I’m about halfway done writing a replacement to Reddit, with no adverts, no tracking, no data harvesting, no selling of your data, no algorithm-driven presentation, no tracking pixels, basically none of the things that annoyed me about reddit.
I don’t expect it to make me millions, or even thousands :), but it’ll be an experiment to see if a completely non invasive platform can work. Costs should be small, so I can keep it going myself for at least a few years and then maybe Patreon or similar to fund it if it grows to need that
In some ways I’ve taken the opportunity to make things a bit better, the post editor has preview, moderations can be appealed, all moderations are public, the groups have hierarchy, edits can be viewed etc.
Anyway, a month or so and I’ll announce it, currently in test at blewit.uk, because they did.
I mean this genuinely, good luck! It's a tantalizing project to work on, I've bought a couple of domains for it but haven't followed through due to other projects taking precent. Maybe the costs will be small enough for the site to support itself. Technology has advanced since Reddit's inception in 2005, so server costs feel like it's possible to run on a shoestring budget, but if you go viral, server costs are anything but.
There's a whole lot of help out there for getting things started, in fact the technology part isn't the difficult part - its the legalities and hoops you have to jump through to stay legal (which are mainly aimed at <generic big company>, not <joe schmoe>).
I've also taken a few decisions to keep things "lean and mean", so the hardware it requires is surpisingly modest, at least for getting going. Pushing as much as possible to the free tier of Cloudflare helps, and just one box behind the HA layer can manage ~1.3M req/sec if they hit the redis layer (which I ... encourage by design :). Even going all the way down through the DB and back, it hits 50k/sec - which is rendering, not i/o. That's ... quite a bit of headroom :)
I was hoping for this too. I spend far too much unfocused time on there. It'll be interesting to see if I crack and start logging in though. There are definitely posts I've found useful on Reddit, which would probably be the gateway into it. (Although I suppose I could always use the www version if I end up on there via a search result).
My experience is that it has mostly to do with the team structures within organization. SPAs allow you to create front end only team which can theoretically iterate faster with changes and demos.
Btw concept of SPA is probably more than a decade old by now, GraphQl has taken over in lots of places along the same lines.
New reddit is also login only for me. I'd already reduced my use a ton as quality of discussion went down and so many old comments and subforums got deleted but I guess this really is the end for me.
I've always thought of reddit as a "revolving forum" because it focused on regular turn over vs long term threads like traditional forums. I've been sad to see it try and fully shift away from forum appeals.
Currently hn, metafilter, tildes and some topic specific forums/discords plus a little searching online are meeting my needs but I'd love to hear what you folk have shifted to for places with forum appeals.
Does this mean that Google will soon stop showing reddit posts in search results? I've occasionally found helpful tips there for rare issues that are not covered anywhere else.
I’m about halfway done writing a replacement to Reddit, with no adverts, no tracking, no data harvesting, no selling of your data, no algorithm-driven presentation, no tracking pixels, basically none of the things that annoyed me about reddit.
I don’t expect it to make me millions, or even thousands :), but it’ll be an experiment to see if a completely non invasive platform can work. Costs should be small, so I can keep it going myself for at least a few years and then maybe Patreon or similar to fund it if it grows to need that
In some ways I’ve taken the opportunity to make things a bit better, the post editor has preview, moderations can be appealed, all moderations are public, the groups have hierarchy, edits can be viewed etc.
Anyway, a month or so and I’ll announce it, currently in test at blewit.uk, because they did.
I mean this genuinely, good luck! It's a tantalizing project to work on, I've bought a couple of domains for it but haven't followed through due to other projects taking precent. Maybe the costs will be small enough for the site to support itself. Technology has advanced since Reddit's inception in 2005, so server costs feel like it's possible to run on a shoestring budget, but if you go viral, server costs are anything but.
Thanks :)
There's a whole lot of help out there for getting things started, in fact the technology part isn't the difficult part - its the legalities and hoops you have to jump through to stay legal (which are mainly aimed at <generic big company>, not <joe schmoe>).
I've also taken a few decisions to keep things "lean and mean", so the hardware it requires is surpisingly modest, at least for getting going. Pushing as much as possible to the free tier of Cloudflare helps, and just one box behind the HA layer can manage ~1.3M req/sec if they hit the redis layer (which I ... encourage by design :). Even going all the way down through the DB and back, it hits 50k/sec - which is rendering, not i/o. That's ... quite a bit of headroom :)
needed an excuse to compulsively stop visiting, this is perfect
funny that i wasn't getting anything useful out of it for some time
new version doesn't even work properly on firefox with ublock, comments almost never show up, video doesn't work...
Same for me. I reduced my visits after the crackdown on third party clients and I guess now it’s time to say goodbye forever.
To be fair, I guess Reddit won’t miss me either because I was only lurking the whole time.
I tended to use it with an account when posting on hobby subreddits and without an account otherwise.
They are going to lose casual posters as well.
I was hoping for this too. I spend far too much unfocused time on there. It'll be interesting to see if I crack and start logging in though. There are definitely posts I've found useful on Reddit, which would probably be the gateway into it. (Although I suppose I could always use the www version if I end up on there via a search result).
I will never understand the obsession to build terrible SPAs to replace existing UIs, that are, without exception, worse than the original.
But I guess Reddit had a good run and all things must come to an end.
My experience is that it has mostly to do with the team structures within organization. SPAs allow you to create front end only team which can theoretically iterate faster with changes and demos.
Btw concept of SPA is probably more than a decade old by now, GraphQl has taken over in lots of places along the same lines.
Well, that's my usage of the site on mobile over with now. The 'new' interface is even less usable in a mobile browser.
Whenever old Reddit stops being available for members as well, that's my time to return to old school forums instead.
New reddit is also login only for me. I'd already reduced my use a ton as quality of discussion went down and so many old comments and subforums got deleted but I guess this really is the end for me.
I've always thought of reddit as a "revolving forum" because it focused on regular turn over vs long term threads like traditional forums. I've been sad to see it try and fully shift away from forum appeals.
Currently hn, metafilter, tildes and some topic specific forums/discords plus a little searching online are meeting my needs but I'd love to hear what you folk have shifted to for places with forum appeals.
Alternative frontends https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib-instances/blob/main/ins...
Today I noticed they also wall off the normal (non-old) site after the session goes on for a little while.
Hopefully it's just another A/B they drop after a week like in the past, but otherwise I may have to move on to another semi-anonymous doomscroller.
Does this mean that Google will soon stop showing reddit posts in search results? I've occasionally found helpful tips there for rare issues that are not covered anywhere else.
How it started (2024):
Google is the only search engine that works on Reddit now, thanks to AI deal | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41057033
How it's going:
AI Overviews could push Reddit to end its $60M-a-year deal with Google | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49032246
As Reddit stock falls, CEO questions value of Google's AI Overviews | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145809