Hacker News but for independent blogs (bubbles.town)
391 points by headalgorithm 10 hours ago
janaagaard 8 hours ago
I think the links should open in the same window (like they do here on HN) instead of in a new tab/window. If I want a separate tab, I can Cmd+click and Browsers don't have the reverse option for opening in the same window.
viermalbe 4 hours ago
Bubbles dev here, I've heard you loud and clear and follow the discussion closely.
I will change the default behaviour to open links in the same tab like on HN or Lobsters soon. But first the HN visitor wave needs to calm down.
mindtricks 2 hours ago
So many comments debating the philosophy around this. I like it when these type of sites open a new tab for me. Is there a way to just code in a toggle between the two link opening types?
rovr138 an hour ago
zenoprax 40 minutes ago
Shank an hour ago
bookofjoe 4 hours ago
Too bad it's so hard to submit a suggested blog.
moebrowne 2 hours ago
Making it too easy invites spam.
Sending a single email seems like a good compromise to me.
bookofjoe an hour ago
AbuAssar 8 hours ago
nope, I prefer open in new tab by default
kpopendurer 8 hours ago
In general, it's better not to force an action onto users. You might prefer things opening in a new tab, but you always have that option. If it's forced on users, it is frustrating for those who would prefer that not to happen.
ffsm8 7 hours ago
chrysoprace 8 hours ago
That's a good user setting, but as opening in the same tab is the default browser behaviour then it should really stay that way. Opening in a new tab takes control away from the user.
RossBencina 6 hours ago
el_io 7 hours ago
reactordev 7 hours ago
netfortius 5 hours ago
100% agree. I had to install a browser extension when I use HN with such (vs app on android, when it does it by default), just to force open links to new tabs.
giancarlostoro 4 hours ago
I'd rather have an icon next to the link that implies "Open in new Tab" like one of these with the arrow:
locknitpicker 2 hours ago
Telaneo 5 hours ago
I too prefer that, but i don't want to force that choice on othet people.
CTRL+left click is ingrained in me now anyway.
rafterydj 4 hours ago
I do as well, but I think it's good practice to put something like in a user preference setting somewhere if you are going to stray from default browser/system behavior.
akoboldfrying 6 hours ago
And people who prefer the other way can just hold down _____ while clicking to open it in the current tab instead.
Good ol' _____-clicking saves the day again!
em-bee 5 hours ago
AbuAssar 6 hours ago
why the downvotes, I meant to demonstrate that I prefer the current behaviour so the site developer knows.
markdown 6 hours ago
nathell 7 hours ago
I’ve been perusing Bubbles increasingly often since discovering that my blog is syndicated there, a few weeks ago.
It feels really refreshing compared to doomscrolling of social media, or indeed even to HN. It’s so diverse and humane. The indie blogosphere is coming to life.
Kudos to the author. A great idea, splendidly executed. I hope it grows and doesn’t change much.
flir 6 hours ago
Just glanced at the front page - it seems to be very "blog posts about blogging" (4 out of the top 5 posts right now). Is it always like that?
The "My" tab looks like it covers the same ground as a feed reader would. I wonder who the audience is for that feature.
jl6 6 hours ago
Is blogging always like that? Always has been.
flir 4 hours ago
altairprime 25 minutes ago
Ah, I love a good classic curated-authors aggregator. The days of yore have returned! Gives me hope. And thank you for having posts open to HN, that’s a brilliant way to augment rather than displace.
On first glance, the first several posts are more interesting than HN; that’s a good sign. But there’s no hide link to mask the AI posts I don’t care about; perhaps one appears after signup?
But. HN’s single-post mute method is treading water at best versus the flood, and with the sixth post on the homepage being outsourced-to-AI, clearly that will persist at Bubbles. Can I mute specific blogs that are just repeatedly posting ‘I subcontracted my project to AI and am now taking credit as if I did the work myself’ on this site? If so, I’d give this a full week tryout immediately.
bovermyer 6 hours ago
The Briefings have been most useful for me. It feels more curated and less firehose-y.
frereubu 5 hours ago
Would love a version of this on HN.
lapcat 4 hours ago
Also, showing the excerpts from the post text is vastly superior to just showing the post titles.
viermalbe 4 hours ago
I currently work on a feature to show excerpts (and read time) in the list views as well. But I will wait with the deployment until the Hacker News visitor wave has calmed down.
lapcat 3 hours ago
exitnode 8 hours ago
Very cool but I would like to be able to create an account with my mail address instead of using a Mastodon account because I am trying to avoid social media.
solid_fuel 8 hours ago
It looks like there's an RSS feed at the bottom. If you don't want to use the social aspects of the site, maybe just use that in an RSS reader?
