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Besides lemmy, what's another good reddit alternative?

Hi! Recently exiled reddit user, here. I'm curious what other alternatives to reddit there are, besides Lemmy, and Raddle, of course. Also, imho, Phuks is a good alternative, there's no hate-speech (that I'm aware of) and people are pretty respectful. Anyways, let's hear your suggestions! Thank you!

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  • MetaFilter. It's a very old school general interest indexer/forum. It's been around since 1999, has a lot of well known professionals on it, requires a small fee to make an account, they pay their moderation team a living wage because it is a job, and has recently transitioned to official non-profit organization status.

    Quality links, quality discussion, (although discussions are chronological, not threaded or voted on, first post gets top spot) plus some goofy stuff and random quality art thrown in. Kind of general interest, but because of the format, some posts can have absolutely mind-bending numbers of links and in-depth information. Some users go all out in making insanely in depth posts that end up generating significant discussion. As I said, you have a lot of professionals on there, and unlike say, HackerNews, it's professionals of all stripes: scientists, programmers, lawyers, federal workers, economists, writers, musicians and so on.

  • There are several closed group options or other closed source ones that aim to be just like Reddit in practice but not exactly it in theory. Ironically the Reddit alternatives sub on Reddit is probably the best place to get such a list 😜.

    I enjoyed Squabbles for a bit - it was described at the time as toxically non-toxic as in very much anti-hate speech, though I don't know how it's fared recently. At the end of the day though it's just one guy's project, and while he's no Huffman, still the entire thing turns around him, very unlike the Fediverse that can become anything we want it to be.

    If you do remain on Lemmy, learn which things to block bc that will improve your experience substantially. Just blocking lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.net improved mine 95%, and ironically some people (not me) also block Lemmy.ml. You will come to find what works for you, I am just saying that the experience varies enormously depending on that one factor!

    • it was described at the time as toxically non-toxic as in very much anti-hate speech, though I don't know how it's fared recently.

      Well, the dev ended up going the "free speech" route and started allowing hateful content to be posted and the community kinda imploded on itself. Haven't looked back at that site in probably 6 months or so now.

      • Thank you so much for the update. Oh wow what a turn-around. I can only guess he was desperate to grow the site and did whatever he thought would help his profits. I really do enjoy the mode of thinking behind the Fediverse so much more!:-)

    • I’m curious, why block Lemmy.ml?

      • Well I don't, thus keep in mind that I may be summarizing here the reasons that others do incorrectly &/or unfairly, but from what I understand people are saying:

        (1) often when people get extremely argumentative (aka bat shit insane crazy trolling) it is from there. Who wants to talk to someone who is rude, condescending, and doesn't listen in the slightest to your POV before loudly proclaiming how very wrong you are, even while using logical fallacies (such as strawman) as they do so?:-P Counterpoint: that can happen on any sufficiently large instance e.g. lemmy.world too? Though it does seem to happen more often on lemmy.ml for whatever reason.

        (2) it may be relevant (tbh I'm not entirely sure how though?) that it leans fairly hardcore to what many people e.g. in the USA would consider an extreme leftist viewpoint, as in so far to the left that it may even become uncomfortable to someone living in a society that leans more rightwards even if the person in it considers themselves an "extreme leftist" in relation to that center point. Along these lines, are "memes" merely political propaganda that happens to be drawn in a cartoonish form? (Though this is an argument pertaining to merely a community, not an entire instance.)

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