Current State of the Internet...

So long story short, since 2017 people from many imageboards, such as 4chan and 8chan started to feel an apparent decline of the nowadays Internet communities. For example here are three /leftyp0l/ threads I've archived (just focus on the Internet and community part, not the ideology you may not agree). >Chans being so political https://web.archive.org/web/20170807012100/http://8ch.net/leftypol/res/1921953.html >Did the Internet go downhill over the past 10 years? https://archive.fo/qQg2H >What do you think of the year 2007? https://archive.fo/CP9k3 So I also posted a thread here about the apparent decline of nowadays Internet culture and community, and seeked to look for a home online at the beginning of this year, and attempted a systematic analysis of Usenet/mailing list, forums, and the role Facebook, Twitter and Reddit played, also the "network topology" of different mediums of communcations. I've received lots of great responses from many good perspectives. This week when I was looking around the Internet, it seems that... It was not our illusion, but everyone started talking about it! Even the New York Magazine and HackerNews! >Online friendships in 2018 https://8ch.net/tech/res/912996.html >I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17068138 So I think it's good time to restart the discussion. But the good old thread died like Linux 2.4. I've looked the archives, but unfortunately it was not there. If lainons have an archive/screenshot of the old thread, please post it, I don't have any extra backup. Or just continue talking about it... And where to go? Net is vast and infinite, Ghost in the Shell promised us. But it's a lie! Now there is the vast and infinite network, but I don't have a place to go! The communities are all dead, dead, and dead, everywhere. The community is inactive, or the content is soykaf. It feels like watching the fuarrrking TV in the 80s. I mistakenly believed that there must be a good place hidden in the Internet, but it turned out to be a mistake.

>>10088 > I mistakenly believed that there must be a good place hidden in the Internet, but it turned out to be a mistake. I more or less feel the same. Communities got smaller, inner conflict created fracture points, and now it's lots of tiny groups complaining about a lack of proper community. This could more or less be solved by really making lainchan (or any other safe haven) highly visible and trusting the mods will keep newcomers in line. It would require some amount of coordination and implication, but I don't see any way forward in the current climate. Advertise, witness the influx, cull the unadapted, repeat.

The decline of quality of posts is linked to ease of access. Back in the day you already needed some level of technical knowledge just to go online and find these communities. Many had some level of self obfuscation, for example 4chan used edge and nazi imagery to scare the new users away. This of course backfired when 4chan gained media notoriety, however there are still plenty of great communities out there, they may be small yes but they're surviving. A lot of it comes down to having a slight barrier to entry, keeping away the lowest level of visitors. Essentially this is a really simple way of making sure the people participating actually want to be there for sincere reasons, because they had to put in some level of effort just to get there. Examples include: >ssh chans >private communities where you need to know someone on the inside to gain access >old school UI to deter phoneposters and kids >decentralized or distributed systems >niche topics requiring specialist knowledge to participate >local networks like a piratebox >i2p, tor, freenet It's all happening but it's changed. I make a hobby of exploring the wired to find these cool little places still managing to cling to survival against all the odds. Facebook, twitter, google, smartphones, in some sense they killed what the internet was. That surface level is never going to be the same again. But beneath the surface, in the dark corners there is still some semblance of quality, and to be honest that's cyberpunk as fuarrrk.

>>10093 > Back in the day you already needed some level of technical knowledge just to go online and find these communities Sorry, this only makes sense if you're hearkening back to the 90s which OP is not.

>>10089 >highly visible and trusting the mods will keep newcomers in line It takes more than effective moderation (although this certainly helps). I don't think Lainchan is particularly well prepare in this aspect. You need a board culture that makes your community unappealing to the people you're trying to keep out. 4chan has survived for as long as it has because normal people don't want to see gore, nazi imagery, and crypto-ironic pedophilia. Lainchan doesn't have that natural immune system. >>10093 I disagree about the barrier for entry. I don't think it has any direct influence. Imageboards have never been much harder to use than the rest of the contemporary internet. I've used this example in another thread, but I'll repeat it here: setting up a stream on twitch is more technically involved than using tor/i2p. Even so, darknet imageboards have resisted "normal user invasion" despite extensive media coverage and LARPing appeal (I know I know, after the freedom hosting takedown most of them have gotten soykafty, but that's more because most people who use them are looking to trade CP or scam people, not because they've become a refugee camp for disenfranchised redditors). Why? Because dark net boards aren't attractive. The dark net creeps people out. Some of the fear is justified, much of it isn't. But the kernel of truth is enough to fuel this legend that the dark net isn't a place for civilized people. Alternative communities that wish to survive post social media need to get good at deliberately generating these kinds of legends. The legend serves to attract a certain kind of person and deter the rest. This is also where the barrier for entry comes into play. In the age of youtube tutorials, having something be hard to access isn't nearly as important as making people think something is hard to access.

>>10093 >Examples include: >ssh chans >i2p, tor, freenet >It's all happening but it's changed. I do believe something should eventually appear and fill the gap, after all, every time in the history of the Internet, a platform would appear at the correct time to satisfy the demand of the people. And I personally also believe the next platform will emerge on a decentralized and encrypted network. There are a world for exploration on Freenet, IPFS, ZeroNet, or MaidSafe, etc, and the number of systems will only increase due to the exploded popularity of /sec/ after Snowden's revelation. This is good, but the competing attention of these technologies will only divide the community so far, in the long run, I think the people may eventually settle on a primary one because of the result of competition, but for now it's still uncertain. And I think Tor and i2p should be the first place for us to go, because they are the only system that has a drop-in replacement of WWW. Tor hidden service just released v3 and the cryptography is sound, we already have the technology, now we just need a community. This is why I started to regularly browse Tor and i2p for a few years from now, hoped to be an early adopter of the new community. But on Tor I only occasionally see a few small sites, like TorChan, that were too tiny to form a community. On i2p, the IRC channel does not have conversations in 90% of the time within my years of lurking. There are some activities, but not much. And considering the fact that NNTPchan is production-ready and has been around for 4 years, yet all it has is a couple of soykafposts and no real contents or users. Also, the biggest IRC channel on I2P is almost idle and no conversation. I'm disappointed, so I don't have much hope. Once a community has been kickstarted, I guess the members can maintain it by themselves, and it would get larger due to the network effect, if properly managed. But the major problem is how we bootstrap a new community. For example, is there something we can do to push NNTPchan forward? And for reference, how did we started Lainchan besides publicizing it on 8/cyb/?

>>10095 >I disagree about the barrier for entry. This is an interesting question. Many people included me believed a good community is the Fight Club on the alleyway of the network, but now reexamines it the idea is flawed. Unless you can recruit peoples in other ways and having minimum operation, a good place always needs a level of exposure to allow the mechanism of the community to function, its own culture is created and regulated in the process. If things go well, it may even suddenly be the center of gravity. Some call it the "emergence", and some call it the "natural order". But it is mostly unpredictable at small scale. Overall, exposure guarantees the community can get a feedback and it's important. >4chan has survived for as long as it has because normal people don't want to see gore, nazi imagery A small question about Nazi imagery. I believe the Hitler meme started as an ironical satire of the extremist politics around 2006, wasn't it? Did the 4channers intentionally make the meme even more absurd later to heighten the barrier of entry, and eventually led to the series of unfortunate events of these days?

And as a sitenote about Reddit that seemed to be the enemy of everyone on the imageboards... Yes, I have broken the taboo of channer, and registered an Reddit account to seek an understand of it. Initially, like an interesting website and I do think it deserves some respect from a /cyb/'s perspective - in 2018, you can still find a large mainstream normal person website made by nerds hacking Python, with 2007-style minimalist interface, without the need of telling everything about yourself or your dog, but just a name and password to register. The webpage doesn't have those 20 soykafty trackers, scripts, webfonts like everyone else. But you will soon discover Reddit was fundamentally HackerNews grouped in different topics, minus its discussion. It's good for discovering some links, but as forums in many aspects it's pretty bad... No one talks in small boards, no good talks in large boards, terrible. And the new frontend design is literally soykaf! To me Imageboards, mailing lists, blog and HackerNews are better.

>>10099 >2007-style minimalist interface, Visited recently? It changed. >without the need of telling everything about yourself or your dog, but just a name and password to register. That is a nice thing about Reddit. Plus they are not gay about posting from Tor. >you will soon discover Reddit was fundamentally HackerNews grouped in different topics, minus its discussion. This is backwards. Reddit was first and it was written in Lisp. Then when they rewrote it in Python, Paul Graham made a clone in Lisp to prove some kind of point about how great Lisp is and that became Hacker News. >To me ... HackerNews [is] better. If you get tired of the censorship and political bias on Hacker News then checkout lobste.rs it's smaller but high quality.

>>10102 >Visited recently? It changed. Yeah, as I complained, it's not even a Hacker News anymore. Having a dense list of links is the essential feature. >2007-style minimalist interface, >no good talks in large boards, terrible. And the new frontend design is literally soykaf! >Plus they are not gay about posting from Tor. Yes, pretty nice. >This is backwards. What? I knew Reddit used Lisp, but Hacker News... is a Reddit clone? TIL...

