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The huge number of communities that have elected to move to Discord, an information black hole, seems like a strong counterargument to the generality of this cl

The huge number of communities that have elected to move to Discord, an information black hole, seems like a strong counterargument to the generality of this claim.

newsclues 2y ago
OSINT communities use discord to communicate and discuss information from mostly twitter and telegram and organize and share the packaged information. Information organization is hard and lots of work. Not everyone (or every community) has the same need to organize information, and not everyone has the ability or inclination to do so. Information getting lost on discord is a problem, but that just means the useful stuff needs to be archived elsewhere, and frequently there is another distribution network involved.
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  Accurate Problem description, which can easily be countered with .. [extra effort expended in idealized behaviours] .. [I could paste Lore Ipsum here everybody stopped reading at the idealization]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
pjc50 2y ago
This seems to be a generational issue. It makes me sad, but I suspect it's because doing things "in public" on the Internet has become increasingly exhausting and people have retreated to gated communities. It's not a black hole, it's a "dark forest": you can't find their information because they're scared of you.
- bonoboTP 2y ago
  It's not super new though, people had private forums in the phpbb era as well, which you could only read after login. Or think about IRC, private torrent trackers etc.
  - JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
    I dunno if there were that many successful private forums; locking off access to unregistered users back then was a really good way of ensuring no new users finding the place back then. Very very possible I just wasn't aware of private forums enough though. Beyond that though, information was still neatly catalogued into small focused threads whereas Discord's biggest issue is that stuff just vanishes in a gigantic chain of messages. Was a bit late for IRC's heyday but am I right in thinking it wasn't guaranteed that all users would have access to the chat history? That would create an impetus to log the information elsewhere. Private trackers such as what.cd tended to attract people with strong archivist streaks which I think largely resolved the issue there. Oink could go down and you'd know that a huge chunk of its catalogue would appear on Waffles within a few months.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      It was not just totally private forums but many big forums had private sections and subforums where the real meaty discussions occurred.
    - qingcharles 2y ago
      I ran a private business forum for online marketing. The locked door approach meant it developed a legendary reputation and meant many more people talked about it than they probably would have if it had been open. The mystery effect.
      - JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
        This also happens with some private torrent trackers; the status of having an account means people put more effort into maintaining the place too. Online marketing feels like a field that would _need_ a private place to talk tbh; anything public would be a beacon for self-promotion efforts by people who are quite good (or at least relentless) at doing so.
- grotorea 2y ago
  I think the sort of Discord group being discussed here counts as "in public". You can join interest groups by just clicking a link with an anonymous account. It's out of view of Google, unindexable, hardish to search and to collect organized information from, but it is more public than say, old newspaper archives in microfilm that anyone can look at in a library. People are going to discord for that because it is convenient as a platform for a variety of reasons, not because they want to hide it from the public imho.

The huge number of communities that have elected to move to Discord, an information black hole, seems like a strong counterargument to the generality of this claim.

newsclues 2y ago

OSINT communities use discord to communicate and discuss information from mostly twitter and telegram and organize and share the packaged information. Information organization is hard and lots of work. Not everyone (or every community) has the same need to organize information, and not everyone has the ability or inclination to do so. Information getting lost on discord is a problem, but that just means the useful stuff needs to be archived elsewhere, and frequently there is another distribution network involved.

InDubioProRubio 2y ago
Accurate Problem description, which can easily be countered with .. [extra effort expended in idealized behaviours] .. [I could paste Lore Ipsum here everybody stopped reading at the idealization]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

pjc50 2y ago

This seems to be a generational issue. It makes me sad, but I suspect it's because doing things "in public" on the Internet has become increasingly exhausting and people have retreated to gated communities. It's not a black hole, it's a "dark forest": you can't find their information because they're scared of you.

bonoboTP 2y ago
It's not super new though, people had private forums in the phpbb era as well, which you could only read after login. Or think about IRC, private torrent trackers etc.
- JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
  I dunno if there were that many successful private forums; locking off access to unregistered users back then was a really good way of ensuring no new users finding the place back then. Very very possible I just wasn't aware of private forums enough though. Beyond that though, information was still neatly catalogued into small focused threads whereas Discord's biggest issue is that stuff just vanishes in a gigantic chain of messages. Was a bit late for IRC's heyday but am I right in thinking it wasn't guaranteed that all users would have access to the chat history? That would create an impetus to log the information elsewhere. Private trackers such as what.cd tended to attract people with strong archivist streaks which I think largely resolved the issue there. Oink could go down and you'd know that a huge chunk of its catalogue would appear on Waffles within a few months.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    It was not just totally private forums but many big forums had private sections and subforums where the real meaty discussions occurred.
  - qingcharles 2y ago
    I ran a private business forum for online marketing. The locked door approach meant it developed a legendary reputation and meant many more people talked about it than they probably would have if it had been open. The mystery effect.
    - JansjoFromIkea 2y ago
      This also happens with some private torrent trackers; the status of having an account means people put more effort into maintaining the place too. Online marketing feels like a field that would _need_ a private place to talk tbh; anything public would be a beacon for self-promotion efforts by people who are quite good (or at least relentless) at doing so.
grotorea 2y ago
I think the sort of Discord group being discussed here counts as "in public". You can join interest groups by just clicking a link with an anonymous account. It's out of view of Google, unindexable, hardish to search and to collect organized information from, but it is more public than say, old newspaper archives in microfilm that anyone can look at in a library. People are going to discord for that because it is convenient as a platform for a variety of reasons, not because they want to hide it from the public imho.