Voten.co, a Real-Time Reddit Alternative Launches Public Beta
dotdev.coAs 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?
> who's gonna switch to this?
Probably no one. But you also need to keep in mind that most HN readers probably have a very skewed perception of what Reddit is. E.g. basically my entire 11+ year experience with Reddit is reading and commenting on subreddits that aggregate articles about various topics. But the vast majority of subreddits either allow only self-posts, or else only allow links to one or two whitelisted domains like imgur or youtube. Sometimes this is the stated policy, but many times that's just the de facto state of the subreddit.
I only point this out because it's easy to think that Reddit is mostly about finding and discussing content, which it used to be, when today it's much more about community building.
Thank you. The article said "Reddit alternative" in the headline and kept talking about "social bookmarking" in the main text. If Reddit was a social bookmarking site still, is have left long ago.
edit: Registered. Is this a joke? 262px from the start of one submission to the next. Reddit: 98px. So I guess it actually is a social bookmarking site where people can post memes. But certainly no Reddit competitor. Maybe a pinterest competitor.
yep. Reddit is still doing well with no real competitor. I still enjoy it enough to continue to use it. I usually just stick to subs that fall under my specific interest. I stay out most of the caustic subs (i.e any political and news related) and filter out most of them on from the main page.
Wow. I've just visited Voat. You were not kidding about their userbase.
All of these alternatives are going to run into this same kind of trouble unless they have real financial backing, because the incentive to switch is just not there for most users. New users have to be brought in, which is very expensive, and the community will almost certainly have to be salted with astroturf, as reddit was in days of yore.
Over the years I've been surprised at the "stickiness" of user habits. They can have every reason to switch to another site and still refuse to do so, preferring the old habit. Communities do occasionally move, but it's hard to make it happen.
The other issue is that reddit is an inlet, a way for communities to get traffic and find each other. This is partially because of the inadequacy of search engines like Google, which have been thoroughly gamed for the last decade or so, such that they almost always prefer crappy, highly-commercialized results that have been "SEO-optimized" v. organic, real-person-generated content.
A reddit competitor would need to address a) user stickiness, and unwillingness to give up old habits; and b) supply a stable quantity of new users to keep the community active and alive.
Do bear in mind that reddit itself generally has a reputation as a "dark corner of the internet" in the public mind. There is probably room for something more widely accessible if it can somehow control the user intake and avoid an "anything goes" atmosphere.
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 )
> There is so much hate and anger on the front page and so little good content.
Absurd hyperbole. I mean, all someone has to do is just look at the front-page to see that this is false.
> it seems like they shadow ban everyone except for bots
Also absurd hyperbole.
You claim to have been banned because an admin or an algorithm incorrectly identified you as vote spamming, but I honestly don't believe it based on the rest of the content in your post.
If I had a dollar for every time I saw something either overtly racist or inappropriate, or just plain braindead on the new front page that wouldn’t have shown up before I’d have several. It went from the “front page of (what’s popular on) the internet” to “front page of Reddit”. The only problem is below the surface Reddit has a lot of racist and inappropriate content. That’s why I rarely go anywhere but a few isolated development subreddits
After you made this comment, a whole discussion[0] ensued regarding this topic. Looking at the front page of Reddit is like refusing to use kill files on usenet or /ignore on IRC "because I want to see what 'they' are saying."
The short of it, like many similar platforms from the past, is that Reddit is highly customizable if the user chooses that route (not to mention Reddit Enhancement Suite).
Except before they changed the front page it wasn't like that at all.
The fact is "raw" Reddit is nothing to write home about and the previous front page worked around that with default subs.
I have no idea how it makes sense from a user conversion perspective, since new visitors essentially see the crappiest sides of Reddit before they even make an account to then go and learn how to filter it. I know personally if the first time I visited Reddit I saw what I usually see on the front page these days I probably would stay accountless
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...
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.
