Ask HN: Where do you browse and chat outside of here?
59 comments
·March 19, 2025SeanAnderson
A little bit on TwitchTV, a little bit on Discord, and a little on Reddit, but, honestly, I feel pretty lonely on the Internet these days.
I've been on Reddit for over 15 years and yeah, it feels quite different than it did early on. I can't really stand browsing r/all or r/popular at all.
I miss the days of having 255 friends on AIM, trout slaps on well-populated mIRC channels, and never-ending threads on niche Ultimate Bulletin Board forums.
thefz
> I've been on Reddit for over 15 years and yeah, it feels quite different than it did early on. I can't really stand browsing r/all or r/popular at all.
It's because the age gap, the average redditor is way too young. In a discussion the other day an user sent me to "get bullied at school"... I am in my 40s.
Roger-L
Hahahahaha, the users on popular websites nowadays are usually younger
ryu2k2
The new layout, putting attached images and videos on the index, ruined Reddit forever. I recently went there to see what thoughts people on there had on a specific subject, only to find nothing but a stream of meme and social media posts. You really can't call it a forum anymore.
kelseydh
Bluesky has some good content if you curate your feeds and algorithm (it's fully customisable). Also spend a lot of time on Twitter but I don't recommend it.
Reddit can be okay if you choose the right niche subreddits -- stay away from the main page subreddits. Among the niche subreddits, I find location-based subreddits and subreddits for podcasts to be good sources for unique communities.
lordofgibbons
Many discord servers, each focusing on different interests. The communities are small enough that you can have actual conversations without a lot of noise. I just wish these communities were on a less centralized and less closed platform.
Reddit used to be great, but these days, it's mostly rage bait and state actors astroturfing all of the popular subreddits.
ykonstant
I joined several discords, some of significant size, but I just cannot understand how to start/join a conversation. I just see silence or some random Q&A that dies within a few rounds of back and forth.
I really wanna do some goofy chatting and socialize online in real time, but I must be doing it wrong because it seems like nobody's there. I also tried IRC (went in for the first time in 20 years?!), same story there. Probably I am the problem, but any suggestions?
dharmab
It depends on the server. The best discussions I've found are ones targeted at hobbies which have both a lot of new people looking to get started and some old timers who provide advice and guidance and answer questions.
Timwi
I have the exact same issue. I'm in a ton of Discord servers but have never found a way to hold a conversation like I used to on IRC in the 2000s. I also assumed that I must be the problem, but now I'm not sure anymore.
steve_adams_86
Bluesky and a couple discord channels related to entomology and botany. I really like each at the moment. My usage is pretty limited, and the quality of time spent is really high. I feel like HN is the same. Since dropping Reddit and Twitter my internet usage has been a lot more positive.
I found the discord channels somewhat by chance. When you’re into specific things and ask a lot of questions, inevitably you’ll wind up meeting similar people.
As for Bluesky, I was just too burned out on Twitter and was willing to give something else a shot. My feed was initially a bunch of mycological photography, birding photography, far more moderate and constructive politics, and some lists of people in tech that I seeded my following list with. It was so much easier to read and engage with, and the transition was very natural. I’m glad I made the change.
Bluesky has led to discovering a few substacks that I enjoy a lot too. I definitely wouldn’t have found them on Twitter.
slau
Mastodon and RSS feeds. I’m also trying to write more long form stuff, and that definitely helps keeping conversations going.
I check out Lemmy maybe once or twice a month.
abetusk
What RSS feeds do you subscribe to?
slau
A friend of mine mentioned RSS a few months ago. I asked him for a copy of his feed, and he gracefully sent me a curated list of about 30-50 blogs, job boards, and news.
I’ve removed some and added some. Anytime I come across an interesting blog post (here, Lemmy, Masto) I add the blog’s feed to my RSS reader. If the long-term content doesn’t match my taste I remove it unceremoniously.
theshrike79
FreshRSS can actually subscribe to a hosted OPML file, so you can share a curated blog list (or multiple) easily.
andrewinardeer
Every Mastodon account has an RSS feed built into it.
cstuder
Private Slack, WhatsApp and Signal groups are the most valuable to me.
kelseydh
Ditto Signal. In my local city some Burning Man regulars created a giant Signal group for sharing parties and events. Nearly a thousand members in the same city who post about something to do any night of the week. It's lovely. To join you just need somebody within the group to vet you and you're in.
Group chats reign supreme once you are in good ones.
poisonborz
This question comes up from time to time, only to prove on each iteration there is nothing like HN.
rich_sasha
Surely there's a sampling bias here.
