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Comment by eric_cc | Hacker News Reader

Are there any good alternatives to the reddit platform?

I've been a user since 2006. When reddit blew up in popularity, many subs massively declined in quality as is to be expected. Niche subs, however, remained pretty great.

But reddit as an organization is beyond repair at this point. Changes like this are now par for the course.

Worse even, reddit is now engaged in censoring subs. The most obvious and possibly most disturbing example is the quarantine of r/the_donald on political grounds.

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No there's not, I was recently a member of a harmless subreddit that got banned from someone abusing DMCA who had some vendetta against the subreddit over some nonsense. He sent hundreds of fake copyright claims to posts which he had no ownership but Reddit admins didn't give a shit when we complained. He got our next two subreddits banned even faster since they had little content but plenty of DMCA requests.

We tried every single open or alternative Reddit and they were all garbage. And trust me when I said we tried everything.

They are either awful early-2000s PHP-clone style sites, some stupid fringe political communities which push away mainstream users, or some weird moderation rules.

https://saidit.net/ was the closest clone but they had some bizarre "Pyramid of Debate" [1] moderation thing that seemed culty among their hardcore members, which our sub members got turned off from.

But ultimately it's the lack of good mobile apps for these sites that pushed us away and we never managed to rebuild the community.

Recreating a better Reddit is a project I've long been interested in doing myself.

[1] https://infogalactic.com/w/images/thumb/e/ef/The_Pyramid_Of_...

I spent approximately two weeks working on a reddit like site[1]

[1]: https://yaddu.pw/c/general

One solution might be a "federated reddit". Hacker News is essentially just a subreddit run by YC, so getting people/organizations/interest groups to run their own reddit forums is probably a good idea. It would let each community figure out its own income stream and not worry about advertisers running wild or the entire thing being bought out by the Chinese.

r/the_donald has many many posts advocating for violence against certain groups in clear violation of policy. These posts would stay up for days or weeks. In my opinion quarantining them was basically a slap on the wrist.

>In my opinion quarantining them was basically a slap on the wrist.

I mean, I agree they should have been banned from day one basically.. but to say it's a slap on the wrist is odd because absolutely no one has to read any of their trash unless you specifically go there. Most random reddit users probably don't even know of td, let alone would actually go there voluntarily.

That being said.. I think it's unconscionable that reddit allows that subreddit to exist.. it's literally a breeding ground for violence and hate thought/speech.

That is totally false to assert. So basically you're saying to 'ban them from day one' because...you don't like their politics?

and no, they are not a 'breeding ground for violence and hate thought/speech'

Reminds me of 'wrongthink' and you're advocating for its censor?

Censorship is evil, censoring that sub was evil to supress information

Ok td shit poster.

Classic, well thought out response. lol...

What's the point in actually debating with you? You condone how r/the_donald behaves, so you are beyond help from an internet stranger.

Well... by first trying to point out a little ignorance coming from your comment. Second, maybe add in some hypocrisy from your comment. Third, it is really not about how a community 'behaves' because that is beside the initial point of you advocating for censorship based on political opinions when you're referencing Reddit.

That community does not directly behave in violence, hate, etc. How ridiculous of you to make that assertion. You're likely buying into the bullshit about the excuse Reddit made to censor them to begin with..."Anti police rhetoric" ...it is laughable that you're buying that.

End of story: Political Censorship

There is a lot of difference between “wrongthink” in the 1984 sense and only prohibiting particularly evil ideologies that advocate for violence. These are not subjective view points, violence is universally bad for everyone.

That is mostly false to say. That sub gets bad actors all over it all the time. It is a controversial, political sub. There are many who have been working to remove it for years.

They should have never been censored, it was a politically inspired move, and a disgusting one to have made.

I've noticed that TD has recently stood up a reddit clone of sorts on a separate web site. If that works, it seems like a win all around, both for friends and foes.

Perhaps we will see a diaspora of such clones?

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