I love this, but while we're here I was wondering if any of you could recommend small niche Youtube channels that you love? I don't care what the niche is, I just love passionate oddballs.

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.

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.

The Briefings have been most useful for me. It feels more curated and less firehose-y.

https://bubbles.town/briefing

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.

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.

This reminds me of Kagi's Small Web: https://kagi.com/smallweb/ or https://kagi.com/smallweb/river

Bubbles dev here, thanks for the mention

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.

Curious on your "Top" algorithm? I see many 1-voted items there.

Also, how do you vet your blogs?

It would be great if this supported federation as a Lemmy community, given that Lemmy already has votes.

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.

> https://tuesdaynight.blog/i-want-to-go-to-a-furry-con/

Ok. I think I'm good without this.

> "5011 independent, personal blogs. One front page. Ranked by votes and freshness, shaped by you."

That line is so claude.

Oh, great, I can log in with my GoToSocial instance to comment and vote! I will definitely add this site alongside my HN addiction :)

This is it!! I can finally leave reading comments on hn or get bamboozeled by ai posts masquerading as something technical

I like it, but shouldn't this be part of "Show HN"?

Search doesn’t seem to work.

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

Please make AI a category.

It's not stated explicitly, but I would assume that 'independent' blog means no Substack, no Medium, etc? Is that the case?

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?

Just curious but isn't this just digg, metafilter?

This is lovely

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"

https://bubbles.town/about

I love it!

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!

Ah, this reminds me of StumbleUpon.

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.

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.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552985