>>10098 >Did the 4channers intentionally make the meme even more absurd later to heighten the barrier of entry That's kinda just what 4chan does with things. I didn't mean to imply it was a fully conscious choice though. It was an emergent response to outside pressure. I was just trying to make an observation about how these "immune systems" function. It can be done more deliberately though. This is probably going to be a very unpopular example, but try to be objective: Tsukichan is actually an excellent template for how to quickly grow a fairly selective community without having to resort to invite-only. The goal is to make a honeypot for a certain kind of person (in this case: "people that think cyberpunk afterlife in the wired is cool to think about") which is at the same time toxic to everyone else. Tsukichan was somewhat successful in this latter aspect because the "suicide cult" legend makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but ultimately it became too much of a public curiosity and failed.... well there were other reasons too, but I won't get into it. Basically what I'm saying is that you need a dog whistle to announce your presence to like minded people, while being ignored or rejected by people who would have nothing to contribute anyway.

>web = whole internet I want Gen Z off my information superspeed highway.

>>10110 >web = whole internet >I want Gen Z off my information superspeed highway. I could say "Interweb"... It doesn't make a big difference. I do use ARP, DNS, DHCP, telnet, SMTP, NNTP, XMPP, SSH, BitTorrent, IRC, Gopher, etc, and they are not going anywhere in the foreseeable future. But it doesn't like that you can still telnet into many good BBSes (but you can find a list), NNTP to the Usenet (although there are still some acitve groups, but others are occupied by one or two toxic narcissists who believed they are the boss, not worth to come), subscribe to a good mailing list (despite LKML generates a few hundred messages per hour, Nettime still has writers, or Full Disclosure still has vulnerablity reports), or find many blogs to read on Gopher. IRC and BitTorrent is still fine though, but the activity of my channel declines everyday. It's no longer the time where the domain name starts with the name of the procotol, smtp.example.com or www.example.com, it's www by default. It's manifested again when the IETF recent announced DoH, new DNS encryption standard which literally put DNS inside HTTPS which seems absurd, but makes perfect sense considering the compatibility and interoperability reasons... I once used DNSCurve protocol in dnscrypt-proxy but it was interfered badly by the middleboxes, and DoH helps me to get online with encrypted DNS for the first time! So yes, Interweb is the new Internet, and Facebook+Twitter is the new Interweb.

>>10114 With DNS over TLS you may as well say good bye to system-wide domain resolution proxying and blocklists. Just because some normans want their placebo "security" by connecting to MITMFlare blazing fast DNS servers.

>>10115 What? DoH can be proxied even more easily than HTTP over HTTPS. I would say it's just as easy as running a local DNS sever but there is the extra step of generating certificates.

>>10098 >Did the 4channers intentionally make the meme even more absurd later to heighten the barrier of entry, and eventually led to the series of unfortunate events of these days? I think that sometimes "shocking" memes and irony tend to outlive their usefulness, but it's mostly unintentional. The main problem, I think, is that if you have a open online community that hates outsiders, the newcomers, who of course exist, will try to perform the role of a veteran. To varying degrees, then, the following happens: -Everyone who isn't scared off by weird or offensive memes parrots them to fit in. -The part that isn't properly parroted is the intent: "this is funny because outsiders/normal people overreact to it". That's still important to the newcomers, but they also think: "posting like this makes me just like the old users" and "this is part of the community's culture" (board culture or whatever applies). These are the ideas that live on when the shock factor wears off. Of course, it goes downhill even faster if the original intent was some satire or in-joke that the newcomers don't know about, which can lead to fights between newcomers and frustrated veterans. The outcome has been the same since the beginning of Eternal September. -Eventually you get to the point where the community has a reputation for the meme, and the normal people aren't shocked anymore. In fact, they're coming to look for funny things to post on social media. -But the community, now dominated by relative newcomers doesn't care about the lulz anymore and won't stop. They want to preserve their culture or whatever, and they don't want to drop the thing that they had to adapt to in order to join this community. Plus, it's easy to spin any kind of attention as outrage, even if it's just mockery. This is where the amplification really begins, as many users decide to dig in their heels in response to the attention. -If things get to this point, the meme can still just die out, but anything with a sociopolitical nexus will attract and breed extremists. You can see this happening anywhere with a reputation (deserved or not) for any sort of "casual misogyny". Instead of marginalizing the community, the attention and mockery acts as a smoke signal for hardcore misogynists to come and defend the maligned nerds. The extremists end up taking over.

I wish I could find a small active place with good discussion again.

>>10120 Isn't lainchan good enough?

On that leftypol thread, there is that image of the woman growing up through different periods of 4chan. I've used imageboards to whatever extent since 2007 and I can tell you that's bullsoykaf to a degree. Even back then there were cynical old users who complained about decreasing post quality all the time, and a lot of people blamed moot for being more active and actually deleting illegal content: https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Bday My most solid memories would be from using /a/ from 2010-2011, and I can tell you the stuff happening today is more like a seed growing into a tree. The elements were there: socially awkward men and a few ladies closing themselves off from the world as outcasts. A lot of them were full of insecurities, were biased to many things, and felt like failures. Then over time they began to notice people who seemingly opposed everything they stood for. Misunderstandings happened, people refused to open their minds, insecurities blossomed into militant behavior fueled by those things and also things to blame on for the problems in the world.

>>10123 >Remember when /b/ was good? >/b/ was never good.

>>10104 Reddit used lisp a looong time ago. It's all python now

>>10121 lainchan is total garbage(Complain about the quality of Lainchan in /q/.)

>>10093 >ssh chan What kind of image board do you ssh into? I’m now very interesting in learning what you mean

>>10139 well they're not really imageboards since it's just text. einchan is a well known one, I think I've seen others mentioned before but those might have been gopher chans.

>>10089 >now it's lots of tiny groups complaining about a lack of proper community. That's just humans for you really. >Advertise, witness the influx, cull the unadapted, repeat. That is the basis of it, thought there's a lot can go wrong at any stage. >>10093 >This of course backfired It was inevitably going to. "Communities who get their kicks pretending to be retards will eventually be flooded by retards who think they're at home." The problem with using something like gore or nazi imagery is it doesn't scare away everyone. >A lot of it comes down to having a slight barrier to entry This is important, but for small sites having ever heard of it is often enough of a barrier. >these cool little places still managing to cling to survival against all the odds Communities take time to die. Often they only fully die when their committed members start dying but as soon as they stop attracting newcomers they're doomed. >>10095 >4chan has survived for as long as it has because normal people don't want to see gore, nazi imagery, and crypto-ironic pedophilia. If you call that surviving. It's not the same as it was. Not nearly. >but that's more because most people who use them are looking to trade CP or scam people Well of course. They heard a legend that it was the place for that sort of stuff. >>10098 >its own culture is created and regulated in the process. Yeah, you have to be really careful when it comes to how what you do affects your culture. If you have an IQ test before you can join you will inevitably end up with a culture of elitism. >If things go well, it may even suddenly be the center of gravity This is probably really bad. If you can weather it then it's some sort of holy grail but the odds are you can't and you get an eternal september, like what happen with 4chan after the exploding van. >>10108 >Tsukichan is actually an excellent template Some aspects of it are. The aesthetics were amazing, the sign up bit was great. Some of it was a bit cultish for my tastes such as the armageddon mythos, or even just a mythos at all but it's unarguably effective community building. >which is at the same time toxic to everyone else. This is not where you want to be. Something that's toxic is by its nature a curiosity and as you say this wasn't good for Tsuki. Boring to everyone else is better, though anything that's just mildly unappealing works to. You want people to just pass you over, not be so repelled they write a news article about you. Tsuki noticed this later on and started to back-pedal on the shocking aspects. And this illustrates one of the core aspects of all this. Anything that you do is now part of your culture. The suicide cult aspect generated a ton of publicity and prevented the eternal september by being so unappealing but they paid for it. They did not last long at all. If you want to last you usually have to take it slower. It's all depends on what culture you want for your community though. We do alright by being small but open. We're very welcoming to newcomers but we also don't advertise.

>>10144 >Something that's toxic is by its nature a curiosity and as you say this wasn't good for Tsuki This is the bit I'm really interested in talking about. Attracting the right people isn't so hard, and we have good models for doing so successfully. The problem is deterring unwanted visitors. The obvious choices I'm seeing right now are: >1. make it boring to outsiders + easiest to do, especially if the group shares niche hobby that most people don't find interesting + results in a relatively productive and focused community, with plenty of on-topic discussion - much more difficult for a general forum, since you can't rely on the learning curve to keep people out - harder to attract the right kinds of people. dry and technical can work, but nobody wants their forum to be truly boring. >2. make it toxic (i.e. scary/unwelcoming/morally repugnant/etc.) to outsiders + can be really exciting. a community that's a little rough around the edges is generally more fun to be a part of than one that's too sanitized. maybe this is only my personal taste. + it's easier to attract like minded people, because the perceived danger and hostility can be attractive if executed well. - it's easier to attract the wrong kinds of people... for the above reason, and also for the reasons you already eloquently described in your post - witch hunts, purity tests, obsessive introspection, micromanaging of the group identity, "go back to reddit". this is the real killer. the group ends up talking more about their own self-image and bitching about outsiders than doing anything productive. i'd be very interested in any ideas you all have to combat this. >3. make it obscure (difficult to find/difficult to use/migratory/etc.) + moderation is easy because the community is small + easy to assimilate outsiders because they come as a trickle - hard for desirable members to find - gets boring talking to the same people all the time - it's game over if it ever blows up.. the regulars pretty much have no choice but to pack up and form a new obscure community I think all of these options are workable if we figure out ways to mitigate their faults. (3) probably makes the least compromises, but i think we could stand to put more hooks out there to draw in new members. someone else pointed out that it's really hard to find communities in an organic way these days. i'm not that old, but i vividly remember a time when i used to just plug random words into a search engine and discover all kinds of cool niche forums and personal websites. that's so much harder to do now for numerous reasons. i don't think we've adapted well to this change, and I would really like to discuss possible methods to fix it going forward. i'm going to give it some more thought, but i initially think building up a better connected social graph plays a big part. be more outgoing with people online, and don't try to hide your power level so much. link other lainons on your neocities pages. share interesting communities you find with small, trusted groups. introduce your online friends to eachother (maybe it's just me, but i almost never see people doing this).

