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Until now, the only real demand for an alternative has come from users/communities banned from Reddit or opposed to the censorship/groupthink. Which is not an i

Until now, the only real demand for an alternative has come from users/communities banned from Reddit or opposed to the censorship/groupthink. Which is not an ideal set of users to start a new community with.

agentgumshoe 3y ago
One day, enough people will hopefully realise that internet forums of old (i.e. before Discourse) were perfectly good. Get some reasonable mods, make the rules clear, enjoy the community. Then we might all chill a bit. Pity everyone went chasing popularity, shouting loudly at each other and influencer moneys.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  IMO, the value of Reddit was that it was a group of forums with SSO and decent discoverability. If you wanted to find a forum on a specific topic on the broader web, you had to sift through various sites and look for individual hints as to their vitality, and then register and introduce yourself on each one. With Reddit it was a single search away, and the more or less consistent UI made it easy to tell "this is the active one." But importantly, it retained a lot of the value a forum does: a comment pool that persists, that shows up in Google later. Discord is a TERRIBLE substitute. It's not meaningfully threaded. It's not externally searchable. It doesn't even have the "it's federated, so we're not beholden to one specific owner who will inevitably tank it." catch.
  - agentgumshoe 3y ago
    Agree, Reddit just has the problem of scale and the need to make lots of money to support it. I also hate Discord, topic threads are the best way to categorise conversations. Discourse started the way down that path, never liked it either.
yanderekko 3y ago
>Which is not an ideal set of users to start a new community with. It can be if you're part of the ever-growing number of normal humans whose views fall outside of the tightening Overton Window that American elites want to impose on all social media platforms.

agentgumshoe 3y ago

One day, enough people will hopefully realise that internet forums of old (i.e. before Discourse) were perfectly good. Get some reasonable mods, make the rules clear, enjoy the community. Then we might all chill a bit. Pity everyone went chasing popularity, shouting loudly at each other and influencer moneys.

hakfoo 3y ago
IMO, the value of Reddit was that it was a group of forums with SSO and decent discoverability. If you wanted to find a forum on a specific topic on the broader web, you had to sift through various sites and look for individual hints as to their vitality, and then register and introduce yourself on each one. With Reddit it was a single search away, and the more or less consistent UI made it easy to tell "this is the active one." But importantly, it retained a lot of the value a forum does: a comment pool that persists, that shows up in Google later. Discord is a TERRIBLE substitute. It's not meaningfully threaded. It's not externally searchable. It doesn't even have the "it's federated, so we're not beholden to one specific owner who will inevitably tank it." catch.
- agentgumshoe 3y ago
  Agree, Reddit just has the problem of scale and the need to make lots of money to support it. I also hate Discord, topic threads are the best way to categorise conversations. Discourse started the way down that path, never liked it either.

yanderekko 3y ago

>Which is not an ideal set of users to start a new community with. It can be if you're part of the ever-growing number of normal humans whose views fall outside of the tightening Overton Window that American elites want to impose on all social media platforms.