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The reason forums lost out to Reddit and centralized social media is because the latter is more convenient. Turns out having to register an account on every sin

The reason forums lost out to Reddit and centralized social media is because the latter is more convenient. Turns out having to register an account on every single forum and have to prove your worth every time is less convenient that having a single account and a proof of trustworthiness (as in if you haven’t spammed/misbehaved elsewhere, chances are you won’t misbehave here either) following you around.

naravara 3y ago
Doesn’t Federation solve exactly that problem? Ignoring all the publication of content bits, I always felt like what the internet really needed to improve portability of accounts and data was just a federated user authentication standard.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  It does until the ‘Federation’ splits into multiple competing blocs that auto-blocklist each other… Which typically happens within a few months.
celdon25 3y ago
I'd say it's more of a failure of certain search engines, among other things. Personally I've found reddit karma to be correlated with the obnoxiousness of the user, not the inverse. There's plenty out there who feel the same. Even with that point aside, what is there to prove? I don't understand the assertion. Wrongthink will get you censored on Reddit faster than anywhere else regardless of how much karma you had. Even good posts on Reddit get shuffled past the first pages after a few days. There's too much negative incentive to put effort into content when it can get censored, downvoted, or buried. Sure, you might potentially reach more users in the right circumstances, but many of those users are addicted to notifications and doomscrolling, not enthusiasts of the subject matter. Plenty of that here on HN as well (more on the side of trend-chasing, manufactured two-minute hate about climate or national news, while rarely challenging the status quo) but it's at least tolerable, and I know the moderation is fair here. Forums haven't "lost out" when they can still serve to bring people together who have, or want to read unpopular opinions. I could go on about use cases. If there were none, there would be no forums. The takeaway here is that Reddit can be and is considered by a decent proportion to be a dystopian failure, not a "convenience". A black hole of siphoned search traffic that regurgitates a watered down and sanitized imitation of something resembling a community.
- celdon25 3y ago
  Here's an example just from today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuAOYIjieQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuAOYIjieQ

naravara 3y ago

Doesn’t Federation solve exactly that problem? Ignoring all the publication of content bits, I always felt like what the internet really needed to improve portability of accounts and data was just a federated user authentication standard.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
It does until the ‘Federation’ splits into multiple competing blocs that auto-blocklist each other… Which typically happens within a few months.

celdon25 3y ago

I'd say it's more of a failure of certain search engines, among other things. Personally I've found reddit karma to be correlated with the obnoxiousness of the user, not the inverse. There's plenty out there who feel the same. Even with that point aside, what is there to prove? I don't understand the assertion. Wrongthink will get you censored on Reddit faster than anywhere else regardless of how much karma you had. Even good posts on Reddit get shuffled past the first pages after a few days. There's too much negative incentive to put effort into content when it can get censored, downvoted, or buried. Sure, you might potentially reach more users in the right circumstances, but many of those users are addicted to notifications and doomscrolling, not enthusiasts of the subject matter. Plenty of that here on HN as well (more on the side of trend-chasing, manufactured two-minute hate about climate or national news, while rarely challenging the status quo) but it's at least tolerable, and I know the moderation is fair here. Forums haven't "lost out" when they can still serve to bring people together who have, or want to read unpopular opinions. I could go on about use cases. If there were none, there would be no forums. The takeaway here is that Reddit can be and is considered by a decent proportion to be a dystopian failure, not a "convenience". A black hole of siphoned search traffic that regurgitates a watered down and sanitized imitation of something resembling a community.

celdon25 3y ago
Here's an example just from today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuAOYIjieQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuAOYIjieQ