What are we going to do about it?
Sorry for the Google Translate Link. An easy alternative is much appreciated.
Edit: thanks to @[email protected] for this translation alternative: https://translate.kagi.com/translate/https://www.xataka.com/servicios/foros-internet-estan-desapareciendo-porque-ahora-todo-reddit-discord-eso-preocupante
I run a forum where the first post was started 23 years ago. Although the activity has drastically gone down during recent years, people still occasionally come by. I’m very happy I kept it up, even though a lot of people switched over to a Discord server.
Recently we had an incident where the sole admin of the Discord server was banned and the whole Discord had to be abandoned and created from scratch. People still keep using this trash! I’m not arguing with them, I’ll just keep an alternative up. One day, when Discord really enshittifies itself to a point where it becomes unuseable, people will be happy for my stubborness. I hope.
(It’s a forum for an obscure space pirate game for the PC - I-War 2. Its first post is here.)
I’m getting two points from the article. One is addressed handily by the Fediverse, the other is not.
First the centralized (I prefer to say “urbanized”) nature of social media means a handful of companies control all the conversations. The Fediverse is a decent (though not perfect) solution to that problem, and I think everyone on here knows that.
However, the article also talks about the problems with the format of social media, not just who’s hosting the platform. On traditional forums, conversations can last for years, but on Reddit, Discord, etc. new topics quickly bury old ones, no matter how lively those old topics are. Sure, you can choose to sort by “last comment” which replicates the traditional forum presentation with topic bumping, but it’s not the default, even on Lemmy, so 90% of people won’t bother.
I get to know people on traditional forums, even miss them if they leave, but on Reddit, comments are just disembodied thoughts manifesting in the ether. That may be due to the size of the community rather than the format, though.
What can we do? What can we do about Meta and Xitter and Reddit? Just try to show people that there’s another side where the grass actually is greener and invite them to join.
I have been trying to build a forum recently, but found phpbb really ugly and difficult to customize (even changing the logo was oddly difficult). I know about discourse but I would prefer a PHP based solution I can host in one of my current servers.
Are there any better solutions?
What hosting do you use? You can easily host it using docker.
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/main/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md
Discord 🤣🤣 is that even end to end encrypted?
Especially considering reddit is publicly traded and discord is having an IPO soon, and reddit has gone full 1984 censorship.
Every forum i joined for my hobbies are always been full of shills in disguise.
I’m so inspired by the Fediverse, the social options we have these days are just magical.
A decade ago, Diaspora got press because they were going to build an alternative to Facebook. But there was hype and then there was disappointment.
Now, everybody knows how terrible legacy social media is. Everybody knows. Sure, most people are still stuck there. But these vibrant alternative places exist! The options are exciting! It is so much better than it’s ever been!
Just keep building. This is great, and it’s only just started.
Something I was hopeful for but seems to have died is lemmyBB. A phpBB-style front-end to Lemmy. I’d like the accessibility of being able to use an existing account that federation brings but the forum-style approach that phpBB has.
Mostly though I’ve been disappointed in the teens and twenty-somethings. They seem to have, in distressingly large numbers, just opted to go along with whatever they’re encouraged to use by large platform holders. There doesn’t seem to be an appetite to create communities and define spaces that they control. Perhaps that’s just me getting old though…
NodeBB implements ActivityPub [email protected]
I think a lot of them have never known that it was possible, and things up until recently where at least tolerable. But as interest rates stay up of zero and things continue to degrade eventually more and more people will leave. The people with the most technical skills are going first and the cool people will follow and then they average people follow the cool people
Agree. It’s easy to feel disheartened by the lack of action. It’s easy to say get out and do ABC, however since smartphones and apps it’s been so easy to just hop on and scroll/consume. Plus the monetisation of content creation has captured a whole generation looking to build a career (fuelled by more apps to help them). Sharing and creating is big money now. It’s not just about saying hey look I did this just incase anyone else wanted to try it, and share there thoughts on the matter. I have concerns that even if forums popped up in a new shape they would just get scalped by those looking to repackage and sell the info.
