Besides lemmy, what's another good reddit alternative?

Hi! Recently exiled reddit user, here. I'm curious what other alternatives to reddit there are, besides Lemmy, and Raddle, of course. Also, imho, Phuks is a good alternative, there's no hate-speech (that I'm aware of) and people are pretty respectful. Anyways, let's hear your suggestions! Thank you!

wewbull ,

Slashdot.org and digg.com

I'm old school.

WaterWaiver ,

Slashdot.org

Don't forget its fork, https://soylentnews.org

notoftenthat ,

Appears that "squabbles" is still alive

https://squabblr.co/

tanakian ,

let me list two not federated options.

but both are self hosted.

  • lobsters. one active instance is lobste.rs but i know of https://սարեան.ցանցառներ.հայ

  • if you use gemini protocol, you probably know about it: bubble is a reddit like software. i know about two deployments, the original, by the author is at gemini://bbs.geminispace.org

users also can have their blog feeds on it.

SmoothOperator ,

https://սարեան.ցանցառներ.հայ

What is this black magic?? How are these symbols a valid domain name???

Colour_me_triggered ,

Getting drunk, going out on the street and screaming abuse at strangers in the middle of the day.

GrindingGears ,

I think they mean for the parts of the day where we aren't all angry dads. You know, bedtime and the such...

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

MetaFilter. It's a very old school general interest indexer/forum. It's been around since 1999, has a lot of well known professionals on it, requires a small fee to make an account, they pay their moderation team a living wage because it is a job, and has recently transitioned to official non-profit organization status.

Quality links, quality discussion, (although discussions are chronological, not threaded or voted on, first post gets top spot) plus some goofy stuff and random quality art thrown in. Kind of general interest, but because of the format, some posts can have absolutely mind-bending numbers of links and in-depth information. Some users go all out in making insanely in depth posts that end up generating significant discussion. As I said, you have a lot of professionals on there, and unlike say, HackerNews, it's professionals of all stripes: scientists, programmers, lawyers, federal workers, economists, writers, musicians and so on.

otter ,
@otter@lemmy.ca avatar

Personally I would filter and only look at platforms that are open source and Fediverse/ActivityPub compatible. Otherwise it will suffer from similar issues as the other alternatives (centralization, lack of community/momentum, takeovers).

As long as the platform federates nicely then it really comes down to personal preference. The content and communities can grow independently :)

The platforms that come to mind for that are Lemmy, Kbin, Mbin, and Sublinks. I'm probably missing some other good ones

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@startrek.website avatar

There are several closed group options or other closed source ones that aim to be just like Reddit in practice but not exactly it in theory. Ironically the Reddit alternatives sub on Reddit is probably the best place to get such a list 😜.

I enjoyed Squabbles for a bit - it was described at the time as toxically non-toxic as in very much anti-hate speech, though I don't know how it's fared recently. At the end of the day though it's just one guy's project, and while he's no Huffman, still the entire thing turns around him, very unlike the Fediverse that can become anything we want it to be.

If you do remain on Lemmy, learn which things to block bc that will improve your experience substantially. Just blocking lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net improved mine 95%, and ironically some people (not me) also block Lemmy.ml. You will come to find what works for you, I am just saying that the experience varies enormously depending on that one factor!

59QRRwD ,

I’m curious, why block Lemmy.ml?

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@startrek.website avatar

Well *I* don't, thus keep in mind that I may be summarizing here the reasons that others do incorrectly &/or unfairly, but from what I understand people are saying:

(1) often when people get extremely argumentative (aka bat shit insane crazy trolling) it is from there. Who wants to talk to someone who is rude, condescending, and doesn't listen in the slightest to your POV before loudly proclaiming how very wrong you are, even while using logical fallacies (such as strawman) as they do so?:-P Counterpoint: that can happen on any sufficiently large instance e.g. lemmy.world too? Though it does seem to happen more often on lemmy.ml for whatever reason.

(2) it may be relevant (tbh I'm not entirely sure how though?) that it leans fairly hardcore to what many people e.g. in the USA would consider an extreme leftist viewpoint, as in so far to the left that it may even become uncomfortable to someone living in a society that leans more rightwards even if the person in it considers themselves an "extreme leftist" in relation to that center point. Along these lines, are "memes" merely political propaganda that happens to be drawn in a cartoonish form? (Though this is an argument pertaining to merely a community, not an entire instance.)

59QRRwD ,

Oh interesting. I picked it from a list as it appeared to be a more privacy-focused instance and blocked all the annoying pseudo political communities. That said, having to pick a random line from the communist manifesto during sign up as a spam account filter should have been my clue. Chalked it up as a quirk of the developers…

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@startrek.website avatar

Meh, to be fair, communism gave us all the likes of Mastodon and Lemmy, whereas capitalism gave us all Twitter/X and Reddit so... it's not like I'm knocking the politics even, so much as the extremely annoying manner in which those thoughts are handled, sometimes.

