
Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta - ericbarnes
https://dotdev.co/voten-public-beta/
======
imran3740
As with voat.co, who's gonna switch to this? Really the only people who
switched over to Voat are the people who felt reddit was restricting their
rights by posting controversial/hateful material on reddit. So it tends to be
full of /pol-like MRAs/extreme right/alt-right users.

Voten seems like it's trying to implement a more democratic system, but who
will be pushed into switching over to that?

~~~
dkhenry
I dunno, with the recent changes reddit has been rolling out it is no longer a
nice place to visit. There is so much hate and anger on the front page and so
little good content. I could make an account, but it seems like they shadow
ban everyone except for bots ( and not just for content, the last two times I
was shadow banned it was because I logged in from my office IP address which
they deemed was "gaming" votes )

~~~
imran3740
Really? I've been on reddit for a few years now and there's plenty of
enjoyable content on the frontpage and now /r/popular. Sure, there's always
something about politics, but I think that's always been the case.

As for shadowbanning, reddit is taking steps to get rid of that altogether
[0], or at least they recognize that it's a bad system for actual users.

[0]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3sbrro/accou...](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3sbrro/account_suspensions_a_transparent_alternative_to/)

~~~
amorphid
I also like being able to filter out subreddits on /r/all. Every political
cycle, I get bombarded w/ political news on /r/all. I filtered out all of the
political content, including for candidates I like, and now I'm much happier!
When I want political content, I seek it out, and it's kind of hard to avoid
anyway.

------
znpy
Signed up, wandered around, here are my impression.

* Nothing fancy, nothing new, nothing impressive. I wouldn't spend time on this site.

* The graphical design wasters most of my screen estate.

* The side panel overlaps with the content when the window is not in full-screen.

* If you register without an email, it is impossible to add one.

* Did I mention that 60% of my screen estate is wasted ?

* Reddit is open source, this is not.

~~~
aphextron
I agree it's not perfect but we seriously need a reddit alternative. The
community there is simply too toxic and I've had to quit it. If there were a
HN like community centered around regular news aggregation I would be sooo
happy. As is, it's impossible to find a news feed I trust anymore. Google news
is infiltrated with fake clickbait nonsense, and I wont even get started on
Facebook.

~~~
pavel_lishin
> _The community there is simply too toxic and I 've had to quit it._

Which community? There are thousands of subreddits. Are you talking about the
people who use the default front-page subreddits?

~~~
nailer
I use the front page because I'm interested in what's popular. But someone's
angry "f--k (politician here)" rant isn't my idea of entertainment, even if I
don't like the politician, likewise various violence/creepy stuff that makes
the front page. Reddit doesn't let me block subs.

~~~
will4274
It does actually. You can exclude subs from /r/all.

~~~
nailer
Not according to /r/help:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/44498b/how_to_hide_or...](https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/44498b/how_to_hide_or_filter_a_subreddit_from_rall/)

> there is no basic Reddit feature which will hide or filter a subreddit from
> the /r/All page.

~~~
nsuser3
Well, the help is wrong then:
[http://i.imgur.com/YIEduLP.png](http://i.imgur.com/YIEduLP.png)

------
emodendroket
Anyone can create a forum; the question is why people would actually visit
this one instead of the existing alternatives. "Real-time" features don't seem
like that much of a draw and Reddit et al could easily implement them if they
were.

~~~
macey
A lot of people feel that Reddit is overmoderated - there was that controversy
recently where one of the employees admitted manually altering a bunch of
content (removing pro-Trump submissions and comments).

Also I imagine any general forum like Reddit wouldn't retain its power users
for more than a few years at most. At a given time, most users are either at
the point where they don't get any of the inside jokes, or where all of them
are getting old. So it might make sense to have a new one of these every once
in a while.

~~~
DanBC
> A lot of people feel that Reddit is overmoderated -

A tiny handful of people feel that Reddit is over moderated, and those people
went to voat or 8chan.

Everyone else thinks there's not enough moderation on Reddit.

When you ask people what the good bits of Reddit are they almost always talk
about the most heavily moderated sub-Reddits, which is telling.

~~~
Semaphor
Heavily moderated and/or a small and tightly focused subreddit (which usually
tend to not need heavy moderation)

------
tyingq
_" The app itself is powered by Laravel, Vue.js, Socket.io, and Node"_

Is there another Laravel other than the php one? Seems odd to roll out with
both php and node.js. I don't know why you would need both.

