
Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development - jasonbourne1901
https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/35293
======
Afforess
How is lemmy going to avoid the fate of the last reddit alternative (voat)?
Voat attracted the communities banned from reddit, e.g the worst of the worst:
jailbait, creepshots, beatingwomen, etc. The users most interested in an
alternative to reddit are on average, the exact wrong type of user to help
with the growth of a healthy community. I don't see any information on how
being "federated" solves the hard problem of toxic communities, especially
given that is the userbase it will attract.

~~~
yogthos
Nothing can prevent terrible people from using an open source project.
Meanwhile, Reddit doesn't do much of anything about this problem either. For,
example /r/metacanada exists, and white supremacists from there are also
moderating /r/canada subbreddit, Reddit hasn't taken any action on that. At
least the developers of Lemmy are very clear [1] about their stance regarding
nazis, that's more than I can say for Reddit. It's also worth noting that
Mastodon has millions of users now, and it clearly isn't attracting the worst
people. In fact, I find it's a far healthier and friendlier community than
Twitter.

[1] [https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/34286](https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/34286)

~~~
trackofalljades
The situation on /r/canada is heartbreaking. Over recent weeks, almost every
attempt to post a news article involving civil rights or anything overtly
related to Black, LGBTQ+ or Indigenous issues has been immediately zeroed
down, and in many cases then removed by a mod (their favourite method is to
just hit the "dupe" button on all posts about a given news item or opinion
piece, claiming they're all dupes, and not leaving one up).

If you make the mistake of discussing this on any other Canadian related sub
where the /r/canada mods frequent, they'll ban you for life and say that _you_
were "brigading."

~~~
adtac
in case you didn't know, come to /r/onguardforthee, the sane and inclusive
Canadian subreddit

------
TulliusCicero
I have to say, at the very least, the UI is a breath of fresh air compared to
new Reddit. New Reddit is just...I can't quite put my finger on it, but it
just feels awful to look at.

~~~
ehsankia
While I agree that new reddit is awful, I still much prefer old reddit to
this. Also what's up with this new trend of having the main content width-
restricted, but not the header [0]? The new GitHub UI that went live this week
has the exact same problem on wide screens. What kind of UX designer ever
approved such a mess and why do so many sites do this?

The main UI itself, again very width restricted, but also has strange paddings
[1] which limit severely the area for the title (which is the most important
UI element). Doesn't really make sense to me. The vertical centering is a bit
of a mess, and the size of icons is also either way too big or way too small
[2].

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/gZEWEdJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/gZEWEdJ.png)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/nayP548.png](https://i.imgur.com/nayP548.png)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/XZPToxy.png](https://i.imgur.com/XZPToxy.png)

EDIT: Huh, I hadn't used new reddit in a long time, I actually took a look now
and it seems like it has improved significantly. I actually don't hate it as
much, it looks much closer to old reddit now, with full width content and much
less padding [3]

[3] [https://i.imgur.com/c1QBucR.png](https://i.imgur.com/c1QBucR.png)

~~~
hanniabu
> Huh, I hadn't used new reddit in a long time, I actually took a look now and
> it seems like it has improved significantly.

The UI itself isn't horrible, it's the UX. It's incredibly bulky and slow, and
some user links have been hidden while others completely removed.

~~~
9HZZRfNlpR
New reddit must be the slowest website out there, on mobile where I'm not
logged in it takes ages to load. Then ages to kill all sort of pop ups that
force me to use their app. I believe they don't care about UX and speed of the
site, it's all about the app. They measure app downloads, not the experience
on the site.

~~~
alpaca128
I still am in awe regularly at how damn sluggish the site is. Even with an ad
blocker it is at least an order of magnitude slower than every other website
I've seen.

------
as1mov
One thing that stands out to me is lemmy has public modlogs[1], this is a
great feature in my opinion. Something that should be more common.

Quite a few people on reddit are frustrated by how opaque moderation is, but
looking at the meta community of power users that seems to mod the bigger
subs, I doubt the devs will ever copy this feature.

[1]: [https://dev.lemmy.ml/modlog](https://dev.lemmy.ml/modlog)

~~~
TulliusCicero
I moderate a couple of subreddits and agree moderation is a disaster. For
popular subs, moderators are basically swamped in a never-ending avalanche of
shit. Even if you want to be a good mod, doing so for the long haul is an
insane time commitment.

The fact that being banned from one sub doesn't usually get you banned from
another sub is totally understandable, but combined with how easy it is to
make a new account, in practice it's just never-ending whack-a-mole with
shithead posters.

~~~
justAnotherNET
The mods only have themselves to blame. They create insanely broad rules
allowing them to ban anything and then limit mod positions to concentrate
their power.

The role of mods is to delete off topic submissions and remove illegal
content. Nothing more.

