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.
itisfinji · 21m ago
I love the UI.
mariusor · 1h ago
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. :)
PaulHoule · 14h ago
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.
mbirth · 13h ago
Yeah, this reminds me of old Reddit where people resorted to imgur and other image hosts before they introduced their own photo upload feature.
PokemonNoGo · 13h ago
Is 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 · 10h ago
It'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 · 3h 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.
DrewADesign · 5h ago
For discussions among technical people, it might not be bad! It works well on HN. Unfortunately, interfaces that developers love are often not appealing— maybe not even useable in some cases— for other users.
athenot · 8h ago
Before Facebook bought Instagram, the later was the main way people posted images on Twitter, since it was text-only at the time.
I'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 · 11h ago
HN 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 · 10h ago
Yeah 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 · 7h ago
For reply notifications, I use HN user ‘dangrossman’s HN Replies:
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]
> 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 · 5h ago
Can you tell me more about your three sided cards?
ramon156 · 14h ago
... hence the comment
latchkey · 12h ago
I'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 · 12h ago
I wasn't complaining. I love that HN is text only.
nathan_compton · 11h ago
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.
shayway · 11h ago
It'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.
averageRoyalty · 10h ago
But 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.
givemeethekeys · 10h ago
Maybe it is a bot by other competing social networks.
Such trolling hurts new businesses a lot more than old ones.
hammyhavoc · 6h ago
Other 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.
perching_aix · 7h ago
It is a bad look, but it makes sense to me.
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.
giancarlostoro · 10h ago
For some people if you can say the most extreme things, then you can say anything else, including things that are nowhere near as bad as this but are banned in other platforms.
I have admined what I consider free speech friendly communities in the past (think forums), people always join and ruin it for everyone else.
ta8645 · 6h ago
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.
JimDabell · 2h ago
> 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
The point of choosing abusive usernames and posting abusive things is to hurt people who don’t want to see that stuff. The two cannot coexist in the same space. There’s no reason to legitimise this kind of thing while they are looking for ways to hurt people.
reactordev · 9h ago
When your speech has no apparent consequences people tend to say the most obscene things because in their mind it’s been taboo for so long. The problem is that is an extreme dopamine rush and if not checked, can cause you to seek that reward by opening your mouth a second time. (Or typing your thoughts on social media).
latexr · 11h ago
> I am, in fact, pro free speech.
You can be pro free speech and still not condone hate speech, or libel, or doxxing, or a myriad of other problems.
> A problem with a subset of people who like free speech or something? I don't get it.
I don’t think those people particularly care about free speech, they just want to be able to say whatever they want with no repercussions. The more of a “free speech absolutist” they claim to be, usually the worse they are. It’s a common pattern to see those same individuals clamour for free speech in one post and then in another call for banning books or try to silence someone else.
perching_aix · 7h ago
The extreme and persistent refusal of people en-masse over the years to concede to this, and to insist with absolute certainty that any amount of filtering at all is straight up censorship and so they're now being repressed, has successfully made me give up on the idea of being "pro free speech". I sometimes wonder if that was the goal, both in the political sense, but also in the sarcastic counterexample sense.
card_zero · 4h ago
> It’s a common pattern to see those same individuals clamour for free speech in one post and then in another call for banning books or try to silence someone else.
But that's you, too:
> Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything in literally any context.
It is of course different because they want to be free to say the bad thing and prevent others from saying the good thing, instead of the other way round like the true free speech advocates.
latexr · 1h ago
I think you’ll benefit from reading the Wikipedia links I posted. Your comment doesn’t make sense when you understand what free speech really means, and that curtains restrictions are a necessary, well-defined, and important part of it.
card_zero · 24m ago
You might be more specific. Something about the paradox of tolerance, maybe?