>>10158 >1 Topic quality appears to be inversely correlated with the rate of posting. You could probably cite (how the relevance of replies to a given topic tends to decrease with every post, that it's unlikely that a large volume of new threads would be generated by a community interested in post quality, that any technical knowledge floors to discussion get shifted down as the audience grows as a means of accommodation, and whatever other ways of explaining post quality in terms of number of posters,) and a mostly correct answer would lie somewhere between every explanation. That is to say that a diminished number of posts results in only more heavily invested anons posting, leading to more compelling content. This is the polar opposite of "boring," at least in my own personal estimate. Granted, there are other metrics for boredom. A slow forum would certainly be considered boring to most other people. In that regard, a site like 4chan would be exciting because of the sheer volume of posts, but would be boring to me, as the vast majority of posts are essentially hundreds of rotten banana peels in a dumpster. >2 Toxic lacks any practical specificity, similar to the word "racist." I would suggest you let your extra descriptions do 100% of the work since they end up doing that anyway. Shocking content acts as a crude filter, which is mostly useful but has the downside of becoming an unnecessary constant as well as a slippery slope to outright illegal content. The only actual merit to gore, excessive racial slurs, etc. is that it's extremely fast. Someone doesn't want to see it? Great, you've instantly made that person exit your thread, board, or possibly the whole site. This tactic can and has worked extremely well in the past but for Lainchan it seems like a very poor idea. The closest thing this site has is the drugs board, which oddly enough is more of a deterrent for me than hard gore and Nazi propaganda. >3 If I had to guess at one of the many reasons that small communities are less accessible in such an easy fashion, it's probably because they've been consolidated into a large soykafheap like Reddit, losing part of their identity in the process. There's also the obvious search engine bias (certain chans not showing up on Google and such). Whether that is because of the search engine provider or an intentional move by the chan is likely case-by-case (but if you had a few solid examples of this I think I could form a much more grounded opinion on it). As is, the post frequency and quality on this site is sufficient for me to consider it my preferred chan for now. It isn't the one that I lurk the most simply because it doesn't take me very long to get up to speed on all the new threads, but that's more an issue of being willing to waste an excessive amount of time looking for dumb soykaf to read on other chans. Weighing your propositions, I would consider the third to be the most fitting and reasonable in this particular situation.

>>10159 >more heavily invested anons posting, leading to more compelling content i agree to an extent, but i do think the compromise to this approach is narrowing of the conversation topics. if you have to be a good programmer to participate meaningfully, then it follows that most members aren't going to have much insight in other areas. i don't mean to imply lainchan is like this, but think about the "community" on stackoverflow or what have you. >Toxic lacks any practical specificity, you're absolutely right, and i did hesitate to use that word. i just couldn't think of a better umbrella term. maybe "caustic"? i agree with your criticisms, but the only reason i keep bringing this option up is because i feel like it has the most potential if executed *perfectly*. it has to be a hyper-targeted "stick" to complement the "carrot" that will draw in the right kinds of people. gore and pedo soykaf isn't going to cut it because then you're going to get edgelords and pedos in addition to people who are just willing to put up with that kind of stuff. i won't belabor this point though. it's pretty much useless in any practical sense... more of a description than a suggestion. i need to give it more thought. >the post frequency and quality on this site is sufficient for me to consider it my preferred chan for now. yeah i'm not trying to soykaf talk lainchan. more, i'm trying to figure out how to create more lainchans.. and to make sure that lainchan can effectively resist the external influences that kill other small imageboards. imagine a site for people who are as into experimental music, or postmodern art, or whatever, as people here are into computer science. i've been parts of communites like that, but they're on discord and facebook... which i would obviously like to change. also i just think this subject is interesting to talk about. >Weighing your propositions, I would consider the third to be the most fitting and reasonable in this particular situation. i agree, but do you have any thoughts on the social aspects i mentioned? this is a nice site and everything, but i think as a community we would be more resilient if lainchan itself wasn't such a central node. i should really just speak for myself, but i've found it difficult to connect with people on an individual level here. being so privacy focused, it seems like people keep even their pseudonyms pretty close to their chests. maybe i'll try to revive the xmpp thread if it's still around... hmm

>>10158 The community at lobste.rs always kind of impressed me; they match points 1 and 3 on your list pretty well. Very little brewing soykaf, lots of focused technical discussion, open-mindedness and a willingness to listen to others. Unfortunately it doesn't allow anonymity by design; it's invite only, which seems to be a form of quality control. I've often wondered about how to build an anonymous community with that level of quality. To be clear I'm not a member there, I just get some tech news from there. But the comments are interesting to read and usually pretty cancer-free.

>>10160 >toxicity and company Word economy is usually a huge concern for me when I'm writing fiction, poetry, or some other related brain-trip trash. However, for forum posts or other online discussions, why not use multiple words to say exactly what you mean when you want to say something with the impact of "toxic" and an intended meaning more in the ballpark of "intentionally uncomfortable, sometimes to an aggressive degree?" The way I rationalize this is as follows: if someone is actually reading your post, a few extra clarifications won't destroy their attention. If they throw their hands up and go "tl;dr," your diction didn't matter to them anyway. Always cater to someone who is sharing mutual respect, which would be the person reading your whole post. >the individual Something that has always been appealing to me about digital communication (like this) is that it has the potential to be pure discussion, almost to a chemically distilled extent. The only cues you pick up from the other person are in the way they present their words. Their race, sex, age, economic status, religion and so on could potentially become topics for a conversation, however you would have no way to confirm any of that information, visually or otherwise, except for what they specifically tell you. This directly contrasts with our interactions under more informed circumstances, such as when we have access to the individual's voice, image, or are interacting in person. Those circumstances inherently contain factors which would sway our interpretation of the other person's message. In a society where suffocating degrees of race and gender politics are shoved in my face 24/7 (to the point I sometimes want to loudly call certain people libtards and nigs without presenting a legitimate counter, thus lending their argument, whatever it is, some semblance of reason) it's extremely refreshing that I can have the opportunity to talk with those people, and the antithesis of those people, without either of us even having to bother putting aside differences we think might just potentially hamper proceedings. You give me an idea, I give you an idea. We compare ideas and maybe our opinions change because of it. There's a wonderful simplicity to that mode of communication and if I had to let go of it, if I was forced to only talk through social media on the internet, I'd rather just be alone during that time. There is absolutely merit in becoming more familiar with some anons, perhaps to the point of knowing information such as their country of origin and so on. However, the number of people I know like this is very small. I tend to hop around sites every few years and never really get established in any particular knit group. There are many things I could potentially see myself sinking time into, like what if I became a known member of a specific 3D modelling forum? What if I was a known regular in a certain game in a certain server region? These kinds of virtual appearances might resemble who I am in part quite well, but there is always a large piece missing; I'll never take the time to fully reveal myself to a certain community, nor would I want to. It takes a lot of effort to maintain meaningful contact with many people (or really, just a few is hard enough) so perhaps I wouldn't want to overstate how much time I'm willing to allocate towards that end. As I'd imagine most Lainons are, I have many interests, which can easily sink time if I let them. If that is a given, I could conclude that the unfortunately impersonal modes of communication used on chans happen to have some very specific benefits in terms of efficiency, which when you think about it are probably why can talk on these sites so much more freely in comparison to much more image-based venues. In conclusion, I would argue that the additional privacy and open discussion on sites such as Lainchan are worth their potential detriments to the point that measures should be taken to ensure that a balance like the one currently evident on the site is kept.

>>10162 i like your points, but i'm going to bed soon so i'm just going to respond to this bit: >In conclusion, I would argue that the additional privacy and open discussion on sites such as Lainchan are worth their potential detriments to the point that measures should be taken to ensure that a balance like the one currently evident on the site is kept. I'm talking about online acquaintances rather then deep friendship. It's not that I think every site should have a social board and an irc server. I just like being able to add people on xmpp or whatever and chat with them occasionally. The flip side is that personal conversation, even if it's unfamiliar (like talking to a stranger at a bar), allows you to share things in a more specific way. I find all kinds of cool soykaf online that I don't post on here because it's not worth wasting people's time with a new thread, or it won't appeal to the board in general. But I do send it to various online acquaintances if I think it's something they would be into. And they do the same for me. Then there's the networking aspect, which is perhaps more important than sharing music or software or whatever. In that alt-chan thread, there were a few people who (for good reason) didn't want to just post their favorite communities on a public forum. Personal connections are essential for the kind of virtual word-of-mouth that keep communities like this alive. I'd never wage slave lainchan in mixed company, but I've linked a few people in private because they seemed like they would fit in. I guess my point is that while I would never want people to start using pseudonyms/tripcodes on here, the compromise is that there isn't currently a great way to continue a conversation privately. You either have to post your contact info in the thread or say "hey, jump on irc". I don't think this is a technical problem... the semi-forced anonymity is the biggest reason that I prefer chans to traditional forums. You know, maybe this problem is just me projecting. I'm just going to try harder to meet more anons and see where it takes me.