Reddit has already made large strides there. I see far fewer shadowbans today than I saw 1-2 years ago (based on sbanned posts caught in the modqueue).
Being shadow banned has no impact on what content you see so if you just want a better front page experience, try creating an account and joining smaller subreddits that are more aligned to your interests. I don't think I have a single default sub on my front page anymore.
Right and then try to participate in the conversation, and you can't, but since its a shadow ban you don't even know that you can't participate. In general your giving traffic and ad dollars to people who seem more interested in pressing a narrative then providing content.
You seem to be insinuating about a conspiracy among Reddit the company, admins (low-level employees), and [mostly] independent subreddit moderators. I think your premise is flawed.
What is the supposed narrative that shadowbans intend to foster?
Making people outraged and then trying to convince them to switch to voat. Or now, I suppose, voten.
I'd say the changes aren't responsible for the "hate and anger", but the growth and natural drift of users.
Undermoderated websites gradually radicalize as the heat and rage drives away moderates. 4chan is the extreme example of this, but Reddit's culture slowly lumbers in the same direction.
That would apply if Reddit were any kind of unmoderated. Most of the communities showing up on the front page have a litany of exacting requirements for content, and sometimes, stuff winds up deleted anyways.
For the posts? Yes. But for the commentary? Only a handful of subs moderate the commentary to any real level - usually ones created in reaction to the ugly nature of their minimally-moderated counterparts. /r/science and /r/canadapolitics are examples of heavily-moderated subs that specifically try to avoid the terrible level of discourse that Reddit is famous for.
I have been hearing "reddit sucks now" for 8 years and my reddit account is 9 years old. And I pretty much agree. But I keep going there!
Do you mean /r/all? Because you can just filter out bad subreddits and filter out bad subreddits...
As you said it yourself, Voat is "full of /pol-like MRAs/extreme right/alt-right". Voten is not trying to do the same. It's just an alternative with a good design, real-time features and basically everything that Reddit and Voat aren't.
>Voten is not trying to do the same.
No, but most people who seek a reddit alternative don't list its design as a grievance. The site will be made by its community, and it's a safe bet to make that Voten's community will not be very different from Voat's.
> who's gonna switch to this?
Scott Alexander put it very well, in describing the right-leaning Reddit clone voat.co, and its influx of new users after Reddit purged some subs:
"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."
(from http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/04/getting-high-on-your-ow...)
Are there libertarian-hunts as well?
unintentionally, since any outspoken libertarians tend to get caught in the crossfire of these witch-hunts as well, due to the whole debate turning into a simplified 'us vs them' situation.
> who's gonna switch to this
I wonder if the removal of CSS from the subreddits will give other message boards a chance to splinter off some of the community.
I think they backtracked on the CSS removal.
Still, something like CSS removal, spezgiving, or Pao happening again could easily trigger a migration. Voat didn't take off simply because it couldn't handle the load when those events occurred.
Reddit has been through a lot. (I went through three CEOs during my 3-year tenure there.) At this point, I can't imagine a scandal worse than spezgiving- the only way Reddit will die is a slow fade into irrelevance, rather than a Digg-style calamity- and I certainly hope not, as a Reddit addict.
Also, I have a theory that the "no more css" and "okay some css" was a carefully crafted maneuver, rather than a real backtrack.
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.
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.
> 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?
There are thousands of subreddits, sure, but still you end up with an identifiable overarching "reddit" culture. There are subreddits that don't share this, due to strong moderation, small size, or niche/polarizing subject matter. But in most subreddits, mentioning a broken limb, for example, will inevitably generate a low-effort allusion to a certain gross story that is prominent in the collective memory of the site. A positive reference to feminism will likely spur someone to try to start a flame war. Even if you unsubscribe from the defaults, the site-wide zeitgeist stills filter down and influences conversations across individual sub-communities.
Maybe, but isn't that more generally culture's fault and not Reddit's fault?
A site can do something about its users' behavior more easily than they can do something about the larger culture.
