Ruqqus

About

Ruqqus is a U.S.-based, open-source aggregation platform for online communities that emphasizes no censorship and no moderator abuse. Similar to Reddit, content is ranked on an upvote/downvote scoring system determined by user votes. Users are free to share or say anything that’s protected by the First Amendment, even if they’re not based in the U.S. Specific communities based around one topic are referred to as guilds. The site launched in late 2019, but grew in popularity mid-2020 after Reddit’s crackdown on certain communities resulted in an exodus.

History

In late 2019, Ruqqus^[1] launched its website (seen below) after the creator expressed that Reddit was beginning to heavily censor content on the platform. From its origin, Ruqqus was intended to mimic Reddit’s basic structure but focused on being censorship-free and moderator-abuse free. Anything posted to Ruqqus that falls under the protection of the First Amendment is allowed for all users both in or outside of the U.S. To allow for transparency, the platform’s codebase is openly available on GitHub,^[2] as well as the algorithms used to sort trending content.

Features

Similar to Reddit, Ruqqus^[3] is an aggregation platform that allows users to post either original content or content found across the web. This content can then be upvoted or downvoted via a ranking system controlled by users, as well as commented on without censorship. Moderators similarly exist on the site but operate under more limited capacity. Mods on Ruqqus cannot delete content off the platform, but they can “kick” posts from their guilds (communities), which sends them into the catch-all “general” category. Any content that violates site-wide policy is removed by admins on the core team. Moderators are only allowed to moderate a maximum of 10 guilds at any given time.

Currently, Ruqqus also doesn’t serve advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid censorship surrounding them. Funding for the site comes from donations by users or out-of-pocket by the core team. NSFW content, including pornography, is also allowed on the site.

Users can create an account on Ruqqus without an email while remaining anonymous. These users can then vote, comment, post or join guilds to customize their home feed to see content they’re interested in. Ruqqus is currently based primarily on a web browser (that also works on mobile) but has a beta version of an app in development.

Highlights

In July 2019, Ruqqus launched its Twitter^[4] account, which currently has about 700 followers. The admin team runs the account and posts updates, news and various discussions surrounding the platform.

On June 17th, 2020, Redditor ^[5] TerrryTerrr posted a Virgin vs. Chad meme to the /r/virginvschad subreddit, depicting Reddit as the virgin and Ruqqus as the Chad (seen below).

Reddit’s “The Great Ban” and Exodus to Ruqqus

On June 19th, 2020, Redditor^[6] GammaKing made a post to the /r/TumblrInAction sub discussing the impending changes to Reddit and the potential that the subreddit might be banned. In the text post, which received over 1,100 upvotes and 285 comments, a link to Ruqqus was included with information about the site should they receive a ban.

Following Reddit’s banning of roughly 2,000 subreddits and content policy update on June 29th, 2020, known as “The Great Ban,” Ruqqus began seeing an increase in new users and unprecedented traffic, which caused the site to temporarily go down. Ruqqus tweeted^[7] about the “hug of death” on June 29th, receiving nearly 200 likes. On June 29th, Twitter^[8] user eelneelie also tweeted about the exodus resulting from the ban wave on Reddit (shown below).

Search Interest

External References