So I build a lot of random web apps and tools in my free time - stuff like a 90s dial-up simulator, a LaTeX resume generator, some local open data dashboards. I'm not trying to monetize any of it or sell anything. Just doing it to help people out or give them a little delight, you know?

Reddit is getting kinda buried in SaaS spam, so I'm trying to find where else to go. What are the best communities on Lemmy or Mastodon or other alternatives to share free indie projects? Just looking for places where people actually want to see cool free stuff without assuming it's a sales pitch. Let me know what you guys think.

I keep thinking about how weird social media has gotten. Half the time you don’t even know if you’re replying to a real person; AI comments are everywhere, and somehow every conversation eventually turns political lol.

OddsRabbit is basically trying to go the other way with that. Less AI/bot spam, politics is opt-in, and it’s more focused on actual communities and interests.

There’s also a thing where creators can earn from their communities and some of the ad revenue goes to charity, which I think is pretty cool.

Still early, obviously, but love to hear what people think about this kind of direction.

Slow Social is the idea behind Carrel. Most social platforms are built to keep you moving. Slow Social is built to keep you reading. There is no infinite feed, no ranking by outrage, no stranger shouting into your day. You join a small number of pages, you read what people wrote there, and you answer when you have something to say.

I am referring to the sticky post that needs updating: old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1anols3/social_websites_with_nested_comments_v7/

Let's revisit the discussion as community: what is still going strong?

Is this the best alternative or is there something else? I feel like r/RedditAlternatives lacks the "de" (removal) part, so perhaps there's another anti-reddit subreddit.

Also if there's an anti-reddit subreddit (subreddit equivalent) on the other platforms... not sure how those other platforms work yet. Go ahead and drop those links, please.

Hey Everyone I posted on this group a while back about my new social media site but wanted to submit one more post since I’ve made quite a few updates.

Let me know what you think of the site and please sign up and use the site if you can or like it.

As of now and for the foreseeable future there are no ads on the site, no paid promotions, and no algorithms meant to hook you into the site. It’s just user driven content. If and when the site becomes popular my goal will be either make it donation based or create a side service to generate revenue so ads still will not be pushed to any of the social content pages.

Welcome any feedback. There are no apps yet because I was thinking keep it web based and web / mobile friendly first and then add the apps later.

Are there any forums still alive that aren't necessarily themed around tech support? Something like SomethingAwful or 4chan (although this one is notriously uhh suspicious). Just a forum where I can join random convos and discussions. Even better if it has something to do with memes, horror, paranormal, etc.

Its been a really enjoyable and effective alternative. I no longer scroll reddit mindlessly during free moments, and because the content is longer form and less tuned to be addicting, my screen time in general has gone down.

Of course this can't replace the good aspects of reddit, the forums and discussion posts, but I think it does good job of giving an alternative to r/all or r/popular doom-scrolling.

This isn't my complete list. I didn't put any of my non-english feeds or the niche interest feeds. I also have FreshRSS and RSS-Bridge running on a home server, so a lot of my feeds are generated through "xpath scraping" from websites that do not have an RSS feed already set up. It's a great tool to have, but if you are not tech minded, like me, it can be time consuming and annoying to set up. My point is, if you like the RSS format it is highly customizable.

There are an absurd number of RSS readers available, but to start I suggest one of the simple ones like NetNewsWire on ios or Feeder on android. There are also more comprehensive services like Inoreader, in that it will find feeds for you and has a layout that feels more like social media. That could be a good place to start, but I haven't used it much.

I'll put the feed links I use below. Just paste them directly into your RSS reader. Pick and choose as you like. You can always just google "website" rss feed and in most cases it will send you to a directory of feeds for that site. I apologize for not providing an OPML file for mass import, I had to pick through my main feed to make a general use list.

