All 100 ideasCommunities
#64 of 100 · Communities
Reddit without the ad company
A topic-based Reddit-style forum with voting and threads, not run by an ad company, with fairer moderation and less toxicity.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay7%
- Want it local or private0%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted36%
- Want AI to do it0%
Share of the 14 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Built, still asked for18 Show HN launches do this job, and 10 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.
- Non.io, a Reddit-like platform Ive been working on for the last 4 years2023 · 1,943 pts
- Hummingbard – decentralized communities built on Matrix2021 · 412 pts
- Zsync, a Reddit Alternative with the Goal to Reward Quality Comments2023 · 207 pts
- Sqwok – A low-cruft, minimalist alternative to Reddit and Twitter2020 · 185 pts
- Gurlic – Free and Open Communities2020 · 108 pts
- Reddit alternative – decentralized social news site, no censorship2015 · 104 pts
- Discuit – A Reddit alternative with a clean UI and a sensible vision2023 · 53 pts
- An open-source and real-time Reddit alternative, currently in beta2017 · 13 pts
Instead of: Reddit
The idea, as matched
A Reddit-like general discussion platform with topic communities, voting and threaded comments, not run by an ad-driven company, with fair moderation and less toxicity, often non-profit or open source.
Jev first matched 20 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 14 of 20.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
Reader’s note. Many are complaints about Reddit moderation.
- Aug 2024Wants a Reddit competitor with lighter censorship and better moderators, after being banned. Read it: a comment in “Reddit banned me for developing Geddit”
- Feb 2024Wants a megaforum where people can retreat into smaller forums, avoiding deplatforming and unwanted content. Read it: a comment in “The Supreme Court is about to decide the future of online speech”
- Dec 2023Wants a social network where you follow topics rather than individual people, like old Reddit. Read it: a comment in “How to run a small social network (2019)”
- Aug 2023Wants an open source, vote-based forum like Discourse, free for non-commercial use and paid for commercial deployments. Read it: a comment in “Think Twice Before You Use Discord for Your Community”
- Jun 2023Wants a ready-made Reddit clone to host migrating communities under another funding model, like donations. Read it: a comment in “Reddark: Website to watch subreddits going dark”
- Dec 2021Wants a Reddit alternative that fills the role Reddit used to, as even niche subs have degraded. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: There should be a Reddit Alternative (This isn’t it)”
- Sep 2021Wants an open source forum that looks like old.reddit, finding it easier to read than Discourse. Read it: a comment in “Please stop closing forums and moving people to Discord”
- Aug 2021Would pay for a Reddit alternative without politics creeping in and a few moderators controlling everything. Read it: a comment in “TikTok overtakes Facebook as most downloaded app”
- Jun 2021Wants a Reddit-like site organized by topic with HN's simple design and benevolent moderation. Read it: a comment in “Link rot and content drift are endemic to the web”
- Jun 2021Asks for Reddit alternatives, having already moved mostly to chat tools like IRC or Matrix. Read it: a comment in “Reddit’s disrespectful design”
- Jun 2020Wants a Reddit alternative without built-in censorship, after subreddit bans. Read it: a comment in “Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development”
- Oct 2019Wants something like Reddit that is neither censored nor toxic. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: Is Reddit still toxic even after all their “changes”?”
- Dec 2013Wants a Reddit or HN style site that is invite or application only, to ensure consistently good content. Read it: a comment in “How to defend yourself when your photo is ridiculed on Reddit”
- Nov 2010Asks for an open-source platform for running a Hacker News style news community. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Is there an open source social news platform?”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.