Gotta 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.
Most 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!
Two 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.
For what it's worth, right now at least, most thoughts and opinions people have in the English speaking world can be expressed just fine without it getting moderated out, despite what some would claim. And so those who seek out platforms where they won't get moderated will primarily be folks who would get otherwise moderated out elsewhere. One can also refer to cryptocurrencies and Tor for a parallel.
We see much worse than that all the time. We go to movies that portray horror, torture, murder, depravity, slavery, etc. There are books that contain all those. There are tattoos on people that depict scenes of death and satanism. We put these in their proper place and tolerate them, many people even enjoy them. There are some efforts to keep them out of the public eye and away from children, but it's quite easy to see incidental advertisements, posters, or discussions of all of them.
We should treat social media the same way. There should be a way to filter what you don't want to see, that's your choice. But we shouldn't try to stamp out people saying what they want, or decide what other people should filter for themselves.
Most people who say things like you quoted, aren't killers, i'd guess that most of them aren't even racist. A good fraction of them are just immature, or social outcasts, that are desperate to get a rise out of people. If we could all turn down our reactivity, there'd be less of a draw, for those troublemakers to spew their nonsense.
What we should be the most on guard against, are the unintended consequences of trying to censor this stuff. People shouldn't have their political and social voices limited, just because a relatively few people are disruptive like this.
Cool! 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.
I 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.
I 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.
In a very similar veign I've been working on a federated link aggregator for quite some time.
It's test instance 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. :)
For 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?
Yeah 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.
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Sure bud.
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.
For what it's worth, right now at least, most thoughts and opinions people have in the English speaking world can be expressed just fine without it getting moderated out, despite what some would claim. And so those who seek out platforms where they won't get moderated will primarily be folks who would get otherwise moderated out elsewhere. One can also refer to cryptocurrencies and Tor for a parallel.
We should treat social media the same way. There should be a way to filter what you don't want to see, that's your choice. But we shouldn't try to stamp out people saying what they want, or decide what other people should filter for themselves.
Most people who say things like you quoted, aren't killers, i'd guess that most of them aren't even racist. A good fraction of them are just immature, or social outcasts, that are desperate to get a rise out of people. If we could all turn down our reactivity, there'd be less of a draw, for those troublemakers to spew their nonsense.
What we should be the most on guard against, are the unintended consequences of trying to censor this stuff. People shouldn't have their political and social voices limited, just because a relatively few people are disruptive like this.
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.
"Password needs a lowercase letter"
Can you use entropy based password complexity measures please.
Is there some "industry standard" or "best practice" for such a metric?
I guess Bitwarden might have something publicly available...
It's test instance 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. :)
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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Copyright (c) 2014 Lucian Marin"
· https://github.com/lucianmarin/subreply/blob/master/LICENSE