
Text-Only Social Network - lcnmrn
https://subreply.com/trending
======
thrownaway65535
Formerly known as "Sublevel":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8111691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8111691)

------
joe_the_user
When you say "social network", do you mean Twitter Clone?

It seems like developers in particular have come to regard Twitter as
archetypal social networks despite it's many problems and the way the user
doesn't really much ability to define their own social graph. IE, N-character
limit is still a determiner of Twitter (poisonous) discourse quality, just for
example and Twitter isn't something most people enjoy being on but I think
it's what people get on to seem/feel important.

I think by earlier terminology Facebook/Myspace/Friendster/linkedin are social
networks and Twitter/Mastodon/etc are "microblogging services".

I think the clone-Twitter impulse is kind of terrible. Not even to say
Facebook is inherently better but because I don't think ways of defining one's
own social network have been exhausted by all the networks out there (Discord
is another format with increasing presences which shows that new ways of
organizing connections are still possible).

~~~
ehsankia
The character limit is the last of Twitters issue, in my opinion. I think the
#1 issue is the retweet model, it leads to people just brainlessly sharing low
effort content with a single click. It's similar to how fake news and
misleading content thrive on Facebook. But notice how Instagram where it's
impossible to easily re-share content (well, you can now in stories) is far
less toxic.

~~~
inopinatus
An honest UI might use the word “echo” rather than “retweet”.

~~~
bigiain
Perhaps "parrot", given the parent platform's choice of terminology?

"I totally made the world a better place today! I , ummm, yeah. So. I just
parroted an actual activist's well thought out and carefully composed tweet,
instead of doing anything of substance at all myself... What am I doing with
my life? <sobs>"

~~~
zimpenfish
> instead of doing anything of substance at all myself

Does amplification of messages count as "nothing of substance"? "Getting the
message out" is a crucial part of activism, is it not?

------
andreygrehov
This is the only JavaScript file they use [0]. It's a pure joy.

[0]
[https://subreply.com/static/script.js?v=6](https://subreply.com/static/script.js?v=6)

~~~
jcun4128
Why do (almost) all the functions have event.preventDefault() ?

~~~
dgb23
Not on desktop right now to inspect.

But this is typically the most compatible way to prevent standard anchor and
button (or others) functionality.

If you want the specific answer you could inspect where these handlers are
attached to and then check the MDN documentation for default behavior.

------
jbaudanza
I wanted to see how it would handle non-ascii text so I typed 안녕하세요 and it
romanized it to annyeonghaseyo. (This is "hello" in Korean). I did not expect
that.

I really like the idea of a text-only social network, so I hope this takes
off. I think the author should consider supporting other languages though.
Seeing romanized text isn't very helpful to people that actually want to read
or write in other character sets. It's a cute feature though.

~~~
blotter_paper
From the about section (emphasis added):

>Subreply was created by Lucian Marin from the desire of a having a simple to
use, _English only_ , public forum that has nothing in common with ancient and
untrustworthy social networks.

[...]

>Limitations

>480 characters per reply _ASCII only because it works everywhere_

I could see this being a xenophobic thing, but I could also see it being more
about the limited character set (for minimalism). I'm not making a claim about
the motivations, but either way your desire seems counter to his vision.

~~~
unityByFreedom
Where does Unicode not work? It’s been everywhere for years

~~~
aabbcc1241
Because the content density varies in different languages.

For example, each english word has ~7 ascii chars, but each chinese / japanese
/ korean words only has ~2 unicode chars

~~~
unityByFreedom
That doesn’t have anything to do with the tech being standard and easy to
implement.

------
carrolldunham
As seen on twitch, letting people put emojis in their name on a black and
white site sets up a system where scanning eyes just see those eye-candies and
skip over the rest. This is useful on twitch as it highlights the streamer's
paying subscribers but here it's just whoever is more obnoxious.

~~~
pippy
Putting a filter: grayscale(); over the title makes the emojis melt more into
the text. it makes it a bit more readable.

