Building a Reddit Alternative : An Evolved Forum Software

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DragonfruitOk2029@reddit

So each sub Will be like an dictator driven company almost

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Greg_Zeng@reddit

Interested in your experiences with trying to modify or reform the current Reddit.

Why would your Reddit alternative be different or similar to Reddit?

In my opinion, much more hand holding is needed, to avoid getting much negative treatment from Reddit readers and Reddit moderators.

Perhaps more interesting ways of learning to avoid being Reddit punished? Most of us learn by ignorance that we are being Reddit punished.

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Electrical_Arm3793@reddit

Would love to try it out, but I also know it’s unlikely to have many users…

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UnflinchingSugartits@reddit

Are you going to make an Android app ?

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No_Reveal_7826@reddit

I've never once wished that Reddit had articles, discussions, chats, events, jobs, changelog, feedback, or quizzes.

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threelonmusketeers@reddit

Sounds like an interesting project!

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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kkatdare@reddit (OP)

Very interesting questions.

It's not. As a founder, I've been in the community domain for the past 20 years. The project is passion turned into a business, profitable and bootstrapped. We rejected 2 buyout and 3 investment offers. Community platforms die; and I know how painful it is. We built the platform for ourselves; convinced ourselves that it solves the problem and worked on it for about 2 years before launching it.

It's going to remain in our control for the next 5 years at least. I can't predict the future and I hope we'll continue to build a lasting company funded entirely by customers. We want to be the MailChimp of the community industry. But yeah - mailchimp was acquired.

Right now - manually. But we are working hard to implement an AI moderator that learns from human moderators. Our job is restricted to offering the platform and we don't want to put strict control on political opinions, controversial topics. However, we will NOT allow anything that belongs to the 'adult' industry. We own the right to choose our customers.
Too early to decide. I'm okay with small userbase as long as the it creates value that benefits the community. Not going to pressure ourselves into 'growth at any cost'.

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habarnam@reddit

As someone that builds stuff in this space, my opinion is that a for profit business is not the best model for fostering discussion platforms. The incentives are the complete antithetical sadly: more users, more user monetization through ads or subscriptions. No thank you.

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virtueavatar@reddit

Respectfully, it sounds like you're working with the worst of all worlds in those answers.

The most interesting part to me is how you managed to get 2 buyout and 3 investment offers in the first place considering that. I assume there's something I'm missing.

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kkatdare@reddit (OP)

I don’t have the answer to how.