>>10161 Man, I'm so sick and tired of hearing these same comments from past 2 or 3 years. Instead of building a new community, why not focus on improving the quality and quantity of given boards which we visit frequently. Also, we don't have the luxury to choose, only a handful of imageboards are left on our sleeves. Why is it so hard to grasp the idea that things will never be the same again. I agree with >>10160, Lainon. We're so privacy focused that we don't even realize, that it's all meaningless if it doesn't produce anything productive or fruitful. Over the years imageboards have become a cesspool of loners who can't connect to society(more like a hiding place). Imo, these are the very good points >>10158 anon pointed: >link other lainons on your neocities pages >share interesting communities you find with small, trusted groups >introduce your online friends to eachother My point is we're here to learn, share our knowledge and ideas. Accept and throw quality criticisms, and most important we're here to build a good community of anons.

Actually, I think Lainchan is already a superior website to 4chan, posts are more thoughtful and of a higher quality, but not without abit of humour here and there

>>10167 That's a pretty low bar. It's not hard to be better that 4chan.

>>10171 I mean, while retaining the imageboard format, getchan is pretty comfy too (although it's dead)

>>10097 any thought on this?

Just throwing my 2c in. Been online since '91 I think it all really went downhill when monetization took hold of the internet. Creativity has been stifled. Humor suppressed. Entitlement to outrage & offense. Designs are all homogenized. Psychologists could probably articulate why this is happening. I really don't like it. Depresses me. Will be a tipping point when I give up. End up moving to the outskirts of the Simpson desert with my solar panels & caravan.

>>10097 >>10290 I've been looking for good darknet communities for a few years now. I kinda missed the boat because I started going deeper into it just before the freedomhost takedown. First off, I agree with you that tor and especially i2p represent the next logical step for "alternative" online culture. More limited friend to friend networks (retroshare, etc.) are neat, but I can't see them being used for much beyond niche chat groups and filesharing. >Freenet, IPFS Cool in theory. If I knew anyone that used them, I'd probably give them a shot (I have freenet installed and ready to go, just never got into it). That being said, my last point is relevant here. I2P is a more logical progression. >zeronet I get the distinct impression that I'm using it wrong. All the zeronet project's sites are both dead and a UI nightmare. If there's good soykaf on zeronet I have no clue how to find it. >nntpchan Pic related. >But the major problem is how we bootstrap a new community. Is the problem bootstrapping a community, or finding existing communities? Genuine question. I obviously haven't been able to find any compelling groups, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. >For example, is there something we can do to push NNTPchan forward? There's a lot to this idea, and it deserves careful consideration. On one hand, it makes sense to start out by supporting what is probably the biggest and most public darknet community. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember NNTPchan being a bit like 8chan in the sense that anyone can make a board. Starting a lain board on there seems like a reasonable idea. On the other hand, we could start our own spinoff board (or some other kind of spinoff service). It does seem like lainchan will eventually end up on the darknet if we stay around for long enough. Maybe it makes sense to start moving in that direction soon. This is of course the riskier option, and even with a firm consensus I would still want to talk about ways to prevent fracturing of our community. Even so, I see some potential for growth there. If we could run one of the few places on I2P that isn't skiddy pedo hell, that would be attractive to plenty of people without even needing to advertise it. FWIW I think the first option makes more sense right now. If there's any interest, maybe we should talk about how an NNTPchan colony could work.

>>10291 I think the idea of "creator/follower" relationships vs. "peer/peer" relationships is useful here. I'm pretty sure I talked about this in another thread, but I'll repeat some of it here. It's hard to monetize chat rooms and forums. You can do the classic stuff like banner ads but those don't work any more. Product placement is one of the few advertising techniques that still works on gen Z. Thus, It helps immensely to have a bunch of mini celebrities to help you sell your products. As a result, the "asymmetric" social dynamic has become dominant. (One huge exception is facebook. Reddit is also an exception, but it is clearly somewhat of a relic from the dotcom era early social internet.) If monetization is one side of the coin, this is the other. The potential for outrageous popularity and fame suggested by "creator/follower" socialization is a huge part of the appeal. Not to put too fine a point on it, but think about the people you know who cared a lot about popularity when you were in school. Now imagine these same people, except now that they're online their potential for fame just got bumped up several orders of magnitude. It's intoxicating to them. The follower is a bit harder to characterize, especially since creators and followers are just two roles that typically exist, with varying emphasis, within the the same person. I think it has to do with wanting to socialize passively. Most humans need social attention. Being a follower simulates this without any effort on their part. You really can go quite deep with this. I suspect someone smarter than me could connect the social creator to the deification of the artist/commodification of art in western culture.

>>10293 >Is the problem bootstrapping a community, or finding existing communities? Bootstrapping. Someone starts a board. A few people post. Nobody responds. You find it. There is nothing there. You keep moving. Everybody does the same. If you want to start a community you need to generate fake content to keep people engaged until there are enough real users to sustain the community. That's exactly what reddit did in the beginning. >It does seem like lainchan will eventually end up on the darknet if we stay around for long enough Why? The darknet only really exists for things that are too illicit to host in the clear. What advantage do you think there is to taking Lainchan to the darknet? >If we could run one of the few places on I2P that isn't skiddy pedo hell Skeptical. I think i2p has done a good job of managing their moral reputation and making it hard to find bad things.

>>10308 Lainchan is honestly too niche, too obscure to be found by cancer, but not too obscure that it ends up dead

>>10308 >If you want to start a community you need to generate fake content to keep people engaged until there are enough real users to sustain the community. Oh, that's what you meant. I thought you were talking about starting new communities vs. revitalizing existing ones. >Why? The darknet only really exists for things that are too illicit to host in the clear. i guess that's how most people use it, but the fundamental purpose of the darknet is anonymity. i think many people here, myself included, value anonymity for its own sake. >I think i2p has done a good job of managing their moral reputation and making it hard to find bad things. Yeah? I've only ever used i2p for drugs so I wouldn't know. I'm just basing this off my experience of tor imageboards.

>>10318 >i think many people here, myself included, value anonymity for its own sake. That's not a reason to move Lainchan to the darknet and lose like 95% of posters. *Hosting* on the darknet is about the anonymity of the hoster. As long as Lainchan continues to allow posting through Tor then you don't have a problem. >Yeah? I've only ever used i2p for drugs so I wouldn't know. I'm just basing this off my experience of tor imageboards. Well obviously Tor was so infested with that soykaf from 2010-2014 they became the target of Anonymous and then massive international law enforcement operations followed. i2p is not Tor though.

>>10123 Do you mean this one

>>10335 >That's not a reason to move Lainchan to the darknet and lose like 95% of posters Of course. I should have clarified that I wasn't advocating for that. I was just making a prediction and suggesting that we might want to think about establishing some kind of darknet presence, since a lot of people in this thread seem to agree that the darknet is becoming a frontier in some sense. >i2p is not Tor though. Good to know. Are there any good directories of eepsites to check out?

Does Lainchan already have an onion address?

>>10108 >too much of a public curiosity >>10144 >but they paid for it. They did not last long at all Care to clarify? They're still going strong IMO.

It's pretty crazy we haven't provided ourselves with a lainchan.onion yet. As an option, at the very least. I2P is cool to but getting an onion server first would be more pragmatic.

>>10367 I thought so.. but now I don't see it. Maybe I'm just being retarded. >>10377 Agree.

>>10308 >The darknet only really exists for things that are too illicit to host in the clear. >>10318 >i guess that's how most people use it, but the fundamental purpose of the darknet is anonymity. i think many people here, myself included, value anonymity for its own sake. The whole purpose of Tor and i2p is end-to-end encrypted, anonymous and decentralized communication (I hate I have to emphasis this fact on a Lainchan, a cyberpunk imageboard). You should know, many developers of cryptography and anonymous technology, are literally, directly influenced by cyberpunk works, and it is almost the entire reason it has been developed (another reason is the upcoming Big Brother). For your reference, this piece is written in 1993. Cyphernomicon 4.8.1 + Motivations for Cypherpunks - Privacy. If maintaining privacy is the main goal, there's not much more to say. Keep a low profile, protect data, avoid giving out personal information, limit the number of bank loans and credit applications, pay cash often, etc. - Privacy in activism. + New Structures. Using cryptographic constructs to build new political, economic, and even social structures. - Political: Voting, polling, information access, whistleblowing - Economic: Free markets, information markets, increased liquidity, black markets - Social: Cyberspatial communities, True Names Cyphernomicon 8.6.5 "The more controversial vision associated with anonymous remailers is expressed in such science fiction stories as "True Names", by Vernor Vinge, or "Ender's Game", by Orson Scott Card. These depict worlds in which computer networks are in widespread use, but in which many people choose to participate through pseudonyms. In this way they can make unpopular arguments or participate in frowned-upon transactions without their activities being linked to their true identities. It also allows people to develop reputations based on the quality of their ideas, rather than their job, wealth, age, or status." [Hal Finney, 1993-02-23] After Silk Road has been busted, the media started the meme about the "darknet" as a underworld where 95% of the information, pedos, druglords, murders-for-hire, and all the crazy things gather, which completely missed the point. Then when people started believing this soykaf, we definitely have a big problem now.

