Hey everyone, about two or three weeks ago I posted on here about a site I had begun using, much like the old reddit. Mirage.talk The post got removed because I needed to give people invite codes, so I asked to people of Mirage and they gave me one of the developers links that you can click on and enter that way. https://mirage.talk/signup?ref=Anon-Pavones

https://preview.redd.it/5vwnnov5vb2h1.png?width=1918&format=png&auto=webp&s=1ee7b776afb982b8f790805a4857faaf035694c5

There was a lot of Interest on here, and they are gaining users from Instagram and Twitter also. The number of users has actually risen above 1300. I personally love it, and tend to only use reddit to interact on football/Arsenal related things

https://preview.redd.it/8o89f21mpb2h1.png?width=2084&format=png&auto=webp&s=5b4b7f3bd40360df1e803985b8c917eae0c8bb87

Mirage is built around the kind of things people in this sub look out for, old reddit style format, less noise, more control over what you see, and most of all self-moderation. No email, No phone number, No personal info. If you click the link you get 12 word seed phrase(you need to save this otherwise you might forget and lose the account) You can opt in to use 5 'agents'. You can use it anonymously, instead of going through the usual account setup stuff. That alone makes it feel much more open and less intrusive

https://preview.redd.it/6oekef65tb2h1.png?width=1689&format=png&auto=webp&s=dc9a3513e472314292d2a9bad331d728d40ca414

Noone is there controlling what you post, or what you comment, you can create any 'topic' you want that you are interested in and it won't get removed. If you don't like something YOU block it from your feed. Don't like a User YOU block them from your feed. There are the agents that you see above, one of these I really like called the safespacebot. It changes how something is said, in this case you dont see any nasty comments that are inevitable. I've put examples from the users there

https://preview.redd.it/ra713z8gtb2h1.png?width=1690&format=png&auto=webp&s=b744ae930cf23da829ae0d2f53ae49075c1df2f6

https://preview.redd.it/9yn1rgvnsb2h1.png?width=1214&format=png&auto=webp&s=61666bcc7f068244ac8a08beacb1b44234525c0f

This before and after the 'SafeSpaceBot'

https://preview.redd.it/vafq7zzwsb2h1.png?width=1873&format=png&auto=webp&s=a0b6e1a1e513f04e5850c13aa1d26d9f1f74c1b4

It's built around rewarding actual participation rather than popularity. Upvotes, comments, and posts all matter because they help you earn MIRAGE, and that reward system isn’t just based on who happens to upvote you. From what I understand, the token is meant to be useful inside the platform, it can be used for subscriptions, username reservations, higher limits, and upgrades. So participation has a real purpose beyond karma-like vanity metrics.

https://preview.redd.it/cdmgzv1iub2h1.png?width=1188&format=png&auto=webp&s=0b15a8df4b8b50433a1097c4adb0455fb7b2e28c

What I like most is that it feels like a Reddit alternative focused on use, not just scrolling. The anonymous setup, the low-friction onboarding, and the fact that users can earn something by contributing all make it feel more practical than a lot of the other options I have used.

Again, I will leave links to their

Twitter. https://x.com/getmirage
Official Page https://mirage.foundation/
FAQs https://mirage.foundation/faq

So you don't have to take my word for it, you can do your own homework. If you like it below again is the link you need to click to get access and that's it. They tend to give 'subscriber tier' to new users, so if you do join, make a post so thats given to you. Hope to see some of you there!

https://mirage.talk/signup?ref=Anon-Pavones

Disclaimer: I have no connection whatsoever with the platform or its creators.

I stumbled upon OpenSpace some time ago, but back then it didn't really capture my attention. Recently, I've received an email from them about the platform's complete redevelopment.

"We're excited to announce that Openspace has officially relaunched with a completely rebuilt platform designed around openness, community, and the Fediverse.

Openspace is a Fediverse-native social network that lets you connect, react, comment, and reshare across the open web — without ads, tracking, or algorithms working against you."

I took a look and I must say it looks at the very least... interesting? Fediverse, communities, circles, Reddit-like posts, customizable feeds, etc.

Perhaps this could be our new haven? Sure, there isn't much going on there at the moment, but the more people sign up, the more active it will become.

