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Subreply – An open source text-only social network
- PaulHoule 1y agoGotta say that (1) images greatly improve engagement on things like Mastodon and Bluesky and (2) I have the most fun on those platforms sharing photos that I took.
- chistev 1y agoBut there are no images here
- ramon156 1y ago... hence the comment
- latchkey 1y agoI've been keeping a list of features to build into a HN browser extension for years now and this is one of the top items on my list. One of these days I'll get around to it.
- chistev 1y agoI wasn't complaining. I love that HN is text only.
- PaulHoule 1y ago... and what I post to Mastodon/Bluesky is different from what I post to HN https://mastodon.social/@UP8 https://mastodon.social/@UP8 For instance, I post links to phys.org a lot more and I'm less likely to post a link to the paper because (1) Mastodon can't extract images out of the latter and (2) I get more replies like "this is over my head" from Mastodonsters whereas I think most of you might think you'd look stupid if you said something like that. On the other hand I rarely post links to The Guardian to Mastodon because it can't extract images from Guardian articles. Bonus: if you look right now you'll see the user interface that I use to post to HN! [1] [1] permalink that documents the mysterious YOShInOn: https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114887102728039235 https://mastodon.social/@UP8/114887102728039235
- latexr 1y ago> I get more replies like "this is over my head" from Mastodonsters whereas I think most of you might think you'd look stupid if you said something like that. Not sure that’s the reason. Or at least all of it. HN tends to value substantive posts and someone just saying “I don’t understand this” doesn’t add to the discussion and would likely be downvoted. On the other hand, I have seen people here say they don’t understand specific bits of a post. Those are actionable and advance the discussion, and tend to be upvoted and get replies.
- what 1y agoCan you tell me more about your three sided cards?
- mbirth 1y agoYeah, this reminds me of old Reddit where people resorted to imgur and other image hosts before they introduced their own photo upload feature.
- PokemonNoGo 1y agoIs that bad? Resorting to a dedicated party for rich content? I enjoyed reddit more when it was like that honestly. Business wise it is the wrong decision though.
- mbirth 1y agoIt's bad in that the media is completely disconnected from the posts. If the media provider you chose goes down, nobody will be able to see the stuff you've posted anymore. If that subreply server you're using gets taken down, you'll have lots of orphaned stuff on that media upload website.
- giantrobot 1y ago> If the media provider you chose goes down, nobody will be able to see the stuff you've posted anymore. Imgur was started because the founder was annoyed at sites like ImageShack and Photobucket killing viral images and/or preventing hot linking. It was Reddit's official-unofficial image host until Reddit started hosting images themselves.
- whywhywhywhy 1y agoImgur also rugpulled in the end, think it was adult content at first but didn't they recently delete a ton of old content and content not tied to accounts. Ultimately you can never trust the parasite image upload service because eventually they'll try and supplant you like how imgur is now a reddit-like/ifunny-like type site instead of just a "dumb" image host.
- giantrobot 1y ago
- throwaway81523 1y agoI've never used Mastodon of Bluesky and I hate Twitter. I do feel pretty engaged with HN, and it is text-only. I'm not sure what makes "social media" different from a discussion board though, so I don't know whether HN counts. I do remember that github used to call itself social coding, which was one factor making me want to stay away from it.
- latexr 1y agoHN has (or is missing, depending on your point of view) a number of features integral to (other?) social networks. Being text-only is one, but not having notifications for replies is a big one. Also no “boosts”, “reshares”, “follows”, “blocks”, …
- throwaway81523 1y agoYeah for Usenet I use gnus, which keeps track of which posts I have already seen. It doesn't have notifications and I don't miss them, as long as I can see right away where the new posts are. I don't know what reshares are. Gnus does have a way to ignore specific posters or topics and I do use that. Every time I mull the idea of writing another forum poster, I come back to the realization that Usenet already does everything needed (at least on the backend), and has done so since the 1980s. A better NNTP to web gateway is all it could really use, for those who want to read with browsers.
- aspenmayer 1y agoFor reply notifications, I use HN user ‘dangrossman’s HN Replies: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=dangrossman Show HN: HN Replies – Get notified of replies to your comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539 - February 11 2016 (124 comments) https://www.hnreplies.com/ https://www.hnreplies.com/
- stupidgeek314 1y ago> text only > emojis xD
- pluto_modadic 1y agoUTF-8 is still text :p
- diath 1y agoYou probably want to pin requirements to specific versions of the libraries.
- _jplc 1y agoTrendiest post is from the developer saying "Mastodon is dead", four weeks ago, 12 replies. Sure bud.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoYou make it sound like they claim subreply is the thing that might have killed mastodon. The full post is: Mastodon is dead. Most people have migrated to Bluesky or Threads.
- herrherrmann 1y agoMost of their other posts on the front page also aren’t exactly charismatic (or plain childish). A good early warning sign to stay away from that place!
- nathan_compton 1y agoTwo clicks into this and I say someone posting "Killing n** (free speech)" from a poster named "N*** killer". I am, in fact, pro free speech. But this is a bad look. I'm not even saying this is a problem with subreply. It is some other kind of problem. A problem with a subset of people who like free speech or something? I don't get it.
