I'm working on a Reddit alternative

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Aggravating_Will6187@reddit

Hey how do we add new subreddits in this app.

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On DomoTown I manually add them. On Unpop I'm thinking about how that's going to work. I think it may start out as by-request to keep things focused as it grows, and then eventually open up to everyone, possibly with a karma-like requirement. If you'd like to suggest an art-related community to add to DomoTown, feel free to make a proposal. I usually do add the ones people ask for, in fact I don't think I've said no to anyone yet.

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Aggravating_Will6187@reddit

Sorry for taking long but could you add a Miitopia game community if you need you can check out the game it is published by Nintendo on 3DS and Switch. If you need anymore detail plz DM me.

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threelonmusketeers@reddit

what it would need, in your opinion, to become a proper Reddit alternative?

Nested comment replies. In my opinion, it's not a Reddit alternative without that.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Tell me more about that. Why wouldn't a two-level threaded reply structure work (as it is now on DomoTown)? Currently, direct comments on a post are at the "top" level, and replies to those comments and any replies to those replies are at a 2nd sublevel. This is essentially how YouTube does comments. And I'm legitimately asking so I can understand. Thanks.

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CptHammer_@reddit

I dislike YouTube comment style as it's difficult to follow a conversation. In YouTube they are not ordered by time but by engagement so I hope you don't do that.

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eccsoheccsseven@reddit

Exactly, and the result is that youtube comments aren't really a conversation. They are just people spamming opinions that have nothing to do with each other.

Lazy opinions at that. As a 47 year old TV repair specialist your channel is an inspiration to me.

Youtube comments can't be replaced by AI fast enough because we'd be losing nothing.

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keepthepace@reddit

It makes long in-depth discussions hard to follow. It makes it impossible to talk about a specific aspect. It forces a superficial level of engagement.

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Iobserv@reddit

This is the one reason why I started using Reddit over SomethingAwful. Up/downvoting is a good feature but the basic organizational aspect of nested comments is key.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

I see. How about Twitter/Bluesky style comment threads?

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keepthepace@reddit

It is confusing as hell. And I am of the (unpopular?) opinion that downvotes and upvotes are important features in these discussions to filter out trolls.

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yungbillcosbii@reddit

Yea I'd say that profiles with history up/down votes/karma are what has destroyed reddit. I just want sub communities with completely anonymous posting with no voting system to avoid another echo chamber shit hole

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ch1llboy@reddit

They are fundamental to bring the valuable discussion to the forfront.

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busymom0@reddit

Twitter/Bluesky/Youtube's lack of nested comment threads is very annoying. On Twitter, one has to constantly keep clicking back and forth to read replies which is super annoying.

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DouglasJFalcon@reddit

Bluesky has beta threaded replies

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Rommie557@reddit

No.

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busymom0@reddit

Agree with others. I hate YouTube comments because of lack of nested comment threads. It's an absolute must imo.

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Rommie557@reddit

Youtube's comment section is confusing, and you never know who is responding to who unless the user tags them in their reply.

Nested comments allow for more in depth conversation that doesn't get as muddled or confusing.

Sincerely, someone who hates the YouTube comments, and would never consider a reddit alt without nested comments.

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towehaal@reddit

Being able to collapse a section of comments is essential too.

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smallbrownfrog@reddit

I tried to run a community on Imzy when it was beta testing. The primary complaint of people trying to get groups going there was the lack of threaded comments and the impossibility of real discussion.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Fair enough. Thanks for sharing your experience

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Tyrannosaurus_Rox_@reddit

/u/liebn0r I'm putting my reply to one of your replies here. See now why a simple 2-deep comment structure is stupid?

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Eliqui123@reddit

+1 for this.

u/liebn0r I did encounter some strange behaviour earlier - I replied to someone and my comment appeared above theirs. I thought I’d stupidly hit reply to the wrong comment, and was about to delete it but after a refresh it was all good.

Oh yes, there seemed to be no delete option. Is that correct?

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Thanks, I'm aware of that issue with new comments and working on a fix. There should be a delete button on your own comments, and on your own posts you can click the 3 dots to get the menu to delete the post.

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Eliqui123@reddit

I am now seeing a “delete” option next to “edit”. I swear it wasn’t there earlier, but I also wouldn’t rule out user error given that I only slept a few hours last night. Assume the latter and I’ll update you if it turns out to be the former :)

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I-T-T-I@reddit

I think you should try collaborating in radii

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WombatusMighty@reddit

Which country are you from and where are the servers located?

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ARAM_player@reddit

There’s no toxic downvote button, good to know! Very cool overall

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ARAM_player@reddit

Remove the downvote button. Deal breaker.

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cyber_hooligan@reddit

Research Apollo and make it just like Apollo

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Background-Hat-1356@reddit

Looks neat - just signed up, although I don't really see a category where I fit: writers, historians that sort of thing.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Welcome! DomoTown itself is art-focused but the new site, Unpop, will have more of a Reddit vibe and be more general interest. Although if you would like to share some creative writing, I should add a community for that on DomoTown. Let me know!

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rolyfuckingdiscopoly@reddit

Since I’ve seen comments about the name more than once, I just wanted to put in my 2cents that I like the name Unpop!

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busymom0@reddit

Unpop

I would recommend changing the name to get rid of the "Un". It makes it sound negative.

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CptHammer_@reddit

Unpop doesn't sound like a place I'd like to visit.

Perhaps Upop, or uPop? The "un" just makes me feel like something negative is going on.

PopUn?

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rolyfuckingdiscopoly@reddit

I like Unpop! Well, at least I like it better than most of the names of Reddit alternatives. No shade, but I’m personally not a fan of adding the “u” to the beginning of things. Feels like a college student study center.

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FeverishPoeticDream@reddit

Any of these just remind me of “Funko Pop” but I do agree with your statement overall.

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busymom0@reddit

Agreed.

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Southern-Topic-9888@reddit

I second this

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antboiy@reddit

what makes reddit reddit for me is the subreddit and the content focused aspect.

a content focused platform cares more about the content than the authors. (youtube and bsky are more author focused than content focused in my opinion)

i subscribe to subreddits and see what the subreddit has to offer. not that one thing in the author's personal life unrelated to the subreddit's topic.

and nested comments and upvotes and downvotes. as much as i hate the downvotes i receive i prefer a platform where they actually matter.

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Xerxero@reddit

Cool idea. How are you gonna finance the infra and staff should it take off?

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keepthepace@reddit

Decentralized, connected to the fediverse. I think that if we have to leave reddit, that can't be for something that suffers from the same centralization issues.

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Final_Alps@reddit

Precisely. Without federation any platform can shut the doors and enshittify the service.

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ResolverOshawott@reddit

Nothing is ever completely immune to enshittification, not even fediverse.

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RatherNott@reddit

Enshittification is a direct consequence of profit motive and shareholders demanding said profit at the expense of users.

The Fediverse is made up of thousands of entirely independent self hosted servers with no corporate backing, sponsors, or profit. If there is any money involved, it's donations to help cover the server running cost.

What mechanism or incentive is there for the fediverse to enshittify?

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AnonomousWolf@reddit

Exactly, if it's not part of the Fediverse it's just kicking the problem further down the road.

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busymom0@reddit

Your art site looks great. Love the design and also lots of content.

Can I ask how you are funding it? WHat's the future monetization plan to keep it running?

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Thanks! On DomoTown the plan was to make money from community-run ads and Patreon/Ko-fi/Twitch-esque creator monetization tools with a low platform fee like 5% or less. Unpop would be similar but I think it remains to be seen what the non-advertising branch of monetization would look like. Some creators might like to have on-platform monetization tools, but since Reddit is more discussion-oriented than an art platform, I think other ideas would need to be considered as well.

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busymom0@reddit

If you need help with someone building the iOS or Android app, let me know. I do both.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Awesome! Thanks

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reptil03@reddit

Where will you get users from?. I'm on subreddits about specific games (popular ones, not indie ones). On Lemmy they are completely dead, how do you expect to convince such communities to use your alternative?

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myfunnies420@reddit

2.5 YEARS?! jesus... How many users have you gotten? What's your primary customer acquisition channel?

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

User acquisition these days is more narrative-driven than product-driven. I spend most of my time focusing on the product, so our user acquisition on DomoTown hasn't been great. That said, you still need a great product in order to compete, and I think the changes happening at Reddit could be a narrative-driven story that will lead people to a new platform.

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threelonmusketeers@reddit

As with most Reddit alternatives, I have the following questions:

How resistant is the platform to enshittification? Is there anything (e.g. FOSS model) legally preventing you from selling the platform if a person or company made you an offer too good to refuse?
How is content moderation handled? If you're taking a hands-off, free-speech approach, what would prevent the platform from devolving into a "nazi bar"?
Do you plan to implement ActivityPub? The ability to collaborate rather than compete with other Reddit alternatives will help with the growth and adoption of the platform. Existing Reddit alternatives without ActivityPub support (Discuit, Disqus, Raddle, Saidit, Tildes, etc.) suffer from very small userbases compared to those that do support ActivityPub (Lemmy, Mbin, PieFed).