~~~
chowells
The role of mods is to establish and maintain the community they wish to have
in the space. That takes a lot more than deleting off-topic submissions and
removing illegal content.

------
rolleiflex
We have something similar to this, Aether.
[https://getaether.net](https://getaether.net). (code at
github.com/nehbit/aether)

Always glad to see more eyeballs on the space, so I wish then the best. Here
are a few differences I can see at the first glance:

\- Aether is decentralised (as in torrent) this appears to be federated. That
means Aether truly has no servers and every user is a peer, while federated
means there are smaller ‘Reddits’ as servers that talk to each other.

\- By proxy that means we can’t really have a web app unfortunately (working
on it by the way of running a daemon on a raspberry pi) and they can - we need
a native app running on your machine and seeding context to the network.

\- By another proxy, this means Aether avoids the issue of having a ‘middle
management’ in the form of the ownership of your home server that federated
networks have. You are the home server, so no one can control what you see. We
call this user sovereignty

\- In Aether we have elections which elect mods based on popular vote and you
control who is a mod, precisely because the ‘social compiler’ runs on your
machine and allows you to compile it however you want. Two people with two
different mod lists for the same community can see drastically different
communities

\- We have a mod audit log and have had it for a while - everyone’s mod
actions are visible to everyone (this I think they also have)

\- Lastly, we have made the decision to not monetise Aether itself and create
a team communication app called Aether Pro, and monetise that. This creates a
‘Chinese wall’ between where we make our money and the P2P network, which
means it’s a shield against drifting towards trying to make money from a
social network. The code bases are separate but similar, so that also means
work done on the Pro helps Aether as well. We have gotten some funding for the
Pro, and we consider the P2P version a ‘marketing / goodwill expense’ in the
context of that funding. That aligns us towards making sure Aether is long-
term viable, well maintained and monetisation-free.

In contrast I think they’ve gotten money to work directly on this, which has
both good and more hazardous sides. In summary, we opted for a long term
structure that has less moral hazard (in my opinion, of course), in favour of
a more stable app without a need for monetisation that has fewer, more stable
releases.

For context, here's how a recent thread looks on my Aether client:
[https://i.imgur.com/45tXQEO.png](https://i.imgur.com/45tXQEO.png)

~~~
rglullis
> By another proxy, this means Aether avoids the issue of having a ‘middle
> management’ (...) so no one can control what you see.

This _right here_ is the main thing that will never let any fully-
decentralized system become mainstream. Two problems:

\- Most people _do_ want "middle-management". They don't want to deal with
security risks, technical issues, understanding how the protocol works just to
be able to share memes and score points with their social peers. All they want
is to open their browser, see what their friends/peers are posting and be done
with it.

\- This trade-off between federated systems/giving up control _does not
exist_. A federated system can degenerate into a fully-distributed graph.
Those that want to keep full control over their system can easily do with a
federated system: _they just run their own instances_.

Decentralized systems for social networks fail the Zawinski test and do not
provide one single use-case that can not be done with a federated alternative.
I fail to see any benefit of pushing it except for buzzword investors.

~~~
TimJRobinson
The trade-off is that when you run your own instance you have to then attract
users to it for it to be useful, which burdens others.

In a fully decentralized network you can meet new people and moderate your own
view of the world without putting any burden on others to adapt to what you
want. Moderation can be done with a system like this:
[https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-
moderati...](https://adecentralizedworld.com/2020/06/a-trust-and-moderation-
system-for-the-decentralized-web/)

~~~
rglullis
Sorry, either you don't understand the concept of federation, or you are
bullshitting me.

I can run a single-user Mastodon instance and follow people from any other
instance. They can follow me as well. I can send emails from my personal
server to anyone on gmail, and vice-versa.

Where do I need to "attract other users" to my instance? It's quite the
opposite!

~~~
TimJRobinson
I thought you meant similar to hosting a forum or Lemmy like site.

With Mastadon if say I'm on another instance and the host of that instance
blocks yours (because they don't agree with your politics or whatever) then
won't I be unable to see your feed? I'd have to setup my own Mastadon instance
to get around this? What if I'm not technically inclined enough to do this?
Then I'm subject to the whims of the moderators of the instance.

What if I live in China and they block access to the biggest instances so I'm
cut off from all the big communities and can't participate?

What if an instance of Mastadon crashes and the admins can't be bothered
restoring it. As a user on that instance haven't you lost everything?

