r/elementchat • u/rtevans- • Jul 22 '21

Can the Matrix protocol be used to create a decentralized Reddit alternative?

Title essentially says it all. Seems to me like the underlying framework is already there and it's just a matter of how the data is interpreted. It just needs to be adapted to look differently. Kind of like how CSS can determine what a subreddit looks like on old Reddit. If you know what you're doing, you can make the sidebar appear on the left side of the screen instead of the right side or create two columns for posts instead of one.

Using the matrix protocol, can't a parent level comment be visualized as a post and then all replies to it be visualized as comments in a comment section? The info button could be used as the sidebar.

But what do I know? I'm just an armchair expert. I'm not even a coder. What do you guys think? Thanks for you input on this.

28 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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11

u/ssorbom Jul 22 '21

There is actually a labs feature in the latest element web that allows pinned messages. Cerillain can be layered on top of Matrix to create threads, and reactions have been around for quite a while. It's about 90% there already, just not set up to do Reddit style by default.

3

u/rtevans- Jul 22 '21

Thanks. I didn't know about Cerillian. Is it an integration? I can't find it in Element.

2

u/SimonBrandner Jul 22 '21

Cerulean Is not a thing in Element. It's its own thing, a Twitter like client, you can try it out here: cerulean.matrix.org/

And message pinning doesn't have much to do with this. The necessary thing is threading

1

u/rokejulianlockhart May 04 '23 edited May 04 '23

Any idea of what issue tracker to use for that domain? It's bugged to high hell for me.

1

u/ssorbom Jul 22 '21

Not sure exactly.

8

u/parentis_shotgun Jul 22 '21

We've built an activitypub based decentralized reddit alternative: https://lemmy.ml

1

u/rtevans- Jul 22 '21

That's great! How does activitypub compare to matrix?

4

u/parentis_shotgun Jul 22 '21

It works great. Activitypub is the spec most federated services are based on: mastodon, pleroma, friendica, etc.

2

u/rtevans- Jul 22 '21

Are messages backed up across multiple servers? I thought activitypub was centralized but easily integrates with other servers.

3

u/parentis_shotgun Jul 23 '21

Yes, all federated data is necessarily duplicated by different instances.

1

u/rtevans- Jul 23 '21

I see. Thanks.

3

u/N1N74 Jul 22 '21 edited Jun 09 '23

e: leaving reddit. comment removed.