>>10367 >Does Lainchan already have an onion address? Bleep. Bloop. Hello again, lainons. I am the maintainer of the unofficial Lainchan i2p bridge. Perhaps some people may remember me? The landing page was broken for a long time, but the actual bridge on port 443 has been running consistently. It has been fixed. It can be accessed via >http://7rov2od4lmtfswthoy7tziiuixupugkrexpdvyso5yj5pgicxvga.b32.i2p/ and follow the instructions. But we do have problems. Now there are too many resources linked directly to "lainchan.org", as a TCP proxy I cannot rewrite encrypted traffic, I have to intercept the traffic and do MITM at this point. But we still have another issue, lainchan.org now loads 50+ JavaScript and CSS resources, severely affects performance. It should be merged into a single file, and I can do nothing about it.

>>10385 Dedicated users of the i2p bridge can do the following: >save the static CSS, JS and images on computer >use redirector extension to rewrite requests for the static content to own computer >use redirector extension to rewrite all other requests for lainchan.org to the i2p bridge

>>10386 Sounds like a good idea. BTW, does vichan provide a useful API for 3rd-party readers? I think so but personally I've never tried. If it's usable on lainchan.org, i2p bridge users may read lainchan.org in a client, like Emacs, and have a faster experience.

>>10387 apologies if these links don't work but you get the idea >>>/Ω/catalog.json >>>/Ω/res/10088.json

>>10382 >The whole purpose of Tor and i2p is end-to-end encrypted, anonymous and decentralized communication (I hate I have to emphasis this fact on a Lainchan, a cyberpunk imageboard) Tor is not decentralized. And websites hosted through i2p are still websites. (I hate I have to emphasis this fact to an edgy teenager who thinks he's too cyberpunk for us) >the media started the meme about the "darknet" as a underworld where 95% of the information, pedos, druglords, murders-for-hire, 95% of it is botnet c&c. The rest is porn and drugs. It's not a meme. >>10318 >i guess that's how most people use it, but the fundamental purpose of the darknet is anonymity. i think many people here, myself included, value anonymity for its own sake. Lainchan doesn't need an onion address for you to get anonymity through Tor. The only advantage to a Lainchan onion is anonymity for appleman (who has no reason to give a soykaf) and removing the dependency on ssl for encryption which doesn't matter because everything on this site is public anyway.

>>10139 ssh into bit@whisper.onthewifi.com or einchan@einchan.god.jp. Whisperchan is probably the better of the two.

>>10409 This, whisperchan is fuarrrking nisu, it's just sadly, a bit dead. Would be great to have some new members.

>>10409 Do you guys know any ssh clients that work on weak internet and don't require their own dedicated server like mosh. Also, there's so-called local line editing which is really nice, doesn't leak your keystrokes to a server and makes input more responsive, but still absent in default openssh. >>10385 >50+ JavaScript and CSS resources rrrrrreeeeeeee web-boards were a mistake

>>10409 Wait do people still post on those? Warms my damn heart.

>>10413 Of course we do. These are sweet homes

>>10411 Tramp on emacs does local line editing. Not sure how good it is on weak internet, but I found it much better than ssh when I had a lot of lag with the server.

>>10408 >Tor is not decentralized. To make it clear, Tor as a consensus system, ofc, is not decentralized, the "truth" of the current network status is voted by authority servers. What I meant is that Tor enables peer-to-peer communication when it's not possible otherwise, in this sense Tor enables decentralized and possibly communication by breaking the server/client barrier (IPv6 did promised to do so, however...). One example is Ricochet, another example is OnionShare.

>>10408 >Lainchan doesn't need an onion address for you to get anonymity through Tor. I know that. See >>10353 responding to someone who already said the exact same thing. The thread is about the sociological development of "our" corner of the internet. I'm predicting that the darknet will end up playing a major role in this. If that sounds like a reasonable prediction, then it makes sense to begin preparing for it. Not necessarily in a tangible sense... just start thinking about it. Lay the groundwork. We still have time. I just think that when you start to see a cultural shift on the horizon, the best thing you can do is get yourself into a good position for it. ...or maybe I'm just being crazy.

>>10408 >Lainchan doesn't need an onion address for you to get anonymity through Tor But an onion address provides faster access. It also mitigates the problem of someone on Tor getting derezzed and making his exit node IP unavailable for other users. >SSL doesn't matter because everything on this site is public anyway This is bullsh​it. You haven't taken into account that users send data TO the site as well, and if this data is visible they could be deanonymized easily by anyone with a packet sniffer. Moar encryption == gud for other reasons as well -- it makes encryption less of a red flag to (((people))) who want to steal anyone's data if everyone's communications, even the unimportant ones, are encrypted.

>>10438 Not only were you wrong but you were also being a cunt. No one cares what you now want us to think you meant. >>10444 >But an onion address provides faster access. No it doesn't. Onion sites are slower because you need to go through 6-7 hops instead of only 3. >This is bullsh​it. You haven't taken into account that users send data TO the site as well, and if this data is visible they could be deanonymized easily by anyone with a packet sniffer. Your IP packets have the source (you) and destination (Lainchan) address right in the header. If you're making a direct connection then a mitm knows what you post regardless of ssl. Even on a fast site like 4chan I'm sure an attacker can line up the timestamps to figure out what you just posted. Anyway you took this quote out of context. The point was I don't see any advantage to a .onion's end to end encryption over ssl for a 100% public site like this.

>>10451 >Onion sites are slower because you need to go through 6-7 hops instead of only 3. Apologies. I thought this wasn't the case; you are right. >Your IP packets have the source (you) and destination (Lainchan) address right in the header. If you're making a direct connection then a mitm knows what you post regardless of ssl. This can easily be worked around. You can just make some random bogus requests to Lainchan every few minutes, and since the request type and contents aren't visible, attackers don't know whether a particular post was yours or someone else's. The fact is that encryption provides protection to those who take extra precautions to preserve their anonymity. >The point was I don't see any advantage to a .onion's end to end encryption over ssl for a 100% public site like this. SSL security depends on the certificate authorities. Anyone who gained control over the CAs could pretend to be any random SSL service. This probably wouldn't be hard to do, since there are thousands of valid CAs, many of which are in turd world countries where even government officials are susceptible to bribery. With Tor, once the correct onion address is distributed to users, it's more or less un-spoofable. Of course, there are practical issues such as confirming the validity of the onion address, but again, people who cared about the authenticity of the remote service could work around that fairly easily.

>>10451 Onion services can be configured to be non-anonymous so that only the client accessing the onion service is anonymous. There would be far fewer than 6-7 hops and traffic would not be going through congested exit nodes.

>>10461 By the way it's TLS now SSL is ancient. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_Layer_Security

>>10461 >You can just make some random bogus requests to Lainchan every few minutes, and since the request type and contents aren't visible, attackers don't know whether a particular post was yours or someone else's. Did you understand what I said? A mitm with a packet capture can line up the size and timestamps of encrypted packets with post timestamps on the website to guess what you posted. If that is something which concerns you then use Tor. Anonymity is not the job of ssl. https://www.ghacks.net/2012/02/15/ssl-traffic-analysis-reveals-what-you-are-looking-at-on-google-maps/ >SSL security depends on the certificate authorities. Yes exactly. I wouldn't say easy but it is possible. I agree with you that ssl should be the default for everything even trivial stuff. But if someone does go through the trouble of subverting the pki, what value are they going to get from decrypting lainchan traffic? Is that risk worth moving to a hidden service?

>>10385 >lainchan.org now loads 50+ JavaScript and CSS resources, severely affects performance This may be a stupid thing to say (I don't know the details of how your bridge works), but would caching the CSS/js resources and serving them directly from your server help with this, since you're already doing a MITM anyway? >>10476 >Is that risk worth moving to a hidden service? Not him, but I don't think so. Still, is there any compelling reason *not* to set up a .onion endpoint along side the current option? (Genuine question, I've never admined an imageboard so I wouldn't really know.) Seems like avoiding congested potentially compromised exit nodes would be reason enough, provided there are no glaring compromises I'm missing. Either way, maybe we should take this discussion to /q/, since we're talking more about the technical details of spinning up a tor endpoint rather than the cultural implications of darknet communities.

>>10473 It's an Ecmascript thing where everyone still calls it Javascript but everyone knows people are talking about Ecmascript when they say that. Even the non-techies at work know it's TLS but still call it SSL. It'll probably be another 5-10 years before people start using the right name.

>>10473 >>10481 Isn't there a rule about how pointing out trivial issues like this adds nothing to the discussion and is considered a dick move by hacker communities?

Current state of the internet: Going to soykaf. EU is about to force providers to setup mandatory upload filters for copyright protection.(article 13, decided jun 20) If this passes derivate content will go up in flames because anything looking like a copy is a target. Youtube coudln't get it right in a decade. Now way smaller companies will get it right. Not to mention that you can't even get easily permission from rightholders for stuff like reviews or taking apart someone else "news" to show how false they are. This will turn the Internet for EU into a bastartized version of TV.