- shayway 1y agoIt's worth pointing out that the post in question was made in the past half hour amidst the wave of activity from HN. Not to say your point isn't valid, but I think this is more an example of trolls who will say anything and everything to cause anger and insult; it's not representative of those who believe in free speech, or the site itself for that matter.
- givemeethekeys 1y agoMaybe it is a bot by other competing social networks. Such trolling hurts new businesses a lot more than old ones.
- hammyhavoc 1y agoOther social media platforms don't see this as competition, it's got 59 stars on GitHub. I don't think anyone is losing sleep about their silo being made irrelevant yet.
- hn-shithole 1y agoWhite supremacists hang out on "Hacker" News. They feel at home because the mods protect them, as long as they mask their commentary in polite language.
- averageRoyalty 1y agoBut that example has played out on every social media website, forum, etc once hitting critical mass. It's a bigger problem in society yes, but it's not just trolls. Trolls are the least harmful of the groups of people who will scream racial epithets online.
- bluerooibos 1y agoCool! I'd say the current UI would greatly benefit from some UX enhancements. At first glance, the page just looks like a wall of text. Very little contrast/hierarchy difference between author names and post titles etc so it's difficult to distinguish between what the content is. Spacing between content would help too.
- itisfinji 1y agoI love the UI.
- myaccountonhn 1y agoMe too, not all UIs need to have the spacing of a children's book with one sentence and an image per page.
- onetom 1y agoWhile I agree with what we don't need, something is still off with the UI. I can't really put my finger on any specific problem, though. It's just a gut feeling. The names are bold faced, so my attention is drawn to them, but since i don't recognize any of them, i don't even know where to start reading.
- dsmurrell 1y agoWas going to register but this stopped me... "Password needs a lowercase letter" Can you use entropy based password complexity measures please.
- onetom 1y agoCan you give some pointers to some popular implementations or algorithms in any language, please? Is there some "industry standard" or "best practice" for such a metric? I guess Bitwarden might have something publicly available...
- giancarlostoro 1y agoI have thought about making something similar, text only social media. The focus should be on written content, not so much video, and images. I also considered how to monetize / do ads correctly, maybe a slightly different font.
- wenbin 1y agomissed the good old days of telnet bbs & newsgroup :)
- davidcollantes 1y agoFinally! I asked about open sourcing it almost 10 years ago: https://subreply.com/reply/11842 https://subreply.com/reply/11842
- ianschmitz 1y agoAnd yet, it is still not open source :)
- TrevorFSmith 1y agoI would love for everyone designing a new social app to start by deciding how to handle the issues every social app will have. Abuse, hate speech, brigading, etc. We've known about these for decades. They can't be ignored. I'm not dictating how they should be handled (variety is great!) but decisions should be made and declared up front before the first spec or line of code. Otherwise the app is DOA IMHO.
- JimDabell 1y agoI’ve become increasingly convinced that the two main negative metrics for social media are spam and spite. But people only tend to focus on the spam and only act on spite when it tips into abuse. If we put the same amount of effort into spite as we did spam, the difference would be immense and social media would be far healthier.
- mariusor 1y agoIn a very similar veign I've been working on a federated link aggregator for quite some time. It's test instance https://brutalinks.tech https://brutalinks.tech is not open for new accounts but if anyone would be interested to run it for themselves I can help with setting it up. :)
- grillitoazul 1y agoFor a new social network to thrive, it needs two things: content that interests users, and a distinct culture that keeps them engaged. Take the J programming language—I’ve been exploring it lately, but Reddit’s discussions are sparse (the first post I found was 16 years old). Niche topics often lack critical mass, and without it, platforms risk becoming ghost towns. But beyond content, what sets a network apart is its style. Hacker News works because it rewards precision, logic, and staying on-topic. If Subreply wants to compete, it needs more than just "text-only"—it needs a clear ethos. Will it enforce an etiquette? Foster a specific tone? Otherwise, why would communities migrate? Edited with help from deepseek.
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- serial_dev 1y agoI've seen so many forums where the pitch is that it's "like a subreddit or Hacker News but for X", where X is scientific papers, Go articles, OtherLang articles, etc.. and the only one that maintained at least some traffic is lobste.rs, all the others are ghost towns.
- gigatexal 1y agoYeah I like this a lot. I’ll Be signing up. I haven’t logged into mastodon in ages. And threads. Meh. I’m left enough I don’t need an echo chamber to validate my (correct ;-)) way of thinking.
- admiralrohan 1y agoCan you talk about the timeline algorithm? Which posts are getting boosted?
- dorian-graph 1y agoPreviously known as Sublevel and Superthread.
- thetomkim 1y ago[dead]
- asjo 1y agoHow is this open source? This is the license, in full: "All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2014 Lucian Marin" · https://github.com/lucianmarin/subreply/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/lucianmarin/subreply/blob/master/LICENSE
- Karolbrown 1y ago[dead]