Radius relaunches as Meetup alternative on Hacker News
Developer rebuilds community event platform, faces skepticism on UI and market positioning.
What to know
- Radius relaunched as a community event discovery platform, but faces skepticism about differentiation from Meetup, Luma, Partiful, and other incumbents.
- Early users and commenters report UI friction—location permission requirements, unclear landing page messaging, and difficulty browsing without signup—that impedes discovery.
- The developer has implemented anti-spam moderation and opted against user-to-user DMs to prevent commercial extraction and harassment, but community members debate whether this alone can sustain adoption.
- Core question unresolved: whether the platform has a clear geographic or demographic niche to capture and grow from, as competitors like Luma did with crypto events.
The dispute Whether anti-commercial moderation and values can overcome network effects and incumbents' scale without a clear geographic or demographic niche. · positions read across 14 posts and comments
Platform lacks clear niche focus and competitive advantage versus Meetup, Luma, and other incumbents.
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“If you want to start in that niche you really need to double down on a specific subset of that niche to get people to use it. Right now you are not offering much over Facebook Events or Meetup.”
dewey · Hacker News ↗
UI and UX friction are major barriers to entry and discovery.
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“Please create a better UI and make it easier to view events / try posting one before signing in. Something card-based where I can quickly type in my location and see what events are nearby.”
weitendorf · Hacker News ↗
Anti-commercial stance is essential and should be the core differentiator.
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“I think meetup apps need to be aggressively anti-commercial. Meetup became a crappy stew of for-profit low effort AI flyer events designed to harvest money from people.”
cedws · Hacker News ↗
radius89 Radius creator and developer
How it unfolded 8 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Developer responds on anti-spam moderation and messaging policy
The creator acknowledged recruitment and commercial spam attempts, explaining that they use manual and automated moderation to prevent them. They also noted that Radius does not offer user-to-user DMs, only public activity/group messaging and organizer DMs, to prevent harassment.
“I've had a bunch of recruitment agencies and similar companies try to create groups - I'm mostly managing to flag those and keep them down with a combination of auto/manual moderation. Regarding the messages - that's one reason I've opted not to have user-to-user DMs.”
— radius89 -
I would love a meetup alternative so I gave this a look, here's my experience and feedback:Open up the site, (click away cookie consent banner), only way to see nearby events is to give location permissions for some reason (why? I just need to know what's happening in and around Amsterdam, not within x kms of my current actual location), look for…
2 more of the top 3 · 3 posts in this stretch
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Gave it a try, neat idea. I would like something better suited for more ad-hoc meetups that is less commercial feeling. - would like if the member map defaulted to my location - open in sidebar on the member map doesn't do anything for me in chromium and I feel like that should be the default when you click on someone - option to suggest new…
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cool! although keyboard navigation doesn't quite work. ditto with a few of the other comments that there are a few technical issues. ran a probie navigator and there are a few quick wins in it:
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Detailed UX feedback and bug reports emerge from user testing
Users reported specific friction points: needing location permission to see local events rather than typing a city name, unclear landing page messaging that reads like B2B SaaS, and a bug where setting radius to 1000km showed worldwide events.
“I set the radius to 1000 (instead of 100) in the URL and it looks like I get a feed for the whole world. I'm more than 1,000 km from California and Europe and I see all of everything.”
— 2data222 -
I set the radius to 1000 (instead of 100) in the URL and it looks like I get a feed for the whole world. I'm more than 1,000 km from California and Europe and I see all of everything, it seems. Wanted to let you know in case that wasn't intentional.
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Commenters express hope that anti-commercial stance can sustain adoption long-term
A response to anti-commercial advocacy noted that such a stance could theoretically win in consumer apps over time, though existing examples like Signal and Bluesky show slow growth.
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Yeah, I've had a bunch of recruitment agencies and similar companies try to create groups - I'm mostly managing to flag those and keep them down with a combination of auto/manual moderation.Regarding the messages - that's one reason I've opted not to have user-to-user DMs. You can DM organisers of a group, but all messaging outside that is public…
1 more of the top 2 · 2 posts in this stretch
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This. I feel like over the long run anti-commercial should be able to win most consumer apps because they don't degrade and AI makes it even easier now. Doesn't seem to be that easy though. Signal and bluesky are growing but slow.
