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Internet forums are disappearing because now it's all Reddit and Discord. And that's worrying. (www.xataka.com)

submitted 5 months ago by i_have_no_enemies@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (9 children)

I advocate for two things, oddly things I never would have in earlier internet:

Paid forums. A one time payment for registration.
Strict rules and quick bans. But allow offenders to buy back in. Permaban for serious offenses. .

Why? Because if it costs you $10 or 15 to re-activate after screwing around, you're much more likely to read the room and not fuck around too much with others. It encourages users to point out bad behavior, and mods to act decisively. If the mods or management totally suck, then it can go sour, but that's true of any community.

In this case though it can at least partially help to offset costs from shitty users, and keep bots at bay by making them cost a registration fee.

I don't love it as a "solution", but when Facebook was small, people behaved better. But now people post the most unhinged shit ever under their full legal name, so no amount of daylight is going to put the proverbial trolls back in their cages. Just gotta lock them out of civil spaces.

You wanna talk about Honda engine tuning here with us? Don't be a fucking asshole, or get banned.

You wanna chat with fans of 50s cinema and the rise of modern camera film technique? Do it without brining up woke/trump/biden/Covid or get out.

I like that we have free stuff like lemmy and reddit for now, but bots are getting far, far worse.

[–] dullbananas@lemmy.ca 0 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Ideally the world would be moneyless

[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Honestly to avoid the immense botspam coming for small orgs, you need either a literal army of volunteers, or some kind of "realID" type check to verify they're human, and I hate that concept immensely as well.

Giant if, but if you could do a one way cryptographic check against an ID to verify its legitimate, without sending anything off the server elsewhere, then a forum could bind your current username to a state issued ID, at least until it's reissued. And then you could at least reasonably think these users are human.

But who wants to give that info to a stranger online. Even if the hash is unique to the site based on their own seed, the average person doesn't understand that, and it feels like handing over your actual privacy.

Setting aside that PCs don't have NFC readers as a standard feature as well.

Everything I think would be effectivd boils down though to needing to know that something exists in meatspace on the other end, and being able to use that to manage your bans. At least 10bux is just money, and not your ID.

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[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If there is payment, better support crypto too, because this way you wouldn't force people to KYC themselves, as well as wouldn't exclude people from sanctioned regions.

[–] ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Nope. Imo the point is to avoid cryptobro bots and the like, not invite them.

Plus crypto is volatile and you'd have to manage it a lot more to keep it pegged at "expensive enough"

And even then, you won't discourage a troll who just happens to have an absurd stash of coins without pricing out legitimate users. A bot farmer with 50k in bitcoin would drop a few hundredths of a coin just to make your day worse.

[–] EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

"Cryptobros" =/= "people using crypto", because this is a legitimate usecase. You can see it discussed on Lemmy too. This is how I can pay for my VPS while my card doesn't work. This is how I would pay for a service even if my card did work, but I didn't want to attach pretty much my real name to it. But yea, I agree that it might be complicated logistically. Have seen services where you can buy prepaid cards for crypto - at lest that should work.

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[–] SeattleRain@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

I think a big stumbling block is authentication. I think Web 3 could really revive indie forums if the was integrated properly.

It was give people a single sign on for thousands of forums.

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