[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.