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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

Reddit has been (rightly) attempting to drive away it's far-right troll userbase, so whenever a potential viable alternative to Reddit pops up, it's them that go there first, resulting in no-one else wanting to go there, which results in the inevitable failure of that alternative, or at least it becoming an entrenched hangout for bigots.

It's happened more than once already.

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I remember voat. Originally it was looking like it would become the new reddit. The UI was good, the site was stable, but then it become totally flooded with racists so it never took off.

I started building https://20-things.com with a rather big barrier to entry (requires SMS verification) in order to discourage racists from signing up, which is what happens when anonymous registration is allowed, as seen on voat example. So far a few hundred people signed up, but I am the only one actively posting content, I use it like my personal bookmarking service. Without SMS verification, registration would be anonymous which enables racism, and in order to go this route, I'd have to have an army of moderators.

SMS verification is good but I doubt it works on a larger scale.

I've long thought about a social network where each user is required to verify their identity. That comes with its own problems of course, especially in the current times of data protection, misuse of data and a lack of trust for these kinds of things. I'm sure it can be done properly, but who's to say what "properly" means.

I think I have seen a startup doing exactly this here in Sweden, can't remember their name though. We have a well-established e-ID which makes the verification part dead simple.

I'm working on bringing e-IDs to more people which would make ideas like your much easier to implement. If you want to make your idea reality I'd love to collaborate!

> If you want to make your idea reality I'd love to collaborate!

One day, maybe... I am focused on my business at the moment (check my profile here on HN).

A social network is certainly not a small undertaking but I can see it starting off as a side project and building a small community. I can forsee lots of costs involved however. I will keep your offer in mind!

Totally understand! In my mind, it doesn't end at social networks. There are so many applications which become better with trust, like dating apps, product reviews, and online marketplaces.

There's now another one called ruqqus. I'm not sure whether to call it a reddit-clone or a voat-clone. Even the front-page is full of right-wing trolling, whether or not that was the intended purpose of the site.

Hate to break it to you but theDonald.win, where T_D went after reddit imposed its "quarantine", just steamed through the top 1200 spot in the USA according to the Alexa rankings.

Isn't that a good thing for alternative social media sites? A centralized site run by that crowd is probably the optional solution for everyone.

Maybe so, but that's just one of dozens of controversial communities reddit has banned. So I think reddit still has a 'defensive moat' of disgruntled offensive ex-redditors looking for a new reddit-clone.

I don't think it's optimal. It already was an echo chamber back on Reddit, but a centralized site is probably even worse in that regard.

It depends; on the one side, the people 'inside' will probably become more radicalized, but on the other they no longer have a platform, new members of the 'club' are harder to find, and they no longer cause stress / strain on (in this case) Reddit. Reddit must've had hundreds of complaints daily about something posted in T_D. I know I complained once because they adjusted their algorithms so that T_D wouldn't be as prominent in the top lists anymore, but given that I'm one of those idle scrollers on r/all, eventually I went down the list so far that EVERY post was a T_D post.

> but on the other they no longer have a platform

But they do have a platform.

The only reason to go there is if you are already of that mindset. Without access to the wider reddit platform they might end up having a harder time recruiting new users.

I think the fact that Reddit and similar sites block URLs to competitors like thedonald.win is a really good argument for an anti-competitive lawsuit. They are overtly suppressing competition.

Doubt it. There are plenty of ways to share the links. Reddit isn't the internet.

Indeed, that would be the "entrenched hangout for bigots" part I mentioned.

The definition of a bigot is someone who is intolerant to differing views. That being the case, perhaps this accusation is better leveled at the people relentlessly driving right-wing opinion off of every major platform.

You're absolutely correct, but the hypocrisy will fall on deaf ears at the current point in our timeline. However, I'm confident that history will accurately portray these times as the textbook definition of psychological projection.

> The definition of a bigot is someone who is intolerant to differing views.

It's genuinely quite hard to find a post on TD or TD-replacements that doesn't boil down to bigotry. Mocking and attacking their strawmen-of-the-day is basically the entire site.

So yes, I am intolerant - I am intolerant of intolerance. Civil society doesn't only permit this, it requires it. Being anti-bigot doesn't make me a bigot. Thinking so is perverse.

Does anybody know anything about who runs that site?

The moderators of r/the_donald

so how can anyone build an alternative without falling into this trap?

Most alternatives are all for free speech and consequently become platforms for hate speech. Perhaps the key is the moderation model.

The key is to have less politics and more alternate topics such as hobbies, videos etc.

Communicate the fact that it's going to be well moderated and isn't a bastion of free speech.

Not one alternative, all the alternatives, decentralize everything.

isn't that what mastodon is doing?

You can't. You can either have free speech and laissez-faire moderation and let the extremists take over, or you can have moderation aggressive enough to drive those elements elsewhere, and have limited (not free) speech.

There is no third option, because people can't be trusted to simply be civil. Nazis or Fascists, pick your poison.

imgflip has already become the latest hangout for the expelled right wing contingent. https://imgflip.com/m/politics

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