A new Threadiverse platform has emerged, joining Lemmy, Kbin, and PieFed in a growing list of options for users seeking an alternative to Reddit. It’s also looking to possiblyh serve as an alternative to Lemmy itself.

Sublinks is a Java-based platform created by Jason Grim, a web developer who operates the discuss.online Lemmy instance. One interesting aspect of the project is that it plans to adopt Lemmy’s client API, meaning that Lemmy’s plethora of apps will work with Sublinks.

This approach is strongly reminiscent of how Mastodon’s own API ended up being adopted by Pleroma, Friendica, and a ton of other platforms to expand app support across the Fediverse. It’s not a bad strategy for bootstrapping a new project, since newcomers can still use their favorite apps.

Sublinks will have a fully compatible API with Lemmy so all current Lemmy apps will also work with Sublinks. In fact, discuss.online will switch to Sublinks to fully replace Lemmy once we reach our Parity Milestone.

Jason Grim, Sublinks announcement

The project page goes on to indicate a unique focus on an enhanced moderation tool suite, along with plans for supporting server migration from Lemmy to Sublinks. The project is still young, and in an alpha phase, but it’s exciting to see this part of the ecosystem infused with new blood.

The main reason to create Sublinks is to move quicker with features & functionality that the current Lemmy team cannot maintain for various reasons.

Jason Grim

This particular remark stood out, illustrating some user/developer frustration within the Lemmy community. Lemmy internally has a relatively small development team, and has been swamped in the face of supporting network growth and moderation features since the Reddit influx of early 2023.

On the other hand, a new platform may offer a testbed for new approaches not currently being pursued by the team. It’s a little early to say what exact changes the Sublinks dev has in mind, but making moderation and community administration more robust sounds like a solid development focus.

If you’re interested in checking out or supporting Sublinks, take a look at the links below:

• Site: https://sublinks.org
• GitHub: https://github.com/sublinks
• Support Forum: https://discuss.online/c/sublinks_support

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