What do you think Lemmy is missing that phpBB had aside from strong user communities built over years where many of the users knew each other IRL?
Being designed around persistent topics rather than the ephemeral post model and more visible user customisation (more prominent avatars, signatures, that sort of thing).
Being designed around persistent topics rather than the ephemeral post model
Hmmm, you’re probably on to something there. I think Lemmy could do that but no one cares to set it up.
and more visible user customisation (more prominent avatars, signatures, that sort of thing).
I’m honestly not sure this is a bad thing. Dear God, remember how threads would get blown out by hyper-configurations? Sig blocks that were 20,000 pixels long and endless GIF spam? Not sure I’m in a hurry to get back to that!
One of my favorite forums has been around since 1999 and is currently running on XenoForo which is very phpBB-esque. Anytime I get a nostalgia hankering I drop in for a few minutes. It’s not always as good as you may remember. :)
XenoForo
Just looked it up. $60/mo is the “starter” price!? Are forums normally so expensive to run?
XenoForo is a bit spendy but they’re providing the software, hosting and data storage. IIRC the forum I’m talking about is on the “Business” plan due to how busy it is.
I’m honestly not sure this is a bad thing. Dear God, remember how threads would get blown out by hyper-configurations? Sig blocks that were 20,000 pixels long and endless GIF spam? Not sure I’m in a hurry to get back to that!
Honestly, no, none of the forums I ever used allowed that sort of things for, well, for obvious reasons!
Anyway, my reasoning for this is to help make it easier to mentally anchor a given interaction to a user. On things like Lemmy and Reddit I feel like it’s a constant sea of random usernames - there’s no persistence or community. I could well have spoken to the same person multiple times but I don’t notice because they’re so anonymous.
there’s no persistence or community.
That’s it right there, that’s what you are missing. The older forum communities were small enough that you could keep track of whose who, something that isn’t possible when the user counts are in the tens of thousands to tens of millions. I think a lot of us olds would like to go back to that but its impossible; our monkey brains can’t handle communities of that size.
I feel a fundamental problem is the ephemeral post model. If one isn’t actively contributing frequently it’s effectively the same as not being part of the community at all.
Seeing lots of familiar faces in threads, even if they didn’t post today, helped.
With regards to your point though, I think it’s one of the reasons I’m not fussed about getting “everyone” onto a single platform. It’s too many people!
Funny thing…an internet forum group from 23 years ago is slowly reforming because everyone is sick of the same thing re:socmed
How do we create more forums?
I believe this is what they call “preaching to the choir”.
it’s worrying because all that knowledge will be lost instead of living somewhere in a forum indexed by a search engine.
But in the same time, I see more people fleeing from traditional search engines to AI … I don’t know where we’re heading at
What do you think is the reason why not a lot more people are joining the fediverse?
I think there are more reasons, but the most prominent ones are
- the fediverse is not that aggressively publicized
- if by any luck your average bob joins, he’ll be confused because a) the UI/UX is less appealing b) he doesn’t know where to go and what’s the difference between Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy etc.
the fediverse is not that aggressively publicized
For sure.
doesn’t know where to go and what’s the difference between Mastodon, Pixelfed, Lemmy etc.
They also know the difference between Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit. Why shouldn’t they get it here?
No idea, but I tried inviting some my friends which are not tech-aficionados — they couldn’t understand it.
I’d love to see more money thrown on Ads for promoting the fediverse on YouTube, Twitch and all other platforms and get this shit more viral, but I don’t understand why it’s not happening.
but I don’t understand why it’s not happening.
Because there is not much money to make in the process. I think we need to lobby politicians to step in.
Little awareness
Reddit is literally unusable now. I use old.reddit to browse certain subs but there’s no point commenting or interacting cause pretty much everything gets you banned
No, enshittified search engines are only catalogging those because they’re in the AI bed with them.
Your Favorite Forum still rules.