These are the problems decentralized networks are solving, being subject to
the whims of other people.

~~~
rglullis
> With Mastadon (sic) if say I'm on another instance and the host of that
> instance blocks yours...

First: Mastodon, with an "O".

Second: I already had this discussion before. This "blocking" of instances is
something that is going on only on Mastodon, AFAIK, because most of the
current members are conflating the idea of _federation_ with _tribes_. They
_want_ to be insular at this point. This will change as soon as there are more
people using ActivityPub like email or Matrix and stop associating the
instances with the identities/ideologies of its members.

So, no. You won't _have_ to "setup your Mastodon" instance to get around this.
You _can_ do it, but you also _can_ just find a more professional hosting
provider that is not managed by a fourteen year old or tweenagers that love to
spout their love for diversity and yet can only tolerate any conversation that
is exactly aligned with their existing preconceptions of their uniform peer
group.

> What if I live in China and they block access to the biggest instances so
> I'm cut off from all the big communities and can't participate?

What if you live in China and they block the decentralized service altogether?
What if they use the decentralized nature of the service and set up honeypots
to find dissidents? "Decentralized" != "Private" != "Secure"

> What if an instance crashes (...) the admins can't be bothered restoring it.

If it is important to you, _then_ (a) you run your own service or (b) you pay
someone that actually cares about this. With a decentralized service, the only
alternative you have is (a). Then not only _you_ have to make this choice, but
also _everyone_ that you would like to join the network.

My point all along is that federated systems are already enough for those that
do not "want to be subject to the whims of other people", while decentralized
systems shut out those that don't care about it or would rather trust/delegate
these concerns to someone else.

"Decentralized systems" bring no benefit that can't be had by federated
systems and remove all sorts of free options from the potential users. It is
limiting instead of liberating.

------
badrabbit
Sorry, don't like the name. Also, when you say a reddit alternative, to me it
gives the impression that the redditor culture will remain so why would I
sacrifice the content rich reddit for a new platform? Federation doesn't mean
much to me as a user that justs wants [social]entertainment and news (and
commentary on them).

There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee
email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature. Edit: if
you think this is irrelevant, consider how both reddit (until recently) and HN
didn't require email for signup, also the majority lurker population and
importance of lurker-> user conversion. If email is your hill to die on, it
will also be mine and I hope a majority of lurkers' hill to die on against
you.

As a techie I support federated and decentralized systems but as a user, how
the platorm is architected is irrelevant, my experience is all I care about.
Also,how will it monetize? Ads? If so I will stay with reddit. Non-crypto
payment? Yeah, crappy reddit is better.

~~~
mahathu
>There's only one thing that can change my mind a little: if you guarantee
email is not and will never be required to sign up or use a feature.

I'm not trying to play the devils advocate here, just genuinely curious: Why
do you (or anyone else) have such a strong opinion on not using emails for
signing up? Usually, when a service requires me to enter an email, I have no
issue with using a service like 10minutemail and never checking that email
account again.

~~~
badrabbit
I have spoken about this many times on HN. It comes down to this: email is
being used in many nefarious ways and it is an ancient protocol with many
insecurities. Anonymous email works for a bit but then every service worth
using starts banning the providers. Both reddit and HN prospered as a result
of not requiring email, that should tell you a lot about how horrible it is.
It's on the same level as social security numbers being used as a secure
secret that identifies a person. Email was not meant to be abusef this way,
and I have seen first hand how it can be used against people so I have chosen
it as my figurative "hill to die on".

Now, if I can give a limited use address that cant be tied to me as an
individual,expires after a period of time and messages are E2EE encrypted with
no metadata leakage I don't mind that.

I have spent almost an entire day trying to sign up to one service withour
having to give up my phone number,real IP,creditcard or real email address to
anyone as a challenge. I have tried countless anonymous email providers and
sms code receiving services. I failed. Email abd phone number collection is a
modern tech evil for me.

~~~
judge2020
The problem is always 'how do i allow this user to reset their password', or
more 'how do i verifiably contact the user'/'how do i verify someone emailing
support is who they say they are' \- without email, it's completely on the
user to know and remember their password, something a lot of people can't do
(and most don't use a p/w manager). HN does fine here since it's a 'tech'
community where the majority likely does use a password manager, and Reddit
gets away with it since their UI is so quiet about the email being optional -
almost everyone thinks it's a required field since other websites require it
and it looks just like the u/p field.

~~~
badrabbit
If you choose to opt out of email then you also choose to opt out of email
support and being able to reset passwords via email. Two factor auth solutions
let you store a one time recovery code for example that you write down or
store somewhere safe, that's one option if you care to support it but I
wouldn't mind losing the email only features you mentioned either.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> If you choose to opt out of email then you also choose to opt out of email
> support and being able to reset passwords via email.

And the users will get mad and blame the service provider. That said users are
dumb/wrong or whatever is irrelevant, what matters to the business is that
they're pissing off users and getting a bad reputation. Thus, requiring emails
from the user is entirely rational and in fact is a good business practice.

