gnoop

That's looking to be the case. Same thing happened with Usenet and the migration to web forums because Usenet became a complete mess.

Some are going to Tildes. Some are going to Lemmy, though the two most popular servers are dying right now. Enough went to kbin.social that they disabled registration. Then there's mentions of Raddle and Mainchan depending on your preference.

Discord servers with forums seem to be the big one from what my oldest was showing me. Seems that plus some additional web forums will end up filling in the gap.

Reddit will probably still last for a while as it bleeds out users. We'll have to see what replaces Reddit. Nothing proposed so far is going to be the new consolidated home.

Sadly, there's plenty of them. Probably using MS Edge because that's what their computer came with. No adblocker installed.

Reddit has its moments but I still enjoy it. It's a fun time sink between sets at the gym or if I'm stuck on a bike pedaling and have tired yet again of Duolingo.

That said, I have a tendency to filter a fair bit to avoid the major problems but there's going to be some news that I should hear but is not good news either.

I had a chat the other day with a friend. He's deleted the app as he's been on it quite heavily and needed a break. It's certainly something I've heard out of some people. Meanwhile, there's others looking for where the migration is going, assuming a Digg to Reddit type migration.

There most likely won't be. Reddit is Usenet 2.0. With Usenet, it was a diaspora. Sure, we had some sites like Slashdot that started in 1997 but even that was still targeting link aggregation focused discussions on tech related topics and there might only be a handful a day at times. The exodus from Usenet was to internet forums.

The exodus from Reddit seems to be to disperse among a combination of other forums, some Reddit-like sites like Tildes and Lemmy, and Discord.

Once we go through that for a while, we'll maybe have another consolidation again once a new round of companies give it a go. At least that's my hypothesis.

I'd add that Discord is also a modern IRC / Freenode. That seems to be one of the primary places people are flocking as they abandon most current social media sites.

I was on Slashdot in the 90s - they started in 1997. There were some early web boards that came out then as well.

And yeah, phpBB has improved. One site I've been on for a good 15+ years is running on it and it's got some decent features.

Well, let's be honestly. Ebaumsworld is a mess these days. Complete garbage of a front page. Submissions with no comments. Seems like a graveyard that's still operating somehow but probably mostly on automation.

I'll probably still end up on Reddit for whatever it can provide for a while. Seems like the death spiral will be a slow decay more than anything and I'm not seeing any replacement for random facts and tidbits of knowledge, memes, or shitposting at the moment.

We're in the chat cycle of the internet. We went through this with AOL chatrooms and IRC in the 90s as well. I'm not the most massive fan of chat in place of forums either but that seems the trend lately. Even on Reddit, a bunch of communities have Discords you can join. Maybe some new web forums will spin up, though it looks like much the software remains the same as it has been for a while.

They don't understand or at least the current implementation states as much.

You have to first pick a server to join, then join that server. Once in, you're typically presented with local server content only. To see federated content, you have to select "All". Same story with looking at communities. Local first, All by selection only.

You then have problems with the style of Federation. If I create a community one Lemmy instance called tech then you create the tech community on another, we now have two tech communities separate from each other. Given your default community view is local, this presents a problem. You've already got a lemmy.ml technology community along with a beehaw.org technology community. It can quickly spiral into a mess of unintentional duplication.

Tildes is centralized. There's no federation.

Most of the old guard is still going. How well is debatable. Ebaumsworld, Slashdot, Fark, Cheezeburger, and Something Awful, among others, are all still kicking around. Shadows of their former selves, but still around.

I agree with you on things beginning to fracture off again. We've cycled forum expansion and consolidation since forums started. The big consolidations were Usenet and Reddit (aka Usenet 2.0). Their downfalls have let to the new expansions and we're seeing it.

New web forums and Discord will be the norm for a while. We'll see the Usenet 3.0 challengers start the new round of consolidation until the new Usenet 3.0 comes in. That took a while last time.

One thing I've noted is that online forums have expanded and consolidated a few times over the decades. We saw expansion to start, back with BBSes, then consolidation to FidoNet, Usenet, and services like AOL. Web forums took us into expansion. Link aggregators and meme sites moved toward some consolidation. Reddit is basically Usenet 2.0.

I suspect we may see another round of forum expansion again as people want to carve out their own niche communities again. We might not see Usenet 3.0 for a bit while we let people expand then let a new site come along and consolidate.

You mean Lemmy in general? Lemmy.ml is just one of many Lemmy servers. Though there's some discussion coming up on how things are going in Lemmy regarding anything surrounding any criticism of China or Russia.

So far, there's been attempts to spin up new servers to mitigate issues on lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml while others are looking to Kbin which also federates with Lemmy but uses separate software.