About Otto

Otto is a community-driven discussion platform inspired by old Reddit. No algorithmic feed, no promoted posts, no private profiles. Posts are ranked by votes and time. Moderator actions are logged and visible. Country flags are shown alongside posts and comments so you know who you're talking to.

The platform is built around transparency, authenticity, and moderator accountability. The things that made online forums work before engagement metrics took over.

User Features

Posts & Content

  • Three post types: text posts with Markdown, link posts with automatic thumbnails, and image uploads
  • Automatic title extraction when submitting links
  • Duplicate link detection across communities
  • Post flairs for categorization
  • "Other Discussions" tab showing where else a link has been posted

Voting

  • Upvote and downvote on posts and comments
  • Transparent vote counts with both upvotes and downvotes visible
  • Anti-manipulation protections against vote rings and coordinated voting

Search & Discovery

  • Full-text search across posts, comments, users, and communities (powered by Meilisearch)
  • Search within specific communities
  • Browse posts by domain to see all submissions from a given website
  • Depth sort (the default) gives more weight to articles and text posts that spark discussion, over images and videos that tend to dominate vote-based feeds

Media & Embeds

  • Embedded YouTube videos, Twitter/X posts, and Bluesky posts inline
  • Automatic thumbnail generation for link posts
  • Image lightbox for viewing uploaded images at full size

Notifications

  • Notifications for post replies, comment replies, mentions, and messages
  • Unified inbox combining DMs and modmail
  • Mark individual or all notifications as read

Account & Security

  • Email registration or Google sign-in
  • Session management: view and revoke active logins with location info
  • Password reset via email
  • Invisible bot protection on forms (Cloudflare Turnstile)

Trust & Authenticity

  • Country flags displayed next to posts and comments based on where you're posting from
  • VPN and datacenter IP blocking to prevent ban evasion, astroturfing, and coordinated inauthentic behavior
  • No private profiles: every user's post and comment history is publicly visible
  • Public mod log on every community so you can see what moderators are doing and why
  • Account age, email verification status, and other trust signals shown alongside content

Comments & Discussion

  • Threaded comment trees with collapsible branches
  • Markdown formatting with mentions (@username)
  • Five sort options: Most Liked, Quality, Controversial, Latest, and Oldest
  • Quality sort uses a confidence-based ranking that rewards substantive, well-written comments over quick one-liners
  • Sticky comments highlighted at the top of threads

Communities

  • Create and join communities (prefixed with o/)
  • Customizable community settings, icons, cover images, rules, and flairs
  • Private communities with access request system
  • Related communities sidebar for discovery
  • Discover page for browsing communities by size, activity, or recency

User Profiles

  • Public profiles showing post and comment history
  • Points breakdown (post points and comment points)
  • View saved, hidden, upvoted, and downvoted content on your own profile
  • Country flags displayed alongside posts and comments
  • Active communities list showing where you participate most

Messaging

  • Direct messages between users with conversation history
  • Conversation approval workflow to accept or deny message requests
  • Modmail system for contacting community moderators
  • User blocking to prevent unwanted messages

Personalization

  • Dark mode
  • User tags: assign personal labels to other users, like a built-in RES feature
  • Save and bookmark posts and comments for later
  • Hide posts from your feed
  • Configurable comment collapse threshold, with sort preferences remembered per community
  • Keyboard shortcuts for navigating posts

Privacy & Safety

  • GDPR and CCPA compliant with full account deletion and data export
  • IP addresses hashed before storage, not kept in plaintext
  • Report system with multiple categories for posts, comments, and communities
  • Ban appeal process for disputed moderation actions
  • Content safety scanning on uploads
  • Self-hosted, privacy-focused analytics (no third-party trackers)

Moderator Features

All moderators are expected to follow the Moderator Guidelines.

Moderation Dashboard

  • Centralized queue for pending posts and comments awaiting approval
  • Reported content queue with report reasons, counts, and quick actions
  • Optional pre-moderation: require approval before posts or comments go live

User Management

  • Ban users from the community, temporary or permanent, with reasons
  • Approved user whitelist for private communities
  • Moderator notes on user profiles (visible only to the mod team)

Transparency & Accountability

  • Complete moderation log with every action recorded, timestamped, and attributed
  • Internal mod log filterable by action type or moderator
  • Public mod log on every community, visible to all users, showing removals, bans, and other actions with reasons
  • Automated detection for mod abuse patterns

Content Management

  • Approve, reject, or remove posts and comments with optional removal reasons
  • Lock posts to prevent further comments
  • Pin posts to the top of the community
  • Sticky comments within threads
  • Customizable removal reason templates for efficient moderation

Flairs, Rules & Settings

  • Create and manage post flairs with custom colors
  • Define community rules displayed in the sidebar
  • Configure community title, description, icon, and cover image
  • Toggle private/public status and submission requirements

Permissions & Modmail

  • Granular per-moderator permissions: posts, comments, bans, settings, rules, flairs, and moderator management
  • Modmail system for receiving and responding to community member messages
  • Moderator hierarchy with position-based ranking
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