trove - a not-for-profit reddit alternative driven by aesthetics and ethics (please break it!)
Please break, critique, "dunk on," meme, and improve my reddit alternative called trove.
The domain is currently: trove.saw.dog
Backstory:
Last year, I posted on here about Trove, a minimalist alternative to Reddit I was experimenting with. Lots of people liked the design and motivation for the project.
At the time, it was just a mockup, but now it's a website!
The goal is basically to steward a website that feels like "old reddit".
My top priorities:
- fostering slow, thoughtful, creative, and engaging discussions (writing a constitution?)
- respecting user privacy and attention (no ads, AI content, infinite scrolling)
- ensuring users retain ownership of what they post (users can easily delete their accounts and download their data)
- keeping things simple and solid (a mobile site that works, no crazy slow javascript magic)
I don't expect people to use this platform. But I do hope to slowly and surely make something that's a really good home, and maybe one day people will move in.
Extra notes:
I don't have a constitution, about page or privacy policy set up yet. Hoping to flesh these out as user feedback comes in.
The moderation tools are ... well ... nonexistent. This is because I'm not sure who will be moderating what and how Community (subreddit) ownership will work.
I hope Trove can be like Reddit if it were made by the Wikimedia Foundation, i.e. a centralized platform with a strong ethical and stylistic stance.