
Ask HN: Alternatives to Reddit? - FrozenVoid
Reddit is pushing the new redesign which seems half-baked attempt at competing with facebook.
What sites&#x2F;forums can be considered as alternative to reddit or its parts?
======
bitexploder
Reddit scrubs the identity out of many communities/topics. I have found much
deeper and meaningful discussion on focused forums. For almost any topic with
any significant interest there is a non Reddit forum or community that is
deeper and more customized. Not always, but usually. Just support those
communities and forums. Example, mtgsalvation is by far better to visit for
meaningful MTG deck building and discussion. Subaru forums are another great
example. There are plenty of established communities out there.

~~~
dmix
> Reddit scrubs the identity out of many communities/topics.

In my experience Reddit moderators do this, not Reddit.

For some reason heavy handed moderation is now the norm across every medium-
large sized subreddit. I don't know if it's a cultural thing, there's some
top-down pressure, or the nature of the kinds of people who become (and stay)
mods.

But I'm finding it more and more the case where mods feel the need to heavily
regulate conversations/posting preemptively based on arbitrary personal
worldview on what is 'good' content for the subreddit, instead of coming in to
help when there's actual problems and situations where downvoting simply isn't
enough.

Facebook and Twitter went down this road hard too, but at least they weren't
doing it via "community leadership" but instead via the predictable slippery
slope of centralized content controls.

Who knows maybe I'm spoiled by HN or naively expect large scaled up
organizations/systems to stay as functional as they were when they were
smaller. But I don't think it's always a lost cause, many big organizations
have maintained high quality - given proper management and push-back against
the negative forces which cripple large companies (such as becoming extremely
risk adverse).

~~~
ahtu123
Reddit is also just too big. It's only a matter of time before a great
subreddit reaches /all/ a few too many times and becomes a meme
factory/circlejerk/battleground instead of something interesting. Then the
mods start cracking down to try to keep the original subreddit spirit but it's
too late by then.

~~~
fao_
Hey, I vouched for this post because it was interesting. For the record,
you've been shadowbanned for some reason.

------
CM30
There's actually a whole subreddit (somewhat ironically) dedicated
specifically to Reddit alternatives:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/)

That may have a few to check out.

However, I still agree that forums tend to have better communities than
subreddits over all, and the specialised ones really outperform the ones on
said services. If your interests aren't purely in a general/top level subject
(like music/TV/games/sports as a whole), you'll probably find better
discussions on specialised sites.

I've also noticed a fair communities using chat esque services like Discord
now, and those seem to be a lot more active than subreddits are.

And well, if you're after tech stuff... you're already posting on the best
Reddit alternative for that field.

------
tjwds
There isn't one that's going to do everything that reddit does, honestly. You
might want to consider breaking down everything you were getting out of reddit
that you aren't anymore and pursuing ways to find those things again.

I recently realized that I was spending way too much time on Reddit, so I
started only briefly scrolling through Reddit once per day without reading
comments, and relying more on HN, twitter, and a few blogs for news. To feed
that itch to belong to a community, I started commenting on HN more, and
continue to go on JQBX and belong to a few slack channels.

------
tootie
Use [https://i.reddit.com](https://i.reddit.com). It's basically the craiglist
view of reddit built for mobile. Super fast and no fluff.

~~~
pandasun
Made a quick url rewrite userscript:
[https://pastebin.com/A55FBKug](https://pastebin.com/A55FBKug)

~~~
tootie
I still have to visit the www site sometimes because the compact one is
missing a few features (like delete). They haven't done any maintenance on it
for years.

------
anthony_romeo
Since there's a lot of talk about rss feeds on hn nowadays, you can also
subscribe to any individual subreddit by adding "/.rss" to the end of the url
(e.g. "reddit.com/r/subreddit/.rss"). I've been weaning myself off reddit, but
there are some subreddits that I still want to follow, and rss is a fine
compromise.

------
xabi
[https://old.reddit.com](https://old.reddit.com)

~~~
catach
It seems highly unlikely that that will be supported for very long past the
final launch of the new design.

~~~
schnevets
I don't know - the "reddit disguised as work" site
[http://codereddit.com/](http://codereddit.com/) and the Android app Reddit is
Fun have been running off the API for nearly a decade.

