[ugjka]

The problem isn't that no one can create a Reddit clone, the problem is that no one can scale like Reddit and do it at continuous loss just to be dominant

[MisterBastahrd]

The problem with reddit clones is that every single freaking one I've seen featured on HN over the past few days has absolutely no idea of what it takes to run a proper social media platform. We abandoned tagging-as-categories two generations back. Active moderators are always better than hivemind moderation. They're so hellbent on trying to find a use case for monetizing their halfassed "build reddit in 24 hours" clones that they don't actually think about how to make the user experience better. Why the hell is the one guy working on a disbursement algorithm when his UI looks like shit and his site is unnavigable? Because he's a hobbyist, not an entrepreneur.

[ugjka]

If you tasked a team to build a reddit clone and nothing else the only problem would be scaling and paying an aws bill (for decades at loss)

[wvenable]

Having scaling problems and a big AWS bill is the consequences of success, though. I'm pretty sure the team would consider that a win.

[ugjka]

That's where Reddit is at right now, they make no profit. You think u/spez would piss off the entire site for no reason? They desperately need profit

[wvenable]

They also went from 700 employees to 2000 employees because they took VC money and have to grow grow grow. I'm sure one could make a sustainable business out of Reddit but nobody wants just a sustainable business.

[MisterBastahrd]

Reddit makes no profit because it needs about 100 devs and support staff if we're being generous and they've hired over a thousand.

[lawn]

No, the problem with a Reddit clone isn't technical.

It's getting the network effect that's difficult. And as much as we nerds want to believe, the best technical solution isn't always what wins.

[ugjka]

Right now if you had a perfect reddit clone and it didn't lag and didn't throw 500 or some stuff you'd be golden (provided you could scale)

[xeromal]

But you don't have content or the network. That's the problem

[ugjka]

Right now a large portion of Reddit is willing to jump the ship at all cost. You can't design for such events, i agree, but if you had a perfect reddit clone right now - people would flock even if there was no content. This is a digg moment. The problem is scaling up when there's demand, because people don't like lag and a half loaded tab. No one is stepping up as a Reddit successor because everyone know they have no pockets to scale to Reddit scale

[zozbot234]

The network effect comes from building actual networks. We don't need a reddit clone, we need good old-fashioned forums/bulletin boards that also interoperate via Fediverse standards. This solves the scalability issue, because individual instances would stay small, and would choose whether to accept "guest" interactions from users of other instances.

[dragonwriter]

> The problem isn't that no one can create a Reddit clone, the problem is that no one can scale like Reddit and do it at continuous loss just to be dominant

Well, anyone with enough money to burn can, but most who could probably can find other, better ways to burn the money.

[ugjka]

That's what i meant, because Reddit still is running at loss not profit