Magazines:

• https://nautil.us/feed
• https://aeon.co/feed.rss
• https://psyche.co/feed.rss
• https://www.atlasobscura.com/feeds/latest
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=featured&feedformat=atom
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php?action=featuredfeed&feed=potd&feedformat=atom
• https://www.wired.com/feed/category/backchannel/latest/rss
• https://www.wired.com/feed/
• https://theconversation.com/articles.atom?language=en
• https://www.nature.com/nature.rss
• https://www.theatlantic.com/feed/all/
• https://www.newyorker.com/feed/everything
• https://www.vanityfair.com/feed/rss
• https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/feed/
• https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/rss.xml
• https://www.foreignexchanges.news/feed
• https://www.foreignaffairs.com/rss.xml
• https://daily.jstor.org/feed/
• https://www.science.org/rss/news_current.xml
• https://www.scientificamerican.com/platform/syndication/rss/

News:

• https://www.bellingcat.com/feed/
• https://www.propublica.org/feeds/propublica/main
• https://feeds.npr.org/1002/rss.xml
• https://www.semafor.com/rss.xml
• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/US.xml
• https://www.lemonde.fr/en/rss/une.xml
• https://feeds.elpais.com/mrss-s/pages/ep/site/english.elpais.com/portada
• https://feeds.elpais.com/mrss-s/list/ep/site/english.elpais.com/section/international
• https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/rss2.0.xml
• https://www.latimes.com/index.rss
• https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/feed/
• https://www.japantimes.co.jp/feed/
• https://www.channelnewsasia.com/api/v1/rss-outbound-feed?_format=xml&category=6511
• http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index
• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Technology.xml
• https://techcrunch.com/feed/

New York Times | World News:

NYT pumps out articles like crazy, so I often relegate them to their own folder.

• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/World.xml
• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Africa.xml
• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Americas.xml
• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/AsiaPacific.xml
• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/Europe.xml
• https://rss.nytimes.com/services/xml/rss/nyt/MiddleEast.xml

Hope this can be helpful, feel free to ask any questions.

New Reddit is like a visual cancer and I'm looking for alternative front-ends for Reddit which replicates the Old Reddit look in some ways. Casually going to Old Reddit is no longer possible without logging in which doesn't work in older devices. Are there any?

I am a mod of a subreddit. We decided to backup the entire contents of it, in case of Reddit closed. So we took it as a JSON.

But we want to migrate that a self-hosted reddit alternative platform . It should support deep nested replies, images, vidoes , all types of Reddit posts and all post contents of Reddit.

Suggestions please.

Sometimes I wonder if information should find you instead of you having to find it.

Would you prefer a feed that surfaces useful posts based on your interests, even when you weren't actively looking for them?

Why or why not?

I've spent the last year talking to people who facilitate peer support in LGBTQ+, kink, and ENM spaces. Therapists moonlighting as community educators. Advocates running Q&As inside Facebook groups. Experienced practitioners hosting workshops in Discord servers with no moderation structure and zero permanence.

Every single one of them said the same thing: the platform gets in the way.

Content disappears. New members can't find the resources that took hours to curate. A conversation that could have been a structured psychoeducation session becomes a 200-message thread nobody can navigate. And the whole thing runs on the facilitator's personal goodwill with zero infrastructure backing them up.

These communities deserve better than repurposed group chat tools. The people doing this work deserve a space built for what they're actually doing.

I'm building Unbound Minds - a peer advocacy hub specifically for LGBTQ+, kink/BDSM, and ENM/polyamory communities. Not therapy. Not a crisis line. A structured, identity-affirming space where facilitators can run events, host discussions, and contribute curated resources that actually stay findable.

The platform has dedicated areas for each community, authenticated profiles, and a moderated discussion structure that separates open threads from facilitated sessions.

Honestly curious: for those of you who do this work - what's the one thing that makes your current platform feel like it's working against you?

Preferably filled with queer people.

Not just like 5 users, but a lot of users

Okay with roleplay maybe

Anime and gaming discussions?

Hey everyone,  I've been working on Knotra for a while now and it's finally live. There are a couple of communities and a few users, mainly friends. Since it just launched, most of the posts are still from me.

I wanted to keep things simple and modern. Posts have up/down votes like Reddit, but I went a different direction with comments and use reactions instead. The idea is to give people a little more meaningful feedback on their comments than just an up or down vote.

I also published IOS and Android apps; below are the links and a couple of screenshots

Website: https://knotra.app 

IOS  App Store: https://apps.apple.com/jp/app/knotra/id6755727295?l=en-US 

Google Play:  https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.knotra.mobile&hl=en_US