~~~
carrolldunham
At that point why not just filter images from twitter?

~~~
andyfleming
Some posts not might make sense without the image as opposed to a post that’d
not intended to have an image.

Also, there’s an argument to be made for emojis adding tone, albeit lazily.
Grayscale sounds like an interesting middle ground.

------
chrismartin
We can't embed media but we can still link to it? I welcome efforts to
encourage higher-quality discussion on social media, but I don't see how this
gets us there.

[https://subreply.com/about](https://subreply.com/about)

"Subreply was created by Lucian Marin from the desire of a having a simple to
use, English only, public forum that has nothing in common with ancient and
untrustworthy social networks."

What does "untrustworthy" mean in this context, and how is Subreply easier to
trust by comparison? The entire terms are "be nice or else". What exactly does
"nice" mean and what are the consequences of violating this vague standard? It
doesn't say. I don't understand how that's trustworthy.

~~~
herbstein
And as with most moderation, how explicit can "I" be when advocating for
genocide before getting booted? Do I have to just not spout slurs, or do I
have to hide it even better?

I think moderators would do nicely to consider that not all negativity
manifests as "niceness". If I were to say "trans women are just gay men trying
to score straight men" (a real opinion of some) there's nothing contained just
within that statement that makes it "un-nice", but the thought expressed is
exceedingly vile. If someone else then replies "You're a horrible bigot" that
would very much be a break with "niceness" or civility - is _that_ allowed?

Moderation is harder than it looks, and I've seen forums descent into racist
hellholes because moderators only cared about civility and niceness. This has
slowly become my number one concern with new forums and places of discussion.

~~~
amwelles
So far, your username _can_ be a racist slur and they’re not intending to stop
it. It’s a no-go for me.

------
lucb1e
Tried registering, I usually try the username luc on sites to see if it's
still free. But that is an "invalid username", no explanation given. So what,
do I need to add numbers and special characters? Is my legal name too short?
Is it already in use? This tells me nothing.

Also, the about page is contradictory:

> [brain][muscles] one or two emojis instead of avatars

> [...]

> ASCII only because it works everywhere

Hmm hmm, I see. Emojis work so everywhere that I have to [substitute] them to
even talk about it here. Seems to me like "we don't do encoding because it's
hard" more than because it works everywhere: any device with emoji support
will also at least support the basic characters -- perhaps a unicode snowman
won't exist in some fonts, but surely a character like µ should work... This
is not just about other languages, either: °C, µm, different length dashes,
etc. are regular non-ASCII symbols that occur in English.

And no, "ASCII only" is not meant in the sense of "plain text only". Any non-
US ASCII is converted (ç->c, ÿ->y, ś->s, µ->u).

~~~
masukomi
> ASCII only" is not meant in the sense of "plain text only". Any non-US ASCII
> is converted (ç->c, ÿ->y, ś->s, µ->u).

wow... way to give the finger to the majority of the world.

------
moxplod
I thought that was what HN was.

~~~
waheoo
Not enough emojis.

~~~
totetsu
Emoji dictionaries for google Japanese input / mozc
[https://github.com/iveskins/google.input.dic](https://github.com/iveskins/google.input.dic)

( ･_<)┏ ﾊﾞｷｭｰﾝ! …———o (that ones a pistol)

------
kristaps
It's 2020 and "Last name should use English alphabet" when entering an
accented Latin letter...

------
ketanmaheshwari
"About -> Limitations: ASCII only because it works everywhere"

This should be in the features. It is the strongest selling point of the site
as I see it.

~~~
crazygringo
So... even if it's English-only, I can't quickly refer to a price in £ or € or
¥? Or that it's 90°F out? I can't talk about my fiancée? I can't even use
“proper quotes”?

Yikes.

These days, talking about the "benefits" of ASCII-only is like talking about
the "benefits" of HTTP over HTTPS, or the benefits of dial-up as opposed to
broadband.

No thanks. It's exclusionary and for zero good technical reason. For every
reasonable programming language, there are functions to do everything in UTF-8
that you can do in ASCII, with about the same complexity.

In 2020, why are you going _out of your way_ to prevent people from typing the
honest-to-goodness useful characters they want to communicate with? _In
English?!_ Where exactly does UTF-8 _not_ work, that this site does?

