- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
An era of the internet is ending, and we’re watching it happen practically in real time. Twitter has been on a steep and seemingly inexorable decline for, well, years, but especially since Elon Musk bought the company last fall and made a mess of the place. Reddit has spent the last couple of months self-immolating in similar ways, alienating its developers and users and hoping it can survive by sticking its head in the sand until the battle’s over. (I thought for a while that Reddit would eventually be the last good place left, but… nope.) TikTok remains ascendent — and looks ever more likely to be banned in some meaningful way. Instagram has turned into an entertainment platform; nobody’s on Facebook anymore…
As I saw it, Discord is a replacement for IRC (for text) + Mumble (for voice), and they succeeded despite problems all proprietary platforms share. Now, I can understand subreddits (or communities now) having a chatroom like Discord for contingencies, but replacing forums?