Who uses Raddle?

The early adopters were all anarchists and socialists who moved to Raddle when Reddit started purging various leftist communities in 2016. Privacy and open-source software advocates were also drawn to the site around the same time.

We were then joined by the members of r/shoplifting who were also exiled from Reddit, and then r/chapotraphouse and r/piracy, though these later migrations proved to be largely unsuccessful due to culture clash.

More recent migrants include various trans and lesbian communities, as well as solarpunks and the image-posting community 196.

The site has always enjoyed a blend of radical left, green, queer, vegan, pro-privacy and counterculture users.

Why the name Raddle?

Raddle is a type of red dye that's used to mark sheep. It's a reference to the site's socialist roots i.e. when people come here they get dyed red.

What's with the frog logo and iconography?

The frog was chosen to emphasize Raddle's focus on ecological concerns. The frog is the Raddle in the scenario, touching people and leaving a lasting mark on them.

Frogs are an indicator species. What this means is when an ecosystem is out of balance, frogs are the first indication of it - they suffer first and then everything else suffers soon after. What has been happening to amphibians worldwide during the climate crisis has parallels to the experiences of the marginalized groups who have made Raddle their home.

It's a poison dart frog because even though it suffers under global capitalism, even though it's oppressed and marginalized, it can still bite back, can still fight against predators.

And the axolotls?

This is a bit of an inside joke. f/shoplifting was once Raddle's most popular forum, but it was slowly abandoned by its community because they didn't want to follow our anti-oppression policy. The forum was filling with spam, trolls and bigots because it lost all its moderators. So we renamed the forum to f/axolotl and filled it with photos of axolotls to reclaim it as a positive space.

How old is Raddle?

Raddle was founded in 2016, but was originally called Raddit. The name was changed a few months later because we didn't want anyone to confuse us with Reddit.

How is Raddle funded if it doesn't have ads?

The site is entirely funded via donations to my patreon.

What if I'm not into politics? Will I get banned for not caring about anarchism or socialism?

Raddle is an inclusive space with all kinds of forums and only excludes oppressive people who espouse bigotry and / or promote authoritarian values including genocide denial, dictatorships, police states and eugenics.

The administrators and moderators having strong anti-authoritarian politics is a net benefit for anyone who wants a forum that will stand against the profiteering, exploitation and oppression you find on corporate social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter, which are often owned and managed by very wealthy people with very far-right politics.

As members of marginalized groups ourselves, we're very keyed in to social justice movements and the causes of structural oppression, power hierarchy and the scapegoating of the most marginalized members of society.

We apply our ardent dedication to liberation to managing Raddle, which has historically resulted in a site management that strongly advocates for its users and stands with them against all forms of oppression and alienation.

Why isn't Raddle federated?

Raddle's strong privacy-focus and activist roots would make this a tricky proposition as federation depends on pushing user data to a multitude of different servers controlled by anonymous and often problematic (far right) people.

Rather than being decentralized as it's often advertised, federated technology distributes data to a series of centralized servers owned by individuals with varying ethical beliefs, goals and motives. Anyone can set up a server and then fetch user-data from other servers to their server, giving them control and ownership over other people's data and allowing them to use it indefinitely in ways the people may or may not approve of.

Furthermore, the federated technology currently in use in software such as Lemmy doesn't really allow users to delete their own data. It lives on forever on all the servers its pushed to, creating a privacy nightmare and even serious legal issues due to the EU's "right to be forgotten" laws. These laws are violated when the operators of the social media platform deliberately mirror all user-data to countless servers in perpetuity, even after it's "deleted" by users.

In contrast, Raddle allows users to delete all their data from our server with a click of a button. Our server also doesn't store the IP addresses of whitelisted users to further improve security.

Our users tend to heavily prioritize control over their data and have shown little interest in Raddle taking their posts and comments and deliberately pushing them to other sites they may or may not want to be associated with.

Can I help add features to Raddle?

The software Raddle uses, Postmill is written in PhP, almost single-handedly by Emma, so if you're a PhP developer, we'd love if you could lend her a hand.

Isn't there a mobile app?

Postmill's API is currently incomplete, so an app won't be possible until more work is done to complete it. Work is currently underway to improve the mobile browser UI so thumbnails won't be hidden on smaller screens.

Edit: typo