How to Compete with Reddit
#Know Your Customer
The first mistake people make when trying to create a Reddit alternative is that they don’t know who is actually paying them. Without knowing who is going to pay you, it is impossible to build a viable product. On the internet, there are only two real ways to get paid: advertising and subscriptions. Donations technically exist, but it takes an exceptional set of circumstances to rely on them; for that reason, they aren't relevant here.
Advertising is king. Both Google and Facebook are, at their core, advertising companies. Pretty much any “tech” company you’ve ever heard of has either tried, is trying, or will eventually attempt to enter the ad space because the margins are just that lucrative. Yeah, yeah—people hate ads and ad-blockers exist—but the reality is that corporations spend hundreds of billions of dollars on digital advertising every year. To sit in the middle of that flow between the brand and the end customer is the ultimate ambition for anyone building a tech product. Saying “I won’t have ads” or “No tracking” is bullshit; it signals that you haven’t thought about your product in any meaningful way.
The second way is, of course, subscriptions. Companies like the NYT and Netflix (who recently added ads as well—see how tempting it is?) rely on this model. The problem is that unless you are providing something truly valuable, like original journalism with a decorated history or high-cost, high-production films, nobody is buying a subscription to your app. This is especially true when your competition consists of ad-based giants who offer what you offer for free. Even if you had a unique product, they have billions of dollars to dedicate to copying you and eliminating you the second you become a threat.
So, you can’t say “no ads,” and you can’t realistically charge for subscriptions. What else do you have to compete with Reddit? Maybe you think you can sit in front of an AI and churn out questionable features to close the gap? Reddit has hundreds of millions of dollars in payroll; my only payroll is the $20/month for my favorite AI. Surely, I can compete, right?
#Tech Is Not a Way to Compete
To the people posting in this sub every day listing features that will make their product "different" from Reddit: you are wasting your time and money. Any feature you build, they will copy. They will make your appeal meaningless the second you pass a certain growth threshold. Reddit and its peers have more money, better brand recognition, and smarter developers than you could ever hire.
You cannot go head-to-head on tech. Their entire value is attracting advertisers; without users, they have nothing to sell, so they are incentivized to follow the user's every want. You might ask, "What if I patent my tech?" Sure, you can. But can you defend that patent in court against a hundred-billion-dollar company that can afford $700/hour lawyers for months on end? Probably not. Don’t bother.
#Decentralization
Decentralization is a lot like looking for a virgin: it survives more in the imagination than in reality. It is one of those things that people "agree" is a good idea in theory, but the reality is that centralization is far more convenient. Whatever is cheaper and more convenient is where the vast majority of people will gravitate.
I’ve also noticed that decentralization suffers from the same problem as veganism: weirdos. Socially maladapted people tend to be the majority of the users—people defined by their niche. You get the far-left, the far-right, the crypto-obsessed—people you wouldn't be able to socialize with if you took away the word "decentralization."
#What I Would Actually Recommend
Honestly, my first impulse is to say: it isn’t worth it. The internet isn't the same as it was in 2005, back when you had smart, techy people and creative university students. The internet is mainstream now. People want a lot more than 2005-era text-based Reddit; they want video and high-res media, which costs a fortune. That’s why you have to go to those "Vulture Investor" criminals to get help now.
Even if you break the light barrier and get funded, you have to deal with AI slop, an enshittified internet, and three billion bots for every authenticated human. Your average internet user is stupider now. You won't find the Reddit users of 2005 anymore—or even current-day Hacker News types, though the bots and the brainless are invading there, too.
But having said that, if you must build an alternative, build a small, highly targeted forum for a specific subset of Reddit users. Do not ban ads. Do not refuse subscriptions. Just make sure the community is highly filtered—free from bots and free from stupid people. No decentralization nonsense, no AI nonsense. Just code written by hand, so you know exactly where to look when your app crashes at 2:00 AM or a library gets compromised. Resist the AI tools at all costs.
Build this community yourself. Go out into the real world—attend conferences, talk to people, promote yourself and your community both offline and online. Since you probably don’t have money for ads, replace it with legwork.
That is how you compete. It isn’t because of a “cool feature,” or because your app is federated with some platform nobody has heard of, or "no tracking." Those are meaningless. Ask yourself honestly: "Would I actually use my own app if someone handed it to me?" Chances are, you wouldn't. Your success meter is the closer you get to a definitive "Yes." And don't bother with online promotion platforms; they are full of bots and other losers looking for promotion themselves. If something is easy and everyone is already doing it, it's probably not effective.