Reddit’s down again. No logins, no threads, no access. If your community lives there, you’re screwed.

 

[ATTACH type=full" width="732px" alt="1743103856518.png]1440[/ATTACH]

 

 

Let this serve as a reminder that if you're building your community on Reddit, Discord, or Facebook Groups, you're building on borrowed land. The moment they go offline, change the rules, or decide you're a problem, you lose everything.

 

Reddit’s been pushed hard by Google lately. It’s dominating search results. AI models are hoovering up its content. The platform’s chasing an IPO, which means more ads, more paywalls, more data scraping, and less stability.

 

People act like Reddit is the internet. It isn’t. It’s a single website with a voting system that rewards snarky one-liners and groupthink. Mods can nuke your post or ban your account without warning. There’s no consistency, no ownership, and no real appeal process. Just vibes and power trips.

 

So if you're serious about your community, stop giving it away.

 

Own your platform. Run a forum. Host it yourself. That way:

• You set the rules.
  
• You keep the data.
  
• You’re not one outage away from a blank screen.
  
• You don’t rely on ad-driven algorithms or unpaid volunteer mods.
  
• You can back it up, move it, archive it, and fix it.
  

Forums aren’t old-fashioned. They’re independent. They work when Reddit doesn’t. They aren’t trying to turn your community into ad impressions. And they’re not going to vanish because some investor wants a better quarter.

 

If Reddit going down today has left you stranded, think about what happens if it goes down permanently.

 

Build something you own. Stop trusting corporations with what matters.

Sweet. Would be a good thing for forums if Reddit would stay dead.

The irony is, I can't post this on Reddit...

The irony is, I can't post this on Reddit...

Yes, that must be a heartbreaking issue.

 

Sorry you have to deal with this.

Yes, that must be a heartbreaking issue.

 

Sorry you have to deal with this.

No need for the attitude, buddy boy. I was going to post it on r/Administrata to show there is an alternative to Reddit.

No need for the attitude, buddy boy. I was going to post it on r/Administrata to show there is an alternative to Reddit.

Should also post it on the /Redditalternatives section.

 

There’s a lot of traction in that subreddit. There’s always users seeking alternatives.😂

I've been saying this for some time, but humans are set in their ways. When TikTok was banned in the US, I made a post about it on Thee Zone and shared it on Facebook and Bluesky about having a Peertube installation where you have full control over the website so it'll only go down if your host has a problem or something broke. On FB I had a long, lengthy post to go with the article too and I did get some of my friends to like it but I doubt any of them are going to leave Facebook any time soon.

 

Also when Reddit started charging for their API and many subreddits went silent to protest, I brought up on r/casualconversation that I wasn't upset when Reddit was a ghost town because forums exist and we should go back to using them again. A few people replied and said they didn't like that they had to join a bunch of different forums for different niches and liked Reddit because they can easily just find a community, click join and they can start posting. So it really comes down to a bit of laziness. (Or "convenience" if you want to look at it that way. I did bring up Proboards and how they have a global account, where you just need to make one account and then you get access to any other proboards forum but just with a few extra steps.)

People will stay with Reddit even when it starts to sink into the dark deep. Just like Ravenfreak said, people are lazy and if they even have to click one extra times, they'll drop it without a single thought.

This is very true. Communities were so fun before Facebook and others. I had a few really big ones, but I was running VB in those days, and now I struggle to get anyone to post even when they’ve taken the time to register. And that’s only because I have the one-click register options: Facebook, Apple, and Google. But it’s like pulling teeth. That said, this community is for my business, and it’s a difficult clientele, so it’s a little expected. But I’m also looking at creating a second community for Red Dead / Red Dead 3 and hoping I can get it to grow roots. At the very least, it will be fun to create. So, we’ll see how it goes.

I sincerely pity the communities that depend heavily on reddit. Their frequent downtown is a little bit frustrating. Anyways, it's a lesson to those who centralize their online community on a single platform. It's so risky as such platform fumble at any time.

People will stay with Reddit even when it starts to sink into the dark deep. Just like Ravenfreak said, people are lazy and if they even have to click one extra times, they'll drop it without a single thought.

I honestly don't think this is 100% true. There's a lot of discussion in the Redditalternatives subbreddit where users are seeking other avenues and looking for other alternatives to Reddit. It's a good section to advertise your forum as well. I'd recommend being active in that particular area. There's also various topics in that sub where users discuss forums as well. I believe it's a quality avenue to drive in new users to online communities.

 

A lot of people thought Digg wouldn't go anywhere years ago, but we all saw what happened to their community years ago. A lot of their users ended up flocking to Reddit. There are many things that are going on behind the scenes on Reddit that their user base aren't agreeing with, so it's a good chance that they'll leave for a better community.