[imran3740]

As with voat.co, who's gonna switch to this? Really the only people who switched over to Voat are the people who felt reddit was restricting their rights by posting controversial/hateful material on reddit. So it tends to be full of /pol-like MRAs/extreme right/alt-right users.

Voten seems like it's trying to implement a more democratic system, but who will be pushed into switching over to that?

[Alex3917]

> who's gonna switch to this?

Probably no one. But you also need to keep in mind that most HN readers probably have a very skewed perception of what Reddit is. E.g. basically my entire 11+ year experience with Reddit is reading and commenting on subreddits that aggregate articles about various topics. But the vast majority of subreddits either allow only self-posts, or else only allow links to one or two whitelisted domains like imgur or youtube. Sometimes this is the stated policy, but many times that's just the de facto state of the subreddit.

I only point this out because it's easy to think that Reddit is mostly about finding and discussing content, which it used to be, when today it's much more about community building.

[Semaphor]

Thank you. The article said "Reddit alternative" in the headline and kept talking about "social bookmarking" in the main text. If Reddit was a social bookmarking site still, is have left long ago.

edit: Registered. Is this a joke? 262px from the start of one submission to the next. Reddit: 98px. So I guess it actually is a social bookmarking site where people can post memes. But certainly no Reddit competitor. Maybe a pinterest competitor.

[nirav72]

yep. Reddit is still doing well with no real competitor. I still enjoy it enough to continue to use it. I usually just stick to subs that fall under my specific interest. I stay out most of the caustic subs (i.e any political and news related) and filter out most of them on from the main page.

[joesb]

Wow. I've just visited Voat. You were not kidding about their userbase.

[cookiecaper]

All of these alternatives are going to run into this same kind of trouble unless they have real financial backing, because the incentive to switch is just not there for most users. New users have to be brought in, which is very expensive, and the community will almost certainly have to be salted with astroturf, as reddit was in days of yore.

Over the years I've been surprised at the "stickiness" of user habits. They can have every reason to switch to another site and still refuse to do so, preferring the old habit. Communities do occasionally move, but it's hard to make it happen.

The other issue is that reddit is an inlet, a way for communities to get traffic and find each other. This is partially because of the inadequacy of search engines like Google, which have been thoroughly gamed for the last decade or so, such that they almost always prefer crappy, highly-commercialized results that have been "SEO-optimized" v. organic, real-person-generated content.

A reddit competitor would need to address a) user stickiness, and unwillingness to give up old habits; and b) supply a stable quantity of new users to keep the community active and alive.

Do bear in mind that reddit itself generally has a reputation as a "dark corner of the internet" in the public mind. There is probably room for something more widely accessible if it can somehow control the user intake and avoid an "anything goes" atmosphere.

[dkhenry]

I dunno, with the recent changes reddit has been rolling out it is no longer a nice place to visit. There is so much hate and anger on the front page and so little good content. I could make an account, but it seems like they shadow ban everyone except for bots ( and not just for content, the last two times I was shadow banned it was because I logged in from my office IP address which they deemed was "gaming" votes )

[root_axis]

> There is so much hate and anger on the front page and so little good content.

Absurd hyperbole. I mean, all someone has to do is just look at the front-page to see that this is false.

> it seems like they shadow ban everyone except for bots

Also absurd hyperbole.

You claim to have been banned because an admin or an algorithm incorrectly identified you as vote spamming, but I honestly don't believe it based on the rest of the content in your post.

[BoorishBears]

If I had a dollar for every time I saw something either overtly racist or inappropriate, or just plain braindead on the new front page that wouldn’t have shown up before I’d have several. It went from the “front page of (what’s popular on) the internet” to “front page of Reddit”. The only problem is below the surface Reddit has a lot of racist and inappropriate content. That’s why I rarely go anywhere but a few isolated development subreddits

[narrowrail]

After you made this comment, a whole discussion[0] ensued regarding this topic. Looking at the front page of Reddit is like refusing to use kill files on usenet or /ignore on IRC "because I want to see what 'they' are saying."

The short of it, like many similar platforms from the past, is that Reddit is highly customizable if the user chooses that route (not to mention Reddit Enhancement Suite).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14351010

[BoorishBears]

Except before they changed the front page it wasn't like that at all.

The fact is "raw" Reddit is nothing to write home about and the previous front page worked around that with default subs.

