of that content, but I find Discord harder to engage with because it feels a bit more synchronous and time sensitive.
Disagree, while it's obviously bad to spend all of your free time on a screen, there are some good middle sized subreddits that provided me value for my job or my hobbies.
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.
I feel like we use reddit in entirely different ways. I don't use the front page. I'm not subscribed to any main subreddit. I use subreddits to find information about my interests: Individual game subreddits, Financial information, Product reviews.
Does everyone who has strong dislike of reddit stay subscribed to /r/news and /r/worldnews (and others)? I know those subs ruin my feeds and my mood. Otherwise, I don't see how reading something like /r/factorio can decline one's mental wellbeing.
You have a high bar. Compared to where most people hang out online (Instagram, TikTok, etc.); many subreddits feel like debating in the agora with Pericles.
I agree HN is better for the kind of subjects HN covers, but for others I tend to go to Reddit.
I've made several lifelong friends on Reddit from a small subreddit for a sports team. Sure there's a lot of bad with Reddit but there's also good in there if you try to look for it.
Which you could say about nearly anything in life.
Were you looking at the really big subreddits, or were you looking at smaller subreddits like r/boardgames, r/cooking, r/gardening, r/woodworking, etc.? I do agree about the bigger subreddits, but not about the smaller niche subreddits.
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.
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.
Somethingawful forums is also a community of communities. Each subforum has it's own culture and norms. And they have a pretty good system for dealing with spam, sock puppets. But its $10, not free.
Question though, how will you sustain this platform? I'd be happy to just pay some small fee per month and have some sort of guarantee that my data is not just being sold to the highest bidder. I'd like to be the customer on some social media platform for once
There's a reason people are missing the mark here; the "community" feature is not what gives Reddit its crazy high value for the vast majority of its users.
The ceiling is a lot lower for a community engine than it is for a link aggregator. Google News vs. Google+.
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.
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.
Works very well for me too. Also, I see a lot of people here saying lemmy and other alternatives to reddit will not attract as many users as reddit.
But maybe that is a good thing? Being a popular hangout on the internet seems to be a curse more than anything from my observation over the last decade. If an alternative reaches an amount of active users similar to the early years of Reddit, I would call that a win.
The whole reason (well, the majority of the reason) is that my favorite reddit phone app is going away at the end of the month. This is kind of a deal-breaker for me as bespoke app experiences (i.e. polish) are very important to me.
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.
> 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).
This sounds like kind of how Tapatalk works. Tapatalk forums are fine enough, so it's not a bad model.
I think there's a third piece missing though which is discovery/distribution. On reddit, popular posts from any sub can reach the front page, and perhaps more important, discovering new subreddits is a core part of the user experience. Users share new subreddits all the time, the site constantly pushes you to new ones, and they're easy to find with the search function. AFAIK Tapatalk doesn't do this, and it would probably not be welcome given the expectations they have with existing communities.
I agree with you completely, I always found federated platforms confusing to use and they still run into the same problems that billion dollar platforms have without the resources to solve or mitigate them.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] pc86|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Niksko|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _oce_|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2023throwawayy|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] xboxnolifes|2 years ago|reply
Does everyone who has strong dislike of reddit stay subscribed to /r/news and /r/worldnews (and others)? I know those subs ruin my feeds and my mood. Otherwise, I don't see how reading something like /r/factorio can decline one's mental wellbeing.
[+] [-] Al-Khwarizmi|2 years ago|reply
I agree HN is better for the kind of subjects HN covers, but for others I tend to go to Reddit.
[+] [-] last_responder|2 years ago|reply
Yea that's really subjective and blanket statements are silly.
[+] [-] spike021|2 years ago|reply
Which you could say about nearly anything in life.
[+] [-] unpopularopp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irrational|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mr_00ff00|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsir|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] gnopgnip|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Karsteski|2 years ago|reply
Question though, how will you sustain this platform? I'd be happy to just pay some small fee per month and have some sort of guarantee that my data is not just being sold to the highest bidder. I'd like to be the customer on some social media platform for once
[+] [-] Zetice|2 years ago|reply
The ceiling is a lot lower for a community engine than it is for a link aggregator. Google News vs. Google+.
[+] [-] ykonstant|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cephalization|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agg23|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] accrual|2 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] robotnikman|2 years ago|reply
But maybe that is a good thing? Being a popular hangout on the internet seems to be a curse more than anything from my observation over the last decade. If an alternative reaches an amount of active users similar to the early years of Reddit, I would call that a win.
[+] [-] tills13|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragontamer|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] joshuawitzer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oDot|2 years ago|reply
(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|2 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] notJim|2 years ago|reply
I think there's a third piece missing though which is discovery/distribution. On reddit, popular posts from any sub can reach the front page, and perhaps more important, discovering new subreddits is a core part of the user experience. Users share new subreddits all the time, the site constantly pushes you to new ones, and they're easy to find with the search function. AFAIK Tapatalk doesn't do this, and it would probably not be welcome given the expectations they have with existing communities.
[+] [-] codingcodingboy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] camel-cdr|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] evdubs|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] soared|2 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] slily|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haolez|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggoo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jibbit|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benjimouse|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] EA-3167|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2023throwawayy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] gman83|2 years ago|reply
So far, so good.
[+] [-] haunter|2 years ago|reply
This is the main problem with the whole decentralized system and it won't go anywhere besides being a niche.
0, https://lemmyverse.net/
[+] [-] FlyingSnake|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] haunter|2 years ago|reply
https://github.com/reddit-archive/reddit
[+] [-] INTPenis|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] FemmeAndroid|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] acrispino|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway81523|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AussieWog93|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ThrowawayTestr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silisili|2 years ago|reply
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.