~~~
exelius
How long do you think the API will continue to exist? All of Reddit’s recent
moves have shown me they finally realized that much of the DNA of the site (no
account verification required, “questionable” speech being semi-tolerated, a
dense UX that’s hard to cram ads into, portability, etc.) are what’s
preventing them from monetizing. And they’re trying to monetize.

This is _exactly_ the transformation Twitter went through. They changed the UX
to make it more advertiser friendly, and when people started using alternate
clients to get around it, they cut off the API.

Frankly I think the community will hate it but because it’s really hard to
move millions of individual communities, Reddit likely won’t lose too many
users.

~~~
Slansitartop
> Frankly I think the community will hate it but because it’s really hard to
> move millions of individual communities, Reddit likely won’t lose too many
> users.

Is that really true? Didn't Reddit get big because Digg made some ill-advised
changes and its userbase picked up and moved en masse to Reddit?

~~~
exelius
Reddit is much, much bigger now than Digg ever was; and there’s no viable
platform for most to move to. Its communities are decentralized, and
moderation is a function of the network, so Reddit as it exists is effectively
the only thing holding them together.

------
cies
[https://raddle.me](https://raddle.me) mostly lefties I guess

[https://steemit.com](https://steemit.com) ties into a crypto currency, you
can get paid for content there

------
Huhty
My team and I run Snapzu ([http://www.snapzu.com](http://www.snapzu.com)), a
which we started several years ago.

First off, the main reason there's no de facto "Reddit alternative" (Like
Reddit was to Digg) is because it's nearly impossible to grow a community
based around thousands of topics from scratch.

It's a massive "chicken or egg" dilemma where you need a steady flow of users
(1000's per day or more) to provide the necessary community "value" to other
users. And even then, the users are scattered all over the place with all
kinds of different interests, making it hard to keep them around and coming
back for more.

I've kept an eye out on all the competition that has come and gone (hundreds
of them at this point), and most of them don't make it even one year before
throwing in the towel.

Building a link-sharing/discussion platform is one thing (anyone can do it),
but populating it with active people is a whole other beast and probably 100x
harder, requiring routinely time consuming tasks such as blogging, promoting
the blogging, and trying anything and everything to get the word out. This is
where most people fail, and the saying "build it and they will come" is utter
BS.

It also doesn't help that Reddit has copied (probably unintentionally) many of
the things we added over the years to try and differentiate from them. We had
their new "cross-posting" feature many years ago, but ours is named
"mirroring" where you can add an existing post into other tribes (our version
of sub-reddits). We also had the ability to add "related links" for years now,
and I've noticed they added that feature to their "mega-thread" topics, and
I'm sure they will make it a site wide feature soon enough.

Reddit gets millions of daily visitors from SEO alone, and all of that SEO is
dependent on their user-generated content. For MANY search terms, you can find
a Reddit link on the first page of the Google results.

At this point we've had to pivot (focusing on bloggers/creators and their
audiences) because we understand that we can't directly compete with them.

~~~
skrause
At least pretty much everything that requires an invitation by another user is
doomed to fail.

------
threepipeproblm
This one [https://steemit.com/](https://steemit.com/) is interesting... would
be more interesting if the percentage of non-cryptocurrency-related articles
were higher.

------
trip9
It has quite a reputation from back in the day, but I find Something Awful to
have a very high level of dialogue, probably because you have to pay a small
fee for membership, and they aren't afraid to probate/ban people.

~~~
FrozenVoid
Paid forums are niche area, it will not be a reddit alternative: the "filter"
you describe is not geared towards maximum quality, but to enrich the owners
of the site.

They have financial incentive to ban at the slightest provocation, restricting
everything to safe and predictable "high-level dialogue" that can't challenge
the status quo.

Reddit thrives on multiple levels of "dialogue" segregated into their own
communities. Its pro-growth vs SA pro-elitist stance. Thats why SA will never
be a reddit alternative.

------
pmoriarty
Usenet.

It's a shame it's been mostly abandoned.

In so many ways it was reddit long before reddit even existed, and was
superior to it in so many ways.

~~~
dmix
Isn't that mostly a result of UI/UX problems? IRC has fostered a good
community of tooling. But the content side of Usenet seems to have been
completely ignored, outside of file sharing.

