Reddit has been going through some hard times lately. First, it banned its alarmingly popular forum devoted to ceaselessly mocking the overweight, which sent Redditors of all stripes (but mostly jerks) into a tizzy. Then a well-loved moderator of the famous interview subreddit r/IAMA was inexplicably let go, and the Redditsphere exploded.

Over 30 of the site's most popular subreddits went dark in a show of solidarity, protesting against the now Conde Nast-owned site's treatment of its Reddit-employed admins and volunteer moderators. The blackout has since cleared up, but the unrest has left countless Redditors looking for a escape in the form of a site that isn't Reddit, but it is still somehow exactly like it.

So with the search term "Reddit alternative" trending on Google, and a subreddit unironically devoted to finding an escape from Reddit, an army of copycat sites have set up shop. Complete with shamelessly similar interfaces, promises of freedom, and server capacity that can't even begin to withstand a fraction of Reddit's monstrous traffic, these are the Reddit alternative hopefuls that aim to take the place of the stumbling behemoth ranked roughly from "most viable" to "why just why?"

Voat

Probably the most popular and widely known of the Reddit alternatives is Voat.co. Launched as a Reddit alternative back in April of 2014, Voat is basically a mirror image of the site it imitates. Instead of subreddits, Voat has subverses. Instead of urls like reddit.com/r/pics, Voat has urls like voat.co/v/pics. And the general visual layout speaks for itself.

Where Reddit his been cracking down on heinous hate-based subreddits, Voat has claimed that "No legal subject in this universe should be out of bounds." At least until its owners discovered they might be personally liable for illegal content, at which point they decided to maybe start banning subverses that look sketchy.

Voat.co is pretty much the alternative of choice for many Redditors—especially the ones with fiery hatred of Reddit's attempts to cull its more vitriolic communities—but the site is plagued with issues of its own. PayPal has cut off the site due to "obscenity" leaving it reliant mostly on payments in Bitcoin to survive. That and the nutso influx of traffic following all this recent Reddit drama has proven to be more of a curse than a blessing for Voat, which is frequently down thanks to overloaded servers.

Hubski

Like Voat, Hubski predates the most recent Reddit drama and launched way back in 2010. But where Voat's freewheeling sensibilities make it haven for Redditors who miss the likes of r/fatpeoplehate and other communities with slurs in their names, Hubski aims to replicate the side of Reddit that fosters thoughtful discourse. Hubski has no explicit rules on what is or is not allowed, but its guidelines for what makes a good comment give you a general idea of what the site aims to be:

The best comments are those that generate thoughtful, civil conversation. You don't have to agree with others, but be respectful. Good comments are not necessarily popular perspectives, but are well-supported ones. If you assert a strong opinion, try to back it up with facts, or an insightful rationale.

At first glance, Hubski's interface looks very much like it's cloned from Reddit, but beneath the surface is a wealth of different functionality. Instead of upvotes and downvotes, Hubski ranks posts on their number of "shares." You can follow specific people and share their posts, much like you can follow people and retweets on Twitter. When you do that, it fills up the posts "hub" icon and sends it up the charts. In addition, you can also follow "tags" which are analogous both to Reddit's subreddits and Twitter's hashtags. But perhaps best of all, there's actually a feature to mute other accounts and ban them from commenting on your threads.

With its clean design, mix of Twitter-like and Reddit-like features, and a general disinterest in becoming a hive of scum and villainy, Hubski seems like a fairly interesting alternative to Reddit should it build a sizable userbase and manage to keep the site up in the meantime.

Aether

Another entry that predates this most recent Redditpocalypse, Aether isn't actually a website but an app. Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Aether uses anonymized, encrypted peer-to-peer network and users have no persistent identity; it's all anonymous and governed by a simple tally of upvotes and downvotes. On Aether, everyone is equal and equally unremarkable. There are no moderator accounts with additional privelidge. It's a pure democracy, with all the terrible glory that entails.

With this blisteringly anonymous approach, Aether is unlikely to ever have its users get "doxxed" but one need look no further than 4chan's notoriously terrifying /b/ board to see what totally anonymity yields. If Aether takes off, things are probably going to get messy all up in there.

Empeopled

Now we're starting to get to the bottom of the barrel. The hilariously named Empeopled (brace yourself, it gets worse) is a Reddit clone that seems to exist only as a mobile site. As you might guess from its terrible name, it's all about power to the people and holds up democracy with an almost comical fervency.

Empeopled has a whole bunch of lofty goals, from allowing users to rewrite the site rules and actually giving users Bitcoin when their posts are upvoted somehow. Despite the whole democracy thing, Empeopled actually has an absurdly complicated scheme referred to as "Decibel level" where frequent posters' votes will actually count more than others'.

The whole thing seems like a fantastically ambitious disaster. This is a case study in biting off more than you can chew.

Zileax

Zileax is hardly worth mentioning but for its shameless similarity to Reddit and its horrific pet-name for users: "Zileaks." That, and instead of free upvotes, Zileaks can pay for "Phala" that they can spend promoting other user's links. Yes, seriously. Verified Zileaks can theoretically turn in their Phala for real cash, which means Zileax is a terrifying bank that is likely illegal in dozens of countries. Not that it matters considering no one will use it.

Commentum

You'll find a pretty basic Reddit clone in Commentum, with a pretty basically boring name. The Commentum twist on Reddit? No voting, only comments matter. Will it take off? Probably not.

Qetzl

Qetzl is another somewhat flavorless clone, albeit one that existed previous to the most recent Reddit drama. Along with an unpronounable name, Qetzl offers the most basic posting and commenting features of Reddit, but without the downvotes. Chance of success? Shrug out of shrug.

Snapzu

Snapzu is an invite-only Reddit clone complete with upvotes, downvotes, comments, and a token comment on its about page about staying censorship free.

No censorship: We strongly believe that transparency and freedom of speech is vital to any community, especially online. For this reason, submitted content belongs to users and thus can never be removed. As the community grows and expands, we will continue keeping our censorship-free ideology as a top priority to uphold. It's tough getting noticed, so every little bit of recognition helps. If you have twitter you can share this post using Twitter below. We really appreciate it!

The site is currently handing out invites like that house that showers you in Dubble Bubble at Halloween.

Loaffe

And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, there's Loaffe. Loaffe exists as a single post on reddit.com/r/redditalternatives (with eight comments!) and the barebones mockup you see above. Loaffe somehow plans to deliver in three days, ostensibly with the help of multiple miracles. One day it may come to pass, but if we are lucky the internet will have ended by then.

And if all else fails? Well, Digg is thinking about bringing back comments.

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