Today I learned about Sublinks (here), an open-source project that aims to be a drop-in replacement for the backend of Lemmy, a federated link aggregator and microblogging platform. Sublinks is designed to be initially API-compatible with Lemmy, allowing existing Lemmy clients, such as Lemmy-UI, to integrate seamlessly.

The project is written in Java, which may introduce some overhead but is chosen for its maintainability and familiarity among a wider pool of developers. The Sublinks team prioritizes a more inclusive and less toxic development environment, and the project has already attracted more developers than Lemmy.

While Sublinks is starting with 1:1 compatibility, future plans include implementing additional features that the Lemmy developers have not pursued. This could lead to a divergence in functionality between the two platforms as Sublinks evolves beyond its initial compatibility phase.

README

Sublinks

A decentralized, censorship-resistant, and privacy-preserving social network.

• Join Sublinks
• Demo Sublinks
• Documentation
• Matrix Chat
• Report Bug
• Request Feature
• Releases
• Code of Conduct
• Contributing
• Style Guide

About

Sublinks, crafted using Java Spring Boot, stands as a state-of-the-art link aggregation and microblogging platform, reminiscent yet advanced compared to Lemmy & Kbin. It features a Lemmy compatible API, allowing for seamless integration and migration for existing Lemmy users. Unique to Sublinks are its enhanced moderation tools, tailored to provide a safe and manageable online community space. Embracing the fediverse, it supports the ActivityPub protocol, enabling interoperability with a wide range of social platforms. Sublinks is not just a platform; it’s a community-centric ecosystem, prioritizing user experience, content authenticity, and networked social interaction.

Features

• Open source, MIT License.
• Self hostable, easy to deploy.
• Clean, mobile-friendly interface.
  • Only a minimum of a username and password is required to sign up!
  • User avatar support.
  • Live-updating Comment threads.
  • Full vote scores (+/-) like old Reddit.
  • Themes, including light, dark, and solarized.
  • Emojis with autocomplete support. Start typing :
  • User tagging using @, Community tagging using !.
  • Integrated image uploading in both posts and comments.
  • A post can consist of a title and any combination of self text, a URL, or nothing else.
  • Notifications, on comment replies and when you’re tagged.
    • Notifications can be sent via email.
    • Private messaging support.
  • i18n / internationalization support.
  • RSS / Atom feeds for All, Subscribed, Inbox, User, and Community.
• Cross-posting support.
  • A similar post search when creating new posts. Great for question / answer communities.
• Moderation abilities.
  • Public Moderation Logs.
  • Can sticky posts to the top of communities.
  • Both site admins, and community moderators, who can appoint other moderators.
  • Can lock, remove, and restore posts and comments.
  • Can ban and unban users from communities and the site.
  • Can transfer site and communities to others.
• Can fully erase your data, replacing all posts and comments.
• NSFW post / community support.
• High performance.

Contact

• Mastodon
• Support Forum

Contributing

• Contributing instructions
• Local Development

Support / Donate

Sublinks is free, open-source software, meaning no advertising, monetizing, or venture capital, ever. Your donations directly support full-time development of the project.