Any thoughts on this site called The Wall (humanitywall.org). I’ve been sitting here reading it for the past 20 minutes.
It’s an anonymous, public space where people leave notes. No accounts, no usernames, no likes, no karma. Just words. You can browse by category, venting, ideas, memories, things unsaid, confessions, and read what strangers left behind.
The “about” page says it best:
“a place where words go when they have nowhere else to go… just what you’re carrying, left here for anyone who needs to know they’re not the only one carrying it.”
It’s surprisingly raw. Some of it is funny, some of it is heartbreaking, some of it is just someone’s random 2am thought. But all of it feels real in a way that most of the internet doesn’t anymore.
No ads. No algorithm. No social performance. Just the wall.
Go leave something. Or just read. Either way.
🔗 humanitywall.org

Heya,

Appreciate I'm very late to the party but the mega thread didn't have answers and filtering by top post shows things from 2024 so are out of date.

As of May 2026, what alternative are people using and recommend?

I only use Reddit for scrolling topics when traveling and Discord/ whatsapp for messaging, so right now Reddit is my only real social media/ news source.

a

Need advice ?

Not really looking for dating apps or the usual “social media but worse somehow” clones. More like communities where random conversations with strangers actually happen naturally.

A random anonymous video chat conversation literally ended up with me visiting Thailand months later after staying in contact with someone I met there, so now I’m weirdly interested in platforms where those kinds of spontaneous interactions still exist.Most sites either feel dead, overmoderated, full of bots, or filled with people trying to sell crypto to emotionally vulnerable insomniacs at 2 AM. Modern internet is a remarkable landfill sometimes.

P.S. Vooz and Discord are the ones recommended. Is Vooz good, anybody used it?

I found online communities like reddit to be low signal (relative to my interests) and unresponsive. I rarely got answers to anything I asked (except trolls and such).
I thought - what if I could have a community where every member and topic and post and comment was personalized to my interests? And it ran locally on my machine, and I could ask anything freely?

This was impossible even a few months ago, but with AI, it is possible now.

So, I built Maibook - a local first, private community that looks and feels like an online community (like reddit), but as a desktop app - with one human user and rest AI members. Each AI member is personalized based on the ongoing user's interests and activity - the members discuss/argue/summarize/ideate around the user's interests.

To the end user, looks and feels like reddit or other similar online communities - but entirely made of the user and personalized AI members other than the user.

Mac or Windows desktop app - requires 16GB (Unified or dedicated) VRAM - 32GB or more RAM is better (better models).

https://maibook.app

Would love any and all feedback.

Note for moderators: not sure which flair made sense - this is siloed as in it runs entirely as a desktop app, but is not open source - currently free.

Yet another reddit clone... but with a couple of twists.

-> https://www.psephos.cc/

>Psephos (Ancient Greek: ψῆφος, romanized: psêphos; plural: psephoi, ψῆφοι) was a ballot used by jurors (dikastai) in the law courts of ancient Athens to cast a secret ballot.

Decentralized moderation

Reddit and many clones have the issue that moderation is mainly handled by a couple of unpaid volunteers. This creates two problems: the mods have too much arbitrary power, but at the same time they have too much work.

With small power comes low responsibility

To address this issue we tried a decentralized, jury-based moderation system. The site has site-wide rules and board (subs) specific ones. When reporting content the rule that was infringed has to be selected, if enough (n=1 currently) reports are made a jury of users is randomly selected to judge the case. To handle egregious cases rapidly board's admins can fast-track moderation, but the user can contest which will result in a jury being selected as in the "slow" path. In theory this system should scale better and avoid some of the issues with the "mod-king" model of reddit, but whether this actually works in practice remains to be seen.

Media views

Another issue with reddit is that e.g. images often take over text content, due to their mass appeal to our weak-willed human brains. For example the r/photography allows only text posts, as it would otherwise be overrun by images. But isn't it a bit ironic for a photography sub not to allow photographs? To solve this we introduced different views of a board: all / text / images / videos. That way different types of posts can coexist without cannibalizing each other.

No BS?

No ads, no tracking, no google, no AI, open-source (eventually), global-first ("news" is not about the USA), etc.

Give it a try

https://www.psephos.cc/

I've disabled email verification, so making an account should be easy.