~~~
badrabbit
No, making it a default makes sense. Users will not get mad if they get a
warning telling them email support will no longer be possible. Alternatively
you can opt with giving them a recovery code by which they can contact support
or with which email will be enabled for an account when the user forgets their
password. The only time you can't turn on email on your account is if you lose
the password. Email is not secure, a user that has their login compromised is
very likely to also have their email compromised. Moreover, if their email is
compromised this completely silly dependence on email will get their account
on your site compromised as well so you should be using a non-email means of
authenticating users for support or account recovery!!

Email must die. No buts or ifs. It must die. You are a poor or ignorant
engineer and architect if you build new things that depend on email in 2020.

If you give the most mediocre hacker 100 emails of users of your service that
depends on email for account security, I am confident he/she will compromise
at least a 3rd of accounts.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> Users will not get mad if they get a warning telling them email support will
> no longer be possible.

Yes, they will. Most will not have even noticed the warning you put up.

------
TulliusCicero
Neat, but the big test for a discussion platform like this is what happens
when they get big enough to matter, to get the attention of journalists
looking for a scoop.

It's easy to slide by with haphazard (or no) moderation when you're small.
Discussion extremists (trolls, bigots, and the like) are less attracted to
smaller platforms; they'd prefer bigger ones, if any would take them.

I'm curious what will happen with the central listing of communities if a
particularly vile community gains popularity. If there's a community
unapologetically dedicated to, say, neo-nazism, and they like to do things
like praise Hitler or discuss ways they can kill racial minorities, do they
still get listed? How will others feel about that?

~~~
kixiQu
why are there so many comments assuming that the point of this project is to
facilitate lighter moderation than Reddit has? the code of conduct on the site
is pretty clear, actually.

now, can you start a federated instance with that kind of content? sure. but
just like how none of the normal mastodon servers federate with Gab, no one
would have to federate with the cesspool.

~~~
TulliusCicero
I think that sort of technical distinction might be lost in many when there's
a news report on how [platform] 'allows' bigots to spread hatred.

------
fernly
So sad, nobody remembers Imzy, the "nice reddit" founded by Dan McComas. It
really was nice, had highly varied, friendly communities and a pleasant UI.
Couldn't get traction, apparently.

[https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/imzy-the-nice-
reddit...](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/imzy-the-nice-reddit-
alternative-is-shutting-down.html)

~~~
zem
I was unaware of imzy, but reading between the lines of that article the cause
of demise seems to be "not enough traction to be successfully run as a
business". sounds like there were communities there who were using it and
enjoying it, so the real failure was the expectation that it would get as
large as reddit and sustain a business model, not in the lack of usefulness to
its users.

------
mfkp
Not a good sign when the website doesn't load:
[https://i.imgur.com/Us1mwrD.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Us1mwrD.jpg)

~~~
bo1024
I had several problems trying to get the page to load. After allowing it to
use lots of javascript-related resources, it eventually loaded but took a
while to display the actual text, on a fast internet connection. Unfortunate.

------
nickdothutton
I’m hopeful something good will come of this. I wrote this about LinkedIn but
most of it could easily apply to a Reddit alternative, I love HN but would
love to see a broader platform that didnt become cancerous.
[https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-
linkedin/](https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/)

~~~
ativzzz
> didnt become cancerous

Ultimately any platform big enough becomes cancerous unless it has sponsors
who are willing to fund the platform without turning a profit, like HN is
funded by ycombinator (though notice how over time there are more and more
hiring advertisements for ycombinator companies).

The bigger a platform becomes, the more expensive it becomes to maintain; the
people who were volunteers at first have to either monetize to be able to
continue supporting the platform, or they have to sell the company to someone
who can support it.

Once money is brought into the equation, a community starts to slowly
deteriorate, as money slowly starts taking over all aspects of the platform,
which is nothing more than human nature.

~~~
Can_Not
The hiring ads here seem completely relevant and appropriate for this forum.
Very few other websites can say the same for their ads. YC saves money on
recruiter fees and job listing fees, you reach your target audience, and you
don't need tons of analytics.

------
mrfusion
I think simply having a Reddit clone run by a non profit (or owned by the
members themselves) would go a long way in promoting freedom and fixing the
issues.

I guess use a people solution instead of a technical one.

~~~
tennineeight
There is one made by previous Reddit admin/dev who understands how reddit
works. It is nonprofit, developed in open and all policy discussions go
through community.

[https://tildes.net/](https://tildes.net/)

------
stormdennis
I'd like a "reddit" that wasn't a confusing mess to navigate on a browser on
my phone and wasn't always trying to get me to use the app. It could do worse
than take lessons from the design of HN. A separate HN clone for each
subreddit.

