What are your opinions on the other Reddit alternatives like Squabbles.io, Raddle, Tildes, etc?

So obviously a lot of us are partial to kbin/Lemmy but have any of you explored the other alternatives like Raddle, Squabbles.io, and Tildes?

I made an account on Raddle because r/egg_irl and r/ennnnbyyy moved there and I also made one on Squabbles.io because some of the subreddits I joined had an analogous one on Squabbles.io. I haven't use either enough to form a good opinion on them. Raddle seems to be predominantly political, and I'm trying to limit my exposure to politics and prevent doomscrolling.

What are your thoughts on these alternatives?

Mars2k21, (edited )
Mars2k21 avatar

I actually joined Tildes before the API changes, back in February of this year. Before that, I had been a lurker on the site since 2020, so nearly 3 years.

Tildes is...interesting compared to any other social media. Its completely its own thing and there is a heavy focus on the philosophy of the site and the Tildes docs, which is basically the constitution of the website. Long form discussion is encouraged, posting images isn't even an option, and its very focused on providing for its users a great, streamlined experience. The interface is my favorite of all the Reddit cousins, its simple and it loads extremely fast. The software is great, no bugs at all and the interface is simple and lighting fast and the voting system is really well designed in regards to maintaining activity on threads that can be days or even weeks old. The people there are friendly and I've never even seen a bad interaction on Tildes.

However, this comes because the whole site is heavily moderated and controlled by the admins and mods. Long form discussion just isn't really my thing when it comes to online discussions, so I don't talk there much. I don't really like writing a paragraph or more in response to every question online versus having a long in-person discussion or on a real-time messenger like Discord (I'm doing it now of course, but I don't like doing it for every post). I would if every topic there interested me, but that's just not the case and that won't be the case on any site. My last post was 2 months ago, and I've just been very inactive there since making my account. I like reading on there occasionally, but not contributing much. Unfortunately, that's the nature of the site. Like another poster said, its very tightly controlled. While that prevents many trolls from appearing despite the few moderators that are actually on the site and encourages long form discussion, it also hampers the diversity of the people there. Sometimes I criticize the whole "We don't want people from Reddit or other social media" take when it comes to Kbin/Lemmy's growth, but its much worse on Tildes because the site actively wants a certain type of individual. No image support on purpose already filters out a lot of people who could bring great content to the site, and the lack of an ability for users to create topics affects it more. You can't make a topic on Tildes like you can on Kbin or Lemmy, there are strictly defined ones created for you, and they are quite general. You won't see much OC as you will just links and random conversation topics, and that kind of just makes for a lukewarm experience in my opinion. If you want to talk about a specific niche, you're out of luck. Kbin/Lemmy/the Fediverse and Reddit have that, and its a large part of the appeal for me. The lack of user diversity in interests also just makes the experience a little worse. For example, I like space and anime, and the space and anime communities on there aren't the most active, maybe a post weekly or biweekly. I'm also interested in tech, and you can imagine that community is booming 24/7. Compare the ~space community to /m/space, and you'll see the difference. This issue went away somewhat while the Reddit migration was in full effect, but now its returned as activity on the site has dwindled down a bit.

Tildes cares about the users, no doubt, but it doesn't really give them much power over the site. I wish it were less controlled.

I highly suggest you just take a look at it and lurk for a few days on there. What you see is what you get. Its not ultra politically focused like you said Raddle was (I have 0 experience with any of these sites other than Tildes, Kbin and Lemmy), its has equal activity in most of the communities. However, there are only 20 or 30 to actually choose from, and if you want something niche you'll just have to post in one of the communities and see if someone knows about it. If you don't like it, I wouldn't be expecting it to change much, the site culture isn't dynamic like the Fediverse or Reddit for instance. The conversation there is unparalleled by any other platform though. You can find some truly inspiring and deep conversations on there. Its not for me, but you may like it a lot. Its a flawed approach, but the site fulfills what it intends to do very well. For me, Lemmy and Kbin, while not perfect, are the best alternative to Reddit. Tildes is open source and anybody could make an instance of it, but it hasn't happened yet as far as I know.

