Best Self Hosted Alternatives to Hacker News

Lemmy is a link aggregation and discussion forum platform similar to Reddit-style communities, built to run as independent servers that can federate with each other. It uses ActivityPub to share posts, comments, and communities across instances while keeping local control over moderation and policies.

Key Features

• ActivityPub federation between instances (Fediverse-compatible)
• Community-based posts with voting and threaded comments
• Moderation tooling for admins and community moderators, including public moderation logs
• User mentions and community tagging, plus notifications (including email notifications)
• RSS/Atom feeds for key views such as subscribed content and community feeds
• Themes and a mobile-friendly web interface
• Media support including avatars and integrated image uploads

Use Cases

• Host a public or private Reddit-like community with fine-grained moderation
• Build a federated discussion network that can interact with other Fediverse servers
• Create topic-focused forums for organizations, projects, or interest groups

Lemmy is well-suited for communities that want a modern voting-based forum with federation and strong local autonomy. It provides a familiar user experience while enabling decentralized hosting and cross-instance discussion.

Mbin is a decentralized content aggregator, voting, discussion and microblogging platform that participates in the Fediverse via ActivityPub. It is a community-driven fork of kbin providing a web UI for submitting links, posts, comments and votes, and interoperates with other ActivityPub services.

Key Features

• Full ActivityPub support for federation with Mastodon, Lemmy, Pleroma, PeerTube and similar services
• Posting, link aggregation, threaded discussion, and up/down voting model for community moderation
• Web UI built with PHP and Symfony using Twig templates and JavaScript enhancements
• Docker and Docker Compose deployment options and documentation for bare-metal installations
• Multi-language support and community-driven translations via integrated localization workflow
• Code security practices with composer dependency management and regular audits

Use Cases

• Running a federated community forum or link aggregator that interoperates across the Fediverse
• Hosting a microblogging site with voting and threaded discussions similar to Reddit/Lemmy
• Integrating community-moderated content streams and magazines for niche interest groups

Limitations and Considerations

• Requires familiarity with PHP/Symfony and typical web hosting stacks for installation and maintenance
• Federation behavior can vary depending on ActivityPub implementations of other servers; interoperability nuances may require tuning
• Smaller project and ecosystem compared to some larger Fediverse implementations; administrative resources and third-party tooling are more limited

Mbin is suited for operators who want a community-focused, federated aggregator and discussion platform with active development and a focus on interoperability and usability.

PieFed is an open source, federated forum and link aggregator designed for community discussion across the Fediverse. It uses ActivityPub to let posts and conversations flow between independent servers while keeping each community in control of its own rules and moderation.

Key Features

• ActivityPub federation for cross-instance discovery, sharing, and discussion
• Forum-style communities with posts, comments, and moderation tooling
• Admin and moderator features for handling reports, blocks, and instance-level controls
• Media support including image and video uploads
• Asynchronous background processing for tasks such as notifications and maintenance jobs
• Developer-friendly, customizable Python codebase with container-based deployment options

Use Cases

• Hosting a federated community forum that can interact with the wider Fediverse
• Running a link-aggregation hub for news and topic-based discussion with local moderation
• Creating an interest-based community network that remains interoperable across instances

Limitations and Considerations

• Federation behavior and feature compatibility can vary depending on the remote ActivityPub software n PieFed is a solid option for communities that want a forum-like experience with Fediverse interoperability. It balances familiar link-and-comment discussion flows with instance autonomy and moderation control.