~~~
leephillips
Stay tuned for my uppercase-only social network. Also, we don’t allow the
letter Z nor semicolons, as they are rarely used.

~~~
bigiain
Wanna try making that the letter E?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gadsby_\(novel\))

~~~
leephillips
Yes, that always astonished me. This novel is famous, but I’ve never met
anyone who’s actually read it.

~~~
bigiain
I have :-)

It is, as you and everybody you know seems to have worked out, not really
worth the effort, unless you are amused in just the right way by such things.

(I did start the French novel influenced by it, but my decades-rusty high
school French comprehension was not up to the task...)

~~~
leephillips
Is that by Queneau? (Probably spelled that wrong.)

~~~
bigiain
I'd love to make a gag about how it couldn't possibly be - because Queneau has
the letter e in it twice...

But the one I was referring to is La Disparition by Georges Perec - with the
letter e four times... :shrug:

~~~
enriquto
in my edition of "la disparition" the author is written as "gorgs prc"

------
kyoob
Clicked through and the username of someone who'd replied in the thread on the
front page was a racial slur. That's enough to turn me away. I'm no prude, but
allowing someone to drop a bomb like that in their handle is a big broken
window. Doesn't instill hope that I'd have a lot of positive interactions with
the folks in this community.

------
russellbeattie
Bringing back social isn't about getting rid of images and focusing on ASCII
text, it's about getting rid of URLs and article snippets, and refocusing
solely on user created content. Remember when streams were only filled with
updates from old friends and family with things like birthday parties,
vacations, graduations, concerts, restaurant meals, etc., and _nothing_ else?
(Sort of like Instagram still is, but with text allowed, two-way authorization
only and without the "influencers".)

Now you log in (FB, Twitter, etc.) only to find out which of your casual
acquaintances are the most gullible, racist, sexist, homophobic, sociopathic
or worse by the news items they're spewing into their increasingly extreme
echo chamber. Sure, the same thing could be conveyed by a selfie wearing a
MAGA hat, but it would happen much, much less often.

All these services would have to do to get back to their social roots is
provide a default filter for news items. But they refuse, and in fact are
increasingly manipulating your feed instead to increase "engagement" (read:
anger and hate).

I'm amazed that a social- _only_ network hasn't taken off yet that provides
this basic functionality. It feels like the time is right for something like
this.

~~~
soneca
I am trying to build exactly this, positioning as a personal journal that you
can share. But the end game is exactly what you described.

I'd love to have your feedback if you care to take a look:
[https://www.quidsentio.com](https://www.quidsentio.com)

~~~
ilovetux
I'm not the gp, but i like the look and feel of the site. I also love the
idea. I've been using group messages (mms) for this purpose and its been
working great. It has the advantage that nobody needs to go to a website or
download an extra app, but it has the drawback that sometimes people forget
that I started a group message and will use that thread to start a new
conversation with someone and people get messages that were not intended for
them.

I'm interested in the claim that its impossible to share content with someone
that doesn't have permission. How do you protect against copy/paste or
screenshots?

~~~
soneca
Thanks!

About the sharing, I am sorry, but I didn't want to claim that it is
_impossible_ to share. I will check the phrasing, but the idea is that it
doesn't have a _sharing feature_ (like retweeting or the share button on
phones). You can't click on a button to _forward_ the content. You still can
copy/paste and screenshot normally.

It is not built-in, so not encouraged by design.

~~~
ilovetux
> there is no way to share content outside of the list of who posted it.

I can see how I misunderstood. Still it seems like it might be a good
compromise and would get me around the issue I described with mms of
unintentional sharing. I'm going to see if I can get some of my family and
friends to sign up with me.

~~~
soneca
That's great! Your feedback will be very valuable (you can just reply the
Welcome email).

Btw, I just changed that line to:

 _Also, there is no feature to share content outside of the list of who posted
it._

------
aymeric
I want this to succeed. There is something pure and calming about the idea.

Design wise though, I suggest making the content (text written by users)
easier to read / scan.

Right now, the usernames are more prominent than the comments.

Have you tried putting the username and timestamp on the same line as the
content?

Also maybe use grey colors for less important text.

------
cosmotic
Basically half the messages have an emoji in it, so I would not describe it as
"text only"

~~~
alexwennerberg
I would argue that emojis would fit within a technical definition of "text".
They fit inside the text/* mimetype.

~~~
reaperducer
So do uuencoded and base64-encoded images.

...and we're right back where we started from.

