SpeakBits: A civil Reddit alternative without censorship

Transparent moderation and inclusivity built-in

I created SpeakBits as an alternative to Reddit after becoming disillusioned with the extremely corporate direction that they have decided to take. I would like to return to the internet of a little over 10 years ago that was a much less about making money off of every interaction and more about the content and connections with users all over the world. I really hope to grow this site to fulfill that desire and hope that you feel the same way. I welcome any and all feedback and criticism as I believe that is the only way this site can grow to be what I want it to be.

Creating your own posts and groups is strongly encouraged so that everyone can start cultivating the type of content they would like on this site.

Why not just contribute to other alternatives instead of building this?

Ideological differences mostly. I think having NSFW content is part of the experience of these sites for a lot of people and removing that ability hampers the site as a whole. I think there is a decent middle ground between the wild west of the internet from the early days and the extremely sanitized experiences sites are leaning towards today. Aside from extreme, hateful, and illegal content, I don’t want to control and lord over what everyone posts. I would like the culture of the site to grow organically in the same way that others in the past initially did.

Features

I want to provide users of SpeakBits with all the features they know and love along with anything that might be missing from their experience today. The following is what the site currently has in place today:

User Experience

• “Trending” posts page of subscribed groups

  • Defaults to “all” without NSFW when not signed in

• “Top” posts page of subscribed groups with time sorting

• “New” posts page of subscribed groups

• “Controversial” posts page of subscribed groups

• “All” posts page of all groups

• List, Card, and Compact views

• Click-to-expand images/videos in list view

• Infinite Scroll and Pagination

  • Defaults to Infinite Scroll

• Light and Dark modes

• Profile page with all posts and comments

• Site-wide search of all posts, comments, and groups

• User to user private messaging

• Site notifications

• Progressive Web App

Posts

• Text

• Link

• Image with 20MB limit

• Video with 1GB limit

• Poll

• 1 post per user id per minute

• Youtube/vimeo embedding

• Automatic GIF to MP4 conversion

• Automatic link image scraping

• Markdown for content with preview

• Click-to-expand images/videos in list view

• Up/down voting

• NSFW content tagging

• Crossposting

• Cross site tagging for users with “@" and communities with “g/”

• Spoiler tags

• Multi Image upload and gallery view

Comments

• Nested comments

  • 1 comment per user id per minute

• Markdown for content with preview

• Trending/top/new/controversial sort

• Permalinks

• Thread collapsing

• Up/down voting

Groups

• Communities/subreddits/etc. equivalent

• Public/Restricted/Private types

• 1 group submission per user id per hour

• User subscription to see posts on Trending page

• Post tags (flairs)

• NSFW content tagging

• Pin posts and comments

• Post type limiting

Profiles

• Expanded profiles with upvotes, downvotes, saved posts

• Saving posts and comments

Moderation

Moderation is key for a well functioning site and reddit would not be where it is without the work of the mods. For that, I'm planning to build out robust moderation tools. I have never been a mod so this is one area I would love to have lots of input on. The following is what has already been built with much more coming very soon:

• Post and comment reporting

• Rules that appear in sidebar and reports

• Management for group moderators/approved/removed users

• Moderator queue for approving/removing/tagging/spam posts and comments

• Post/comment thread locking

• Moderation logs

• Reasons required for approving, removing, spam marking, and tagging

• Sortition moderation and appeal system

• Temporary Banning system

• Automatic CSAM flagging system

Monetization

I think everyone here knows that, at some point, the site would start costing a lot of money and would need to be funded in some way. I would love for the Wikipedia donation model to work for a site like this but everything I find points to that not being the case. Only 2% of users donating to Wikipedia, Reddit gold not covering server costs, and open source devs not tied to a corporation struggling to continue working on their projects being three prime examples. If anyone has anything that can convince me to give it a try, please let me know and I will switch this to a non-profit.

Otherwise, I am inspired by the PhotoPea model of advertising and subscription: one unobtrusive ad to the side of the screen that can be removed with a subscription. PhotoPea also has a premium feature that could be provided but I’m unsure what kind of feature is ultimately worth having on a site like this.

Following that model, I would have three available options for funding:

• Donations for those that want to decide how much to give.

• Monthly subscription to remove ads ($1.99)

• Ads

  • One ad below sidebar on desktop

  • Mobile will switch to have one inline ad per page (every 27 posts)

Ideally, the first option would fund everything and the next two would never be needed. If that is the case, I would guarantee that ads would never make it onto this site.

Join SpeakBits Today

Whether you're a casual user, a passionate advocate, or simply looking for a platform where your voice is heard, we welcome you to join our growing community. Your ideas, opinions, and thoughts matter here.

Create an account today, be part of something extraordinary, and let your voice be heard on SpeakBits. Together, we can create a more open, inclusive, and free online world. Come join us!