[Chathamization]

> Is that no longer the web?

From what I've seen, a lot - I'd say most - of the communities that existed outside of the major platforms have dried up or ended (the famous/infamous bodybuilding forum apparently just went down). Web forum communities, mailing list communities, communities built around an individuals website (it sounds strange to say now, but this was pretty common a couple of decades ago). Even the offline meeting sites like Couchsurfing and Meetup are a shadow of what they were in their heyday (about 15 years or so ago).

The actual number of people actively using the internet is much higher, yet the number of people outside of a few small social media silos are much lower. So I can only surmise that these social media silos are giving the vast majority - almost everyone - what they want (those gratifying instant hits). It's just sad to know that there's apparently only a tiny sliver of humanity interested in venturing off the main path and interacting with people outside of these silos.

[dartos]

You may be pleased to hear that those kinds of communities are actually alive and well, they just live on places like discord now.

Places that largely can’t be indexed by google.

My hope is that eventually these groups migrate to matrix, but we’ll see.

[treyd]

That's exactly the issue the parent poster is talking about. It's not the web in the strict sense, it's the siloification.

[dartos]

> It's not the web in the strict sense

It kind of is though. Maybe not with discord specifically, because it’s a closed platform. but communities on open ones like matrix are just as much part of the web as any forum.

It’s not a big platform with all users in one space. There are dedicated communities with passionate people talking, sharing ideas, helping each other out.

Would you’ve considered IRC chat rooms on freenode part of the web?

[treyd]

> but communities on open ones like matrix are just as much part of the web as any forum. [...] Would you’ve considered IRC chat rooms on freenode part of the web?

For IRC, absolutely not. IRC (1988) even predates the web (1989). Freenode offered a web-based gateway that ran on their servers, that doesn't make IRC a web protocol.

As for the rest it's slightly fuzzier since in practice they rely on HTTP, but you can't just use a normal web browser to interface with them. You have to run a specialized client that understands the protocol to interact with them. The practicality of the firstparty clients for these platforms/protocols (or in Discord's case the only one you're officially allowed to use) being shipped in a web browser doesn't make the systems "part of the web". The server doesn't give you HTML that you can see in any browser, you make API requests for JSON in a non-W3C-standardized format and interpret it with specialized software. You can't send someone a URL to a message and have them be able to open it in any web browser without additional software.

[dartos]

> You can't send someone a URL to a message and have them be able to open it in any web browser without additional software

You actually can with discord and with certain matrix clients as well.

The clients for those protocols are built on top of web technologies, even if the protocols may not be.

That would discount IRC from being part of the web though.

[treyd]

I am well aware that it's possible to have a link to a discord/matrix message, but it only works if you're already a member of the group and you download the custom software client.

[jjav]

> You may be pleased to hear that those kinds of communities are actually alive and well, they just live on places like discord now.

But that is exactly what it wasn't. Discord is a proprietary walled-garden like too many others today. I tried to access a forum there once and it demanded both registration and a phone number. No thanks. That's not the open Internet.

The open communities were defined by the openness. Using standard protocols like SMTP, NNTP, HTTP (on public websites, not walled gardens).

[256_]

> (the famous/infamous bodybuilding forum apparently just went down)

What forum? Was it the one where they couldn't figure out how many days there were in a week?

[prmoustache]

> From what I've seen, a lot - I'd say most - of the communities that existed outside of the major platforms have dried up or ended (the famous/infamous bodybuilding forum apparently just went down). Web forum communities, mailing list communities, communities built around an individuals website (it sounds strange to say now, but this was pretty common a couple of decades ago).

I would say that is simply because bodybuilding sucks and everyone with half a brain has moved to other activities like crossfit or similar that allows you to have a nice body that you can actually do something with instead of a useless one :)

More seriously this is not my experience. Two of the websites I visit the most in 2024 are the "traditionnal participative type", ie, privately owned, not social medias but with membership and comments and stuff. One is using a custom cms based on rails and has been launched in 1998, the other one is only 15y old but is running vbulletin.

And I still encounter many websites like this. Last time I had an issue with my Piaggio motorbike, I found a vespa dedicated web forum that was really helpful and active.

I think there are lots of people deep in social medias, reddit and discord and some who are fed up by this stuff and stay out of it. The issue is that privately owned websites cost money to run usually or are very stripped of customization/features/storage and moderation is a burden so you need very motivated people to keep the light on compared to say, a discord or reddit community that can stay online for months/years while the initial admins/founders aren't even connecting to it anymore.