What are we going to do about it?
Sorry for the Google Translate Link. An easy alternative is much appreciated.
Edit: thanks to @Xamrica@lemmy.dbzer0.com 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
Reddit (and Lemmy/Mbin) is just a kind of forum.
And still is Reddit by far the biggest. How can we change that?
Am I mistaken in saying that the new Reddit/Lemmy format of forum is to message boards, as message boards was to BBS?
Met my wife on a little internet forum called 9chat. Right before it disappeared.
These little spaces on the internet were quite nice to be. Always seeing the same people. It has a different feeling.
Decentralising social media will have its positives. When one tries to control public opinion, people can flee to another one for example.
That’s why we have to make sure the Fediverse is the future!
It’s been 1 week since I found out about Lemmy, liking it quite a bit.
I wonder, is there an area on this social media that are extremist pro free speech?
Such as, okay you’re being a total shithead, I still won’t ban you.
I’m just curious if spaces such as that even exist, and if they do, what they lead to.
I’m just curious if spaces such as that even exist, and if they do, what they lead to.
I don’t know about lemmy since I’m old enough to not care to go looking for that, but I can speak in generalities from a few decades back.
So, I ran an old-school forum in the late 1990s/early 2000s. I found that a complete lack of moderation leads to bad actors essentially ruining the vibe. Basically, there are human beings (and bots plied by state actors in this day and age) that will happily exploit a fully-unmoderated forum and fill it full of awful stuff.
Now, bad mods are awful, power-tripping and all, and lots of regular people who have never run a community of any sort have had run-ins with mods that have the HOA Karen mentality and come to the not-entirely-correct conclusion that ALL moderation is bad, but having no mods can ALSO kill a community if it gets big or noticed enough to draw in outsiders, because you end up with the bullies running roughshod over everyone else, and changing the vibe. And if the vibe gets too gross, you lose the decent, cool members because they’ll fuck off elsewhere and do their thing elsewhere because your community is too full of bullshit and crap.
Corpo social media has the no mod feeling. They only really moderate to avoid lawsuits and things like harassment are rampant
I can imagine that spamming/constant harassment/advertising/etc can ruin a space. Especially when it can be automated.
Perhaps it would be better with temp bans and that moderation is automated in order to prevent bias.
You could simply start your own instance. Nobody can delete your content or ban you there. But get ready to get defederated from other instances.
but it can help against that if you disable registrations after you got your account
How would this help against defederation?
if you are the only person, you cannot be defederated because of instance hopper ban evaders
Well there’s the disaster that was hexbear…
Decentralized and smaller platforms definitely help preserve open discussion. But when it comes to company security culture and internal comms, even forums are giving way to automation. Tools like cyberupgrade.net show how even training and risk detection are now handled without Slack threads or forum debates.
That’s a good argument. But shouldn’t we then promote FOSS solutions like Perplexica?
Every forum I used before Reddit even existed is still active (hell, PHPBB was updated as recently as November!) and new platforms, like Lemmy, pop up all the time . IDK what the fuck these articles are talking about. Maybe they just don’t know how to actually find anything on the web? 🤷🏻♂️
I think it’s more about the scale. 80% or more of the content gets created on Reddit or alike, probably.
Barely any content is created on Reddit. It’s an aggregate site where 90% of the posts are links to other sites, just like Lemmy. Even most of the memes/image macros are unoriginal and taken from somewhere else.
well maybe on certain (mainstream?) subs, but tech subs like those that do something with selfhosting have a lot of discussions. including in the comments of posts that point to external content!
its a shame that there’s no lemmy instance thats basically a mirror of a few reddit subs (or is there?)
I’m not sure if it’s a Lemmy feature or voyager feature. But under the settings, there’s a migrate subreddits. It pulls across the subreddits you are subscribed to and matches them to ones on Lemmy.
afaik that just auto-subscribes you to a popular lemmy-alternatives of your communities
I have to disagree. I have seen a lot of helpful question/answer Style content there which was only there.
There are tons of forums out there, the search engines just won’t show them to you. The search engines are the real problem.
How funny if we revert back to tons of search engines and web rings… Frankly that might not be the worst.
Web rings still exist, you just wouldn’t know it because search engines don’t show you the types of sites that use them, which is usually personal sites.
I sometimes use excite.com (oldschool) for searching, and get better results than the major ones, sometimes not. Most people have no clue its even still up. I haven’t dug much, so I don’t know much about its current state. Like tripod sites, how they still exist but are full of hidden junk.
Make Lemmy great again!