*Link: https://bubbles.town/rss
holtwick 8 hours ago
The briefing pages also have RSS, this way you see the most relevant stuff https://bubbles.town/editions
DavideNL 32 minutes ago
brulx126 7 hours ago
I haven't tried but in principle you only need a Mastodon compatible authentication, there are other services that are not twitter clones. See for example https://fedi.tips/what-other-kinds-of-servers-are-on-the-fed... or more complete https://fediverse.observer/allsoftwares
samtheDamned an hour ago
I can't speak to other fediverse software but I tried a few lemmy servers to no avail. My mastodon instance is under maintenance so I guess I'll have to wait until that's done to sign up.
rsolva 6 hours ago
I do NOT consider the Fediverse and the myriads of implementations of it to be social media, but rather a social web. More like websites with the abilities to communicate and interact in different and interesting ways.
Social media is dead, and has been for a while. Many use it still, but it is not primarily social. The social part was mainly a ploy to get peoples attention and then badly abusing it in ever more creative and sinister ways.
rirze 2 hours ago
To me, social web == social media.
I don't use Facebook but use it for auth when I have no other option.
Even worse, I don't want an external service federating my identity when I can avoid it. We have all heard of people getting locked out in cases where Google decided to ban a user from their platform.
I'm never trusting an external provider again.
rsolva an hour ago
Schiendelman 7 hours ago
+1 to this. Apple sign-in would be ideal, since it maps to single-identity more cleanly than a social media system.
dredmorbius 3 hours ago
Bug.
nozzlegear 21 minutes ago
AbuAssar 8 hours ago
I'm curios why you are avoiding social media?
exitnode 7 hours ago
Mostly because the "damn this is interesting" to "i don't care what you ate yesterday" ratio is not good enough to spend my time on it. These days I am much more enjoying exploring gopher holes, reading and writing blog posts. For realtime communications, I prefer IRC. For me, social media sits in between chatting and publishing content and is therefore neither fish nor fowl.
locknitpicker an hour ago
> I'm curios why you are avoiding social media?
You make it sound as if that's undesirable.
sdevonoes 6 hours ago
Because there’s little good about it
globalnode 8 hours ago
Its a scam
rsolva 6 hours ago
I do NOT consider the Fediverse and the myriads of implementations of it to be social media, but rather a social web. More like websites with the abilities to communicate and interact in different and interesting ways.
Social media is dead, and has been for a while. Many use it still, but it is not primarily social. The social part was mainly a ploy to get peoples attention and then badly abusing it in ever more creative and sinister ways.
EDIT: This comment was meant to be posted to the parent comment!
altairprime 13 minutes ago
whereistejas 6 hours ago
This reminds me of Kagi's Small Web: https://kagi.com/smallweb/ or https://kagi.com/smallweb/river
NoSalt 2 hours ago
I was there, literally, 5 seconds and already saw a headline that pissed me off.
No thanks, I don't need any extra stress in my life.
the_lonely_phon an hour ago
Was it the one where doing yoga and eating healthy is a white supremacist dog whistle?
derangedHorse an hour ago
Same haha
viermalbe 9 hours ago
Bubbles dev here, thanks for the mention
RobotToaster 5 hours ago
Any plans to add Lemmy federation? It would be nice to be able to follow it as a Lemmy community since it works like a federated hn/Reddit.
samtheDamned an hour ago
This would be really cool. With the process of allowing fediverse logins it would be nice to also be able to use lemmy accounts since right now those don't seem to work. (That might be related to the HN hug though I'm not sure).
stakhanov 8 hours ago
I'm curious: What software is driving this? Is it a re-skin of the lobste.rs or HN open source software, or is it its own thing?