FAQ

• Federated ? No, I'm not sure how that would work with moderation.
• Mobile app ? No.
• Economic model? Donation-based / non-profit (eventually)
• Bots ? No magic solution besides standard practices, but I think it's a big problem that will need some institutional solution (some form of privacy-respecting ID system)

First of all, thank you! Over 1,000 of you joined the Rhyme.com waitlist in the first 24 hours after we announced, and the feedback was something like 99.9% positive. The suggestions have been thoughtful and the whole response affirmed two things for our team: that this is a platform people actually want, and that the hours we've spent building it have been time well spent. Please keep the feedback and suggestions coming.

With that out of the way, We want to start a series of posts walking through the different pieces of Rhyme. The goal is to explain what each part does, why we built it that way, and open the door to feedback on each individual area during this beta period. Today's post is about the most foundational piece: topics, and how posting actually works.

https://preview.redd.it/yylbs89l8j0h1.png?width=1657&format=png&auto=webp&s=ff9305e1f1a972986c850e1be561fa122df07e07

Topics are created by the platform, not by users

This is probably the single biggest structural difference between Rhyme and other platforms, so it's worth leading with: on Rhyme, topics exist at the platform level. We create them, not users.

Right now, the platform has roughly 88,000 topics. We bootstrapped that initial layer largely from Wikipedia and Wikidata, which was admittedly a bit of a nightmare on our end! But that's our problem, not yours, and the result is that it's now genuinely rare for someone to want to discuss something and find that no topic exists for it today.

The system can also get pretty granular. There's a topic for Apple. There's a topic for AirPods. There's a topic for AirPods Max. The same logic applies across every subject area.

https://preview.redd.it/y4by25y3bj0h1.png?width=1037&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b1e2b73c0c0916874734fa1512743ddbbc66333

A common question we wrestled with internally was: how granular do we go? The rule of thumb we landed on was basically: do people talk about this thing on its own? Do people talk about AirPods? Yes. Do people talk about AirPods Max specifically? Yes. Do people talk about the specific battery inside the AirPods Max? No. That's where we stop. Silly example, but it's the logic.

For the genuinely niche stuff that doesn't deserve its own topic but does come up occasionally…like AirPods Max cases, AirPods Max skins, that kind of thing…we do have a tagging system that makes them surfaceable when someone needs them. I'll save the details for a future post.

Hierarchy: topics live in a tree

The other thing to know upfront is that topics aren't a flat list, they live in a multidirectional tree with parents, children, and siblings.

Apple sits under Technology. Under Apple, you've got macOS, iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision Pro, Final Cut, Logic, and so on. Apple's siblings (same level in the tree) might be Microsoft, Dell, Sony, and other companies of similar scope. We're actively refining the system that decides which siblings to surface most prominently (because "most relevant sibling" is a fuzzy concept), but there's a detailed map view you can click into to explore the tree yourself.

We’re going to dedicate a whole post to hierarchy later, because it has some interesting downstream effects on how posts surface. For now, just know: it's a tree, and the tree matters.

https://preview.redd.it/7ri8gymzaj0h1.png?width=1438&format=png&auto=webp&s=9f2db2e4bf578418d06bb98e205c1756012a350d

How posting works

You can create a post from anywhere on Rhyme. There's a "new post" button on your homepage, on every topic page, and on every thread. The first thing the system notes is where you were when you hit that button, which becomes useful later when a post's intent is ambiguous.

From there it's familiar: you write a title, a description, optionally share a link or image, hit submit. While you're typing, the algorithm is quietly working in the background trying to figure out where this post belongs. It uses a bunch of signals like the content of the post itself, where you started writing it, what topics you've been viewing recently, your posting history, and so on.

Here's where it gets interesting: a single post can live in multiple topics simultaneously.

Say you write:

"I've been a longtime Apple fan and I really love macOS, but lately I've been considering switching to Linux. Anyone been down this path who can offer recommendations?"

The algorithm reads that and figures out that the conversation is going to come primarily from the Linux community, but there's also going to be meaningful engagement from macOS and Apple folks. So the post gets assigned to Linux as its primary topic…and it also surfaces in macOS and Apple, just at lower visibility.

