Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

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Hmm. Interesting. The old internet was a place where communities formed. (Yeah, it wasn't just that, and it didn't always worked, but it was better at it than today's internet.) You could connect with people on the old bulletin boards and forums, even if you never knew their real name.

The last time I felt that - where I felt like I actually knew people, where I could sometimes tell who wrote something just by the writing style - was Groklaw. That's been a while. Currently, of all the places I know, HN comes the closest, but I don't actually know any of you.

Of the new internet, Facebook comes the closest. You could use Facebook in that way, and some people do. I think my wife does. But she's not in her 20s...

I wonder if the 25-and-below crowd still needs personal connection, but doesn't understand how to go about getting it. So they use Facebook in a way that is different from how older people use it. (Or maybe they just don't use Facebook - that's for old people.)

Young people are forming communities all over the internet.

They’re just not doing it where you were in the past.

If you think Facebook comes the closest to a community building site for younger generations, your information is very out of date. Young people don’t use Facebook.

Vert true, there's still a lot of small communities forming.

Even if you go on like Reddit if you post certain things in certain subs you'll get invited to private subs talking about whatever niche topic.

Same with Discord, lot of small communities there.

I don't think I'd call "Reddit and Discord" communities "all over the internet"

Really I'd call that kind of homogenization a large part of the problem

I don't believe that accessible community-building platforms are a problem. Nor do I believe it's something that can be solved; people will understandably congregate on platforms that are easy to use and that their friends are on.

Is the only healthy Internet one where there's 500 different platforms and to try and build a community you have to be an IT worker? How is it a bad thing that someone can hop on Discord or - indeed, as much as you might hate to admit it - Facebook and effortlessly create a group for their friends or local club?

Centralization is not the problem - it's what those companies can do with their power and data that is the underlying problem. And attempting to de-centralize things won't solve that problem - either some platforms will grow to a point where abuse happens, and/or the point of abuse will lower over time to cover those smaller platforms.

Without, for example, data privacy laws, nothing will change, whether we're on 5 platforms or 500.

(As a brief aside, since you brought up IRC in TFA... is it at all relevant that, even then, there were like 5 main networks?)

Reddit definitely feels homogenous to me. Yes I know, smaller subreddits etc etc, but it’s built on the same engagement infrastructure that is the basis for so much of the modern internet.

HN is still too large for this, I think. Smaller web forums have distinct personalities and reputations, helped by avatars and signatures and the same stuff we used to build community back in the day.

Not to be too harsh, but if you think that Facebook comes the closest to the community-forming platforms you're talking about, I think you're not very familiar with how young people actually use the Internet.

May I introduce you to Discord, or any MMO?

While you're right, the original posts point about "internet today is transactional" applied to all and every MMO, and as for discord, it's currently already in the process of "enshittification that follows after sufficient scale have been reached"

Discord is in the process of "needing to host millions of users that expect the service to remain free forever and will complain about any attempt at making money like harmless profile cosmetics"

No arguments about MMOs, really, except that I haven't paid a cent to an MMO in 15 years and I run a community in one of them.

Discord is definitely under profit pressure and it’s starting to show. Their app spies what programs you’re running and you can’t turn it off, you can only stop announcing what you’re doing to your friends but it’s on by default. It’s a privacy nightmare. “You’re missing out on our overlay” nags appear with you start playing a game, etc. Nags to visit their shop. Is the start of a trend. Of course people here on HN will defend these practices. “Just use the web app”, “they’re harmless cosmetics” etc.

I highly doubt the 25 and younger crowd are using Facebook. At least none a I’ve ever spoken to use it unless they are there to respond to their parents’ posts.

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