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

I have experience in this area. I created and ran a webcomic hosting platform called Smack Jeeves from 2005 to 2018 when I decided to sell it. One of the worst decisions I've ever made. I had plenty of reasonable reasons for selling, but Smack Jeeves was a beloved place in the webcomic community and what was lost was not worth it. What I got out of the experience was an appreciation for the value of keeping internet platforms independent and non-corporate. That said, this project is bootstrapped and I put almost all of my time into development. I don't have $15 million and a team of ex twitter employees at my disposal to build the next Bluesky version of Reddit. My long term goal is to build an app that serves its users and makes enough of a sustainable profit to support a small team.
This is a great point. One of the risks of building an alternative platform is having it quickly devolve into a place where all the fringe people go to be awful. I think it is the responsibility of a platform owner to lead the culture of the platform through example and enforcement. Principally speaking, I'm pro free-speech within the context of a nation of people under government. For an online platform, I'm still fundamentally free-speech, but early on there will be high standards for content: no porn, discussion must be civil, no harassment, no promotion of violence against individuals or groups, no spam, no doxxing. Long term I'm undecided on whether pornographic content would have a place on the platform.
I think long term ActivityPub would be more of a hindrance. I eventually came around to the idea of distributed protocols and built a Bluesky client because of the popularity of Bluesky and IMO the superiority of their protocol from a performance standpoint, but I quickly learned that 99% of people don't care about the underlying protocol. They just want the product to be good, and they want people to be there. I'm experienced enough now to know that I won't be in control of the growth of this platform. It may or may not succeed. In today's world, having a social media platform explode is the product of the convergence of a lot of things, the majority of which are out of the creators' control.

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UnflinchingSugartits@reddit

Would like for it to have an Android app

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BlazeAlt@reddit

I knew you were going to say this ha ha

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UnflinchingSugartits@reddit

Lol yes, it's really my only 'must have' 😅 lol

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PMSEND_ME_NUDES@reddit

I just had a look, where is the NSFW porn stuff?? Isn't that a huge if not a majority of the early adopter market? How do you succeed without that?

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SoggyGrayDuck@reddit

I like it. One thing that new platforms lack is content. Maybe find a way to import posts and comments from reddit or wherever but make them visually different from the real content so people know the op won't see it. I just hate knowing that I'm missing out on content when trying to switch so I always go back.

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Final_Alps@reddit

Making it part of ActivityPub protocol would accomplish that.

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SoggyGrayDuck@reddit

What is that? I'm new to alternatives and haven't spent much time on them.

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Final_Alps@reddit

ActivityPub is a messaging protocol for things like BlueSky, Mastodon and Lemmy that allows for federated messaging systems where not one single person controls the whole exchange of information.

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threelonmusketeers@reddit

I think BlueSky uses a different protocol, but yeah, Mastodon, Lemmy, Mbin, PieFed, etc. all use ActivityPub.

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briggs851@reddit

I’m on iOS and I love the UI

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arthurdentstowels@reddit

This looks very well done, I love the layout and dark mode style. I'm not an artist by any means but I could see myself still browsing this.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Thanks!

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arthurdentstowels@reddit

Sorry I just realised what your post says! I speed read it originally. So you're looking at building something similar to Reddit in the style of your already working platform? We absolutely need this now that Reddit holds the Monopoly. I'll follow your account to keep up to date!

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Final_Alps@reddit

Make it compatible with federated protocols from fediverse /bluesky / mastodon / lemmy / Pixelfed.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

I actually built a Bluesky client based on the same UI if you want to check it out: bluejeans.app

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BlazeAlt@reddit

Support ActivityPub. Lemmy supports it and just reached 55k monthly active users. Discuit, which is centralized, has 200 active commenters.

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Eliqui123@reddit

Ooh I like this! Immediate response is that it’s very appealing visually and has an intuitive UI (amazing how many sites get this wrong). I’m definitely going to have to sign up and have a proper play.

On first glance it seems you have the basics covered. Off the top of my head I’d like:

to be taken straight to the comment section when I try to comment. I don’t want to have to scroll past the main post content (currently I’m having to scroll down past the image)
user created subfolders when I choose to save something (rather than a big long list). You may have this - I don’t know yet
comprehensive view history

Nice.

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liebn0r@reddit (OP)

Thanks for the feedback and for those suggestions! They all make sense to me. Sounds like you're on mobile?

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Eliqui123@reddit

Happy to help. I sent you a DM as well.

Yes, I should have mentioned that mobile is my primary method of consumption for Reddit. It’s partly so that I reserve my computer for work/music creation, but also because Reddit’s website is so atrocious :)

I’m using old.reddit when I do access it using a browser.

Domo.town behaves as I’d expect an app to behave on mobile. The thought you’ve put into it is apparent in that respect, too.

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A_reddit_refugee@reddit

I think the name unpopular works better than domo town. Checking it out now