EDIT: ...just realized that's in the FAQ.
> Is it open source?
> Not yet. Maybe someday.
viermalbe 8 hours ago
It runs on Go + sqlite on a Hetzner machine, built from scratch, not a re-skin.
Semaphor 8 hours ago
TopHatHipster 6 hours ago
embedding-shape 8 hours ago
AbuAssar 8 hours ago
how do you decide which blog is included in the aggregation?
viermalbe 8 hours ago
You can find the criteria in the FAQ: https://bubbles.town/faq#sources
ShinyLeftPad 8 hours ago
try about page, it explains
KerryJones 2 hours ago
Curious on your "Top" algorithm? I see many 1-voted items there.
Also, how do you vet your blogs?
pchm 6 hours ago
I submitted a somewhat similar project yesterday to Show HN (didn’t resonate), although mine is purely based on AI scoring, with zero community features.
I call it bubblewire. Funny. I had no prior knowledge of bubbles.town until seeing it here now.
bubbles.town looks nice! Hope to see more projects that aim to bring back the good old web.
cosmicgadget 41 minutes ago
I think it's great. I don't mind the AI ranking system (it beats a free for all), though it's a bit like HN where only a few posts appeal to me.
I'd have upvoted you but I think you got eaten by /new.
latexr 6 hours ago
> (didn’t resonate), although mine is purely based on AI scoring
One reason for it not resonating might be that it’s yet another opaque algorithmic feed in a moment in time where people are getting sick and tired of them and wary of their manipulative features. And HN is so inundated with AI submissions that having yet another Show HN about it is uninteresting to many.
Would you visit HN if it were just a link aggregator whose ranking was decided by hidden logic of a machine? A lot of people wouldn’t. We’re a social species, there is value in human curation—especially when driven by the community—that’s inherently lacking from algorithmic curation (AI or otherwise).
pchm 6 hours ago
That's true, provided that all activity (comments, voting) here is still coming from actual humans. That's no longer the case for community websites, I'm afraid.
It's an experiment made for the web of 2026, where you can no longer tell if the users are humans or bots.
If nobody's interested in that idea, I accept that.
akoboldfrying 6 hours ago
> Would you visit HN if were just a link aggregator whose ranking was decided by hidden logic of a machine?
I assumed it was...?
If not, who or what decides the ranking moment-by-moment? dang?
agmater 5 hours ago
ozgrakkurt 6 hours ago
This is it!! I can finally leave reading comments on hn or get bamboozeled by ai posts masquerading as something technical
RobotToaster 6 hours ago
It would be great if this supported federation as a Lemmy community, given that Lemmy already has votes.
zingar 5 hours ago
Is this “hacker news”-esque in terms of being a social bookmarking site? I don’t see much by way of the same topics, and don’t think the difference is only whether it’s Indy or not.
rirze 2 hours ago
> https://tuesdaynight.blog/i-want-to-go-to-a-furry-con/
Ok. I think I'm good without this.
nozzlegear 15 minutes ago
Visually difficult to read with all of the colors, but I thought the content was good.
the_lonely_phon an hour ago
Content aside, not my thing either, I actually did really like this one. It has so much personality it reminded me of the early MySpace days before we all became identical looking Facebook timelines.
atulvi 5 hours ago
> "5011 independent, personal blogs. One front page. Ranked by votes and freshness, shaped by you."
That line is so claude.
kenanfyi 4 hours ago
I thought the same. I like the idea of it and probably use it to find nice blogs, but it looks like AI-coded.
rsolva 6 hours ago
Oh, great, I can log in with my GoToSocial instance to comment and vote! I will definitely add this site alongside my HN addiction :)
agup792 4 hours ago
I like it, but shouldn't this be part of "Show HN"?
gus_massa 4 hours ago
For a "Show HN", the OP must be the author. The project has been posted a few times in the last months without look by different persons.
agup792 2 hours ago
Ah, okay, thanks for your reply. I understand now.
HardwareLust 5 hours ago
Please make AI a category.
azhenley 3 hours ago
Search doesn’t seem to work.
