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Internet forums are disappearing because now everything is Reddit and Discord. And that's worrying.
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this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2025
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It is a problem, but I think it downplays the reason those platforms got popular.
No admin required. No updating of software to make sure you're not going to get compromised by a vuln.
No account management. You don't have to make a new account, and manage another password for every community you use. Also, no worrying about 1 when somebody like me can't be arsed to update that forum software. I don't want an account for everything.
It's all in one place. You look at your "feed" of things and your stuff with a new post every week is right there with the stuff with new posts every ten minutes.
If you're running a big community you shouldn't be building it somebody else's garden, but you do need to manage the garden yourself and it's not super trivial and maybe your little Final Fantasy XIV group can make do with a corner of Discord and abandon it when it goes real shitty. If you've got 50,000 people, it gets a little trickier.
The Fediverse goes a little way to fixing things, but it's all a trade off. Not having corporations involved is a damn good start though.
I research information, I don’t like to pop into spaces and ask questions while sitting around waiting for the good will of a random to answer (in my experience they don’t).
Discord makes it so I can’t research and am basically forced to ask, sit around, waste the time of myself and a million others, hope that whoever answers me isn’t an asshole or an idiot (I typically need help for more difficult things and the answer I usually get from people in these cases is typically a waste of my time and theirs).
I just don’t understand why use it for support. It’s a chat room.
This is my exact beef with MS Teams. Companies tie it to a SharePoint and then only give access to all of their shit...via Teams.
It's a fucking chat app, Microsoft, leave it at that for the love of god
If game developers would launch their own fediverse instances (maybe with devs + moderators as the only registered users), to which general purpose instances could freely connect, then problems 2 and 3 would be solved for users as well. Imo that would be a far better solution than having game forums on a walled garden platform like discord. That still leaves the devs with problem 1, but they would also regain control of their data + the data would also be searchable with proper search engines. I can dream :)
It solves #1 as well because the Lemmy-phile/end user is already apart of an instance that would federate with the game instance.
Administration is taken on by the game company for their own instance, so updating and technical, server side stuff isnt a worry for the end user. As far as the instance owner, its no more difficult to keep updated as it is for other instances. If anything it would be easier because only the devs and company folks would be users of the instance itself so an update doesn't impact their user base directly, there might just be a pause in new content while it was updating
It would be solved for people who are primarily interested in tech and gaming. How about bellow challenges?
Gaming is huge so presumably lots of gamers are interested in the wider world, which is not exactly well represented here compared to the major platforms.
And we can't ignore the inherent complexities of federation. If a user signs up to another instance but for some reason that instance (or game 's instance) is blocked by others or even goes offline, then it will be confusing if not ruining of their experience.
If a Lemmy-naut is registered with an instance that's defederated from the game company instance, they can always register at an instance that is federated, either in addition to their main or to replace it. The company's instance would likely act as an info hub, but the gamers wouldn't be members of the instance directly, so it would be like any other content that could be opted into. If it became the norm that games or game companies spun up their own instance, it could become a community and marketing tool for the games. But even if the instances themselves retire, the content made is still around and the existing fans could just start channels to continue the community. Companies that arent complete assholes could even assist with transfer to new channels elsewhere.
I think theres an opportunity down the line for a company/companies to form that specialize in helping orgs to spin up instances and sell their them hosting. Hosting is expensive for small groups to manage, but multiple small groups together could make it viable. Plus having the hosting coupled with help overcoming the tech-knowledge barrier could lead to more orgs feeling comfortable spinning up their own instances.
Well put, and info hub is a great term to describe these limited purpose instances.
The problem with your logic is that now you have to have multiple accounts across the "same bloody Lemmy". That kills the whole purpose of a decentralised approach. Defederation should not be a thing at all.
Respectfully, i disagree. If a person's main instance defederated from an instance that was set up for a specific game, their main instance is likely doing so for ethical reasons/whim of admins.
If a user of that main instance has values that match with the mission of the instance they will either,
a) not want to be federated with the game instance in the first place, b) only align with a majority of the instance's values and occasionally need an alt to access places defederated from, or c) find a new main since the one they chose is too restrictive for them.
I agree that having alts is annoying. Ideally, there will be options enough for users to find a main instance that they're aligned with so they wouldnt need an alt. Regardless, i still think the game company running their own instance for the specific purpose of the game is where the fediverse ought to head.
I want, as an example, the US Forest Service to have their own instance. It solves two problems. One, the USFS gets to personally interact how they want in the fediverse and federate when they want with who they want (just like the rest of us) and two, Anyone with an @usfs.fedi.gov account could be trusted to actually be who they say they are. I would like this trend to include news outlets, gov angencies, schools, etc. It helps with validating information and provides trusted first-source information directly from orgs.
If the girlscouts changed a girlscout cookie flavor, their @girlscoutsofamerica.federated.social could make the announcement and we could trust the info and be mad that a cookie flavor changed.
Instance defederations should be an option in the user settings.
Yes, that should be a user controlled thing, not an admin controlled instance wide thing.
We're trying to have an intelligent discussion here.
You think every Lemmy admin should be forced to fed with CSAM instances, and therefor host on their own servers CSAM? Wow great plan you have for expanding the fediverse.
Oh, you're one of those "think of the kids" nutjobs!
No I'm one of those "think!" nutjobs
Yeah, I think a user shouldn't just "exist" on a single instance and the same goes for communities.
And at the same time, an instance owner does need to be able to block things from being federated with themselves. You really do not want any CSAM on hardware you own.
It's tricky to cover everything, and I'm not even going to pretend I've got the answers to it.
But obviously instances blocking other instances is part of it.
RSS exists, sadly average people just couldn't figure out how to use it.