Hacker News Reader

Comment by 542458 | Hacker News Reader

I haven’t seen a compelling OS alternative to Reddit yet. The ones I’ve seen have all either been big on decentralization at the expense of long load times and a lot of UI complexity, or big on 4chan-style dialogue with little moderation. Neither of those sounds like a great migration path. IMO this is the same problem “migrate off Twitter” efforts had.

View on HN

The effort I've seen pointed to a "recommended lemmy instances" page which had a wide range of things from the anodyne to the horrific.

I can't think of much else that could have done a better job at putting me off from ever touching Lemmy than some of the descriptions of federations it "recommended".

Also, by being open about how many people were federating in each community, it also made it clear that even the biggest server was smaller than most discords.

I don't think it's too bad, I see like one loli server but everything else looks reasonable.

Have you seen Tildes?

- incredible moderation and respectful community

- you can't sort by controversial

- non-profit, no investors can corrupt it

- beautifully simple UI, better than old.reddit on mobile

- fast and not decentralized

- no images just text

- open source

- The site is the main mobile interface, not an app

- No limits to logged-out browsing

- Completely functional for browsing without javascript

- Zero third-party scripts/assets during normal use

- Uses modern versions of simple, reliable, "boring" technology

https://docs.tildes.net/philosophy/site-implementation

This looks interesting for sure thanks for the link

I want to like Tildes, but to be completely honest, it annoys me that the '~' character is used heavily. Both from a look perspective and a typing perspective.

Maybe I could get used to it overtime, but we'll see if it ever becomes non-invite-only.

I’m interested in trying it. Do you have an invite link by any chance?

I can send you an invite if you put a means of communication on your profile for me to reach out to.

Please see updated profile and many thanks

Sent!

Interested to get on tildes too.

Wondering if you still have any invites to send my way?

Email in profile. Thanks!

That's by far the best Reddit alternative I've seen. Still, I feel that "no images just text" and "invite only" (although I 100% respect the rationale for both) make this a non-starter for any sort of mass-migration.

Why inability to sort by controversial is seen as a positive?

Prevents a community of people awarded for throwing rotten vegetables at people like Twitter and Reddit.

> I also notice that there is no such thing as sort by controversy

> This is one of the things I like about Tildes so far. An option like that is specifically designed for hate. I want to spend my time on these sites talking with other nerds about homelab stuff and niche 30 year old RPGs no one cares about. Not feel the urge to constantly validate myself by looking at comments people are metaphorically laughing at for being ridiculous

https://tildes.net/~tech/15v5/stop_trying_to_make_a_good_soc...

Some threads on Reddit represent an echo chamber and I like then to sort by controversial to check if there are also people with a bit more divergent opinion. I was not aware of this being a wider problem for people.

> An option like that is specifically designed for hate

This is very short-sighted, I feel. The controversial comments often have the most interesting discussions, and helps to avoid the issue of the top-voted comment being a popular, but incorrect, view/discussion where all the activity happens.

I don't disagree, but Twitter never had a site wide Billion user blackout

If we blackout long enough and then figure out how to cooperate to create an actual community alternative in the blackout period, it could work

Not easy and will take real leader with 80 hour a week work ethic for a year, and probably a few million dollars to start.

However it would be an amazing groundbreaking feat

Reply on news.ycombinator.com