Edit: Yes, I see each has it's strengths. But that has to drive a lot of doing
the same thing twice, in two languages...they both interact with the same
data. I would guess time-to-market is important at launch to react to things
you missed. I would have settled on one or the other. Feels like premature
optimization.

~~~
seibelj
Nothing wrong with PHP, just use the right tool for the job, and the right
tool is based on existing skills, time to market, requirements, etc. If PHP
fits the bill, use PHP

~~~
tyingq
That's not what I said though. I'm asking why php AND node.js. One or the
other should suffice.

For websockets, as an example, HHVM+proxygen should be as performant as node.
Or, node should be roughly as good as php for developer speed on the normal,
not-websockets side of the house.

~~~
seibelj
In a microservices architecture, you might have many languages. And if you
have a PHP developer and a node.js dev, and you are trying to deliver as fast
as possible, that could be a reason to split it up.

~~~
tyingq
Writing everything twice for the speculative success of a brand new Reddit
clone doesn't qualify as "deliver as fast as possible" to me.

Edit: For clarity, I mean there would be significant overlap in areas like
data retrieval, sessions/auth, etc.

A Reddit like app would have read/write to and from the browser and to and
from the database for many data structures. Users, admins, moderators, topic
areas, topics, threads, users, etc. And different views depending on context.
You see more of your own profile, less of others...and similar for moderated
topic areas and so forth. So, 2 platforms means duplication of some of this
data access, update, marshalling, acls, sessions, etc.

Assuming the node.js part is for the "real time posts", via websockets, it
would need most of the above. Then, assuming php is handling the rest,
including profile edit, rendering everything but the posts, etc...it also
needs most of the above.

~~~
seibelj
I seriously doubt they are cloning all of their features in 2 languages, I
think they are just splitting up features into different tech stacks.

------
danso
Signed up...of all the recommended programming-related channels to show a
first-time user, why (after "opensource") are "vuejs" and "laravel" the
channels most spotlighted? As opposed to "programming" or even "javascript"?

On a sidenote, given that Reddit "growth-hacked" its early days by creating
fake accounts and the appearance of activity [0], it'd be funny to see Voten
use bots to simulate activity based on Reddit's years of activity. A slightly
less obvious version of www.reddit.com/r/SubredditSimulator, if you will.

[0] [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-reddit-got-
hu...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-
fake-accounts--2)

edit: One missing feature: I skipped out of the recommended channels feature
after signing up. OK, now I want to sign up for more channels. I've been
clicking random buttons and hamburger icons for a minute now and still
couldn't tell you how to find the channels I've subscribed to, nevermind all
the other existing channels. The "Search" menu appears to be the only place
where I can find new channels to add. But there's not a list of channels. I'm
just supposed to guess which channels already exist as I type into the
autocomplete?

~~~
rc_kas
Yeah, really hard to find channels. For #politics I had to type it into the
URL bar and visit it in order to subscribe.

------
codelitt
I know a lot of people are rather pessimistic about a Reddit competitor
gaining traction, but on a technology and UX note they've done a great job. I
signed up on mobile and browsed around. The user experience is miles ahead of
Reddit's new mobile web client. Pages load instantly, everything is smooth,
scaled well, and no tiny text to click. Well executed IMHO.

Regarding being a Reddit competitor, if they can get the content well seeded
and manage to allow unpopular opinions that are substantial then I would
gladly switch. HN has done a fairly good job of not allowing downvotes into
oblivion because someone disagrees with a popular opinion on the forum. It is
not perfect, but better than Reddit. Unfortunately HN is more or less a single
topic forum. I can't come here reliably for fishing discussions for example.
Likewise, it would be great if Voten can figure out a way to disincentivize
comments that are unconstructive or personal attacks but go along with the
narrative (another problem I see on Reddit).

So in short, my hope for the founders is that they can attract good users,
properly seed content until it takes off, and promote substantial and quality
comments regardless of viewpoint. I think they could be a good alternative at
a time when Reddit is becoming a victim of its own success.

~~~
ehsankia
> but on a [...] UX note they've done a great job

Really? Their UI is bloated and ridiculous. On my laptop screen I can see a
whopping two stories per page, compared to 10 on reddit. It's confusing,
crammed and poorly designed. There's a big useless sidebar on the left where
your eye automatically goes to, instead of the content.

It looks exactly like the project of young webdevs straight out of school who
are using all the fancy hip new tech and just learned about material design.

EDIT: One quick example of "not putting content first". Take a given story. At
the very top, in big, we have the username and their avatar. So to kick off,
it seems more like Twitter/Facebook than reddit. The user posting is given
more importance than the content itself...