~~~
alexwennerberg
True, but my terminal, web browser, phone, and text editor don't render
base64-encoded images in-line, nor is base64 encoding part of the Unicode
spec. Emojis behave much more like text than like images.

------
mudlus
I wish there was just a protocol to do what Twitter does. Oh wait:
[https://activitypub.rocks/](https://activitypub.rocks/)

~~~
Can_Not
Is that abandoned? digging deeper I see the test suite has been down for at
least a year.

------
newman8r
I've been trying to make something along those lines at podaero.com, and I'm
actually trying to get HN users to join some of the small groups... see here
if interested [https://podaero.com/info/hacker-
pod](https://podaero.com/info/hacker-pod)

~~~
ekr
I did try signing up. The second I ran into the activity requirement quota I
quickly got out of there. That's a huge red flag for me, why is there a quota
imposed on me? Are you paying users or something? Why expect free work to be
done?

~~~
newman8r
I'm experimenting with it and I might get rid of it. It's mostly just to try
to keep the group active, because it's a small group and if the activity level
dies out, the group dies out.

But thanks for the feedback, I'm making a note of it.

~~~
zem
I once watched a livejournal group die in < 24 hours because the mod suddenly
decided it was too dead and put in a rule saying anyone who didn't keep up a
certain level of posting would be evicted. the thing is, it really didn't
matter if no one posted much; posts were aggregated with all the other groups
and journals people followed, so when someone did post something it was seen
and the large lulls between posts didn't bother anyone. the minute the new
rule was announced there was a general stampede for the door and the mod left
there saying "but I was only trying to revive the group!"

my general takeaway from that was that people might get annoyed when you tell
them what they are not allowed to do on your site, but most of them will roll
their eyes and put up with it. if you tell them what they have to do they will
simply drop the site and never look back.

~~~
newman8r
I think in this scenario, where some sort of rule is imposed upon a group
that's already been established, people would be justifiably pissed off.

I do my best to make the activity requirements clear upfront, so the only
people who will be upset are those who choose not to sign up anyway. For me,
the far bigger challenge is learning how to define these "rules" in a way that
makes the group sustainable over the long run - which is to the benefit of
everyone involved. While the idea of having to post once every 25 days may
seem unnecessary, if 100 people followed it to a tee, you're going to have a
group that remains active indefinitely.

I do see your point, and I agree that if any sorts of hard rules are to be
imposed upon a discussion, it needs to be done tactfully.

------
aahortwwy
This is cool. I'm glad people are working in this direction.

A common theme that I've noticed among recent upstart social efforts is a
focus on platform and/or policy differentiation. I personally believe this is
not very important during the phase where a social network is working to reach
critical mass. It seems to me that most successful social networks got their
start by offering users unique content, by targeting existing, tight-knit
communities, or through some combination of the two. Platform and policy help
shape the social network, but there needs to be a network to be shaped in the
first place - they don't form magically.

------
Upvoter33
Gains popularity. Suddenly a new thing that may become a better social
network! Then, bought by Facebook for $2B.

The End.

~~~
Jaruzel
With $2B in your bank account, do you really care if that's the end result ?
;)

------
jtvjan
How about adding a `latest top level posts' page? Many posts that you see on
the search page don't make sense without seeing the post they're in reply to.

------
ewired
Oops! I made an account and logged out from within Settings so I could read
over more of the about page, but I got stuck with Internal Server Error on the
whole site. I deleted the "identity" cookie from site storage, which was an
empty string after logging out. I logged back in and it seems to be working as
normal. Other than that, I really like the vibe of Subreply, nice work.

------
enriquto
> English only

I understand that they limit the text to ascii. But many other languages can
be (sort of) written using only ascii characters. How do they want to enforce
that? Do they block users who speak other languages? It sounds callous to me.
A great thing about twitter is precisely that it allows to form communities of
speakers of tiny, globally irrelevant languages.