Is it just me or are seemingly random comments getting downvoted heavily as of late? I don't see anything particularly wrong with this one.
I have noticed and I agree. HN is at the top of the list of sites I wish I had log data for. It would be a very interesting week of hacking looking for trends.
I hope you're right, because so far it looks like Voten doesn't have any community moderators at all.
This is pretty much dead on why I avoid reddit
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.
In my experience, you get out of reddit what you put in.
With an account you can unsubscribe from specific subreddits, which I have done to clean up my feed from angry/creepy/violent stuff and I get posts that I am very interested in, primarily from smaller subreddits about hobbies, sports, cool technology, etc.
I have an account, and am unsubscribed from subreddits I do not like. There's no way to visit /r/all without seeing all the political hate, creepypasta, and violence.
I've been a frequent Reddit user for 7+ years. I honestly don't remember the last time I've ever been to r/all except when some massive drama hits and I want to see what the fuss is about. I'm subscribed to dozens of subreddits so my default homepage is never wanting for interesting content. Because I've unsubscribed from r/news, r/worldnews, r/politics, I never see Reddit discussions on the news of the day. On the other hand, I greatly enjoy the occasional r/politicaldiscussion and r/neutralpolitics thread that show up on my homepage.
And I'm a user who sometimes seeks drama, that is, r/subredditdrama is one of my guilty pleasures. And I still don't get much of a toxic vibe.
That said, I also don't check r/programming very often. The discussions there seem much more blowhard than their equivalent threads on HN. So in other words, there already is a decent alternative to Reddit: HN. Twitter is also pretty decent.
/r/programming's virtue has definitely faded, but you can almost make up for it by subscribing to the dominant subreddit for all your languages of interest. Reddit's big enough that most of those are pretty active on a day-by-day basis, or hour-by-hour in the biggest cases.
you seek drama and you don't mention r/drama?
Ironically I hadn't even realized that r/drama existed until at some point I noticed it being mentioned in r/subredditdrama threads. I'm not sure what the history between those 2 subs is (r/subredditdrama has 270K subscribers vs. r/drama's 32K). But r/drama seems to involve a lot more shitposting and personal-scale conflicts, e.g. a Prius driver having a history of anal-retentive commentary. Whereas r/subredditdrama is for when an entire forum goes apeshit. Or at least several impassioned commenters.
I think the difference in quality is actually more of a testament to how the mods run the community, even though both r/drama and r/subredditdrama have large overlap. But the latter seems to have instituted a culture of determined understatement, so threads have titles like "A visitor to /r/JapanTravel is adrift after he discovers that Japanese girls don't care about him". Whereas r/drama's current top post points to a Twitter account and has the title, "Orange ameriburger goes full retard...again"
Rule #1: don't visit /r/all.
Also, you say you're interested in what's popular. And this is exactly the source of your problem. What's generally popular is what appeals to the widest audience in general population. And that is exactly what you see - "political hate, creepypasta and violence". It's the same in YouTube comments, it's the same in all general-purpose discussion boards. Lowest common denominator.
If you seek sanity, you have to start frequenting domain-specific boards, especially those with actual moderation. Be it Hacker News, topical subreddits, or communities around particular bloggers. People there are still regular human beings, but community focus does wonders to the quality of discourse.
Is all of that sad? Yes. Welcome to the human fucking race.
Look here, you can filter subs from /r/all: http://i.imgur.com/YIEduLP.png
I hate Reddit; but what you've brought up is simply a feature not a bug:
> /r/all
It includes all the subreddit potentially; that's the point. Make a metareddit if you want tighter control; or tailor your FP
And once you've spent all of that time making reddit meaningful... there's virtually no new content, because you realize that the site is basically an echo chamber (not that HackerNews is much better in this regard, but eh.)
Reddit was done once they refused to put the jackboot to the hate communities over fears of the Digg-like user revolt, letting them fester and take over other subreddits. It's literally impossible to go a day on reddit without running into some racist diatribe, even if you go to the far-flunged reaches. Even /r/linux is completely unreadable.