~~~
codelitt
I haven't had the chance to see it on desktop yet. But on mobile it's much
better than Reddit's new mobile interface. Loading time alone is much better
for me.

Anyways, I was commenting on the UX on mobile was. The UI wasn't what I was
particularly focused on, but on mobile I found it much better as well.

------
wingerlang
Strange for a "reddit alternative" to have a _landing page_ instead of, you
know, content upfront like.. reddit.

------
Ono-Sendai
I made a website a bit like this: [http://suprsede.com/](http://suprsede.com/)

It's like reddit but each topic/page has a realtime chat.

Unfortunately it's rather infested by spammers currently :)

Getting traction for these social media sites is very tricky!

------
corobo
Login wall really hits my "cba" buttons, sorry. If it re-appears on my radar
with some more info behind it I'll give it a thought again.

To expand on that a little - if I forget and link an interesting comment
thread to a friend and they have to register to view it I look like a dork.
It's not happening.

~~~
dredmorbius
CBA == can't be arsed?

If so, completely agreed. That was one of Tzu's massive fails, though they
supplied same in quantity.

~~~
corobo
Yeah exactly. I imagine it's a forced register thing so that they can build a
userbase but I don't want to sign up without knowing what's there

I am aware my complaining has taken longer than just signing up but I'm
already registered and logged in here :P

------
kevingrahl
Aaand yet another reddit "alternative" and they all seem to fail or have
troubles gaining traction. I can recall voat.co, hubski.com and imzy.com (my
favorite so far) and now one more. I'd really like to know why devs think they
can rival Reddit, it's just too big.

~~~
aloisdg
I would like a decentralized Reddit.

~~~
CM30
Same here. And with all the hype Mastodon and GNU Social inspired Twitter
alternatives are getting now, I'm surprised no one's done the same for Reddit
yet. Or at least managed to advertise it heavily enough that people have heard
of it.

It'd certainly fix a lot of Reddit's issues with censorship (by making it so
the subreddit owners act like independent forum owners). Or if it's truly
decentralised rather than federated, by not having a single person or team
doing the moderation in general. And there'd certainly be no possibility of
the system losing CSS support...

------
dnrvs
The immediate problem is that the home page is a boring marketing page and not
content like reddit or hn

------
KirinDave
Has anyone signed up?

It's very interesting what the first topics are. There is a #conservatism with
8 members already, but you can't make #liberalism, #communism or #leftists.
"The_Donald" is "coming soon".

(Edit: I must have hit a bug because I tried with a few names and my attempts
just didn't do anything, but someone else did it immediately).

I wonder if this is like Gab, an attempt to make a more single-issue-politics-
friendly variant of a popular site.

~~~
dkhenry
I just signed up and created #liberalism to test it out. Worked just fine

[https://voten.co/c/liberalism](https://voten.co/c/liberalism)

~~~
ue_
Me too, I've created #Communism, works for me too. I didn't like how I had to
subscribe to other channels before it let me make my own, though.

