3 ms·

I’m guessing the “somehow” has something to do with the order of magnitude fewer users on the internet.

mantas 4y ago
More like forums were fragmented. Topics, geographically etc. And politics was either sophisticated forums or just a byproduct of those fragmented topics. More users, many of them lurkers, would just result in more fragmentation and niches in that old world. The old forums was safe from feeling of censorship too. If you didn’t like mods too much, you could not easily go to another forum or start your own.
- hinkley 4y ago
  With fragmentation, several other things also happened. One, getting banned from one community was not the end of the world. You could join another. Two, because the forums were small, if you got banned from one, you couldn’t seek sympathy by complaining to the entire internet about the unfairness, because nobody knew about that community so getting them to care was a challenge. And three, you couldn’t complain to the entire internet because there was no soapbox large enough to do it. Only your friends and the new community had to listen to you complain. On the flip side, an angry user with some technical abilities could poison the well by trying to take your community offline. Whether they succeed or not depends on who has more patience, the custodian or the manchild throwing an extended tantrum. That is at least a one place where centralization helps. Getting resilience set up is a full time job. Though I suppose you could say that’s an area where technology might actually help.
  - mantas 4y ago
    Previously one needed technical abilities. Now one needs to cry enough to get someone or a whole group banned from the unified platform. For a small forum being offline for a day or two is not an issue. Even if admins prove to have less patience than the attacker, the forum hivemind can easily migrate to another, new or old, forum. With some losses, but it's still just changing one small soapbox to another. Not a massive endevour like moving off FB/Twitter to self-hosted.

More like forums were fragmented. Topics, geographically etc. And politics was either sophisticated forums or just a byproduct of those fragmented topics. More users, many of them lurkers, would just result in more fragmentation and niches in that old world. The old forums was safe from feeling of censorship too. If you didn’t like mods too much, you could not easily go to another forum or start your own.

hinkley 4y ago
With fragmentation, several other things also happened. One, getting banned from one community was not the end of the world. You could join another. Two, because the forums were small, if you got banned from one, you couldn’t seek sympathy by complaining to the entire internet about the unfairness, because nobody knew about that community so getting them to care was a challenge. And three, you couldn’t complain to the entire internet because there was no soapbox large enough to do it. Only your friends and the new community had to listen to you complain. On the flip side, an angry user with some technical abilities could poison the well by trying to take your community offline. Whether they succeed or not depends on who has more patience, the custodian or the manchild throwing an extended tantrum. That is at least a one place where centralization helps. Getting resilience set up is a full time job. Though I suppose you could say that’s an area where technology might actually help.
- mantas 4y ago
  Previously one needed technical abilities. Now one needs to cry enough to get someone or a whole group banned from the unified platform. For a small forum being offline for a day or two is not an issue. Even if admins prove to have less patience than the attacker, the forum hivemind can easily migrate to another, new or old, forum. With some losses, but it's still just changing one small soapbox to another. Not a massive endevour like moving off FB/Twitter to self-hosted.