~~~
pmoriarty
What UI/UX problems does Usenet have?

My impression was that Usenet was abandoned mostly because it had a ton of
spam, and at the time there was no good solution to that.

These days, spam is not nearly as much of a problem, so the only obstacles to
its adoption of it are most users' ignorance of it, their psychological
dependence on their web browsers as their primary online communicaton tool,
and most importantly the network effects of reddit and other web forums being
much more popular.

~~~
pasabagi
It's also really hard to get into. If you just download a news reader, read
the manual, and go onto a random forum, you'll find a lot of weird
early-2000's spam, and maybe some (crazy) discussion, and it's really hard to
find active communities.

People who live there don't have these problems because they have big kill
lists, know which groups are interesting, and only download new stuff, which
is pretty spam-free.

------
urtrs
There is also a subreddit dedicated to alternatives
[https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives](https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives)

~~~
5_minutes
Oh,right yes ofcourse there's a subreddit for that...

------
ghthor
[https://steemit.com/trending/](https://steemit.com/trending/)

Where you should be able to turn your good karma back into something you can
use to buy food.

~~~
FrozenVoid
How its not filled with paid ads? The platform seems interesting technically,
but what prevents them from being swamped with promoted content/ads/blatant
spam?

------
viraptor
You can always use a third party app. That works around any website redesigns.

~~~
FrozenVoid
I actually read reddit with custom CSS filters and filtering userscripts(which
redesign (obviously) broke), i don't want a mobile app expirience.

~~~
catach
I expect that we'll soon see a handful of browser extensions that try to fix
the redesign.

------
ProAm
Its weird but Ive gone back to Digg. Really interesting articles without the
twitter-like commenting. Ive gone full circle it seems.

~~~
linsomniac
I mentioned Digg to a friend of mine the other day and he said "Oh, is that
still a thing?" I didn't realize that it was a thing to put Digg down. It and
HN are the two sites I go to in the morning to pick up news. HN I also go to
in the afternoon. Digg works really well for keeping me up to date on newsy
things.

------
vegn
I've been lurking and reading here for many years and have finally found the
place to jump in.

I want to submit [https://postwith.me](https://postwith.me) for consideration.
Our Twitter profile (@postwithme) describes it as: "Building a better social
community through civility, data privacy, and a meaningful exchange of ideas."

I wrote it as a side project over the past several months and then launched it
a few weeks ago when the Facebook stuff was happening. It's getting a fair
amount of traction and increasing engagement. We are still way within the "do
things that don't scale" phase.

From a tech standpoint, it is completely serverless. S3/CloudFront hosting a
React front-end (React Native apps almost done), API Gateway with Lambda
functions, DynamoDB and Redis.

Happy to answer any questions about the site or the tech stack.

------
startupflix
* Voat.co * Quora.com * Slashdot.org

~~~
arbitrage
Slashdot and voat are full of the beardiest necks on the Internet.

Quora is also showing signs of hardening of the arteries in its old age ...
not really fun places to go to if you're not fully indoctrinated in the
groupthink.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
I used to be a big fan of Quora but there seems to be a lot of spam and
deliberately provocative "political statements designed as questions" on there
these days. If it hasn't jumped the shark already it's certainly going through
the motions.

~~~
52-6F-62
I still am a big fan of Quora. There are a lot of great engineering and maths
question/answer threads I enjoy reading on there when they show up in my
inbox.

But you're absolutely right that more and more I'm receiving notifications of
questions like "What do Liberals do for fun?" "Why do Liberals hate Donald
Trump so much?" etc, etc etc.

Obvious trolling to spark anger, snark, or vitriolic response. It's toxic, and
a damned shame.

