https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36203610

Demo: Fully P2P and open source Reddit alternative (plebbit-test.netlify.app)

313 points by estebanabaroa 3 days ago | 239 comments

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664067

Lemmy, an open-source federated Reddit alternative, gets funding for development (lemmy.ml)

944 points by jasonbourne1901 on June 27, 2020 | 657 comments

I coded an upvoting platform in the late '00s. I mean, these things are very simple to build, and if you actually put some thought into sharding they're not that hard to scale. (No offense Dan but I have no clue what route HN has taken and I'm almost terrified to know).

The simple problem is what it's always been: Good moderation and building a community. See me, I was literally just bitching about being kicked off of WSB. Or the many times I've been banned or limited from HN. And I consider myself a mildly obstreperous arguer, sometimes a bit of a jackass, but certainly not the worst.

The answer to why there are no Reddit clones is simply that Reddit owns the market for all forums in the known universe which are not specialty forums, which usually run on PHPBB or some other ancient janky software and charge $5/mo for subscription to keep their servers up. A single ad on Reddit reaches millions. It's simply the economy of scale.

[edit] This does get into the more interesting question of why people keep building startups without asking themselves "hey, what's our moat to prevent someone else from..."

The "moat" for Reddit is only volume. Period. Same with all socials that have existed more or less since the collapse of Friendster, Myspace, LnC and Suicide Girls [edit edit: I guess suicide girls still exists. That makes me feel even older].

How Voat went may have discouraged them.