>>10451 >Onion sites are slower because you need to go through 6-7 hops instead of only 3. Not necessarily. For public servers, all you need is activating Single Onion Service since Tor 0.2.9.8. It's designed for public servers when protecting the location has no benefits. If Single Onion Service is activated by... HiddenServiceSingleHopMode 1 The 3-hop server circuit is removed, left only 3 hops from the client, a win-win, you are doing a public good by stopping putting traffic on Exit nodes (they are scarce resources), while protecting yourself with end-to-end encryption at the same time. The implementation is still a bit buggy and has some more things to be done, especially single-stack IPv6 is completely broken. But otherwise, it's now in a usable shape. In fact facebookcorewwwi.onion is single-hop.

>>10480 >I don't know the details of how your bridge works Currently, without MITM, when a i2p connection is received, a new TCP connection to lainchan.org is opened, and the entire stream from i2p is forwarded, by HAProxy. >would caching the CSS/js resources and serving them directly from your server help with this, since you're already doing a MITM anyway? This is the primary reason why MITM is needed. Otherwise it's not possible to cache anything. I hasn't started the MITM yet, because I was told a dedicated i2p user could just use the API instead. but if I finally decided, all static resources will be cached by a reverse-proxy.

>>10493 >EU is about to force providers to setup mandatory upload filters for copyright protection. Yep. Most people are distracted by the net-neutrality bill of the US or the GDPR regulation of the EU (both of them may be in fact a helpful progression), while ignoring the new EU copyright reform completely. It's basically the European version of SOPA/PIPA, this soykaf just never dies. Japan is doing something similar.

>>10481 >Even the non-techies at work know it's TLS but still call it SSL There is another minority position in the community which believes TLSv1 compared to SSLv3 breaks backward compatibility to solve security issues, but TLSv1 in itself does not introduce anything new. So occasionally you may see some security people ironically refer TLSv1 as SSLv3.1. In the same way, SSLv3.4 is coming! >It's an Ecmascript thing where everyone still calls it Javascript To me there is a difference. ECMAScript is what the programming language supposed to be, while JavaScript is what every crappy web browsers implemented. >>10488 >Isn't there a rule about how pointing out trivial issues like this adds nothing to the discussion and is considered a dick move by hacker communities? Yes, it is. Let's stop.

>>10099 >But you will soon discover Reddit was fundamentally HackerNews grouped in different topics, minus its discussion. It's good for discovering some links, but as forums in many aspects it's pretty bad... No one talks in small boards, no good talks in large boards, terrible. And the new frontend design is literally soykaf! >If you get tired of the censorship and political bias on Hacker News then checkout lobste.rs it's smaller but high quality. So both Reddit and Hacker News come from a very 2000's mindset that the problem with communities is off topic comments. So goes the theory that if people were allowed to vote on what content was on topic, the constant angry thread wars about things being off topic would cease. A whole wave of "reputation" systems was working it's way through the internet at the time. Most of which, including Reddit and Hackernews, have only demonstrated the flawed thinking of the concept. Additionally, the two sites championed "nested" comments which were intended to counteract the same "off topic" behavior. These also failed to work, and have been shown again and again to *encourage* thread derailment. The cancer in reddit/hn is a product of the poor "social engineering" experiments baked into their design as a site. It became a pissing contest and echo chamber once they gave people points, and the ability to out shout one another. Such experiments are worthwhile, but they were carried with such inflexible, and hamfisted ineptitude, you have to wonder whether the founders were willing to admit the systems failed to achieve the original goals. Neither site is a failure, but they failed to address poor quality discourse. As for hacker news being Paul Graham's little echo chamber. That's by design too, because the site's sole real purpose is to promote his start ups.

>>10715 I was gonna polite sage, but in a way, this is related to the decline of the Internet. I'm gonna tread carefully with how I word this because otherwise, it's gonna sound like I'm complaining about another imageboard. But I know that it's a common thing in 8chan boards for some new poster to say something and then that poor sucker gets a dogpiling because he "types like a redditor" and then disregard what was said because "Reddit spacing". I tend to break up my walls of text myself too, but the way imageboards show text they end up looking you are just writing a few lines and then spamming that enter key. The reactions to "Reddit spacing" makes me type totally differently from here and other imageboards just to avoid derailing the thread, Personally, the tribalism that has allowed for terms like "angry anime avatars" or "plebbitors" annoys me even though that is human nature. It makes public spaces pretty annoying to hang at.

>>10409 Einchan is now at einchan@ein.blue thanks to some issues with freeDNS. Whisperchan is still at the same place though and it's always nice to see some posters on both of them. If you haven't given them a look check them out, they're very nice places in contrast to a lot of the internet today. There are some other command line communities around if you're willing to look.

>>10093 freenet is very cyberpunk

This thread showed me Ein and whisper. Are there any other textboards people can go to? I don't really need images and it would be even nicer if it was accessible via shell.

Honestly, why not try to find a like-minded person to talk to? Wouldn't that be enough? It's certainly easier than trying to find a community who's just corrupting itself with time. I feel pretty depressed about the whole thing, sometimes I've tried to talk with people, but usually it didn't really work out. I really wish I could find a like-minded person, but I'm usually too insane I fear. Maybe it was a dumb idea, I've tried to "connect with people." Communities are always doomed for failure sooner or later. It just takes one bad person.... Communities depends on high-valuable people who know their stuff and make interesting things happen in that community.

>>11953 > Honestly, why not try to find a like-minded person to talk to? If that were possible I wouldn't need to be here.

>>11954 Why isn't it possible for you? What's hindering you? I'm interested. For me, I guess I expect too much of a friend. Usually friendships aren't that deep, but I wish they were. I often said in the past they should be "like in animes."

>>11956 I've always thought this too. I want my friendships to be like in my animes. I treat them that way but sometimes I get taken advantage of and recoil.

>>11957 Well, I'm the guy that created the thread: https://lainchan.org/hum/res/2762.html I really don't want to mention it everywhere, it seems kinda pretentious. But what other options do I have? It feels like there's something fundamentally wrong with me. I always thought that maybe tulpas would be able to fulfill my wish, but I really want to have a human friend and not a tulpa. I remembered once still how my friend who had a tulpa livestreamed a game (Monkey's Island), it was honestly really comfy to watch and I really had a lot of fun with him, but he ghosted me since then. It was something that I didn't think would cause him so much grief. In my view it wasn't something major. Maybe he was also a bit young and maybe he would think differently in 5 years, but I really like how different he was from most people. If you want to try then you can send me an email. Just look at the other thread, there's my email.

>>11956 Nearly everyone I knew here moved away and the rest of the people I care about live in a country I can never visit again. They aren't internet types either but I sometimes get mail (as in dead tree layers with ink on them, an old tradition from the forgotten times). I can't do any of the old stuff I used to do because on the one hand it bores me and on the other, I hate being the oldest person in the room when I don't recognize most of the faces. It feels like being the creepy guy in the van on the edge of the school playground. I don't develop new interests due to anhedonia (google it) and I can't access medical help. No one cares about being friends with someone who used to be interesting and went traveling but is now pathetic.

>>11959 PS: just to clarify, this was the Lain that question was directly posed to (>>11956) >>11957 ...this Lain is someone else. Not that it matters I guess.

>>11959 What would you like to talk about? What are your interested? It feels like I'm running in circles, never moving forward. I wouldn't mind talking with you if we had some sort of similar interests, that is if you want to. Really, I just want a comfy friend. But often it takes dedication and most people are interested in that. They just want someone for a quick talk. I want something that we can share our experiences with, like with a IM (example: XMPP). The guy I talked about always had something to share. Wish I could get him back sometimes. I might also be a bit too clingy, I wish I could find someone who really likes that and wouldn't mind it....

>>11961 Ok I remember you from that other thread. Here's the thing... I'm broke and can't afford internet. Even the laptops I inherited all self destructed so all I have to go online with is a phone and public wifi which is at least ten minutes from home. So I can't really be available that way. Sorry.

>>11962 I see. You can still write me occasionally emails, if you want to. I'll respond to them then. Might make you feel better. But you're probably right if you don't have stable internet. If your situation improves or you feel that you're up for it then just tell me, you know where you can reach me!

I'm really sad that reddit killed most forums.

Remember that you, lainon, can have a great impact on this site. You can create the internet that you long for if you post the content that you want see and spread the culture you want to experience.