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Users advocate for aggressive anti-commercial moderation to prevent platform decay
Commenters argued that event platforms degrade when commercial actors flood them with low-effort, profit-seeking events, and called for strong anti-spam policies. One noted that Meetup became a platform for extractive events.
“I think meetup apps need to be aggressively anti-commercial. Meetup became a crappy stew of for-profit low effort AI flyer events designed to harvest money from people.”
— cedws -
I think meetup apps need to be aggressively anti-commercial. Meetup became a crappy stew of for-profit low effort AI flyer events designed to harvest money from people. I used an app called Nomadtable for a while but there too I caught organisers just trying to make money off of travelers. I'm also told women constantly get unwanted sexual…
1 more of the top 2 · 2 posts in this stretch
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The Activities idea is interesting. How do you handle the problem of people joining an activity and then not showing up? Do you have any reputation or attendance mechanism planned?
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Commenters cite saturation of event platforms and existing discovery channels
One commenter noted that multiple competing platforms (Partiful, Posh, Luma, Instagram, Meetup) already serve event discovery, making it unclear why another entrant is needed.
“Between Partiful, Posh, Luma, Instagram, and yes even Meetup, I'm not sure how people aren't "finding events" around them.”
— dvt, HN commenter · source -
Between Partiful, Posh, Luma, Instagram, and yes even Meetup, I'm not sure how people aren't "finding events" around them. I literally get invited to like 100+ random things every week.
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Commenters flag UI friction and ask about anti-spam and attendance features
Users reported friction in discovering events—requiring location permissions to view nearby events, unclear landing page messaging, and difficulty browsing without signing in. One commenter asked about reputation or attendance tracking.
“Please create a better UI and make it easier to view events / try posting one before signing in. Something card-based where I can quickly type in my location and see what events are nearby.”
— weitendorf -
If you want to start in that niche you really need to double down on a specific subset of that niche to get people to use it. Right now you are not offering much over Facebook Events or Meetup and the tech / design in this case doesn't matter when all that matters is that you have people using it for their events.I'd take a look at how Luma (The…
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Users question platform switching incentive and demand clearer niche focus
Early commenters raised concerns about why users would switch from existing tools like WhatsApp, Facebook, or Meetup, and stressed the need for geographic or demographic focus, pointing to Luma's success in starting with crypto events in major cities.
“If you want to start in that niche you really need to double down on a specific subset of that niche to get people to use it. Right now you are not offering much over Facebook Events or Meetup.”
— dewey -
Please create a better UI and make it easier to view events / try posting one before signing in. Something card-based where I can quickly type in my location and see what events are nearby.This isn't just a complaint about the UI being "vibe-coded-coded" or incomplete, but the product itself not making the happy path very useful or confusing.For…
2 more of the top 3 · 4 posts in this stretch
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I really appreciate the work and polish put into the project, but I would always think why would someone switch from direct communication (WhatsApp groups, Facebook groups..etc) to a dedicated platform. I know it has a lot of other features that might be useful to coordinate events, but in the age of AI and social media addiction people are…
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The problem with this is not technology- its the lack of interesting meetups i want to join in my cityEg meetup at least has critical mass of users and meetups
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Radius developer relaunches community event platform on Hacker News
A developer posted a Show HN submission relaunching Radius, a platform designed to help people discover and connect through local communities, groups, and events. The original Show HN from years earlier had generated 150+ comments.
“Radius started out from my frustration with not knowing what was going on around me. The initial plan was to "show all and every type of event" from big to small, but over time I narrowed the focus to communities, groups, events, and helping people connect through them.”
— radius89
What people are saying 1 voices from 1 site · best of 14 · verbatim
- What specific geographic or demographic niche is Radius targeting to bootstrap network effects?
- How does Radius plan to prevent recruitment spam and commercial manipulation at scale without sacrificing openness?
- Sep 20
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Congrats on the relaunch!why should I use this versus luma or something similar?