We have different opinions, but the same conclusion. I haven't found Reddit relavent in years and they still don't turn a profit.
Nothing against it or regular users, just not for me anymore
If only reddit allows you to customise what you see... oh wait it does.
Then don't visit /r/all?
I'm not sure what the issue is here.
As mentioned: I'm interested in what's popular.
As mentioned upthread: therein your problem lies.
Why do you have to visit r/all ?
Already answered elsewhere.
How does Voten purport to solve those problems? It sounds like less of a Reddit problem, and more of a Gabriel's Theory† problem.
And given that currently you cannot create your own channels on Voten (subreddits), it sounds like the moderation problem is going to be an even bigger nightmare than on Reddit.
Reddit is basically NNTP with a special client that offers a "here's top-rated stuff from everything" option. Which for anyone who used NNTP, should be self-evidentally a thing to be avoided. But like NNTP, some of the groups are fantastic.
Everyone has a different front page, and it's up to you to tune it to make it work best for you. A few popular communities on Reddit may be toxic, but I'd say the vast majority isn't.
It does actually. You can exclude subs from /r/all.
There is also the excellent setting "don't show me submissions after I've downvoted them".
Click once to mark something as the sort of thing you don't want to see and to hide it!
Not according to /r/help:
https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/44498b/how_to_hide_or...
> there is no basic Reddit feature which will hide or filter a subreddit from the /r/All page.
Well, the help is wrong then: http://i.imgur.com/YIEduLP.png
That page is out of date. They added filtering for everyone in November.
You realize that you can make your own front page called a multi reddit right?
Yes. I want to see popular shit from all all across reddit. Including subreddits I don't know about. There's no way to do that without seeing all the anger/violence/etc.
All of 4chan is one community. All of Twitch is one community. All of reddit is one community.
Youtube sucks because it has videos that pander to kids. Twitter sucks because it because it's because talking about their mundane life. Facebook sucks because it's people sharing fake news.
In social media, whenever you're having a bad time, it's most like your fault. When you say X sucks, You're really saying that your friends / the people you're following / the communities you visit suck.
That's like saying a nation is one community. It's not. It (usually) shares a language and some common values, but otherwise there's greater diversity within a nation than between nations.
Still, there's a lot of truth in "When you say X sucks, You're really saying that your friends / the people you're following / the communities you visit suck". It literally takes seconds to join or leave an on-line community. On the Internet it's more true than anywhere else that you get the communities you deserve.
FYI That's OPs point. They are saying all those social media sites are the same to prove the point that they aren't. As evidenced by their next paragraph.
Since this is project is coming out of the voat.co community, I expect the community will be more toxic than Reddit's, not less.
EDIT: The article implies a connection, but as cracell pointed out, there is in fact no association, even historical or in personnel.
Voat has a couple of issues.
First, it took in a lot of people from banned subreddits (/r/coontown, fatpeoplehate, etc.) Unlike the great Digg 4.0 to Reddit migration, they didn't a huge chunk of Reddit. They just got the most controversial.
Second, It tried to be a full Reddit clone with tons of subverses. Reddit started out with just a few categories and slowly expanded out to user generated subreddits. That has to grow slowly over time with your userbase. Since Voat started with that, it has a ton of abandoned subverses that one one posts in anymore.
Voat is a pretty bad cespool of hatred right now. There's occasionally good stuff on there, but a lot of it is conservative garbage. People who have tried to turn it around are so outnumbered that they just leave.
With that said, Voat is open source (written in C# I believe), just like Reddit.
The problem is a "Reddit alternative" will naturally attract the groups that no longer feel at home on Reddit. It seems inevitable that any alternative will be more toxic and/or hyper-moderated.
As will almost any site specifically marketed as an alternative to a major one. You market your site as a freer, more fair alternative to another social site, and yes, you'll likely draw in the people that were hated/seen as controversial on the original. See also a lot of Twitter alternatives (like Gab) if you want other examples.