Imagine a Karen who regardless of actual right vs. wrong, thinks they are right, but more importantly just enjoys slamming it into people's faces. Like, if you really think that you are correct, why work so hard to convince people of that "fact" - you catch more flies with honey than vinegar - and who exactly are you trying to convince bully even?

Likewise even a factually correct endpoint can be made into part of an incorrect statement if arrived at via a false chain of logical deduction - i.e., even a stopped watch is right twice a day, but that doesn't mean that you should trust the watch from then on!? A statement that includes a logical fallacy, even if deployed in order to defend a true statement, is still false,
even if the underlying fact also happened to be true.

And if there is anything I am learning from the internet, it is that trolling exists, yet not everyone is a troll, and it improves my mental sanity >95% to block such. I used to be proud of never blocking anyone, ever. I grew up though, in seeing how others refuse to grow.:-D

You might try an experiment and make an account somewhere, and see how different some posts and their complement of comments look, in terms of which instances you may choose to block, and also which individuals may have blocked your instance in return...

Shyfer ,

For 1) That's funny because other people have said that about lemmy.world. Lemmy.world and sh.itjustwor.ks were defederated from Beehaw during the Reddit exodus for that very reason.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@startrek.website avatar

Oh I did not know that. Sometimes the answer to "where would you go, if you were a troll" may just happen to be the same answer as "where would you go, if you were not a troll":-).

mctoasterson ,

Is that the most toxic instance? I got blocked or banned or whatever from hexbear for simply posting a slightly different opinion from whatever the current orthodoxy was there. Do curated echochamber communities really provide any value?

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@startrek.website avatar

I mean, that's how they want to be, so whatever, they can enjoy it.

But that's not how *I* want to be - and I resented having it thrust upon me without consent, in the form of being able to make an informed choice. They do not clearly state how they are, yet they are that way, hence the disconnect.

Like any authoritarian regime, they have drunk their own cool-aid and they seem to both not acknowledge it whilst simultaneously also flaunting it proudly - i.e. how they are looks to be by design, not ignorance or whatever.

And ofc the obligatory caveat that not all people on those servers are that way - e.g. you were there, until you weren't anymore:-P. But it does form a trend. And I for one would rather that people be able to make an informed choice. Like someone go there if they want, but don't you come here and tell me how to be.

Yes an echo chamber provides value to them in terms of an emotional reinforcement, though it's dangerous b/c what gets reinforced becomes thereby divorced from logic. i.e., "might makes right", which works so long as you ignore the alternative that "the pen (Reason) is mightier than the sword (Might)" - i.e. the value is purely local amongst themselves, who choose to refuse to see outside.

Even so, the code for the Fediverse came from the guy who started lemmygrad.ml iirc, and it was freely offered to the world not in spite of but b/c of that belief in communistic philosophical principles. In contrast, Reddit and most other alternatives started here in the USA - like squabbles to name one (looks to now be renamed to squabblr or something?) - did not offer their sourcecode freely, and instead tried to monetize their user base, and this too not in spite of but b/c of their own beliefs in capitalistic principles.

As long as they are honest about it though, I'm fine with them. The problem is that they are not, nor are they respectful to others... so I ban them and move on with my life. I am not kidding: if I could not have banned them, I would have left the Fediverse entirely - they are that annoying. So being able to easily improve my Fediverse experience by 95% with 1-2 instance blocks (lemmygrad.ml is often blocked by default, and many others though seemingly fewer likewise also block hexbear.net) is wonderful!:-)

Quetzlcoatl ,
@Quetzlcoatl@sh.itjust.works avatar

Never heard of phuks. Went there and immediately the first thing I came across was hate speech. Assuming its not open source?

otter ,
@otter@lemmy.ca avatar

Looks like it's open source, but very dead

  • Sorting by new gets around 1-3 posts a day, site wide

  • the top post of all time was 6 years ago and it was discussing the shut down of Voat

So while they might not have recent hate speech, it seems like that's the community that started there. Sort by top all to see the context

GolfNovemberUniform ,
@GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml avatar

I can say that hate speech is smh even more common on open-source sites than on proprietary ones

simple ,
@simple@lemm.ee avatar

https://tildes.net/ , it's not super active but it's my second option.

Ember_Rising ,

Tildes is usually pretty good. Long thoughtful comments and arguments don’t get toxic as quickly.

originalucifer ,
@originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com avatar

im enjoying an mbin instance

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