Why has no social media giant created a Reddit alternative?

[Jerek Deter]

Curious on opinions here. Reddit over the last decade has basically become a total shithole with power-hungry moderators and rampant censorship. I know there are "alternatives" like Voat, Lemmy, and Kbin, but with all the major social media giants trying to copy Tiktok or add other features from other websites it seems like making a Reddit alternative with less censorship and making sure groups of powermods with blatant agendas can't totally control conversations could be legitimately profitable. Not to mention it would be very enticing for the AI training that all these companies are almost certainly doing.

Personally I think the biggest hurdles would be figuring out a decent way to do moderation and whether or not it should be done by users, and deciding whether or not porn should be allowed on the website. I am sure it would also be an expensive undertaking for these companies but I feel there is enough potential reward that it is surprising there aren't more serious, well-funded competitors to Reddit.

 

[Lou Bega]

Because there's no way to improve perfection.

 

[Asian tech support]

Probably because it'd be hard as hell to convince redditors to go somewhere besides reddit. Its remaining users seem to enjoy the hugbox its jannies have curated for them and the people who enjoy the reddit experience minus the other redditors (rdrama, KiA, thedonald.win) have made their own splinters.

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

it isnt very viable. not only is reddit itself not profitable, but getting users to move away form the name brand website is difficult. look at how much the twitter alternatives struggle to get users. another example is google's attempt to do facebook and how that failed.

you not only need compelling reasons why your site is loads better, not just slight improvement, over the original, but you also need users. what is the point of posting on a forum if there are no other users? this is what i encountered on the google facebook alternative. i did like the site and functionality more than fb, but there were maybe 1 person there for every few hundred on fb. posts which would get good engagement on fb would get maybe 1 person on google.

 

[Pagan Min]

Probably because it'd be hard as hell to convince redditors to go somewhere besides reddit. Its remaining users seem to enjoy the hugbox its jannies have curated for them and the people who enjoy the reddit experience minus the other redditors (rdrama, KiA, thedonald.win) have made their own splinters.

Not only that, but what if you DID convince redditors to come over to your site? Would you really want THAT??? *shudders*

 

[Hunter Hearst Helmsley]

I agree somewhat. I wish Elon had bought Reddit instead of Twitter because I feel like if you remove the moderator class from Reddit then the site model is very good. OTOH, I think the microbloggy style of Twitter will just never be good. The problem is advertisers are very much in line with the thought process of the moderators.

 

[dick brain]

This nigga don't know about digg.

 

[Kosher Dill]

This nigga don't know about digg.

Which was the very last time someone created a social media "alternative" that actually caught on. Alternatives just don't happen anymore. People move to new gimmicks instead - there was no "New Facebook", kids just went to Instagram or Tiktok or whatever.

 

[We Are The Witches]

...then the site model is very good.

It's kind of bad though (comment threads system, PM system, blocking feature, etc).

Not to mention that it's filled with bugs/things not working.

 

[Grub]

Facebook groups are kind of like reddit. They range extremely autistically niche or local, to broad and general just like subreddits. They're full of brain dead retards who overshare. They're also full of bots, fakes and ads. The jannies are power tripping faggots just like reddit. It's full of retarded interpersonal drama. It's full of hidden degeneracy, shit like mom groups selling children and shit like that, just like reddit. It's basically reddit except it's linked to your personal information so you get the added bonus of people schizo doxing eachother over slight disagreements and involving eachother's family and friends. I'm honestly surprised facebook groups doesn't have a community watch thread here.

 

[Overwritten Tapes]

Why would those faggots leave their updoot bathhouse?

 

[Not A Bunny]

Why would you want the responsibility of that if you want money?

Yes, you'd have plenty of volunteers for mods, but those are power-hungry antisocial freaks that suppress discussion and these days, allow calls for violence.

The kind of people you'd want aren't terminally online. Putting aside any violence that happens that can be marginally connected to a post on your site could be costly.