On top of that, hierarchy compounds the effect. If a post's primary topic is macOS, it also surfaces in Apple (the parent) less frequently, and in Technology (the grandparent) less frequently still. So one well-placed post can naturally reach the right audiences at the right intensities without you having to cross-post anywhere.

https://preview.redd.it/8sxyfn01bj0h1.png?width=1643&format=png&auto=webp&s=cfafbb869ad6ca8eb7cb71f6830c964fe1df2f6e

Quick aside on something we get asked a lot: the system is very good at not being gamed. Old-school attempts to force a post into the "wrong" topic by stuffing it with irrelevant keywords just don't work. The algorithm is looking at intent and substance, not surface-level pattern matching. And an important note: the algorithm isn't acting as an arbiter of what you're allowed to say. It's making sure posts end up where they belong. There's a separate post coming on the broader analyzer, and I'll get into the "what does it actually decide" question there.

What happens when a topic doesn't exist yet

So what about new things? New products, new bands, new everything. Let's say the Clicks Communicator (a real, niche Android phone with a physical keyboard) launches tomorrow. You write a post:

"Anyone seen the Clicks Communicator? Big Android fan, was a big BlackBerry fan back in the day, curious if this seems viable and whether you'd buy one."

The algorithm reads it and immediately identifies that you're talking about Android, a little about BlackBerry, and a thing called the Clicks Communicator. Android and BlackBerry both have topics. Clicks Communicator doesn't…yet. But the algorithm determines pretty quickly that this is a real product people are going to want to discuss, so it goes off and does its homework. It figures out what the Clicks Communicator is, generates a topic for it, grabs an appropriate image, writes a description, and slots it into the hierarchy (probably under cell phones, with Android and BlackBerry as siblings). Your post then lives primarily under the new Clicks Communicator topic, and also surfaces in Android and BlackBerry because it's relevant there too. All of that happens in the time it takes to submit a post.

A natural follow-up worry: won't this generate a million junk topics? In practice, no. The algorithm is pretty conservative about whether something is actually a thing people will discuss, and it almost always gets that right. Our incentives lean toward generosity here. Server resources for this are effectively unlimited on our side, and because of how hierarchy and multi-topic posting work, an unused niche topic doesn't hurt anyone. The post about it still surfaces in the broader topics it relates to, so conversations don't die in empty rooms.

Community input on topics

Topics aren't fully locked once they exist. There's a flagging system, and "flag" here doesn't mean "report for badness," it's more general than that. You can flag a topic to say "this description is inaccurate" or "this image is wrong/low-quality" or basically "something here needs attention." When enough flags accumulate (the threshold scales depending on topic size/age/engagement/etc), it gets reviewed and corrected.

We're also actively experimenting with giving communities a bit more direct input on their topics. The example I keep coming back to: right now the Pop Music topic might really want a Michael Jackson avatar. We think there should be some way for that to happen organically without it being a free-for-all. We're prototyping things that look a bit like polls or proposals…someone with enough account history could propose a topic image change, which opens a submission window, then a voting window, then a result. Something like that. Probably rate-limited per account so it doesn't get abused. We're not committed to a specific design yet, and I'd genuinely love feedback on what people would want here.

"But what if I want to create my own topic?"

This is the question we've gotten the most, and there are two different answers depending on what you mean.

If you mean "I want to start a niche community where like-minded people can hang out away from the broader conversation", that's intentionally not how Rhyme works, and we want to be upfront about that. A point worth making clearly: Rhyme isn't trying to replace other platforms where this is the norm. Those platforms still exist and still do what they do. We're trying to occupy a different spot in the ecosystem.

The specific thing we're trying to do differently is this: when something happens in the world…like breaking news, a major release, a cultural moment…it currently gets discussed in 30 different corners of every platform, each with its own preexisting bias, each reinforcing whatever spin its members already agreed on. We think that's part of why public conversation feels broken right now. Rhyme's bet is that there's value in everyone showing up to the same table for a given subject and working it out together. Taylor Swift drops a new album? It gets discussed in the Taylor Swift topic. Not separately in "Taylor Swift Lovers" and "Taylor Swift Haters." Fans and skeptics are both welcome; they're just expected to actually talk to each other rather than past each other.

That's a real tradeoff, and we understand it's not for everyone. If what you love about other platforms is the ability to carve out a small, like-minded space, Rhyme isn't trying to take that from you, it's just not what Rhyme is for. Those other platforms aren't going anywhere.