>>11979 ^^,hugs^^,

Hey lainons I read quite a few books, and studies on group psychology since the last thread, this is my attempt to compress the information into a reasonable format: >Understanding Group actions are dictated by sentiments forged by group norms. Neither groups nor the member of groups operate rationally. All thought takes on the form of religious sentiment in groups. Groups are incapable of creative or intelligent tasks. Ideas must be radically simplified before a group is capable of taking grasp of them. This leads to the development of turns of phrase and images which replace the nuance of original ideas. Group norms are products of previous group norms and group experiences. A destabilising group experience can call into question previously established group norms and lead to the development of new group norms at whatever scope the experience occurred at. The scope of the group norm to apply is derived from the level of accountability of members of the group for their actions. The more anonymous members of a group are the more they are able to diverge from the established broader social norms. When groups first establish new norms in reaction to a event for which no norm has been established before, they often follow the first suggestion. This environment creates what appears to be a contagion of ideas and actions which spreads over the group from the origin. Individuals are largely products of the various group norms established in them. Even once a individual has long sense left a group the sentiments established by the group norms will remain within the individual. Democratic style leadership is more productive than authoritarian leadership or no leadership at all. Leaders of groups are merely a reflection of group norms rather than a director. The truth is not a intuitive notion that will rise from groups left to their own devices. A slight change in a group norm can have a domino effect on other group norms. >Sources Deindividuation and Antinormative Behavior: A Meta-Analysis, Propoganda, Resolving Social Conflicts Selected Papers on Group Dynamics, The Crowd a Study of the Popular Mind, The Formation of Social Norms: Revisiting Sherif's Autokinetic Illusion Study, The Psychology of Social Norms >Ideas I addressed this in my 8ch thread but I think moving out of the clearnet is a sure fire way to make sure no one (not even quality posters) uses your platform, as can be seen by numerous examples. I haven't put in the work into redoing my design at all from last time, I've just been growing my knowledge and such, I'm now on page 512 of SICP, and I've got a decent idea of how I'd want the data and UI to be stuctured, at the same time Ive grown a bit cynical with my knowledge: https://gitgud.io/btraven/omegachan/tree/master

>>10139 >>10140 You could just run a web server that listens on localhost only and then use ssh to port forward a local port on the browser side to the listening port of the web server. Or you could go the SOCKS route and achieve the same thing.

haven't read all so not sure if someone has posted this but this article is very relevant and may provide some clues as to what makes a good balance for a community https://meaningness.com/geeks-mops-sociopaths

>>12062 tldr: to keep a subculture alive you have keep the number of posers at a reasonable level and you (the creative leader of the subculture) have to be slightly evil and extract funds from the remaining posers before someone else does. This seems to me like more a method to retain a cult of personality truth be told. It does make some sense though as a online community you need resources in order to maintain servers and software, you also need to keep posers from ruining discussion. However modern online communities have three possible alternative solutions: (1) Ban the posers if/when they suck (2) Federate the servers for volunteer hosting (3) Open source the software for free development

>>10088 If the content of a community is purely based on sex, entertainment, hate and bashing others, technical details, trying to sell something - be it an idea or material goods, then it will become superficial and boring soon. I think this is where most of the communities, including HackerNews falls in. I think all such sites really do not have genuine human relationship in mind. So a site which knows the importance of real human relationship would be something which we can call good. I think constantly bashing each other drains energy and people involved in such discussions are not serious and are hurting themselves. Considering the current state of our society, including the internet, I thought of making a site which really understands the value of real human relationship. This does not mean one cannot disagree with another or anything.. The site is still very new so please have a look. https://naturalpeople.wiki/ There is also a chan like imageboard in here : https://naturalpeople.wiki/communicate/

>2017 Nope, the roots those problems are from a long time ago. Most of the internet users are in social media citadels or think about the nostalgic past of the "early years of the Internet " (that can be the 80's,90's and mainly 00's) instead of face the problems future will bring to us. Also, we have other mirrors problems like: 0) Meme Culture: brewing soykaf became a serious and profitable business. 1) Frontpage/ Page 1 Culture: everyone wants answers now. Most of imageboards users think if their threads are answered after 6 hours or that the place is dead. 2) Middle sizes communities became too big to don't be corrupted or too small survive for years. 3) Free things vs "Free things": The 4chan with Moot was free because someone was paid for that. The 4chan with Hiro is "free" because the users are the products.

>>10088 >https://web.archive.org/web/20170807012100/http://8ch.net/leftypol/res/1921953.html that's the dumbest fuarrrking OP I've ever read nice to keep getting to reaffirm the observation that at least a thin majority of people think "political" means "containing literally any substantial discussion of anything"

>>11979 I haven't found that to be the case. I can make all the high quality posts I want, dumb soykaf spreads like cancer no matter what because it requires no effort to emulate. This is how it is and always will be.

I feel really alienated by the politicized state of the internet. I'm LGBT so people will either overestimate me and give me an unfair advantage over others because of favoritism or will underestimate me and disregard anything I do because of discrimination. I just want to be treated based off of my own merits and work, not judged (negatively or positively) by who I am. I miss the old internet where you never gave away your real name except to close, trusted individuals, where you gave no soykafs on what someone was and only judged them by their actions and ideals, and where The internet feels too suffocating. It has become so hard to grow as an individual anymore or advance my skillset because it feels like all commentary on people's works stems from what others perceive them as. Is this all really so much to ask for? It feels so simple but so far away from where we are now. I'm almost 26 now and I feel so tired from all of this. I can only feel energetic and productive when I shut myself off from any social spaces on the internet entirely.

>>13171 One worry of mine, is that we're focusing on things wrong. Are we sure this issue is the internet, and not modern human interaction and culture generically? I fear by focusing on the issue of fixing the internet, bringing back internet culture, yadda yadda, we're worrying about the wrong thing. The very essence of human life, human social interaction, is being changed by remote communication methods. I dont care what it was like in the 90's I care what it was like in the last century, the last millenium, and what we may be loosing or damaging irrecoverably.

>>13190 >. The very essence of human life, human social interaction, is being changed by remote communication methods. I dont care what it was like in the 90's I care what it was like in the last century, the last millenium, and what we may be loosing or damaging irrecoverably. I don't know anon, is it really changing all that much? Remote communication has been a thing since writing. Sure today it's faster, and takes more forms, but is it really fundamentally different? Isn't it just more, more talk, more communication, more people to interact with in more ways, but not qualitatively different? Even if you say that telegrams, radio, phones, the internet and other communication technologies are a fundamental perversion, imagine future communication technologies like virtual presence and such. How would those be qualitatively different than previous types of communication like gathering around the communal fire, or chatting in a pub.

>>13188 >I just want to be treated based off of my own merits and work, not judged (negatively or positively) by who I am Then don't mention you're LGBT you idiot. It's the easiest thing to do, a chink might have a hard time disguising their nationality on the internet because of language barriers but there's literally no way people can guess you're a glitterboy just by taking a look at the code you submit. >I miss the old internet where you never gave away your real name This internet still exists. IRC doesn't require real names. Github doesn't require real names. Mailing lists do not require real names. If people know your real name it's because you chose to dox yourself.

>>13191 >this really has been going on for an awful long time I'll grant that writing is part of the issue, and that televisions and telegrams and telefaxes and all that jazz are just part of a slow progression that has been going on since time immemorial. >how would hypothetically telepresence differ meaningfully from chatting around a fire, or in a pub One of the major, defining things that connects all of these, writing, television, radio, the 'net, and hypothetical future virtual pubs, is that they encourage the user to select increasingly more narrowly a niche in which to involve itself. This is hugely different than hanging out at the pub, where you have, conveniently maybe one or a couple crowds to choose from. On the net, we have easily thousands of pubs and they're all just about as far away, after you find them. Is it going to be perhaps, qualitatively identical to hang out with your horrifically niche club in cyberspace, but I think practically speaking, it will still be different. You won't live near the people you hang with in the pub, you won't maybe randomly see a colleague or an old friend there, at least extrmely rarely. I cannot beleive this is 'qualitiatively identical'. I'm not sure if its good, or bad or neutral, but it is different.

>>13191 I tend to think it's different, but only slightly, the problem is the more. Individuals make their private lives dramatically more public and permanent, they interact more with groups and less with individuals, and they interact with literal "social points", followers likes and votes. All these things add up to radically reinforce group norms and beliefs. I posted this in another thread seems more relevant here so I'll post it: At least in the US it seems like a ever expanding power of groups within society as they consolidate. The more your group absorbs other groups the more influence it has and the more it can reinforce it's positions on its members. A sort of "cultures of scale" killing off the little guys: subcultures, and individuality. I've thought long and hard on this, I've read quite a few books, and it seems to just be a product of our "interconnected world." and our psychology. I don't know of a solution.

I read a great article on this subject, shame I can't find it. They talked about how if you go back a few decades there were all sorts of countercultures emerging, hippies and punks and mods and so on. But in time they all got co-opted by consumerism. Same thing happened with rap, commercialised and killed by record studios (sure it's all over the charts, but the soul has been ripped out). Finally being a nerd got co-opted and watered down into oblivion and that was it. Their central idea was that consumerism was so pervasive, so quick to jump on any emerging trend, our world so connected and monitored, that it was no longer possible for any authentic new community to emerge. It would be immediately jumped on and strangled in the crib. I think that's what we're seeing with the internet. There are clear financial structures at work (gotta appease advertisers, ergo gotta become safer and more homogenised) that gradually sap the soul of any site, until it's just a rebranded Facebook. Completely mainstream, traffic's never been higher, yet utterly lifeless. Either way, that's my half-arsed attempt at paraphrasing an article I read ~5 years ago

>>13735 Always thought this was a good writeup by Chomsky: https://chomsky.info/an-eight-point-brief-for-lev-lesser-evil-voting/

this is all at best tangentially related, perhaps the conversation should return to the topic?

>>13750 no idea if this is a widely held opinion but that is one of the things i love about the imageboard and forum formats as opposed to that of reddit type soykaf. discussions are organic and topics morph and change.

>>13193 i feel that you are correct but there is a strong trend towards a centralized internet identity via mega-sites, and if this trend continues i fear a much larger chunk of the internet will require verification through these sites and the number of sites in which you can be totally anonymous will decrease.