~~~
holler
check out the site in my profile, brand new and under active development, but
it's a responsive web app with goal of simplicity/low-friction

------
superkuh
> JavaScript is required for this page.

Yeah, I'm out. That was a problem with the federated reddit-alike notabug.io
too. It was just one giant javascript application, not html. And doing "pre-
rendering" of the javascript on the host machine made the VPS costs too much
to be tenable for people to federate.

~~~
LockAndLol
Prerendering of the JavaScript? What do mean by that? Don't you mean
prerendering HTML?

~~~
superkuh
I do. I just worded it badly. I meant "pre-rendering of the javascript" to
mean executing JS on the server and then sending the resulting actual
html/css.

------
MattGaiser
How is this going to avoid becoming like Voat?

Reddit already has competitors. It is just that they are cesspools as the only
people who have a strong reason to leave reddit are those reddit has banned.

~~~
holidaygoose
Can we try to figure out sociologically, why by default unmoderated social
forums become far-right oriented?

Is it because:

\- People on the far-right are magnitudes more vocal and active online than
those on the left? That they spend a magnitude more time posting and voting on
the internet?

\- Or when people are anonymous, they reveal their "true selves" more which
exhibits more far-right (selfish, tribal, conservative) values.

\- Or we are underestimating how many people are on the far right, because
they are constantly censored so in our minds we think they are the minority
but maybe they're about half of the online population?

I'm just trying to figure out why it takes herculean effort to shift things
enough to the left to be publicly palatable. And if so, then then it seems
like any social forum is going to require heavy censorship/moderation to even
be tolerable to the general public.

~~~
winstonewert
I think it is because far-right is far less palatable than far-left.

Consider two possible statements:

1\. Hitler wasn't that bad.

2\. Stalin wasn't that bad.

I think, for most people, the first provokes a much more extreme reaction.
Both were objectively terrible human beings, but defending Hitler is seen as
far more extreme than defending Stalin.

This has two effects:

Firstly, far-right people are continually kicked out of communities. Far-left
people are not. So any new unmoderated community is going to attract these
"refugees"

Secondly, nobody notices or cares when a community goes far-left. But its far
more noticeable when a community goes far-right.

~~~
rsynnott
I think both of those examples would provoke a pretty extreme response in most
people, but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common, at all. You see a
_bit_ of "Stalinism was actually good" stuff on the internet (weirdly,
occasionally from the right; some more confused Russian nationalists have a
bit of a Stalin fetish), but you'll see a lot more holocaust denial.

~~~
devcouvert
>but sincere Stalinists just aren't very common

Maybe the figure-head isn't en vogue anymore. The methods are always popular.

Leftists(Socialists, Communists, Anarchists) often publically revel in the
idea of when "the revolution comes" to put anyone dissenting up against the
wall or sending them to a Gulag camp of some sort. I don't find that exactly
reassuring. Seeing how "protesters" in the US and Europe act like chinese Red
Guards during the cultural revolution, this day doesn't seem far off.

I'm reading the "Three-Body Problem" right now and the first chapter eerily
reminded me of the current situation where not being enough of an "ally" to
the racial BLM movement is a thought-crime punishable by having your life
destroyed.

------
ScottFree
I'm extremely disappointed your icon isn't a picture of Lemmy from Motorhead.

------
bitL
Is it possible to make fonts smaller to resemble old.reddit.com? My perception
field is vastly larger than the amount of text displayed (i.e. my brain can
search for keywords without actually consciously focusing on them).

~~~
t-writescode
command / ctrl + scroll-wheel?

~~~
bitL
Did you even try it? Give it a go and enjoy unexpected UX, then come back...

------
solarized
I hate when reddit insist us to install mobile version from play store. Why
you guys follow the mainstream ?. Browser version just enough.

------
readnews1
"Reddit alternative" "open source federated"

What is the difference between this and usenet

~~~
takeda
I agree with you that Reddit basically overlaps this area, but I don't think
access to Usenet is easy these days (ignoring paid services that are optimized
for downloading files).

Although if anyone knows good servers (ISPs no longer seem to offer them) or
even better a way to connect own server to Usenet, I'm interested.

~~~
u801e
There are still a few servers that allow one to access usenet to access text
based groups without a monthly fee. Barring that, you can access usenet
newsgroups via Google Groups (groups.google.com), but only via HTTP.

------
cateye
There is huge need for such an application.