------
dgzl
Was thinking about a dating app where you only get to reveal a few
photos/ability to message after answering a short multiple choice quiz managed
by the user. The questions can be arbitrary but the point is that the pursued
gets to control which pursuer can get to their profile via question
navigation. This could help throw off unwanted pursuers.

------
root_axis
I can't use my personal e-mail domain to sign up. I do not like that.

------
benbristow
So it's Twitter but with no features? Why?

~~~
faeyanpiraat
Without media it could be run at scale cheaper

~~~
benbristow
What will happen is that people will just post links to imgur/giphy etc like
they used to when Twitter came out.

Eventually for convenience they’d start getting embedded on the page.

The tracking implications with embedding media would occur. The media would
either be proxied (same/more? bandwidth usage, less storage needed though) or
just self hosted and then we’re back to Twitter again.

Twitter added features for a reason

~~~
TheMblabla
You assume that they'd support embedding even though they say their MO is to
be text-only? I could see them just resisting support for that, and the type
of content adapting accordingly

------
aaroninsf
I would like to see a video-faces-only social network.

Setting aside the topic of lookism and other bias issues,

I assert that the apparently intrinsic and inevitable degradation of low-
bandwidth communication into tribalism and discord,

would be greatly retarded by a universal requirement for real-time high-
bandwidth messaging.

Yes, this would break a lot of other qualities/features; but I'd be willing to
give it a try.

(Stretch goal, looking-the-camera/image-in-the-eye as an additional
requirement...)

I know this is counter to the frictionless, skim and summarize and react many-
parallel-sources sipping-from-the-stream relationship we have evolved with out
various extent social media platforms....

...but it's about time we tried something really different, in pursuit of
finding a better balance between our technologies and our humanity, to put it
grandly.

------
guywithabike
It’s nice that people are trying different things but the N word is plastered
all over the site and when I emailed Lucian about it, he was curt and
dismissive and told me to use a “delete” button that doesn’t work. Subreply
has no guards against abuse.

~~~
tommit
Further yet, there is one guy who chose the N word as their username and they
are just bitching about censorship. I don't get it.

------
mxuribe
I like the premise of sort of simplifying things a bit..but nowadays I'm not
signing up for any centralized system/network if i can avoid it. For me, an
important criteria would be if it can federate (that is, not be centralized),
and additionally, ideally if i can self-host my own instance. Gone are the
days where i blindly sign up for systems that are centralized. I should
clarify that i'm by no means bashing the people behind this effort - kudos to
them for trying new stuff! With no offense to them, I'm merely noting that if
this effort were combined with the fediverse efforts, then it would interest
me.

------
65536
I prefer image boards and posting anonymously.

For example, see this mobile friendly image board:

[http://minichan.org/](http://minichan.org/)

I’d like to see more of the HN crowd come there. It might raise the quality of
the content on Minichan.

~~~
bigiain
So you'd prefer a proprietory centralised re-invetion of usenet (with
binaries) rather than this proprietory centralised re-invention of IRC?

~~~
65536
It’s not proprietary.

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

It’s open source and MIT licensed.

Usenet is flooded with spam to the point of being unusable, and besides,
having everyone use the same interface and see images alongside is different
from having people use a multitude of different clients that present binary
attachments in various different ways.

With a decently sized crowd from HN, there could be a lot of interesting
content on a Minichan like site. The crowd would be small enough that I don’t
think there would be much point in decentralizing it. Besides, with
centralization then mods still have a fighting chance of keeping the quality
of the posts up to par, if they felt so inclined.

The value of anonymous discussion is that every thread is a fresh start. You
can express yourself about what’s on your mind without be constrained by your
own desire to make everything you say fit into some bigger picture of an
identity of self. If that makes sense. But also, it is different from making
throwaway accounts on sites where all other people are using identities.
Admittedly on Minichan there are many people that use names and tripcodes. But
the ability for threads to exist where everyone is on an equal footing is
valuable.

I’m thinking not so much in terms of discussion itself actually but in terms
of creative potential. At their peak, chan style imageboards can be amazingly
creative.

