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.