Hope that it becomes moderately successful. If it becomes too successful, it
will become victim of it's success like Reddit.

~~~
notkaiho
It will absolutely need popular support to attain some sort of critical mass,
and not just among the cast-offs from other platforms, such as Gab, Parler
etc.

------
retpirato
The fact that Reddit is an echo-chamber is one reason I never joined, & never
will, but there are some communities that would be useful like the android &
kustom subreddits, the former of which already exists on Lemmy. I'm only
holding off with Lemmy because they don't (yet at least) have a privacy
policy, which to me is essential especially considering the nature of the
site. The fact that they didn't at least put up some sort of template of a
privacy policy before the site was ever available to the public when that's a
common part of any site that provides accounts, as a way of informing you how
they will handle the data you give them, is very troubling to me.

------
benbristow
Looks nice. Really fast webapp too.

Congrats team! Looking forward to tracking this project's development.

~~~
vinay427
You're not kidding. This webapp is so fast (after the initial load) that I
genuinely wouldn't be surprised if the Reddit mobile website intentionally
adds sleeps/delays as some have jokingly suspected in the past. On this site,
I can actually scroll through posts or collapse comment threads without
wondering if my touch input and/or browser are frozen.

~~~
bserge
New Reddit doesn't need sleep/delays, it's already slow as molasses heh.

If not for old.reddit.com, my time on Reddit would've gone way down :/

~~~
takeda
My understanding was that s/he was referring to the new UI. Actually Reddit
makes it hard to be on the old interface, I have to use browser extension to
completely avoid the new UI.

~~~
bserge
There's a setting in preferences - as long as you're logged in, www.reddit.com
links will still load the old design.

Logged out though, yeah, I manually replace "www" with "old" whenever I open a
link...

Reddit is unavoidable these days since everyone's moved there and there's a
lot of good content :/

------
erulabs
Congratulations! Just discovering Lemmy! Federated software is excellent -
I’ll have to write a home-hosting tutorial for this!

------
u801e
I'm surprised not a single comment discussing Reddit alternatives mentioned
Usenet (especially in terms of federation).

~~~
zzo38computer
Well, now yours does, and thinking of federation, that is what I thought of,
too. And, I think also, to be based on NNTP. I think at at least what should
be done includes: Use NNTP, and avoid namespace collisions if you are defining
your own newsgroups. I don't know how to request adding newsgroups to Big 8,
or to the alt hierarchy, or others, but I invented the "Unusenet" convention
for avoiding namespace collisions, which I use on my own NNTP server. Make the
web pages contain the message ID, newsgroup name, and information to connect
to the NNTP server, even if JavaScripts are disabled. Users who want NNTP can
use it even if they do not have a compatible browser. If you want to use
Markdown, add a "Content-type: text/markdown" header to articles that use
Markdown (and do not try to render articles without such a header as
Markdown), and preferably using a subset of Markdown without HTML.

------
thereyougo
I tried few Reddit alternatives, most of them had the same problem: They
attract many people who got banned from Reddit.

A good solution will be to not allow (at least at the first few years) to open
a sub around politics.

------
markdown
So many noob mistakes in the UI and I haven't even started using the site
proper.

I see a link "Create Community", this takes me to a form where I get to create
a community. I spend time naming and describing this community, and then click
the Submit button. At this point it decides to tell me that I need to use
lowercase for the community name.

So I fix that and hit Submit again. At this point I'm told I have to create an
account first. WTF, why didn't you tell me earlier? If I leave this page to
create an account, will you preserve what I've filled into this form for when
I get back? Why didn't you just add the necessary username/password fields to
this form at the same time you showed me the error?

Anyway, so I click on the link that says Login/Signup and get a popup that
says "Are you sure you want to leave?" Now I have to click again to remove
this popup. Another wasted click and +1 to the "annoyed" meter. See above for
how this could have been avoided by just adding the login/signup forms to the
form I just filled out to reduce friction.

Anyway, so I create an account. And it turns out the site forgot everything
I'd done before that. Why ask me questions (make me fill out a "Create
community" form) if you're going to immediately forget all my answers?

Absolutely no respect for the users time. Why would you do that when your very
existence depends on attracting more users?

~~~
arcturus17
The problems in UX/UI in what I've tried span from fundamental interaction
design down to code.

I guess it's a young project, so lots can be improved. I think the problems
you mention are bad but they sound fixable.

I'd think about contributing or at least start by running my own instance and
tweaking the interface to my liking. I'll also need to check if Inferno is
worth learning.

------
FreeTrade
member.cash is an interesting Reddit alternative. Not federated, but all the
content is on a blockchain, so comments/users can't be censored, but users can
filter them.

