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Comment by PhoenixReborn | Hacker News Reader

I worked at Reddit for several years in the past - if anything, they have the exact opposite of viral momentum: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1360263618508521480?lang=en

I do agree on the neat alternative piece, but all of the ones that have come up in the past had some sort of flaw (or in some cases deliberate slower growth) that caused them not to go viral (Voat, Tildes, etc)

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That may be true, but here's some context to that:

https://imgur.com/a/6le18xj

The blue line (reddit) does indeed keep going up. But it's barely noticable compared to the red (facebook).

I'm honestly flabbergasted that with all the nearly-free money flowing around, nobody tried to build a better Reddit without making it both worse and even MORE filled with spam and nazis.

I suspect in general the entire "thing" that is Reddit is on its way out - just like how craigslist killed classified ads and itself may be slowly dying, Reddit killed forums and now is slowly dying, there may be no replacement.

Currently building https://sqwok.im after years of using Reddit but seeking a better experience for live conversation.

Def not perfect and long way to go but so far it's been fun!

Reddit doesn't make crazy profits, and it's sort of hard to see a way to monetize a similar product without becoming what you're trying to replace.

Good point - the "open source/non-profit" energies seem to be focused on things like mastodon and simple forums, and competitors that aren't trying for venture capital such as Facebook would just want you to use their offering instead. I suspect for many people, "Facebook Groups" is their Reddit replacement.

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