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!
Never heard of phuks. Went there and immediately the first thing I came across was hate speech. Assuming its not open source?
Looks like it’s open source, but very dead
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Sorting by new gets around 1-3 posts a day, site wide
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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
Even by reddit standard, Lemmy is a dead zone as well.
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Aw, no! Phuks has fallen to hate speech? I’ll have to investigate this. I investigated, and didn’t find any hate speech. Just some dumb jokes. I’m talking they have posts with the N word right on the front page. So disgusting.
What was the nature of this hate speech? I don’t want to get involved with nazis.
just in case anyone here is confused … mbin (and its ancestor kbin, which is still running) work just fine with lemmy as they federate with each other. Upshot being that choosing between mbin/kbin and lemmy as an alternative to reddit is not exclusive … choosing one is choosing both … is choosing the fediverse.
*bin also has an advantage of integrating microblog as well, though you can’t change URLs in link posts
Yep, completely unique aspect of the platform. Some however do find it too complex or confusing, which I say just reassure anyone that that’s not uncommon if you do.
I love kbin, never heard of mbin. Would you recommend mbin over kbin?
Hard to recommend one over the other, especially as I’m not following things closely. mbin is a fork and seems well maintained at the moment while the lead dev and founder of kbin seems to be struggling to keep working on kbin. Things could change though.
they also overhauled the threads view filtering, though the all content and new comments highlighting features are still missing
mbin and kbin are both top notch sites.
That site lists misskey as the second most popular fediverse network, but I never heard of it. I will check it out.
It’s like Mastadon (but better) and very popular in Japan. Firefish is fork of it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misskey
My understanding is that Misskey is a lot older, from before the Fediverse and ActivityPub was a thing. It’s very popular in Japan, so it might not have as much content from other places.
Firefish (formerly known as Calckey) is an actively developed fork of Misskey that hopes to add many requested community features.
So firefish was started because Misskey development slowed (or stopped?), but it has had issues recently
https://fediversereport.com/an-uncertain-future-for-firefish/
https://tildes.net/ , it’s not super active but it’s my second option.
How did you get an invite?
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
Raddle, Discuit, Flingup, etc
PieFed! That’s the only other threadiverse project I know of.
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.
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!
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.
Well, the dev ended up going the “free speech” route and started allowing hateful content to be posted and the community kinda imploded on itself. Haven’t looked back at that site in probably 6 months or so now.
I’m curious, why block Lemmy.ml?
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.)
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?
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!:-)
Discuit? I was on it for a bit around exodus
