The Internet I loved was full of random forums and text websites. If anything, I'm rejoicing and hoping this will mean less centralized forums.

Y'all realize you can just not use reddit and Twitter right? You can host your own forum on the Internet

The discovery hurdle is too big for me to rejoice.

Especially since the best search engines are nearly useless for finding new old-style content… search is broken, the big platforms are broken, and random links from users of HN are now the only way I have to find new stuff. The cool thing is that most of what is posted to HN is relevant to my interests…

The discovery hurdle was part of the charm for me. I liked the era of small, niche communities where you knew everyone and developed real relationships with people that you never met in person. Discoverability is what leads to Eternal Septembers.

Well, that was what search was for before that got broken… or should I say broke itself?

If it wasn’t so sad, this would actually be quite amusing to watch.

What is the easiest and cheapest way for me to host my own forum online and invite people I know to talk? Consider I know very little about hosting, web dev, php, etc. I'm actually interested in doing this! Thanks.

Definitely join a Fediverse (e.g. Lemmy, Mastodon)! You can host an instance, but still "linked" to other instances and communities so you won't feel isolated.

There are also a number of hosting providers cropping up with manage deployments for Lemmy with single click setups if you'd rather offload that:

> Do you foresee more hosting providers offering one-click, fully managed, ActivityPub deployments?

> https://programming.dev/post/136548

As pointed by countless people before me -- the hard part is not necessarily the hosting itself (which is still hard and could be a problem at a certain point), but to moderate -- to filter out spams, insults and illegal stuff etc. That is a time black hole. You have to admit that reddit does a much better job at fending off spams than an average forum.

Reddit is useful in Google search results though whereas Twitter and Instagram are not.

For instance if you search "movies like X", on Google by default most results are automated aggregators or one critics perspective. If you search "movies like X reddit" you get more recommendations.

Twitter is in search results, though I guess that might go away if it stays closed

consider r/redditseppuku

I'm not sure it's as simple as a "greedy corporation" thing, because they've been "greedy" for a while. In a sense, they're even legally obligated to be "greedy". And the more we skirt the details of what (who) exactly causes these issues, the more we'll fail to understand such issues.

I got flagged by dang the other day for calling spez some kind of insult. It bothered me.

Spez is inarguably incompetent as a leader and I realize that if I saw him in public, I would point and laugh.

Truly. I understand the fear of social media companies dealing with data scraping for rivals to run AI models, but it has been truly fumbled from a messaging perspective.

Reddit arbitrarily flags things as "available in the app" or "18+ content" to force you to sign in. They've been doing this crap since long before Twitter got loaded with debt by Musk.