[psvv]

I was reflecting the other day how discovering things online felt like being in on a secret. You had to just know about a chat room or BBS or website. Each one was like discovering a secret.

Now it's the opposite, anything special posted online will quickly get overrun. It's the parties and places not posted about online that feel like you're discovering hidden gems.

[microtonal]

There are exceptions, e.g. lobste.rs has an invitation tree. When someone starts posting LLM-generated comments, that part of the tree can get yanked. Also, it builds up a community gradually, because you need to be invited by someone. Since the invitation tree is visible, people will generally only vouch on people they trust, because an invitee that violates the rules will reflect bad on the inviter (and might get removed if they do that too often).