Finnucane 2 hours ago
It's not stated explicitly, but I would assume that 'independent' blog means no Substack, no Medium, etc? Is that the case?
viermalbe 2 hours ago
Independent does not mean self-hosted. Blog platforms are ok if the content is not monetized, no adverts, no paywalls, no self-marketing. For full criteria see the FAQs.
Finnucane an hour ago
Isn't the whole point of Substack, etc. monetization, one way or another? Maybe I'm just a cranky old man, but that to me goes against 'independent'. But then, I'm not just old enough to remember when blogs weren't monetized, but remembering perusing Factsheet Five to see if there were any interesting new zines to trade with. Maybe you could mark the Substack blogs with a little swastika like an asterisk.
1317 3 hours ago
looks quite nice, but i always find myself disappointed that all the content on the "small web" is just posting /about/ the small web, rather than doing anything interesting on it
14/30 of the posts on the top page are just about making websites
cosmicgadget an hour ago
I can say from experience that the small web has considerable breadth. I think what you're seeing here is a product of the small, curated list of sites combined with the recency bias of a feed data view.
You'll see similar results from the various indieweb indexes that primarily use the kagi RSS list from github; this list attracts a specific segment of the blogosphere.
rvba 3 hours ago
Ao refreshing that new links open in new windows - such a time saver dor those pf us who open hundreds of windows.
Top does not sort? Also "top" is what exactly? All time? Today?
How do you defend against brigading?
kwar13 an hour ago
you might find this little extension i wrote for HN: https://github.com/kavehtehrani/hackernews-savedyouaclick
socalgal2 8 hours ago
Just curious but isn't this just digg, metafilter?
altairprime 5 minutes ago
[delayed]
sailfast 4 hours ago
Came here to say this. Perhaps it will work this time if it tries not to scale wildly, take investor money, and just do one thing well with a smaller group? But this kind of site has been around.
eduction 2 hours ago
The title is wrong as they are not just different in sourcing but topic.
A better title would be "Hacker News but for general content from independent blogs."
Hacker News but for independent blogs would be the same topic as HN but only stuff from independent blogs.
This is avowedly broad: "Hacker News and Lobste.rs have community voting figured out, but non-tech content gets drowned by the tech majority"
holtwick 9 hours ago
I love it!
ChrisArchitect 2 hours ago
first thing that caught my eye was "Bubbles mentioned in Verge newsletter" .... that's a post from a "Hand-picked blog"? Thought it was supposed to be non-tech? Definitely don't want to see posts about tech posts from the sloppy tech duplicating press. We have HN for that!
ochronus 7 hours ago
This is lovely
vee-kay 8 hours ago
Ah, this reminds me of StumbleUpon.
TacticalCoder 3 hours ago
Holy smoke the bullshit I see upvoted on that site frontpage mate! Fitness is "white supremacism"!?
A few lines from that "the girly wellness aesthetic as a white supremacist dog whistle" frontpage articles (that title, already):
> I cannot help but see that “Pinterest clean girl fitness and fruit bowl gua sha yoga mat pilates in the forest” content as covert white supremacy and eugenicist ideals
Let people live ffs!
> it’s always white or racially ambiguous people,
"Racially ambiuous"? For a start it's an attempt at manipulating thought by manipulating speech. Then it's deeply racist: it's wanting to categorize people by race, to hate on them. In this case putting, for example, latino-whites (I'm not saying it, TFA is) or half-asian/half-white (like my nephew) as "white" to hate on whites. It has a name:
racism.
Anti-white racism, but racism (usually double-down by explaining that it's impossible to be racists towards whites for anti-white racism is impossible).
And at the gym and among my friends, I see a lot of these "yoga girls" are with... asian genes. Same online among the fitness "influencers" with many subscribers.
There are also a huge lot of incredibly muscular and fit... Blacks. What a surprise: blacks ain't white.
How can someone be filled with so much hate (including, potentially, hate for its own race) to write such hateful texts?
Despicable author, writing hateful words, to please people with really dark hearts.
mikestew 2 hours ago
More of a meta discussion of an aggregator, don’t you think? It would likely be more productive to go complain in the comments of that singular blog.