But anyway, you admit that your idea of free speech has restrictions, and their idea of free speech also has restrictions, but the difference is that yours are the necessary ones, by your values. Their restrictions are the necessary ones by their values, but their values are bad and wrong. I'm only being slightly po-faced here, I think this description of the situation is probably literally true, barring mistakes and room for improvement in the good value system and the outside possibility of adherents of the bad value system being occasionally onto something insightful.
nine_k · 10h ago
> want to be able to say whatever they want with no repercussions
Rather, they want to be able to say anything to annoy people as much as possible, for the kicks.
Verily, it's important to be able to say annoying things: try speaking about atheism or a different religion in a devout crowd (capitalism among the "left", climate change among the "right", etc). But the intention is important. The intention of trolls is to enjoy other people's discomfort, not to voice an important idea.
Unfortunately, this is very hard to formalize.
latexr · 1h ago
Trolls exist, but they’re far from the majority. The people who shout “go back to your country” to fellow countrymen of darker skin colour on the street aren’t trolls.
You probably want to pin requirements to specific versions of the libraries.
giancarlostoro · 8h ago
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.
dsmurrell · 9h ago
Was going to register but this stopped me...
"Password needs a lowercase letter"
Can you use entropy based password complexity measures please.
stupidgeek314 · 13h ago
> text only
> emojis
xD
pluto_modadic · 7h ago
UTF-8 is still text :p
Sirikon · 13h ago
Trendiest post is from the developer saying "Mastodon is dead", four weeks ago, 12 replies.
Sure bud.
loloquwowndueo · 12h ago
You 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.
cyberge99 · 12h ago
Thank you for the context. It’s important and often overlooked.
input_sh · 2h ago
...and completely wrong, as evidenced by simply googling the words "fediverse stats", which will show you no meaningful change one way or the other.
herrherrmann · 2h ago
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!
wenbin · 8h ago
missed the good old days of telnet bbs & newsgroup :)
TrevorFSmith · 5h ago
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.
JimDabell · 2h ago
I’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.
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.
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. :)
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.
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 - February 11 2016 (124 comments)
https://www.hnreplies.com/
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
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.
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.
Such trolling hurts new businesses a lot more than old ones.
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.
I have admined what I consider free speech friendly communities in the past (think forums), people always join and ruin it for everyone else.
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.
The point of choosing abusive usernames and posting abusive things is to hurt people who don’t want to see that stuff. The two cannot coexist in the same space. There’s no reason to legitimise this kind of thing while they are looking for ways to hurt people.
You can be pro free speech and still not condone hate speech, or libel, or doxxing, or a myriad of other problems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything in literally any context. Not, not even in the “land of the free”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...
Additionally, XKCD reminds:
https://xkcd.com/1357/
> A problem with a subset of people who like free speech or something? I don't get it.
I don’t think those people particularly care about free speech, they just want to be able to say whatever they want with no repercussions. The more of a “free speech absolutist” they claim to be, usually the worse they are. It’s a common pattern to see those same individuals clamour for free speech in one post and then in another call for banning books or try to silence someone else.
But that's you, too:
> Free speech doesn’t mean you can say literally anything in literally any context.
It is of course different because they want to be free to say the bad thing and prevent others from saying the good thing, instead of the other way round like the true free speech advocates.
But anyway, you admit that your idea of free speech has restrictions, and their idea of free speech also has restrictions, but the difference is that yours are the necessary ones, by your values. Their restrictions are the necessary ones by their values, but their values are bad and wrong. I'm only being slightly po-faced here, I think this description of the situation is probably literally true, barring mistakes and room for improvement in the good value system and the outside possibility of adherents of the bad value system being occasionally onto something insightful.
Rather, they want to be able to say anything to annoy people as much as possible, for the kicks.
Verily, it's important to be able to say annoying things: try speaking about atheism or a different religion in a devout crowd (capitalism among the "left", climate change among the "right", etc). But the intention is important. The intention of trolls is to enjoy other people's discomfort, not to voice an important idea.
Unfortunately, this is very hard to formalize.
"Password needs a lowercase letter"
Can you use entropy based password complexity measures please.
xD
Sure bud.
Mastodon is dead. Most people have migrated to Bluesky or Threads.