[coldtea]

Any semi-capable coder could build a Reddit clone by themselves in a week since forever. It's a glorified CRUD app.

The barrier to creating a full blown Reddit the huge scaling, not the functionality. But with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and backends like S3, CF etc, this hasn't been a barrier since a decade or more, either.

[scotty79]

What I could do in a week is maybe set up an open source clone of reddit (that was written by many people for many months) and customize it a little bit.

And I have a pretty decent career behind me as a aoftware developer and my peers percieved me as kinda good.

[spiderfarmer]

I think you’re wrong in several ways.

Even capable coders can’t create a Reddit clone in a week. Because it’s not just a glorified CRUD app. And I encourage you to think a bit harder before arguing like that.

Yes you can create a CRUD app in some kind of framework and style it like Reddit. But that’s like putting lines on your lawn and calling it a clone of the Bernabeu.

But even if you were right, the real barrier to building a Reddit clone is getting traction. Even if you went viral and did everything right, you’d still have to wait years before you have the brand recognition and SEO rankings they enjoy.

[coldtea]

>Because it’s not just a glorified CRUD app

In what way (that's not related to the difficulty of scaling it, which I already addressed separately)?

The point of my comment was:

"Somebody with AI cloning Reddit in a week is not as special as you make it to be, all things considering. A Reddit clone is not that difficult, it's basically a CRUD app. The difficult part of replicating it, or at least all the basics of it, is its scaling - and even that wouldn't be as difficult for a dev in 2026, the era of widespread elastic cloud backends".

The Bernabeu analogy handwavingly assumes that Reddit is more challenging than a homegrown clone, but doesn't address in what way Reddit differs from a CRUD app, and how my comment doesn't hold.

And even if it did, it would be moot regarding the main point I make, unless the recent AI-clone also handles those differentiating non-CRUD elements and thus also differs from a CRUD app.

>But even if you were right, the real barrier to building a Reddit clone is getting traction.

True, but not relevant to my point, which is about the difficulty of cloning Reddit coding-wise, not business wise, and whether it's or isn't any great feat for someone using AI to do it.

[spiderfarmer]

Calling Reddit a CRUD app isn’t wrong, it’s just vacuous.

It strips away every part that actually makes Reddit hard.

What happens when you sign up?

A CRUD app shows a form and inserts a row.

Reddit runs bot detection, rate limits, fingerprinting, shadow restrictions, and abuse heuristics you don’t even see, and you don’t know which ones, because that knowledge is their moat.

What happens when you upvote or downvote?

CRUD says “increment a counter.”

Reddit says “run a ranking algorithm refined over years, with vote fuzzing, decay, abuse detection, and intentional lies in the UI.” As the number you see is not the number stored.

What happens when you add a comment?

CRUD says “insert record.”

Reddit applies subreddit-specific rules, spam filters, block lists, automod logic, visibility rules, notifications, and delayed or conditional propagation.

What happens when you post a URL?

CRUD stores a string.

Reddit fingerprints it, deduplicates it, fetches metadata, detects spam domains, applies subreddit constraints, and feeds it into ranking and moderation systems.

Yes, anyone can scaffold a CRUD app and style it like Reddit.

But calling that a clone is like putting white lines on your lawn and calling it the Bernabeu.

You haven’t cloned the system, only its silhouette.

[Ma8ee]

Why do you think the app they call a clone of Reddit do all of those things, or most, or any?

[carlmr]

I was thinking the exact same thing. Moltbook isn't that sophisticated. We're moving goal posts a lot here.

However, I do think 1 week is ambitious, even for a bad clone.

[spiderfarmer]

So if Reddit is just a CRUD app, what is Moltbook?

[bodge5000]

> Reddit runs bot detection, rate limits, fingerprinting, shadow restrictions, and abuse heuristics you don’t even see, and you don’t know which ones, because that knowledge is their moat.

> Reddit says “run a ranking algorithm refined over years, with vote fuzzing, decay, abuse detection, and intentional lies in the UI.” As the number you see is not the number stored.

> etc...

The question is; is moltbook doing this? That was the original point, it took a week to build a basic reddit clone, as you call it the silhouette, with AI, that should surely be the point of comparison to what a human could do in that time

[spiderfarmer]

"A basic Reddit clone"

So as we have established, it's not even a basic Reddit clone.

And anyone who says they can build one in a week is giving HN a bad reputation.

[bodge5000]

That just seems like a completely different argument, Reddit only came into a part of this in relation to Moltbook

[csande17]

Moltbook didn't do any of that stuff either, though!

[spiderfarmer]

So if Reddit is just a CRUD app, what is Moltbook

[coldtea]

Sorry, but this reads like AI slop.