Imagine an imageboard with people from HN, where people were producing
graphics and music like in the Demoscene, but together and for no purpose
other than creativity itself. No names or anything. Just pure unfiltered
creativity.

~~~
bigiain
> It’s not proprietary.

Yeah. I was being snarky without enough context to make myself clear there...
Sorry.

> Usenet is flooded with spam to the point of being unusable,

What mechanisms do you see in place to stop this being an inevitable result
for Minichan as well? It's a social problem not a technical one...

> With a decently sized crowd from HN, there could be a lot of interesting
> content on a Minichan like site.

Maybe. pg's recent comment about the amount of time and effort it has taken to
curate this community into some semblance of civility suggest even "we, the
magnificent HM community" are subject to the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory
as well... (I've had a few "bad days" and needed pulling into line by dang or
others over the years...)

> Imagine an imageboard with people from HN

From what pg says, that'll most likely end up closer to 4Chan that HN -
without several people in full time (well paid) roles who's job description
includes community management/moderation (and who are good at it).

HN is a magical place _only_ because YC values it enough to have people like
pg and dang and scott spend as vast chunk of their paid time making it this
way. Those of us who benefit from this place owe a debt to pg's vision and
YC's commitment, and are lucky it was founded by someone like pg instead of
moot. (And at the same time, people who benefit from 4Chan owe similar thanks
for diametrically opposed visions there.)

~~~
65536
These are good points and I think you are right. I just wish it was possible
for such a dream place like I wish for to exist.

~~~
bigiain
I think they _do_ exist. Transiently and briefly.

For me, they recur maybe once every 5-10 years or so and last about the same
sort of time period?? Here since 2009. Twitter circa 2008 or so. Burningman in
the early 2000s. ASR on usenet in the late '90s

Things change, they run their course - and I change and the things I want
become different. Some people rant and demand things "go back the way they
were", but by then the people who made it "the way things were" have moved on
to a new thing, and new people have grown up and started building new things
they think are better than the old people had.

Hold on to your dream, but realise that you may have to either chase it around
the internet as it moves (and work out how to find it when you one day wake up
are realise it's gone from the old place), or make it yourself as part of a
team prepared to put in the hard work required to shape it the way you think
is right.

(While I personally think 4Chan is a total shit show, I have no doubt moot
invested enormous effort in making it or helping it become what _he_ wanted in
the world. A whole different sort of effort than pg/deng/scott/YC/others put
in here, but I have no doubt moot complained bitterly to his friends how hard
it was dealing with things like lawyers and hosting companies and all the
other things that become a problem when you decide you need to make a thing
like 4Cahn exists in the world...)

------
syntaxing
Neat idea but...seems like its IRC all over again?!

~~~
Fuzzwah
IRC but slower...

------
swagonomixxx
Pages load quite fast, I'm assuming not a lot of JavaScript being used
(haven't checked the Network tab to see what was downloaded).

I have no use for social networks of any kind, but I guess if you want a non-
cancerous Twitter, this looks like one.

------
1f60c
At first I thought this would be a literal text-only social network, à la
txti.

------
DarkContinent
How are you handling content moderation?

------
TeaDude
Always considered doing this sort of thing but with a more myspace-y lean but
never did because I knew the users would still find ways to ruin it in
multiple ways.

Off the top of my head people could still just link to media and it would make
grooming far easier without any expectations of profile photos.

This is all compounded by the fact that text is much harder to moderate than
images as you can't immediately read the situation at a glance and it's not
like moderating a normal social network was ever an easy task anyway.

------
johnsas828
These guys are building a subscription-based social network. It's a freemium
model. Best part is that they are sharing 70% of their subscription fees with
original content creators. Every time someone likes your post you'll make
money. It's an interesting idea.[https://sivaapp.xyz/](https://sivaapp.xyz/)

------
amwelles
No report button. Already seeing racist usernames.

------
fallat
Could've easily been done with ActivityPub.

~~~
thosakwe
"Easily" isn't really that true here.

------
foxhop
Please let me follow people.

Next let me see all the people I follow on a "pintrest" style page. I should
be able to see only their latest subreply.

Most recent subreply to oldest.

I hit refresh when I'm ready for updates.

If I want to see all of somebodies subreplies I will click their username to
see all the threads they have created.