Scott Alexander recently covered this phenomenon here:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservative...
(see in particular section III of the article)
Voat is actually far less moderated, though, and honestly, almost nothing is censored there.
Lead developer says it has nothing to do with voat here https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/5qhz99/...
'The whole thing is based on voting which is why it has "vote" in it. It has nothing to do with voat.co. I guarantee that'
Ah. The article drew a connection, which is why I assumed that. But googling the founders, it appears you are correct.
No thanks.
Don't see how this even on the way to being a viable alternative. It appears to have started by already replicating many of the same toxic subs and doesn't appear to be doing anything systematically different which could help prevent build a less toxic community.
I think the problem is that anytime a group gets that large, it's going to have pockets of toxic users. So unless the plan is to forever jump ship from one product to the next, best bet is to find yourself smaller subreddits to make your home.
I have no idea if it's entertaining and they want me to sign up before I can know. No thanks.
totally agree with you, in addition:
the site should really show its content at first page instead of hiding it behind login or signup.
I get 2.5 stories on my laptop screen... This has to be a cruel joke. On reddit I can see up to 10. Although I've been hearing things about reddit wanting to revamp their UI. I really hope they don't, their minimal simple UI is the main thing I like about reddit and hackernews.
And not being able to browse news without account means it'll never pick up.
> I get 2.5 stories on my laptop screen
Still better than Google+.
Generally agree. But correct me if I'm wrong, Reddit hasn't been open source for a long time?
They certainly have private code, but this seems to have been recently updated:
Too many graphics. Too much wasted real estate. Sorry Voten.co, no thanks.
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.
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.
There have been a number of Reddit controversies, but let's be honest: most people don't know or care that much about them. I think that'll blow over just like firing the community manager and the whole Ellen Pao thing did. I'm not even sure that the average person would agree that Reddit is "overmoderated," since their biggest scandals seemed to come from the opposite direction, like having subreddits devoted to hate speech and photos of underage girls.
> 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.
Heavily moderated and/or a small and tightly focused subreddit (which usually tend to not need heavy moderation)
Haha, but any website whose audience is mostly that group rapidly becomes exclusively that group because normal people don't like them.
Lol. I was trying to say the nice version of this.
"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.
Laravel 5.4 integrates with Vue. https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/frontend#writing-vue-components
Laravel can act as the API backend to the frontend (basically a set of REST endpoints that the frontend can talk to), or alternatively the Vue components are used only where heavy client-side interactions are required, while the rest of the pages are still served up by Laravel normally.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Probably just Laravel for their API and Node + Vue (if they aren't using laravel elixir for the frontend) so that they can more easily do server side rendering via express.
I have played around a bit with socket.io and the reason you use Node for it is that socket.io itself comes with a in built node server for backend. So it is much easier and faster to fire up a server to run socket.io using node.
Sure. Why would you though, not use node.js for the rest of the site? I'm not complaining about either php or node.js. I'm complaining about using both of them for a brand new site.
I assume that both would need to understand the concepts around: users, admins, moderators, topic areas, topics, threads, banning, moderating, vote counts, sessions, and so forth. And interacting with all of that both server<->browser and server<->database. Feels like a lot of duplicated classes, marshalling, etc.
I assume NodeJS is used just as a WebSocket server for their real-time events, doing that in PHP would be a bit uncomfortable.
doing that in PHP would be a bit uncomfortable.
Why? PHP works fine as a daemon, there are many servers written in pure PHP, as well as frameworks for "async" programming.
It is uncomfortable, sadly. At the very least PHP Ratchet is not quite integrated with Laravel and the easy route is to use Node.
I am not saying that as an attack to PHP (or a defense of NodeJS), I am writing PHP daily, but when it comes to real-time (at least WS systems), PHP would be my last resort, mostly because it lacks any real support for such things, you'll have to force your way in.
