Looking back at decentralized conversations before the platform web (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by tedcurran@lemmy.world to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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#Tapatalk was a dominant app in the pre-social media days when discussions took place on all different forums and message board sites across the internet, not centralized platforms like today. Tapatalk provided a centralized way to subscribe to all those discussions on different servers, post and comment freely, without logging into each forum site directly.

Since then #Reddit became the centralized and dominant place to engage around niche topics, killing that diverse ecosystem of forums. I'd like to see the #Fediverse become and equivalent "central" location for finding and engaging with niche topics while remaining decentralized by its nature.

We still have lots of forums running on open source #Discourse software, but we don't have an easy way to connect and engage all those communities back into #Lemmy, #ActivityPub, and the #Fediverse to make them findable with the same ease Reddit provides.

What's the best way to unify the #Fediverse with the existing forum communities that exist outside the platform web?

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[-] tedcurran@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Neat. But it's not pre social media. Social media has been around since the 1980s.

That's why I alternately call it the "platform web" in which social media stopped running on open and interoperable protocols and started being walled gardens on commercial platforms.

And to your other point - it shouldn't be solely up to forum admins to opt-in to the Fediverse, end users should be able to subscribe to the forums they belong to with Fedi-powered tools.

The Fediverse could and should be the place where all those things can converge but I'm pointing out that it currently is failing to be that.