Envisioning my Ideal Social Media Platform: Blending the Best of Reddit and Image Boards

I’m excited to see the new meme browsing interface feature in PieFed. I expected PieFed to be yet another Reddit clone using a different software stack and without any innovation. I believe there’s an opportunity to take things a step further by blending the best elements of platforms like Reddit and image boards like Safebooru.

I wish there was a platform that was a mix between Reddit and image boards like Safebooru. The problem I have with Reddit is the time-consuming process of posting content; I should be able to post something in a few seconds, but often finding the right community takes longer than actually posting, and you have to decide whether to post in every relevant community or just the one that fits best. In the case of Lemmy, the existence of multiple similar communities across different instances makes this issue even worse.

I like how image boards like Safebooru offer a streamlined posting experience, allowing users to share content within seconds. The real strength of these platforms lies in their curation and filtering capabilities. Users can post and curate content, and others can contribute to the curation process by adding or modifying tags. Leaderboards showcasing top taggers, posters, and commenters promote active participation and foster a sense of community. Thanks to the comprehensive tagging system, finding previously viewed content becomes a breeze, unlike the challenges often faced on Reddit and Lemmy. Users can easily filter out unwanted content by hiding specific tags, something that would require blocking entire communities on platforms like Lemmy.

However, image boards also have their limitations. What I don’t like about image boards is that they are primarily suited for image-based content and often lack robust text discussion capabilities or threaded comments, which are essential for fostering meaningful conversations.

Ideally, I envision a platform that combines the best of both worlds: the streamlined posting experience of image boards with the robust text discussion capabilities of platforms like Reddit and Lemmy.

I would be thrilled to contribute to a platform that considered some of the following features:

I would also like to see more community-driven development, asking users for feedback periodically in a post, and publicly stating what features devs will be working on. Code repositories issue trackers have some limitations. A threaded tree-like comment system is better for discussions, and having upvotes/downvotes helps surface the best ideas. I propose using a lemmy community as the issue tracker instead.

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