Forums were micromanaged far more than modern social platforms. Reddit is one of the “free speech absolutist” sites like its sibling 4chan. These were opposing paradigms to forums.

I’ve long contended that modern social media users would absolutely hate the old style forums. If people think subreddit mods and reddit content mods suck. They haven’t met the admin of Joe Bobs phpbb forum hosted from his garage. Joe Bob doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

I don’t think it’s a free speech problem. I think people have not only been conditioned to be content junkies. They’ve become addicted to being Greater Fuckwads.

Maybe nobody cares what you think and whatever your words are they aren’t that important. Social media has devoured peoples egos turning them into the Greatest Fuckwads. With social media everyone has a podium and everyone has very important words with billions of doomscrollers as an audience. Don’t you dare steppy my freedoms!!1!

Anyways I think the real test is whether people can handle a small forum with strict moderation and focused discussion. That will reveal who has half a brain apart from the fuckwads. I’ve seen people come to what are now basically private forums acting like a garden variety social media user only to get smacked down real quick. A sobering dose of reality for them.

That’s how it is anywhere that doesn’t have any real moderation. There are those actively seek to harass anyone who isn’t right leaning cis hetero white male. Lemmy like every other modern social platform is an open air forum available to the entire 7 billion population of the world. Moderators don’t see 99% of the posts. And 99% of what they do see, they don’t take for than a few seconds to consider. The nefarious abusers are almost always more subtle than moderators give thought to. This allows harassment to run rampant. This is a fundamental issue with social media. As as I’m concerned it’s an intractable problem (brought you by free speech absolutist libertarian bros).

That’s as opposed to the traditional internet boards where posting was orders of magnitude lower volume. Site administrators and moderators cared about fostering a good community. Moderators saw a not insignificant portion of the content posted. Not just reports. Forum members used one pseudonym. No throwaways like the reddit/lemmy paradigm. What you posted was attached to you as a person. Therefore there was consequences to being an asshole. In other words deterrence.

Also I find it kind of amusing how they out themselves for their simpleton world view. I’ve noticed a pattern where they take superficial readings of a post to identify keywords/phrases. Then assign identity to that user. Then engage in harassment based on that.

For example say I posted something that was sympathetic to women. Ergo they assume I am a woman. And they engage the usual framework of belligerent replies appropriate to that assumed identity. I know for certain the key words in the second sentence of this comment already has triggered someone for sure.

Edit: The prior replies are just *chefs kiss*. I can’t tell if they’re being intentional or if they’re just that dumb. I guess that’s part of the fun isn’t it.

Anyone with half a brain could tell you plain cameras is a non-starter. This is nearly a Juicero level blunder. Tesla is not a serious car company nor tech company. If markets were rational it would have been the end for Tesla.

Find people in your area. Do tangible organizational things in real life.

Don’t waste time making solutions in search of problems. Some doodad isn’t going to help anyone. Nobody is wiring up an arduino lora whatever gadget. ‘B-but just buy the modules and conn…’ Stop. It’s useless. Doesn’t help anyone. No on is fidgeting with an Arduino sketch and some antenna wires and checking the 18650 battery while trying send packets to a guy over there. None of this matters when you’re all getting pepper sprayed with boots on your neck.

You can pull out the RF gear when the nukes have sent us back to the stone age.

So the same MO as always. To take a stranglehold of the internet. “Creators” or “influencers” or whatever buzzword will be all over this as it’s an opportunity to monetize. I’m sure reddit corporate will be taking their piece of rent seeking of course.

The bigger implication that everyone always ignores is that this is going to lock users into the walled garden. Up to now posters have been driving people off site. The comic artists are a good example. They post their comics as image posts. They direct people off site to access more content. They will no doubt jump on the chance to have a paid subreddit. This is an attempt to kill off whatever sites the artist use. If they had some other service providing monetization then that company is probably panicking a little right now.