Hacker News Reader

Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

So what’s the next Reddit. 9gag? Imgur? HN?

For me it's Lemmy.

Much smaller userbase and it will probably never grow _big_ (because federation is too daunting for some), but for me that's a plus. It's a bit like HN: sometimes it's good to _not_ become mainstream (e.g. by having a design that scares away people).

I'm turning to a grandfather, but I hear Discord is popular nowadays. I'm not a fan/I probably only have less than 1 hour experience with it, but the UI on this screenshot looks almost like it's reddit's new design:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/14/discord-forum-channels/

If they were clever they would've done some guerilla marketing to get people onto their platform off reddit...

> If they were clever they would've done some guerilla marketing to get people onto their platform off reddit...

It was already happening "organically". Every single gaming subreddit had a discord as well. When they announced the blackouts, they left a "see you on discord" message. It's sad because I don't really like discord, it's a blackhole of information. With Reddit you could google and find things, unfortunately nothing gets indexed on Discord by google. So to find anything useful you need to join a discord "server" (not really a server) and use their search (which isn't great).

Discord are up to something with their new global unique @ username system. I expect totally public forums like Reddit soon.

And the community really hates it. It is just that there isn't good alternatives to protest. Apart stopping paying for Nitro.

After Musk took over Twitter and people were looking for alternatives, one that stuck to me was Discord: they have a user base basically tethered to the Internet and a solid brand. If they wanted to launch a competitor, it could really take off.

It appears that Discord have been hiring former FAANG employees(esp META) based from their glassdoor reviews which was found by a redditor https://archive.md/asyPC

Reddit, only a handful of vocals are leaving

Unfortunately for Reddit, that handful includes many moderators.

Has there any been a single instance of a subreddit with a shortage of people volunteering to mod?

There has been lots of instances of bad quality mods and mod abuse, which I assume will only become a bigger problem in the future. Having embedded community talent leave is never a good thing.

A huge sub like /r/funny (40 million subs) will have zero issues finding volunteers.

Finding volunteers you can trust though...

An audience that big + lack of morals + power = chance to make money by manipulating what gets through.

I don't think that's true. The majority of reddit users actually use reddit via third party apps and all those users will be impacted by reddit effectively shutting down all those apps. Anecdotally, I have a bunch of different friends who only use RIF and Apollo to browse reddit and say they won't use reddit anymore once those apps shutdown. They aren't vocal users advocating other people to do the same, they are just normal reddit users with low tolerance for poorly designed mobile ui's.

The estimates I've heard of percent of users who use Reddit via third party apps are 5-10%, so nowhere close to a majority. I wouldn't be surprised if for power users the fraction is much larger though.

As a user of RIF I will be very sad when they shut-down. I'm hoping there's some alternative platform I can spend time on, but it's hard to see myself fully leaving Reddit given the sheer utility of it from an information stand-point.

nobody really left Twitter, nobody is really going to leave Reddit.

I mean the data suggests a fair number of people left Twitter or at least check in a lot less: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2023-deep-dive-the-...

Yeah, it seems like the network effect is simply too strong to overcome in these two cases. I deleted my Twitter account in protest of the harsh approach Musk took in laying people off, but I find myself back on the platform. I imagine it will be similar with Reddit...

I wonder how big the network effect is for Reddit. From a personal perspective it's nonexistent. There is a critical mass, for sure, and that may be just as hard to overcome, which makes it perhaps a bit less all-or-nothing.

I left, haven't logged in in months, do no consume it except when it is linked from somewhere else and then I look at it and go straight back.

I joined, so it evens out :)

Well the advertisers left. That should be worrisome enough for any business.

The activity on my Twitter feed has definitely decreased ever since Musk took over. And I've decided to migrate basically >90% of my tweeting to Bluesky because I'd rather use Bluesky and I need to put my posts where my mouth is.

Not that I can effectively even read those tweets now that the third-party apps are killed.

I deleted my reddit account, 12+ years are no more. It was hard, but that way I will not go back to it. Comparing it with twitter, which I never left because I was never there to start will be hard.

*yeah, I have a twitter account. It's the only point of contact with some companies. I may use it a couple of times a year max.

Big difference between political reasons and usability reasons.

I left Twitter. Most of the people I follow are now on Mastodon, and with Ivory, it’s essentially almost the same experience. I don’t miss it at all.

Nobody left Tumblr? Right now it is up in the air if this is Twitter or Tumblr result if people are going to leave due to this discontent.

I’ve left Twitter. I used to spend hours on it. Last week iOS unloaded the app for me since it had been so long since I used it.

If they really wanted to protest they would nuke the content and delete their accounts. This is just child throwing temper tantrum. They will be back.

I think that's one of the problems here. When Digg happened, Reddit was already a very viable alternative.

But now there doesn't seem to be any.

Surprised to see 9gag mentioned in the context of Reddit alternative. Does anyone use 9gag for more than memes/funny stuff?

Beats me, the 9gag community certainly has postured itself as a rival to Reddit’s (which, of course, is another meme). But more insane to me is that 9gag is a Y Combinator startup:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4313644

The comment by brackin predicting 9gag becoming a (Buzzfeed-style?) media company with “9GAG Magazine, the book and TV shows” is pretty bonkers, as well as the appearance of- moot???

I'm hoping it'll encourage people to go out to the internet and find a multiplicity of replacements.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com