The most likely people to respond on a thread like this are those spending the most time on HN, and thus least likely to be spending it elsewhere. The user sharing time between 5 communities might not even see the thread.
rubenvanwyk
Honestly, reddit. There is loads of garbage but some subreddits are just gold, like the data engineering subreddit.
shreddit
I built https://hn-pm.me/ some time ago, it did not really catch on...
kelseydh
I know you put an explainer in there... but sorry, this looks like a phishing attack to get my HackerNews password.
shreddit
But i don't even need your hn password. You create a completely new account on my page. To prove ownership of your account all you have to do is put a key into your public profile which i check via the public hn api. At no point i ask for your hn password.
mnmalst
Would probably help if you would add an explainer somewhere. I have no idea what the site is or does.
shreddit
Sure, it's actually exactly what the domain name suggests. You need an hn account to sign up* and then you can write personal messages to other (signed up) users.
*the registration process requires you to put a key into your public profile, to make sure it's your account. This key can be removed once signup is completed. There is no need of an email and i do not collect any data whatsoever.
roydivision
Mainly The Guardian and Mastodon
Other sites include 404Media, Wired, The Newyorker, BBC News.
elric
What do you mean when you say that Reddit is too mainstream for you?
I mostly read RSS feeds and hang out on Mastodon. I don't really chat anywhere anymore, not since I left the last IRC channel years ago. I occasionally miss it, but haven't found anything that comes close enough.
mdp2021
> What do you mean when you say
Can I offer a perspective you can add to the interpretations?
Apart from the staggeringly low "effort" you will find in it, and behaviours that in proper societies will have the offender's skull broken, it is (was?) a place you surely would visit were you for some reason interested in groups like "the budding party of those convinced of some personally held stance and visiting the premises to just shout that their guts are right, to woo the likeminded and boo the onlookers".
Being that "ideological hooliganism with the pre-Popperian tint of 'To the man with a hammer everything looks like a nail'" bestial, of a widespread bestiality, that would be "mainstream".
(Of course being it made of chambers there can - and will - be exceptions, but that is the environment which allowed that general culture on which to possibly build exceptions.)
elric
I'm not sure what this word salad is trying to say. I've read it several times now, and I still don't get it. Your reference to "proper societies" and "broken skulls" is a bit worrysome.
mdp2021
No prob! I will rephrase - just be aware that a "salad" is not structured, and what you read above is quite the opposite. My difficulty is that it is not clear what may not be clear to you.
Maybe an instance? That website is divided in sections, each with its own population, and you will easily find many of the form "Those who believe that the moon should be rebuilt with cheese can come here to support each other in this blind persuasion, chanting hooligan choirs (intellectual arguments will be out of place here) against the rest (the "profligates", the "heretic" etc.), so the community can feel strong".
So, you will find hooligans vocally expressing their persuasions (not defending it - just shouting it), proposing world views that would instead require some intellectual defense (hence the mention of Popper), and interpreting phenomena according to the dogma of that world view, painting the world accordingly ("to the man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail").
I do not know what you could not understand, so I can only rephrase the other post.
> worrysome
Good, in general - people today are so relaxed! So relaxed they abuse their freedom. If you visited the site in question, you would find an abundance of participants that out of their "relaxation" will abuse you, protected by the distance of the web page. If the abusers went directly to some group of people in person, physically in front of the abused, what would follow would either be restrained violence and the Social effort, expressed in verbal and non verbal communication, to put the offender back in the framework of proper behaviour, or finally that actual violence that was once called "teaching a lesson".
Edit: addendum: the moderation you can find in that place is of the form "Sorry to hear that an apparent minor is taunting you, would you like us to hide its posts?". Normal, correct reply: "No, I want you to correct the brat and teach it manners, as duly in a supposed community".
mrweasel
Not sure if this is what they meant, but Reddit is just Facebook for younger people. The outrage is the same, the click bait, the like hunting and the general attention seeking. There's some good stuff, absolutely, but the same is true for Facebook.
If you're not part of a sub-culture, and a narrow one at that, then Reddit content is pretty much your run of the mill click bait. Just like with Facebook, I think that the good Reddit content is either in private or really niche sub-reddits. Things like AskReddit, Politics, AITA or any of the subreddits linked at the top of site, they are all pretty Facebook like content, just spewing out much faster.
ykonstant
I don't know; reddit still has long-term, threaded discussions without character limit and a forum-like interface if you are using ~sane reddit~ sorry, I mean "old reddit". That is quite different from facebook, niche groups or not.
mrweasel
My theory is that they keep old.reddit.com around to generate training data for the AI companies.
dharmab
Discord for online hobbies.
Real life (and associated group chats) for social interaction. Board game group, local motorcycling group, some other friends.
I used to really enjoy reddit but find it toxic and too “mainstream” recently so I moved to Lemmy but it’s quiet and kept a lot of redditism. I’ve been enjoying reading HN daily but want to read more than 20-30 top posts. I like the general kind attitude and professionalism as well as the interesting topics.