~~~
TheMblabla
I think you can follow/unfollow people. I agree though, it would be nice to
see more than a list of usernames in the 'following' page

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patcon
As i understand, there's some evidence that visual social networks are
preferred by females, e.g. pinterest.

I recall a hypothesis that it has to do with women (or rather, neurotypes
bell-curving around female gender identification) tending to use social media
to discuss interpersonal and emotion-based content rather than facts and
knowledge-sharing. There is more value placed on relationships with others
when using social networks, which perhaps is bolstered by visual elements.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026840121...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401219300696)

I do wonder whether text-based social networks (e.g., some subreddits,
slashdot, HN, mailing lists) are biased toward making a certain sort of mind
and neurotype more comfortable. And without those neurotypes, what ways of
seeing might that community also now be lacking...

disclosure: i usually identify more with feminine ways of relating to
knowledge and people, than masculine ones.

~~~
swiley
I wouldn’t think of reddit as text based. Most of the self posts in subreddits
I’m subscribed to link to i.reddit.com or imgur.

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dvtrn
I saw this shared here some time ago and never could find it again, appreciate
you resurfacing this!

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jbaber
I thought "text-only" meant it was somehow riding over SMS which was blowing
my mind.

Still a nice idea.

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slim
That was Twitter in 2007

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abductee_hg
"irc"? :)

~~~
tomrod
Or HN!

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njsubedi
They should do some kind of username filtering though. It's much easier
because everything is in English, so a blacklist of words could do the job. I
found several offensive username and names within few minutes of browsing the
site.

~~~
usr1106
blocklist

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23801134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23801134)

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6510
Firefox, after registering, asks to save the second name rather than the
username.

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latchkey
"English only"

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rawoke083600
Wow really awesome , feels like ascii reddit, but better company.

I love the 'about us' page/format. Im definitely stealing (lending) it for my
upcoming project.

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amelius
I feel like I've become less social since the advent of social networks.

And the catch-22 is that quitting social networks seems to make the problem
even worse.

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timwaagh
I have to say it looks very clean, but I can't live with the lack of
internationalisation, so personally I will have to pass.

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edu
Really nice, the big question is who to follow and how to find them. Twitter
solved that masterfully on their on-boarding experience.

~~~
gverrilla
yes because social networks are intended to follow webcelebrities, tv
celebrities, brands, and government leaders, alright! great job twitter

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smhmd
I really hope this takes off. I already love it to the exclusion of Twitter
with its thought leader wannabes and tech comedians.

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basedtho
How do I post? There's no send button

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devenblake
Just press enter.

~~~
basedtho
thanks! i've solved it

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zemo
it's more than five years old but the username @fart wasn't taken so I'm
pretty sure it's not taking off anyway I'm
[https://subreply.com/fart](https://subreply.com/fart)

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btomar
The best thing I liked is their Terms policy 'Be nice or else' :)

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bugmen0t
> ASCII only because it works everywhere

 _cries in his native language_

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MR4D
Loads fast at least.

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dorianmariefr
nicely done, maybe searching for hashtags should only return hashtags used and
not a generic search for the keyword

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democracy
FidoNet was my text-only social network...

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motohagiography
What a profoundly subversive idea.

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johnchristopher
Like it. No logging out ?

~~~
ketanmaheshwari
If you mean to ask how to log out -- click on your username and it will show
you link to sign out. I had similar trouble and took a bit to figure.

~~~
johnchristopher
Thanks, someone hinted to it in a random conversation. Links should always be
underlined if they aren't a button or a menu item.

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anthk
Ah, yes, usenet.

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mshockwave
isn't this similar to Japan's 2ch?

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cessor
you mean... like irc?

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techgiant_guy
Social distancing is must and most of the businesses are thinking about re-
opening their businesses.

Check Safe Back to Work Plan for Your Business - [https://l1n.com/safe-back-
to-work-plan-for-your-business/](https://l1n.com/safe-back-to-work-plan-for-
your-business/)

