Subreply – an open source text-only social network
32 comments
·July 20, 2025nathan_compton
reactordev
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).
shayway
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
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
Maybe it is a bot by other competing social networks.
Such trolling hurts new businesses a lot more than old ones.
giancarlostoro
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.
null
latexr
> 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.
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:
> 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.
nine_k
> 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.
bluerooibos
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.
PaulHoule
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
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
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
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.
throwaway81523
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
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
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.
chistev
But there are no images here
PaulHoule
... and what I post to Mastodon/Bluesky is different from what I post to HN
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
latexr
> 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.
ramon156
... hence the comment
dsmurrell
Was going to register but this stopped me...
"Password needs a lowercase letter"
Can you use entropy based password complexity measures please.
diath
You probably want to pin requirements to specific versions of the libraries.
Sirikon
Trendiest post is from the developer saying "Mastodon is dead", four weeks ago, 12 replies.
Sure bud.
loloquwowndueo
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
Thank you for the context. It’s important and often overlooked.
stupidgeek314
> text only > emojis
xD
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.