[https://voten.co/c/communism/](https://voten.co/c/communism/)

~~~
KirinDave
Yeah, I edited my response to point out I think I hit a bug.

------
shakna
I'm not sold that real-time is a feature you want in your social site.

Reddit has an issue with lightweight throwaway comments already. Broad mostly-
right comments killing actual discussion.

Wouldn't adding real-time on top of that add up to the hell of teamspeak in
games with a bunch of kids?

It could go like IRC... But if you're saying you're like Reddit, I don't see
how it wouldn't devolve into pettyness.

------
yladiz
I'm not sure if I'm in the minority, but for a lot of content I ingest (news,
video) I don't have an account, or actively use one, on the service. The only
time I create an account is if I find the benefits of creating an account are
more than just visiting the service without an account. For example, I keep an
account on Youtube because I want to keep playlists and I don't mind if they
have my watch history as a result, but I don't keep an account on Reddit
because I just casually browse it without really participating (primarily
because I feel like most of the discussion, by the time I see it, is something
I can't add to, as opposed to a place like HN). And so for me, if this site is
registration only, I don't see a point if it is only to make it real time and
a "Reddit alternative" unless it's significantly better, but the most
important part of Reddit is the community aspect, which is hard to replicate.

------
root_axis
What will the moderation policy be like? Will forums in the vein of former
subreddits like coontown and jailbait be welcome?

Also, why choose a domain so close to voat.co for a reddit alternative?
Whether you're a fan/user of voat.co or not, i can see them being easily
confused or mistaken as related projects. They could have at least gone with
another tld.

------
55555
Real-time will lead to even 'lower quality' discussion. Consider email vs.
chat.

------
remx
For those looking for something similar there are these: Telescope[0],
Drum[1], Slashcode[2], and Microscope[3]

[0]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7861985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7861985)

[1]: [http://drum.jupo.org](http://drum.jupo.org)

[2]:
[http://www.slashcode.com/www.slashcode.com/](http://www.slashcode.com/www.slashcode.com/)

[3]:
[https://github.com/DiscoverMeteor/Microscope](https://github.com/DiscoverMeteor/Microscope)

------
stefanve
I have looked for an alternative for along time. Maybe this is something maybe
not. But I'm going to try :-). I love HN because you are able to have great
content and great conversations, but it is afk SE focused. A new platform for
other news would be great

Edit: created #agile was thinking of trying to create a agile focused HN and 1
minute later this came along :-). Anyway if this doesn't work out; DM me if
you are interested in starting something like a agile focused HN. Looking a
bit more fore the business / change management side of things instead of the
SE side of things.

Or if this already exists please point me to it :-)

------
koolba
Does this require log in to browse as well? I'd imagine that anonymous read
only viewing is larger percentage of the audience.

~~~
fischersully
It does requite a login but the registration doesn't require email address and
takes like 10 seconds

------
dkhenry
Looks really nice. Modern clean layout, uses OAuth2 for login. The content is
really light, but I guess we can see how that progresses

------
0xCMP
Honestly, I don't even like reddit for some reason. I can only handle HN. I
tried Imzy and others before too. I always come back to HN.

I feel like more of these websites may be able to succeed (not sure Reddit has
a network effect that could prevent another site from coming up), but I'm not
sure how necessary it is.

------
dmix
Reminds me of Prismatic. I'm still sad that site isn't around anymore. They
were doing some great ML research.

The combined this category based UX with recommendation algorithms and social
indicators. Worked well. But I believe they had trouble monetizing it or
potentially growing it to scale.

------
zzzzz_
Reddit is technology wise pretty simple - it's just one step up from a forum.
So these guys have re-implemented a forum and added a stack of features that
only a bunch of devs could come up with. Markdown support is mentioned twice
at the top of the features list!

Anyway this is a site by actual guys that used to work at Reddit so you'd
expect them to be pretty smart business orientated chaps right? Well they
launch, pull a few strings and get to the the first page on HN ... then they
immediately blunder by making you login to browse! Thankfully I was bored
enough to do so and as expected it's just a barren 'seed user' populated
scaled down version of reddit.

The biggest USP is real time and there's actually only me on there right now.
Last story was posted 35 mins ago. I logged in not expecting my favorite
reddits to be there, but for an exciting proof of concept. If I was in charge
of this company, me and my entire team including the tea lady would be logged
into at least 5 different accounts and we'd be creating a frenzy of real time
activity so that AT LEAST we give people an glimpse of what we're trying to
create.

Poorly executed - you'd really expect more from people with the resources to
self finance a start up like this, the connections to drive users to the app
and the experience of working for a top notch start up like Reddit for a
number of years.

~~~
epmaybe
To be fair, "logging in" is just making a username and password. No Email is
required. That's really not a huge deal to me, but maybe others disagree.

~~~
hashkb
It's a huge deal if you care about conversion. Anyone with web experience
should know this.

~~~
epmaybe
Are you talking about converting people from Reddit to Voten? Maybe the point
is that they want more people to actively contribute rather than just lurk? It
could just be a different opinion on what a Reddit alternative could look
like.

~~~
mentalpiracy
Lurking encourages user participation in the long run. Sure, a few people will
be early adopters and begin contributing with enthusiasm, but a larger chunk
of users prefer to consume content passively before making the decision that
contributing is worth it for them.