------
sebtoast
Here's my list of alternatives

[https://hubski.com/](https://hubski.com/)

[https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

[https://snapzu.com](https://snapzu.com)

[https://soylentnews.org/](https://soylentnews.org/)

and Voat, Slashdot.

~~~
catach
Hubski! I knew there was one I was forgetting.

Also, thanks for the Snapzu and Soylent mentions, those are new to me.

------
stephen82
What about [https://raddle.me/](https://raddle.me/) ?

------
Harkins
You can use the [https://Lobste.rs](https://Lobste.rs) codebase from
[https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters](https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters) .
Before I became the sysop of Lobsters I used it to start
[https://barnacl.es](https://barnacl.es) and the GitHub wiki has few more
sister sites. Drop by #lobsters on Freenode if you need help getting it
running.

------
wooshy
Just use 4chan

~~~
indiachan
Or use [https://indiachan.com/](https://indiachan.com/) An indian chan
inspired by 4chan.

~~~
indiachanuser
We apologize for our weirdo admin. We have no idea how he got out again

------
AnnoyingSwede
Being Swedish, i love Flashback.org - Ir's the best since unsliced bread you
can slice yourself.

------
nikopopol
You know there is a compact view similar to old design right ?

------
bpicolo
Use a reddit mobile app / site alternative which serves your use case better?
The official site/app is far from the only option.

~~~
narag
Your option... I wouldn't call it _alternative_ to be fair :) is against the
expected feelings in this comments section. But it's very reasonable. People
that visits subreddits can discuss what to do, either stay with the help of
some tool or move to greener pastures.

------
wellboy
Steemit, upvote via tokens and make money by getting upvotes.

Already alexa rank 1000

~~~
loceng
Is Steemit using an incentivized blockchain structure (like the
"cryptocurrencies" Bitcoin, Ethereum's Ether et al; Pyramid-Ponzi scheme),
where the value/cost to purchase their tokens increases with demand or based
on a price someone sets?

If it's running on incentivized crypto-asset structure then I personally feel
unless you're wanting to take advantage of uneducated/unaware population,
whereby as the value/price of the crypto-assets go up then society's wealth is
unreasonable/unnecessarily reallocated weighted towards the earliest adopters,
then I personally won't be using such services. I started to read their
whitepaper and it looks like they're attempting to create a "stable coin",
however those inherently seem to have similar problematic issues.

------
johnsnowtho
I made a reddit alternative that focused on removing the power from
moderators. It never really took off, although I do keep it up at this point.
[https://linkgum.com](https://linkgum.com)

------
kfrzcode
You could always spend your time on StackExchange!

------
djfrodo
really late to the party here, but
[https://headcycle.com](https://headcycle.com)

------
kenbolton
Roll your own:
[https://github.com/stephenmcd/drum](https://github.com/stephenmcd/drum)

------
y0ghur7_xxx
usenet

------
catach
lobste.rs is more of a HN replacement, but there you go.

~~~
FrozenVoid
Very nice to see it getting popular since i've last seen it. Seems even more
on-topic tech discussion than HN.

------
snikeris
yours.org

------
dznodes
fark.com

------
dvh
np.reddit.com

------
synthecho
I suggest Voat.

~~~
steaknsteak
The request was for a reddit alternative, not an alt-right reddit

------
repler
Ctrl-F "digg", no results. LOL. rip

~~~
27182818284
I get more value out of the modern Digg than I do the modern Reddit. If
someone reading this hasn't been to Digg in years, it isn't in the up-down-
vote format but rather a few curated articles and funny clips as the day goes
on.

It is different enough from modern Reddit that I wouldn't call them
competitors anymore.

------
dageshi
Anyone interested in alcohol/tobacco is going here [https://speak-
easy.club/](https://speak-easy.club/)

------
randomerr
Other then here, Voat is the best overall. Their source is on GITHub if you
want to roll your own.

[https://github.com/voat/voat](https://github.com/voat/voat)

If you want to do your own Reddit here are some clones, largely PHP based:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/77bhdx/phpbased...](https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/77bhdx/phpbased_selfhosted_reddit_clone/)

~~~
StavrosK
Isn't Voat infested with the_donald refugees?

~~~
catach
Enough to say that if someone's looking for a reddit replacement because they
don't want racism, voat is not the answer.

~~~
krapp
There is probably a niche for which a stripped down HN-like forum with
moderation but for general discussion might be moderately successful.. moreso
if it provides a robust API that allows for third party clients.

Maybe self-hosted forums will make a comeback.

~~~
catach
I don't think self-hosted forums ever left, really. But it's like IRC versus
modern messaging apps; there's been a huge amount of inflation in terms of
what user base "success" is supposed to look like.

