The world is a weird place. Many of these communities seem to be dying off. There are some boards that are still going strong, though. Check out this Canadian deals website that runs phpBB. I've been a member there for like 20 years and it is still as active now as it was then.
2002XterraSC wrote: Sun Nov 24, 2024 1:56 pmThings like Tiktok have destroyed people's attention spans. It's actually really bad the damage these platforms have done...
Forums died before Tiktok, even though that app and apps like it (such as YT shorts) are destroying attention spans.
As for why forums died, well, people would rather make an account on a social media site that everyone joins and not bother with things like administrating their own site. It comes down to laziness and being way too trusting of platforms like Facebook and people like Mark Zuckerberg. People also do not like to join forums anymore either. They'd rather lazily submit their info to silicon valley oligarchs without thinking twice.
Forums haven't 'died', they're just less popular than they were 15+ years ago because of the rise of smartphones and social media. There's plenty of forums still active but the issue is that forums are very specific in nature. If you have a forum about a sports team, that's a great place to discuss that one thing but with things like social media (take Reddit as an example), you could talk about a sports team plus literally anything else.
Forums have not died, and might find a comeback now when the big players and their owners a going (even more) crazy.
Deleted my Twitter-account some days ago, never had a FB-, TikTok-, Instagram-account. And never will have.
I wish they wouldn't have, at least in the narrow sense that they have died (plenty are still thriving!).
Forums seemed to give way to blogs which then gave way to Facebook and short-form media (X, for X-ample). It's harder to establish newer sites and communities because increasingly, people aren't looking to Google or other search engines for where to spend their time online — they start and finish on social media.
And then there's the inevitable commercialization of everything. I seem to recall there being numerous amazing FOSS message boards back in the 2000s, but now, looking at alternatives to phpBB, the lion's share of it is for-profit. Even open source darling WordPress is undergoing tumultuous uncertainty at the hands of a capitalist… (And as goes WordPress, so goes forum software like bbPress.)
Message boards also aren't frictionless, involving users to create new accounts and manage yet another set of credentials and potential endless email notifications, etc.
I'd love to see a decentralized form of log-in that isn't tied to Google, Facebook, Apple, et al. that gives you full control over your info on a forum — register for a phpBB site over here, some other board over there, etc. etc., and if they all use that decentralized service, your profile remains yours, maybe even allowing you to update your info from off-site, see a list of every board you're a member of, etc.
That may not be practical or even possible, I dunno — I'm not a dev — but it would go a long way toward fighting forum rot. (For example, if I sign up for five different boards at different times using that service, get really into one, forget all about a couple, and only post once on another, I'd still see them in my central list and perhaps even always know when I get replies on my posts.
Or short answer, message boards are dying because everything inevitably is made worse.
The rise of Facebook. There's a lot of overlap between former forum users and current Facebook users because of the permanency of the posts and content groups. (Whereas I think the people of today who are active TikTok/Instagram/etc users would have been the devoted MSN Messenger people of 25 years ago -- different crowd)
But I feel like people are tiring of the big social media conglomerates a bit because of their intrusiveness. They are easy and accessible but I think a lot of people find the tailored ads and emotional engineering (promoting topics to promote engagement) tiresome. But because they are for-profit enterprises they have to do it to keep people on the site and make money.
I think there will be a swing back to decentralisation for that reason. People yearning for their own smaller communities with greater control. That swing might not all be back to web forums due to the ubiquity of mobiles, but I think some of it will -- especially departed Facebook users. It'll be interesting to see how it all plays out, I don't think there's a lot of love for social media companies any more.
@saavannah I think this question every day. I owned forums for 20 years.
I share every reply all of you said. I would add that a big (negative) hit has been done by search engines.
SEO has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, have you ever noticed that sometimes you have difficulties to find a really pertinent search result?
SEO is penalizing sites to give advantage to others and the only reason is this $.
Forums were almost a free source of information and digital data for everyone. This is something that is not good for big entrepreneurs.
Things must be paid, who gives free things must not be seen on SEO or they lose money.
So yes, social media also made a big punch to forums, because they have to absorb people data to shot really targeted ads everywhere.
I believe that with what is happening right now in big tech, social media and GenAI, we're going to see a return to "older" tech in the internet. If nothing else because it's more reliable. Both technologically as its content.
There is a good reason why AI bots are slamming especially forums so hard these days.