I guess we come back to _just because you can doesn't mean you should_. :)
It seems like if it's real-time a lot of the page is dynamic applications you interact with through AJAX, and probably it was easier to do that and get acceptable performance in Node. The other functions (say, edit profile) could then be handled by Laravel more easily. At least that's what I'd guess.
Agreed. Also, I've never noticed someone using both a front-end framework AND jQuery simultaneously. Usually, at least in projects I've collaborated on, this is redundant. However, I've never used Vue.js, so perhaps this is standard?
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...
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?
Yeah, really hard to find channels. For #politics I had to type it into the URL bar and visit it in order to subscribe.
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.
> 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...
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.
Strange for a "reddit alternative" to have a landing page instead of, you know, content upfront like.. reddit.
I made a website a bit like this: 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!
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.
CBA == can't be arsed?
If so, completely agreed. That was one of Tzu's massive fails, though they supplied same in quantity.
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
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.
>> I'd really like to know why devs think they can rival Reddit, it's just too big.
The same people said that about Digg before Reddit took all their users.
People switched from Digg to Reddit for mainly two reasons.
1. Digg started sucking
2. Reddit offered a truly innovative feature that most people found useful, subreddits
Reddit is still great, and this doesn't offer any significant features that I'd consider important enough for most people to switch.
I would like a decentralized Reddit.
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...
Have you heard of things like NNTPChan? Granted, it's not "Reddit" (it's an imageboard) however it's an imageboard that works over NNTP. It's as decentralised as I know of, though I'd also be interested in finding decentralised Reddit alternatives.
make it with blockstack
Curious what you liked about imzy.
Digg was once too big...
The immediate problem is that the home page is a boring marketing page and not content like reddit or hn
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.
Jup 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
I just signed up and created #liberalism to test it out. Worked just fine
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.
Yeah, I edited my response to point out I think I hit a bug.
This is exactly what I saw. Is it just the conservative outcasts from Reddit? Will we see a #creepshots in a few weeks?
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.
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.
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.
Real-time will lead to even 'lower quality' discussion. Consider email vs. chat.
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
[1]: http://drum.jupo.org
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 :-)
Does this require log in to browse as well? I'd imagine that anonymous read only viewing is larger percentage of the audience.
It does requite a login but the registration doesn't require email address and takes like 10 seconds
Looks really nice. Modern clean layout, uses OAuth2 for login. The content is really light, but I guess we can see how that progresses
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's a huge deal if you care about conversion. Anyone with web experience should know this.
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.
"Online conversions" generally refers to the process of converting a visitor from some lesser-valued status to a higher-valued one. Unsubscribed visitor to subscribed visitor. Lurker to commenter. Commenter to contributor. Contributor to customer, etc.
Closely associated is the concept of a "conversion funnel", which measures the fall-off in participation as additional hurdles are imposed: registration, check-in, passwords, browser compatibility, extensions, screen resolution, etc., etc. The results can sometimes be counterintuitive.
For a sense of just how precipitous that fall-off can be, from an example I've got some strong familiarity with, there's this image showing total Google+ registered profiles, the number which were ever active, within the past year, and excluding YouTube activity (which was being included in totals). The net result was about an 0.3% active public participation rate.
https://d324imu86q1bqn.cloudfront.net/uploads/asset/attachme...
Study:
https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/naya9wqdemiovuvwvoyquq
(My work.)
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.
> 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.
I believe a large majority of reddit users are lurkers. I browsed the site almost daily for months before I felt the need to create an account so I could start commenting.
Same experience here. I steadfastly avoided Reddit for a while (no real reason, just didn't want to be assed with a new community, then caved and only followed two subreddits for updates on games I was playing.
Eventually the lurking converted me to a registered, commenting user, then finally a submitter as well.
> 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?
These aren't ex-reddit employees. The linked article calling them "former Redditors" is pretty misleading, I think it was just trying to say that they used to be users of the site.
How is it misleading? Redditor is a common term for "Reddit user".