~~~
ryeights
What happens when illegal content is posted? Is it stuck on the blockchain
forever?

~~~
hkt
Sure is!

------
Kye
This has ActivityPub (AP) support on its roadmap. I wrote a well-received[0]
argument that AP could be the future:
[https://kyefox.com/2020/04/09/activitypub-could-be-the-
futur...](https://kyefox.com/2020/04/09/activitypub-could-be-the-future/)

I softened on it a little over the years since, but I think that was just the
dearth of new things coming out that ran on it. Now I'm starting to think that
was just a reflection of the fact that the obvious, low-hanging fruit was
handled (write.as/Pixelfed/PeerTube/Mastodon) and the next round will take a
while as people who got on later get ideas and develop them into something
like, for example, Lemmy.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864029](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22864029)

------
bennysonething
The Reddit redesign made Reddit ridiculously unusable. Also like the web in
general the more users it got the horrible it became. The stardard of content
fell through the floor. The stanard of comments did the same. It went from be
a pretty free market liberal types to angry left wing reactionaries over the
course of a few years. It felt like the users got younger and younger until
one day I saw a pic bunch of high school students egged on by their teachers
holding a "socialism now" banner, this was front page.

~~~
antepodius
I think the lesson might just to move on from sites whenever they get too big
and cancerous.

------
kenrose
“Open source federated Reddit”

Maybe I’m old, but isn’t this what Usenet was / is?

~~~
risho
I'm not sure that usenet could scale to the degree that reddit has. Part of
what reddit does that makes it good(though it's both a blessing and a curse)
is that a lot of the curation and moderation is handled by the community via
the upvote downvote system. That means that you don't need as much dedicated
moderation handling things which at the scale that some of the subreddits
operate at is huge.

------
OptionX
"This is an Antifa instance" stickied on the front page by an admin no less.
If I wanted a politicized cesspool reddit-clone I would just use Voat. Fail to
see the point.

------
dependenttypes
There is also [https://notabug.io/](https://notabug.io/) for anyone looking
into decentralized reddit alternatives.

------
jwilber
Nginx bad gateway when I visit. Reassuring I guess that I’ll face the same
down issues I do now with or without funding.

------
frankzen
I'm convinced that implementing so-called "free speech" sites in public
doesn't work. Real free speech happens in closed networks, invite only. The
only downside is those take more time to grow.

------
shse
Another poorly crafted SPA app. Click on a post then go back and it jumps to
the top on its own. Sometimes there is just a blank screen. Please make it a
simple MVC app without JavaScript BS.

------
Aeolun
Their 500 Exception homepage does not exactly inspire confidence.

~~~
MattGaiser
I don't think it is reasonable to judge whether a product in development
currently scales well.

------
embit
Once upon a time, open source federated reddit was called Usenet.

------
oskenso
I currently use this to host [https://emulator.news/](https://emulator.news/)
the docker support is on point :D

------
highmastdon
Please, allow non-ws connection or fall back when it fails and stick to that
alternative. When behind proxy/in VPN, I'm not able to use your website.

------
appleflaxen
For anyone looking at this type of web application, I believe dev.to has
similar functionality and licensing, but also has a mobile app on both iOS and
android.

------
cuddlecake
I wonder why the developers of Lemmy decided to perform all the content
requests via WebSocket instead of HTTP.

Is there anyone out there who can answer this?

~~~
holler
Obfuscation? I've seen this in other sites (discord comes to mind). Maybe
there's a hypothetical efficiency from reusing the websocket connection for
all requests? for the site sqowk.im Im working on I use http for content
requests and websocket for realtime stuff

------
orthecreedence
I think Lemmy needs to address this before it will get any wide acceptance:
[https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816](https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/816)

~~~
0x6c6f6c
A profanity filter? Seems at best make it an optional preference, but why
would you _want_ to see offensive slurs by default?

~~~
orthecreedence
> why would you want to see offensive slurs by default?

If I don't want to see offensive slurs, I won't associate with people who use
them. Let me decide what is a slur or not, and let me decide who to associate
with.

------
shawndumas
The “forgot password” link does not work. (On mobile so I did not dig in and
see if there were any errors in the console.)

------
Ericson2314
NLNet, the source of funding, is a truly superb institution that should be
better known in the US.

------
saltedonion
Um. CSS isn’t loading on safari mobile. I hope this isn’t the actual
experience ?

------
IgorPartola
The problem with Reddit isn’t the technology. I mean, yes open source is good,
and I want more of that. Even Android is a good thing even if only one company
actively contributes to it. At least when you hit a bug or don’t understand
how something works, you can go read the code. But the problem with Reddit is
community management, and re-writing it won’t solve that.

Reddit has been a mostly free for all in terms of moderation, and it is
explicitly set up to allow thought bubbles, which gives rise to communities
that dox activists, that incite violence, that promote conspiracy theories,
etc. I love Reddit’s good parts and really detest its bad parts. Problem is
that you can only solve that with strong application of content guidelines, or
by not even pretending to be a good place a la 4chan. There is no model as far
as I’ve seen, not even an academic one, that allows for mostly moderation free
or self-moderated content while also not prominently featuring at least one
neo-Nazi group using it to communicate and coordinate.

------
aabbcc1241
How does Lemmy compare to Mastodon, Zero Talk, and ZeroMe?

------
proc0
Love the name, love Motorhead. Here's a Lemmy quote: "Apparently people don't
like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people.
"

------
est
I think it tries to solve a problem reddit doesn't have. Reddit has a content
parity problem, by making content distributed just makes the community stops
growing.

A new reddit alternative should think what makes Reddit useful in the first
place. A community drive social bookmarking. Today's Internet have large
volume of info hidden behind paywalls and walled gardens, something like
Thread Reader App could replace Reddit from ground zero.

------
imrelaxed
Seems to be crashing on my end.