Turning away your potential audience with an immediate demand to register is a
great way to make sure your content isn't read.

~~~
type0
> Lurking encourages user participation in the long run.

I bet most folks started to use HN after they lurked for a while. I think it's
not uncommon to lurk for weeks or months first before one decides to join.

------
Huhty
Here's a few more alternatives: [https://www.inc.com/amy-vernon/3-reddit-
alternatives-for-the...](https://www.inc.com/amy-vernon/3-reddit-alternatives-
for-the-diaspora.html)

------
pavel_lishin
I wonder what their moderation is going to be like; it looks like you can't
create your own channels (subreddits) yet, so the admins are on the hook for
moderating the entire site, yes?

Or are they going to take on a complete hands-off approach?

------
DHNawo
Been browsing this for a little bit now. Honestly, the creator doesn't sound
like he has a clear vision for what the site should be and how it should
function. The UI overall is pretty slick.

------
Shorel
As a Reddit alternative, and given that the domain name is in Spanish, at
least they could make the rest of the site in Spanish.

Make it useful for people in Venezuela.

It is the only reason I would use it over Reddit.

------
need2sleep
Looks dope, but not usable over Tor.

Requests to the API are returned with a 403 code.

------
noway421
The product did not need to be 2 years in development, there is not much need
in so much features and niceties. The main value of reddit is the content and
vast network of users.

------
shireboy
Realtime is interesting. I'd suggest cramming way more stories on a page.
HN/Reddit work for me because I can glance the top 20-30 things.

------
iofiiiiiiiii
Well it took me a minute to find out how to post and now the Submit button is
even greyed out.. what the hell?

------
Xeoncross
So this makes me wonder: HN what would you want in a reddit alternative that
HN doesn't provide?

------
dkarapetyan
I'm starting to think submitting PR pieces about Reddit clones on HN does more
harm than good.

------
omarforgotpwd
Yeah, just what I need a notification for every time someone responds to one
of my comments.

------
hosker4u
Tried to sign in with Facebook but did not work (and the login button seems
odd looking).

------
kr0
Can't see the content without signing up (regardless of email). Bye.

------
ratsz
Looks good so far. How do I change my account password?

------
pranavsinghca
Curious to know if this site applied to YC. Anyone know?

------
homero
There's also voat and imzy

~~~
dredmorbius
Imzy: [https://redd.it/500ysb](https://redd.it/500ysb)

~~~
homero
Imzy just closed unexpectedly

------
nassir
Not worth it

------
rimjeilly
so... I signed up... but I doubt it will catch on.. ala voat.co

------
Profragile
Connect with FB is broken.

------
pvnick
Best of luck. Reddit needs a good kick in the arse. Since shortly before Steve
Huffman's (Spez) return, Reddit has adopted a policy of top-down content
curation - banning controversial subreddits, changing the voting algorithm to
dis-favor /r/the_donald, and most recently introducing /r/popular which is
basically /r/all without that pesky /r/the_donald subreddit (ffs just man up
and ban the group rather than pretending to support the free exchange of
ideas).

Reddit management prefers for their website to only showcase non-controversial
content in order to attract advertisers. Which is their right, but I'm rooting
for the disruptive upcomer that will kill that website like Reddit originally
did to Digg back when Reddit was cool and stood for something.

~~~
oridecon
Reddit is still bearable if you ignore the frontpage/popular subs. Nothing new
but it got way worse the last couple of years.

\- Look at this cute dog (drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola)

\- I broke my leg this morning (while holding this can of Pepsi)

\- Thread that shouldn't be on the frontpage (and the top comment is: "I bet
he bought it at Walmart")

\- Cool drone video (literally filming an ad)

\- Photo of CharmingGuyMcAbs and/or CharmingGirlMcBoobs (Positive
Reinforcement)

> I'm rooting for the disruptive upcomer

Doesn't look anything like Digg/MySpace days unless they somehow find a way to
kill the "smaller" communities. Even the outbound click thing (or the new
frontpage) didn't made any real impact from what I can tell.

But who knows, maybe you're right and someone comes up with a killer feature.
Or an UI that doesn't suck so bad that you need a mandatory browser extension
(that fries your CPU).

~~~
dredmorbius
/r/hailcorporate

~~~
oridecon
Why would I go to a sub that points to obvious shills and product placements?
I'm only giving more views to their images. Maybe hailcorporate was made by
the same people.

(X-Files theme song)

~~~
dredmorbius
It's not so much that you'd want to hang there, as to observe that the problem
is noted ("hail corporate" is a deeply ironic name), and fairly well
documented.

In other news, Reddit have announced some changes to their spam management
today.

~~~
dredmorbius
For those breathlessly wondering what the spam announcement was:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/6bj5de/state_of_sp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/6bj5de/state_of_spam/)

/r/spam will be going away. Better automated tools. Moderators (usually) rawk.