True. Most of it is about the first impression. If it would have presented me with bustling activity and pictures poping up real time (which it is supposed to do judging on what the link says) that would be whole different expireince I would remember.
But so far the reddit tile would never go away from the speed dial.
"pull a few strings and get to the the first page on HN"
<citation needed>
The Cuil of Web forums.
This is actually the worst an internet comment can be - no real insight, judgemental, thinly veiled insults and accusations, excusing bad ethics for business sense, bad tempered and rude. What new platforms need, is less of this.
I have no real horse in the race and am generally sceptical about reddit alternatives as the refuge of whoever gets banned on reddit, but hey, feel free to shit over other people's efforts!
Huh? Did you read my comment?
* They have a well funded + experienced team
* They are currently featured on the front page of HN
* The number #1 USP of their site is "Real Time".
So after forcing me to login to check out what it actually is, I find that there's actually no real time content. It's dead.
My insight is clear even if it is drenched in negativity. These guys should be doing better, even if they had no resources whatsoever, for the next 24h, the CEO, his girlfriend, their dog, the grandmother and every other person they know should be logged in creating the illusion of users.
I think even Paul Graham/YC advocates this method, it's how Reddit got started - so beggars belief that these chaps don't think they need to go to those lengths :/
He raised some very valid points though: requiring an account, no activity, no real benefit offered by real-time as things stand on the website.
Edit: To add my own - Doesn't work without Javascript, information density of both content and comments is far too low, and, flatly, Why? What benefit does it offer over Reddit? What role does it fill that Reddit isn't presently filling? Because for me, things that Reddit does terribly includes iffy moderation, witty snark being upvoted more than sensible comments, and their abysmal search. HN, for instance, is great with all of these things, so I'm on here a lot.
Here's a few more alternatives: https://www.inc.com/amy-vernon/3-reddit-alternatives-for-the...
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?
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.
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.
Looks dope, but not usable over Tor.
Requests to the API are returned with a 403 code.
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.
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.
Well it took me a minute to find out how to post and now the Submit button is even greyed out.. what the hell?
So this makes me wonder: HN what would you want in a reddit alternative that HN doesn't provide?
I'm starting to think submitting PR pieces about Reddit clones on HN does more harm than good.
Yeah, just what I need a notification for every time someone responds to one of my comments.
Tried to sign in with Facebook but did not work (and the login button seems odd looking).
Can't see the content without signing up (regardless of email). Bye.
Looks good so far. How do I change my account password?
Curious to know if this site applied to YC. Anyone know?
Not worth it
so... I signed up... but I doubt it will catch on.. ala voat.co
Connect with FB is broken.
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.
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).
/r/hailcorporate
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)
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.
For those breathlessly wondering what the spam announcement was:
https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/6bj5de/state_of_sp...
/r/spam will be going away. Better automated tools. Moderators (usually) rawk.
T_D is a cesspool. It's like /r/conspiracy went full Saiyan. Nobody wants to see that shit.
Ok but that's not the point I was making.
Removing T_D would result in an insane amount of backlash that I'm sure they don't want to put up with.
If you have to have a cancer, better to know where it is and keep tabs on it that risk spreading it out.
It's funny how many people here claim to support "the free exchange of ideas" but forget to mention the caveat "only if I like them".
It's almost like there's a bunch of gaslighting that makes it okay, regardless of opinion, to modify voting algorithms to promote certain political opinions.
FYI this is the behavior the brown shirts exhibited. We're not so far from those times again.
If the ideas in question include abhorrence to free speech and opposing ideas to the point of silencing those that express them, is it still all right? Because T_D has regularly demonstrated that these are some of their core principles.
>FYI this is the behavior the brown shirts exhibited. We're not so far from those times again.
Top-quality Godwinning.
I hope that wasn't a critique of my behavior, I never claimed to support a free exchange of ideas.
I'm having difficulty determining who (if at all?) you have an issue with?