Naven
Answers
What are the best alternatives to Reddit?
Depending on what you use Reddit for: Lemmy or kbin for a similar federated link-and-discussion site, Tildes for smaller, thoughtful discussion, Discord servers for real-time community chat, Stack Exchange or Quora for questions and answers, and Discourse-based forums for single-topic communities. The Naven Forum is a smaller, screened option where every post is checked before it appears.
What people are looking for when they leave. Some want the same thing without Reddit's company decisions: its 2023 API changes shut down many third-party apps. Some want less hostility, some want a place a teenager can use without landing on adult content, and some just want a smaller community where their post gets an answer.
For the same kind of site: Lemmy is open source and federated, so communities live on many independent servers that talk to each other. It feels like Reddit, but depends on which server you join and who moderates it.
For calmer discussion: Tildes is invitation-based, text-first and deliberately small, with an emphasis on thoughtful comments.
For questions with answers: Stack Exchange sites are excellent for technical and specialist questions, with strict rules about staying on topic. Quora covers general questions, with more varied quality.
For a community of your own: Discord suits real-time chat and voice. Discourse is the software behind thousands of single-topic forums, from open-source projects to hobby groups.
For a screened, all-ages place: the Naven Forum works like a small Reddit, with communities, posts, threaded replies, votes and reactions. Every post and reply is screened before it appears, at a strict setting, because anybody can read it, and personal details such as addresses and phone numbers are refused. Anybody can read it at navenapp.com/forum without an account, members 13 and over can post, and it has far fewer people than Reddit.
The trade-off is always size against safety. Reddit's scale is why there is a community for everything, and also why moderation is patchy. Smaller forums answer fewer questions but tend to answer them kindly.