If you mean "I'm starting a company/band/project and I want a topic to exist for it", that's something we want to make easy, and we're actively building it right now. The plan is a simple submission form: tell us what it is, why it should exist, and we'll review it quickly. Because new genuine person/place/thing topics cost us essentially nothing and add real value, we expect to approve the vast majority of these. The reason we don't just let the algorithm do it on the fly for these cases is that for a truly new startup, there's no public information for the algorithm to draw on yet, so it'll (correctly) pass on auto-creating the topic. The submission form bridges that gap.

And worth noting: the platform isn't a spam-and-promotion free-for-all (there's a whole separate conversation coming on how we keep that from happening), but it also isn't hostile to people building things. If you made a great piece of screen recording software, posted about it, and it's genuinely interesting, today it's going to surface in macOS, in Video Editing, in Technology, in the places where people would want to know about it. That's kind of the point.

Wrapping up

That's topics in a nutshell. I've left plenty out like hierarchy mechanics, the analyzer, moderation, verification, feed filtering…and each of those is getting its own post in the coming weeks.

If you're on the waitlist, hang tight. We're letting more people in every day. If you're not on it yet and any of this sounds interesting, Rhyme.com is the place.

The single best thing you can do to help right now is spread the word. We'll talk again soon.

Happy Monday!

[terribic.com] Plato, it is a forum. Reddit-shaped — subs, threads, votes, moderators — but operated like the small forums and email groups of 2002, before algorithms, before tracking pixels, before "for you" everywhere. One small program, one file of data, plain-text posts. Free to copy and run, designed to be forked.

What I was trying to get right is the balance of power.

The operator runs the lights and nothing more. They don't assign moderators, they don't rule on community-level disputes, they have no special button to unfreeze a quiet sub or install a chosen voice. If the operator goes bad, you fork the code, take your archive, and walk — people leave the operator, not the platform.

Each sub is its own universe. The moderator owns it. They can soft-remove a post (collapsed, still visible, recoverable), hard-remove it (gone, but logged forever), or hand the sub to someone else entirely. Every action lands in a public log the whole community can read.

And the community is not passive. A handful of distinct flags will collapse a post for review automatically. Enough upvotes after a soft removal will lift it back automatically. The math overrides the moderator when it should. Mods drive the sub; the community drives the mod.

The rest of the design follows from those choices.

Posts are plain text — no uploads, no hosting, no embeds. A picture link is a clickable link, not a thing the site stores for you. There's no algorithm; what you see is what's there. Subs publish public feeds you can read in any feed reader. Each member also gets a private feed for the subs they
follow and the replies on their content. There are no notifications. Plato will never email you about activity.

Sign-in is a link sent to your inbox. The email is fingerprinted on arrival and never stored — same email on two plato sites gives you two unrelated handles. The sign-in layer is its own library, knowless, split out of plato so other projects can use it standalone.

Your data is yours from day one. Posts live on disk as plain text; the database is just an index, rebuildable. Personal and full-sub archives are signed and time-stamped, importable into any other plato site by pasting a URL.

It's not federated. One site, one community. The discourse of forums, email groups, and social media, minus the corporate control. Not a network. A pocket.

I’m not fully sure on the rules of this sub, so if this isn’t allowed, let me know and I’ll remove it. 

I've been lurking this sub for a little while through different accounts, understanding what people find issue with most. Basically with mods out of control, power trips, bans, inconsistent rules, AI, lack of anonymity, karma farming etc. You know yourself. I’m also tired of reddit, I’ve deleted accounts then restarted later to try again only to remember why I deleted my old account. 

A site I’ve found and I’ve been using recently is called Mirage.
https://mirage.talk/home

I’ve been on it for maybe 2 weeks or so. It's extremely similar to the old style of reddit, there’s even a theme to make it look like old reddit. It’s the same topic based discussion, communities, voting but with complete anonymity. However, there are no moderators, moderation is done by yourself, if you don’t like something you block it, or block the accounts, and the algorithm learns it. There’s now even a ‘safespacebot’ which basically rewrites posts or comments so it’s not written in a way you don’t appreciate. 

Also they don't ask for email, phone numbers or personal information to sign up. You need an invite code, then you get a seed phrase and that is it.

I think they are new enough, but it looks really promising from my point of view. If it’s not against the rules I will put links to the site so you can read more about it and the twitter page so you can take a deeper look yourself. And if you want to give it a try send me a dm and I can give you an invite code.

https://mirage.foundation/faq
https://x.com/getmirage