Forums lifespans weren’t all that much anyways. Most sites that were hosted before 2010 are gone now.
The real downside to everything being on StackOverflow, Reddit, Discord, etc is that it has made it easier for big tech to run their shady data collection and analysis schemes including AI Training.
Most sites that were hosted before 2010 are gone now.
yeah, because virtually all communities moved to Discord or Reddit.
Most sites that were hosted before 2010 are gone now.
I hosted a forum for guilds in several games I played over the years. I had mine up from 2005-2019 but my board’s php version got way behind the host‘a and it no longer works. Someday I will find someone to help me fix it, or start a new one.
Forums lifespans weren’t all that much anyways.
Couldn’t this be much different if “web 2.0” hadn’t taken over?
Most sites that were hosted before 2010 are gone now.
Many of them are still alive but don’t get the exposure they deserve because of centralized networks.
The real downside to everything being on StackOverflow, Reddit, Discord, etc is that it has made it easier for big tech to run their shady data collection and analysis schemes including AI Training.
Right. But what can we do to get people to switch to the Fediverse and put an end to this?
Couldn’t this be much different if “web 2.0” hadn’t taken over?
Probably not, even if you have time to maintain your site by updating it occasionally then it still falls upon individuals to fund the hosting services and hold the domain name. Even Hexbear’s domain wound up for auction a little while back because they forgot to pay their bills.
Many of them are still alive but don’t get the exposure they deserve because of centralized networks.
Since Net Neutrality has been off and on enforced, it’s generally been considered illegal to block, hide, or throttle traffic, but I agree those small sites didn’t get as much search indexing unless they paid for ads.
Net neutrality
To my knowledge net neutrality only covers internet providers and not search engines or other platforms.
Your precise wording was “centralized networks” which I interpreted as the ISP providing traffic between you and other services. Perhaps you meant monopoly?
No I mean the big social Networks with centralized management. Like Reddit, Facebook,…
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
Ironically posted on lemmy
Which is indexable by search engines, fortunately.
Isn’t this just a bunch of little forums that interoperate nicely?
But I feel like lemmy is going to get a huge boost because of the corporate bullshit behind reddit and discord
Are you pretending that nothing has ever been tried? The Fediverse, that’s what is being done about it. That’s why most of us are here. Also, why narrow it down to Reddit and Discord? Articles like these are garbage because it’s very tone deaf.
Likes and Upvotes have long, long existed before. They started on forums, it was just the dawning of MySpace and Facebook and Reddit are what popularized them and made it standard.
Fucking hell, Forums also still exist, they just aren’t getting activity. I hate this fucking article now.
Are you pretending that nothing has ever been tried? The Fediverse, that’s what is being done about it. That’s why most of us are here.
Yes, we are here. But how do we get the rest of the population over? We are still more complicated to use in comparison to centralized networks. That’s why most people are hesitant to join. This and exposure, of course.
Also, why narrow it down to Reddit and Discord?
I have heard from many people, and also from many YouTube influencers, that they add “reddit” to the end of their search query. So basically, people use Reddit to search on the internet now because it’s real people, not shitty SEO content.
Fucking hell, Forums also still exist, they just aren’t getting activity
True. But forums don’t get the activity they deserve because of centralized networks that take it from them.
Let’s change that! What can we do to strengthen and grow the Fediverse?
So basically, people use Reddit to search on the internet now because it’s real people, not shitty SEO content.
Excuse me what? Since when since Jun 2024 does Reddit actually have real people?
I haven’t had that many problems with bots on Reddit.
Articles like this are constantly like “if only there was something we can do about it” while omitting the thing people are doing about it because the writer is too lazy to research properly
Was this article written 15 years ago? Because this is anything but a new occurrence.
And what can we do about it now? I mean we have the Fediverse. It’s 20 million users are not the most but it’s not nothing. We can build on that.
I think it’s crazy that an art sub is more popular than an art forum.
For news and other more “consumables” I understand, but when posts don’t lose value because they age, forums are better IMO :-/
I think it’s crazy that an art sub is more popular than an art forum.
I suppose it’s the low barrier. People are already on Reddit and thus join the subreddits.
We have a great opportunity with the Fediverse here to replace them.
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…
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. :)
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!
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.
NodeBB implements ActivityPub !nodebb-development@community.nodebb.org
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.
They already disappeared around 2017 when Steve Bannon’s racist troll armies flooded every single social media site or app. The auto-immune reaction killed the host, which I suspect was the point.
Sow how are we getting people to join the Fediverse?
Hire Steve Bannon as a marketer?
He is currently busy destroying the democracy in the US