Ironically, that's the longest thing I've ever typed on Kbin.

panoptic,

I liked tildes’ interface a lot but I bounced off the culture hard. It’s so tightly controlled there’s very little diversity and very little actual interest in diversity. It comes through in the “no new ad-hoccommunities” and “all communities must fit in a rigid tree hierarchy”

It’s sad, the sw is very good.

livus,
livus avatar

I like the fediverse structure better.

AcumenDonor,

I've got some interest in them but, tbh, only if they're federated. Which I know some are very unlikely to, but I don't really want to be bothered investing in multiple websites with heavily overlapping functions that can't talk to each other (though I know Tildes is moderately different).

Penguinblue,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Penguinblue,

    Something I do really like about this site is the ability to see the activity of posts including the reduces (down votes). So the guy that reduced the post above appears to be far right, judging by their activity. Fun!

    Voyajer,
    Voyajer avatar

    I've already seen a few users who seem to have a habit of downvoting large chunks of a user's comment history if they disagree with them which is 1. sad and 2. makes me wonder if that was a common thing back on reddit since there wouldn't be a way to tell. I think it's overall a good thing that it's visible, it should encourage people to talk more and downvote less.

    Penguinblue,

    I can definitely imagine that it happened/s on Reddit, yes. The thing that feels the saddest about doing that is that it really means nothing in no meaningful sense. Its such a impotent form of rage where they aren't debating or even telling you you're wrong, they are marginally impacting others' ability to see the post.

    snownyte,
    snownyte avatar

    I've tried at least 4 alternatives before Kbin and Lemmy.

    Squabbles felt like a ghost town, there was virtually nothing going for it.

    Voat, when it was active, was a hotbed for alt-right, bigot-centered, racist-centered .etc content and discussion.

    SaidIt is similarly in vein to Voat, but seems to try and replicate Reddit, even using horribly outdated code it feels like.

    Quora was basically AskReddit 24/7.

    NylaSmokeyface,
    NylaSmokeyface avatar

    I was genuinely surprised that Quora was brought up as a Reddit alternative since like you said it was basically AskReddit, NoStupidQuestions, etc 24/7

    cassetti,

    Squabbles was fun when everyone first migrated from reddit during the blackout. But activity has died way down. I try to add some content here and there - but it's still mostly a ghost town with few regular people posting often (one of which is the programmer themself constantly posting content).

    I hope Squabbles succeeds, but I'm finding Kbin a lot more active and exciting to visit regularly

    Nepenthe, (edited )
    Nepenthe avatar

    Checked out Tildes for a bit and it's probably where I'd go first if I had to choose, since I prefer conversation over memes and I do really feel like I may be looking for a forum experience.

    But I decided in the end to focus on this place for now. It could use the activity and, more importantly, I got the sense that my time on reddit and sites like it have left me a little...too Reddit, still, for the type of interaction Tildes goes out of its way to curate for.

    Sometimes I really do just want to show off something, but doing so is discouraged unless one intends to use it to spark conversation. Which I thought happened naturally, and I cannot begin every single post I make with, "İ do x, do any of you do x??"

    İt would be painfully redundant, and of course they do underwater basket weaving or whatever. That's why they're hanging out, reading posts in the basket weaving section.

    Will possibly reconsider in the future, but I feel atm that I fit better here.

    Raddle and squabbles...I've not heard great things, though granted this was from people who didn't like them enough to join, so. Bias.

    Both seem like politically extreme reddit wannabes, and looking into squabbles came off as somewhat...tumblr-esque? It seemed polite and friendly-ish, but it could be construed as creepy friendly and they were already fighting about whether or not toxic positivity was a thing.

    I'm also concerned about comments from their own userbase that their dev didn't really have a clear road map and was mostly just doing things in all directions, all at once, by himself. So I'mma back away from squabbles til they settle a bit more.

    waterbogan,

    None seem to have the niche communities I want, and wont have the userbase needed to support those niche comunities. Tildes is invite only, and I’ve heard that Squabbles has had some issues, and even worse one of them has had users arbitrarily banned which is the reason I left reddit so I do not want more of the same

    Also they arent federated so dont share posts/ communities across a larger userbase which is the great thing about lemmy/kbin

    Millie,

    Honestly, if it’s not open source and preferably on activitypub at this point, I’m not supporting it. No point in contributing to platforms that aren’t federated.

    NylaSmokeyface,
    NylaSmokeyface avatar

    I know Raddle and Tildes are open source. Not federated though.

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