~~~
sq_
Same here. Must be getting the HN hug of death.

~~~
gpm
> dessalines (mod, admin, creator) 23 minutes ago

> We have > 2200 connections to the server right now, its a DDOS. Rust seems
> to be handling it fine, but the nginx is having issues.

[https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/35712](https://dev.lemmy.ml/post/35712)

Sounds about right - I'm amused that whoever saw this thought it was a ddos
though.

dessalines - if you're reading this - I expect looking at referrers would be a
good way to (manually) diagnose real attacks vs people becoming interested in
your site.

------
omnimus
There is also [https://tildes.net/](https://tildes.net/) that is also open-
source.

~~~
LockAndLol
Is it federated though?

------
ms4720
I still miss nntp

------
paulcole
Ah, Diaspora 2.0.

------
rospaya
All this trouble instead of just ressurecting usenet.

------
companyhen
I'm a fan of [https://tildes.net/](https://tildes.net/) \- created by an ex-
reddit employee (creator of AutoModerator)

------
secondcoming
As an non-American, Reddit is in general, awful.

It's all "Trump, Trump, Trump" and tolerates anti-white sentiment. Actual
conversations are rare, it seems to mostly be impressionable young people
trying to out-do each other in taking offence to things and being angry.

It seems you can't block subreddits like r/politics without making an account.

/r/cpp has some good stuff sometimes.

What would a reddit alternative bring? More of the same? No thanks.

------
artembugara
The website is down only for me

------
taurath
A federated reddit system needs ways to lock down user accounts. That it’s
basically 4chan in terms of anonymity gives too much of an open door to
extremists and trolls. I don’t see any difference between this and voat except
the assumption of goodwill rather than being centered around right wing
extremism.

~~~
posguy
The fediverse has proven quite resilient to trolls, bots and numerous other
challenges as users and instance operators can block other users and
instances, (or mute/content warn media) among numerous other moderation tools
to prevent bad actors from destroying the signal to noise ratio of each
instance.

------
jari_mustonen
I hope that this will democratise political discourse. At the moment, people
having opposing view to the main stream opinion are having exceedingly
difficult time sharing their content.

Reddit's main fault is their willingness to participate in politically
motivated banning. I'm talking about the fate of The_Donald. (There are also
other examples.) Reddit first persecuted and then effectively banned
The_Donald because, in my opinion, Reddit is run by people who hate president
Trump.

It's important to understand that the hate is not something that will go away
after Trump but it will be replaced by hate for the next guy. It's driven by
political tribalism, not Trump.

As basically all social media platforms are doing the exactly same thing as
Reddit, we are not in a good place. We really can't allow our political
discourse and views to be dictated by a handful of group thinking denizens of
Silicon Valley blinded by political tribalism.

~~~
sneak
> _It 's important to understand that the hate is not something that will go
> away after Trump but it will be replaced by hate for the next guy._

This seems to presuppose that all presidents are equal in terms of the acts
they perform that generate hate or upset in the supporters of their political
opponents.

I don’t think that is true. Not all presidents have been, or need to be,
culture warriors.

Indeed, it would appear that Americans are way more united on a number of
_huge_ issues now more than ever: COVID response, racial equality, economic
recovery.

Just based on circumstance, I think whoever next holds the office of POTUS,
regardless of party, stands to polarize people less than they have been in the
past due to the fact that many, many people are in agreement about federal
government priorities right now.

That seems, to me, relatively unprecedented in recent times.

------
mynameishere
So, on my first and last visit to "Lemmy" I observed the admin "nutomic"
providing the world with his political philosophy:

 _Any platform that emphasises “free speech” will be full of fascists sooner
or later_

No, I don't want to have anything to do with a website controlled by an
unusually foolish five year old.

