Ask HN: Whatever Happened to Internet Forums?

5 points·jason0597··3 comments

I remember when I was a kid in the mid 2000s to early 2010s there would be all sorts internet forums where you would find all sorts of information. Console hacking, programming, school life, etc.

Now it seems like a lot of that is gone. What happened to it? Did everything just migrate into a Big Tech platform like Reddit or Facebook?

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Some still exist, but you are right, most people moved to Reddit, Facebook, Discord, etc... If people can't one-click log into a site using FB/Google or their existing Discord account, then it will be a tiny community at best. Forum software is still actively maintained however. They might regain traction if there were simple ways to integrate them into Discord [1] or FB with SAML auth. Link below is not quite on topic, but you can see some are interested in Discord integrations.

[1] - https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=2532591

Some forums have such a hard time with spammers that they end up blocking VPN access. For example: https://www.thegearpage.net/board/index.php?threads/cant-acc...

Since I have to turn off my VPN, I rarely visit these forums anymore. It is a shame because the content there is much better than reddit, etc...

While I’ll say that I do use Reddit quite a bit, there are still plenty of niche forums if you know where to look. I myself enjoy https://www.airliners.net/forum/ and https://forums.macrumors.com/

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