Fediverse

How do we create more forums?

If anyone is looking for a pretty good list of forums-

https://aftermath.site/best-active-forums-internet-today?ueid=6310597850b065b278e2b143b21b73b5

I for one would want a more open source system where a single guy running a server doesn't have all the power in the forum. It would be awesome if a fedi form of forums took over and one could replicate all the info as relays.

I'm sort of tired of articles describing some catastrophe that happened ten years ago and saying "it's worrying."

Internet forums will come back when AI overtakes Reddit and Discord goes awry because they go public.

Forums are where I learned literally everything about technology I know now. Every hack, jailbreak, method of bypassing something, building, literally anything I’ve done around my tech hobbies. Pi hole, emulation in the late 90s, how to use Photoshop, how to run Linux from a USB, everything I’ve learned from forums. I’m sad to think that me joining certain discords help deliver the death knell to the concept of forums.

Ugh, Discord is an information black hole. I despise how so many of my niches have fled there.

Reddit seems to be trying to destroy that "role" of theirs as hard as they can though. A few very niche subs I follow are drying from some kind of "bug" that deprioritizes their discoverability.

It’s not a bug. It’s absolutely a feature for making Reddit more generic, farmable garbage and noise.

Everytime I want to look for modern solutions to newer projects online it's always in the damn discord. I have like 20 discords in folders just because I feel like I'll need them to troubleshoot eventually.

This is unironically on reddit right now. People lamenting a place like Lemmy doesn't exist.

I'm less worried about Discord, honestly.

Subreddits were not a problem before since they were accessible on the web without needing an account. But now reddit is gradually locking them down behind authwalls and things like not letting search engines index (other than Google).

Lemmy communities dont have this problem and because lemmy is federated, its resistant to such enshittification (plus you can easily create your own lemmy instance for only your team). So imo they are a good alternative to forums (and reddit) and a good solution to this problem.

Reddit is shadow banning people in droves for bad upvotes

Don't forget random Telegram groups!

Every forum i joined for my hobbies are always been full of shills in disguise.

I believe this is what they call "preaching to the choir".

What are we going to do about it?

Do nothing, nothing about it. The great hordes of the unwashed have ruined every single place they've showed up starting in the early 90s. They don't want to be saved from the commercialization that has taken over the internet, to the contrary they thrive on it and are willing to put up with nearly anything to attract and keep it.

If most of Reddit shifted over to Lemmy it would get commercialized into a smoking crater. As soon as there's enough regular people using a thing the companies and venture capitalists will show up and at that point the game is over.

The best of the internet has always been built by and populated with people who don't fit into a box. It's that internet people keep trying to bring back but you can't hold the castle once it's being assaulted by the normies.

So the solution is to do nothing. Let the normies stay in their palaces of commercialization and corruption. It's for the best.