I have no idea how it makes sense from a user conversion perspective, since new visitors essentially see the crappiest sides of Reddit before they even make an account to then go and learn how to filter it. I know personally if the first time I visited Reddit I saw what I usually see on the front page these days I probably would stay accountless

[imran3740]

Really? I've been on reddit for a few years now and there's plenty of enjoyable content on the frontpage and now /r/popular. Sure, there's always something about politics, but I think that's always been the case.

As for shadowbanning, reddit is taking steps to get rid of that altogether [0], or at least they recognize that it's a bad system for actual users.

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/3sbrro/accou...

[amorphid]

I also like being able to filter out subreddits on /r/all. Every political cycle, I get bombarded w/ political news on /r/all. I filtered out all of the political content, including for candidates I like, and now I'm much happier! When I want political content, I seek it out, and it's kind of hard to avoid anyway.

[SquareWheel]

Reddit has already made large strides there. I see far fewer shadowbans today than I saw 1-2 years ago (based on sbanned posts caught in the modqueue).

[covercash]

Being shadow banned has no impact on what content you see so if you just want a better front page experience, try creating an account and joining smaller subreddits that are more aligned to your interests. I don't think I have a single default sub on my front page anymore.

[dkhenry]

Right and then try to participate in the conversation, and you can't, but since its a shadow ban you don't even know that you can't participate. In general your giving traffic and ad dollars to people who seem more interested in pressing a narrative then providing content.

[narrowrail]

You seem to be insinuating about a conspiracy among Reddit the company, admins (low-level employees), and [mostly] independent subreddit moderators. I think your premise is flawed.

[root_axis]

What is the supposed narrative that shadowbans intend to foster?

[arbitrage]

Making people outraged and then trying to convince them to switch to voat. Or now, I suppose, voten.

[Pxtl]

I'd say the changes aren't responsible for the "hate and anger", but the growth and natural drift of users.

Undermoderated websites gradually radicalize as the heat and rage drives away moderates. 4chan is the extreme example of this, but Reddit's culture slowly lumbers in the same direction.

[Karunamon]

That would apply if Reddit were any kind of unmoderated. Most of the communities showing up on the front page have a litany of exacting requirements for content, and sometimes, stuff winds up deleted anyways.

[Pxtl]

For the posts? Yes. But for the commentary? Only a handful of subs moderate the commentary to any real level - usually ones created in reaction to the ugly nature of their minimally-moderated counterparts. /r/science and /r/canadapolitics are examples of heavily-moderated subs that specifically try to avoid the terrible level of discourse that Reddit is famous for.

[seibelj]

I have been hearing "reddit sucks now" for 8 years and my reddit account is 9 years old. And I pretty much agree. But I keep going there!

[ehsankia]

Do you mean /r/all? Because you can just filter out bad subreddits and filter out bad subreddits...

[fischersully]

As you said it yourself, Voat is "full of /pol-like MRAs/extreme right/alt-right". Voten is not trying to do the same. It's just an alternative with a good design, real-time features and basically everything that Reddit and Voat aren't.

[cholantesh]

>Voten is not trying to do the same.

No, but most people who seek a reddit alternative don't list its design as a grievance. The site will be made by its community, and it's a safe bet to make that Voten's community will not be very different from Voat's.

[mundo]

> who's gonna switch to this?

Scott Alexander put it very well, in describing the right-leaning Reddit clone voat.co, and its influx of new users after Reddit purged some subs:

"The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong."

(from http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/04/getting-high-on-your-ow...)

[antisthenes]

Are there libertarian-hunts as well?

[axlprose]

unintentionally, since any outspoken libertarians tend to get caught in the crossfire of these witch-hunts as well, due to the whole debate turning into a simplified 'us vs them' situation.

[snomad]

> who's gonna switch to this

I wonder if the removal of CSS from the subreddits will give other message boards a chance to splinter off some of the community.

[nulagrithom]

I think they backtracked on the CSS removal.

Still, something like CSS removal, spezgiving, or Pao happening again could easily trigger a migration. Voat didn't take off simply because it couldn't handle the load when those events occurred.

[ajacksified]

Reddit has been through a lot. (I went through three CEOs during my 3-year tenure there.) At this point, I can't imagine a scandal worse than spezgiving- the only way Reddit will die is a slow fade into irrelevance, rather than a Digg-style calamity- and I certainly hope not, as a Reddit addict.

Also, I have a theory that the "no more css" and "okay some css" was a carefully crafted maneuver, rather than a real backtrack.