My stance is that the "chan culture" is dying as people move on from it, but it still thrives on places like this. The reason is likely the popularity leading to people exploiting it for propaganda and ads. But the problem isn't this lack of popularity but the lack of initiative to actually organize and meet. It's also the posters that whine about phoneposters or kids that get on these sites. You know how you were at that age, right? These younger people have a long ways to go and a lot to experience. It's easy to complain about others and hard to form relationships with them. Also the format is much less important as long as it is self-hosted. Facebook/instagram/twitter won't work for these kinds of sites, but it doesn't need to be IPFS or whatever distributed system is in vogue. It's really easy to critique a platform or suggest a better one, but much harder to implement it or use it. I've purposely met three people from lainchan, and another one after talking to some rando in a diner who had a laptop running arch. Each of them was interesting, and strangely enough already unknowingly connected to me through other friends or work. All it comes down to is being open and willing to meet people, online and off. Find people that live near you via chatting on some IRC channel, then take the imitative and treat them to a meal or something. There's a kind of tension of "maybe they're a killer/pedo" or "lol homo meetup" or "it's FBI", but I'm convinced this is psyops to prevent people from organizing. Anonymity is important, but there's more value in meeting people in real life and forming better relationships with like-minded people. Don't miss the forest for the trees, just get out there and just TRY to meet people.

>>13785 >if this trend continues i fear a much larger chunk of the internet will require verification through these sites There will always be tinfoil hat communities that you can join without giving your name. It may look like they're getting smaller and smaller but they're actually bigger than they've ever been, it's just that the centralized net grew much, much faster than the decentralized one did.

>>10095 >Lainchan doesn't have that natural immune system most outside people think this place is just larpers, when in fact it is only about 50% larping and 50% good content. Half-jokes aside if some event or another caused this place to flood (i.e 4chan dying, sudden media attention, etc.) we'd probably have our own eternal september. The only solution I could think of would be to go darknet, just because a good amount of the userbase is probably dedicated enough to go with the switch, and the newcomers just wouldn't want to bother (they want the most convenient place for discussion, from the comfort of their phones and workplaces). Then after everything died down it could switch back (so it could once again have a manageable stream of newcomers).

>>13802 why not just purge the refugees? I think the mod staff here would even be willing to cut posting all together until the initial wave subsided as they did with the marchov bot recently. certain boards would be more manageable than others post-event, /tech/ seems particularly vulnerable due to a low barrier to entry and a general topic, but I think the mods care too much about this place to let it die.

>>10088 I've been noticing this since 2011, when facebook became popular in my country. I think there are two factors at play: 1. The use of real identities; 2. The incentive to manufacture content at large scales. I didn't really have any hope until the beginning of this year. I had always seen federated media as a niche and slow tech thing, more fun to develop than to use. I don't remember why but I decided to create a mastodon account and was really surprised, a lot of normal users using it, a lot of posting even thought my instance is not that big. Then I found Pleroma, which is developed by our lain afaik, most of it's instances have a culture similar to that of lainchain, /g/, /a/ and /c/, all mixed together. And people actually post there more than here. Now that tumblr derezzed porn there is a massive influx of people and I hopefully will be able to get quality lewd there. I wouldn't get my hopes very high because the botnet is full tricks but I can see a light at the end of the tunnel. I won't post my nick because I don't want it to seem like I'm mining for followers although it seems like a good idea to have a fediverse thread where people can talk about their tastes and follow each other. OP I posted on the last thread but didn't save, sorry.

Is there a reason why the chans should not decline? Internet is in a constant state of flux. It's a constant cycle of disruption and evolution. New places emerge and old decline as young people gravitate towards the latest stuff. It's been like this since the 80s. The teenagers who used 4chan in 2004 are in their 30s now. Imageboards are ancient at this point. Of course they're dying. I think that the Internet isn't any better or worse - it just feels like the end of the world to you because the portals/communities/ways of your generation are declining. It's uncomfortable and anxiety-inducing but that's a natural thing, it's called getting older.

>>14531 I can completely understand this interpretation, I tend to fall into the "kids these days... *mumble*...." sometimes. Despite that I feel the issue is not with what people like and dislike or the communities they form, rather I am more put off by the "intrusion" of these mega-corps into what were previously user run spaces. Sure they have always been there, but now that they act as the de facto centers of the web for a large subset of the population, and know how to influence human psychology to a T, I can't help but feel that things may be a bit out of hand, and that a reversion to an older, less centralized web would be a good thing. Not all progress is good progress.

>>14513 What long term advantages do you perceive federated communications platforms as having for promoting quality discussion? It seems to have almost all the flaws mentioned through out this thread but with temporary obscurity, a initial community of computer literates, and lack of a ``real name policy''. Problems for example might be a word limit, a social points system, a subscriber/follower model, a image assisted interface, a accounts system, etc. >>14531 Why would the quality of imageboards decline with the maturity of their community? Also I don't think this thread is really about the decline of imageboards so much as the decline of platforms for quality discussion on the internet in aggregate, a pursuit of bastions other than our own should they exist, and research into carving out a new bastion should ours fall. New blood is important to the extent to which it keeps a community alive, but the question is how do you gain this new blood whilst killing any incompetence (perhaps naturally youth as well) before you're forced to interact with it?

>>14531 >Imageboards are ancient at this point. Of course they're dying. Email is ancient at this point. Age alone clearly does not determine when a medium dies. Traffic on imageboards is still increasing, the number of imageboards is growing, and imageboard culture has peaked in mainstream relevance only very recently (arguably in 2016). It's just that other formats, like social media, are growing even faster. Imageboards have declined only in quality, mainly *because* of their growing popularity. The format doesn't scale. The larger and more diverse a userbase becomes, the less they have in common to talk about, the more conflict emerges, and the less it feels like a community. Mass platforms like Facebook and Reddit allow such fractured communities to split easily by letting users create new groups/subreddits, which restores some sense of peace and human scale. (8ch technically offers such functionality too, but is hampered by a hostile userbase that chases off anyone who doesn't fall in line, so every board there ends up with roughly the same vibe.) Then there's the problem of moderation. Mods can only maintain community approval by building trust. That doesn't work on most imageboards, where mods are anonymous by default, usually act silently, don't motivate their decisions, and don't offer an easy avenue for feedback. Since users are also anonymous, it's harder to recruit reputable users as mods when the site grows. The end result is an understaffed mod team that can't keep up. Imageboards were designed for niche communities, and judging from all the complaints about the state of the internet, there's still plenty of demand for those. They can thrive, as long as they stay out of the spotlight, and take active steps to keep the influx of new users to a trickle rather than a flood. (If we play our cards right, those larger platforms can serve as lightning rods that draw most of the attention away from us.)

I personally think that the current state of the internet, and even more weirdly - the state of the past internet was a result of normal (for current society) evolution from decantalization to centralization. We are forced to use obscure means, as the standard means are the centralised means. If anyone cares, there's my phlog post on that (shameless plug): gopher://desolate.k.vu/0/musings/the-lost-webspace.md

>>14539 >Problems for example might be a word limit, a social points system, a subscriber/follower model, a image assisted interface, a accounts system, etc. Not that anon, but none of those things are necessary features of federated platforms. Mastodon/Pleroma/Diaspora/etc just have those features because they aim to be alternatives to Twitter and Facebook. Someone could build a federated version of an anonymous imageboard, a forum system without user ranks or points, a Discord or IRC alternative, or something akin to Usenet or a BBS ring. The main goals of federation are to improve users' control over their data, increase community autonomy, facilitate freedom of association between communities, reduce the risk of the whole network being taken down at once, and sidestep dependency on venture capital and privacy-hostile business models by downscaling individual servers to the point where they can be funded through donations or out of pocket. Quality of discussion is a separate (and largely social) problem, but I would argue that the smaller scale of servers, the sense of ownership that can instill, and the ability to remove servers full of disruptive users from your federation list could all help improve discussion.

>>14542 valid points, I do certainly think decentralised systems are dramatically better solutions than uneconomical distribution and totalitarian centralised systems (except when legal issues are in play at which point distributed solutions become very desirable despite their cost). This was simply poor wording on my part. In fact my proposal was for a federated system: https://gitgud.io/btraven/omegachan/blob/master/README.md (a bit outdated) addressing the comments on quality of discussion specifically this wouldn't surprise me, but it also wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't nearly enough.

>>14542 Basically this. >>14544 It's very easy to implement solutions to any kind of problem. Basically anyone can federate with anyone. If the format of modern social networks is the problem, you can create a new one and keep interacting with the same user base. There have been many good ideas that simply did not gain enough momentum.

very relevant /g/ thread https://archive.rebeccablacktech.com/g/thread/68618638/#68623116

>>10312 Not so much so. I'm only here because someone mentioned you on 4chan. I don't know how people feel about that since I'm new here and all, but I imagine that person probably went around telling lots of other people too.

>>10312 >>14649 I ended up finding this place on an installgentoo wiki page back in 2016. I'm sure anybody could stumble upon this place.

Personally I think what protects lainchan is a strong dedication to encapsulation. lainchan divides what would on a normal imageboard be a single board into many different boards of monotonically increasing barrier to entry and moderation. This isolates new users or otherwise less skilled users from their opposites while allowing directional influence by the opposites onto the less skilled and new users.

>>14654 dude wtf does any of that mean

>>14655 It means new users are contained on boards with less moderation and more tolerance /feels/ /zzz/ /r/ /q/ while old users can show them how it all works on serious boards like /sec/ /diy/ /λ/

I think Lainchan has the perfect balance. Imagine you and a friend love computer science, you're always talking about it and in time you create a forum, this forum keeps growing and that isn't a problem by itself. The problem begins when your forum is so popular that people who don't care about computer science want to be a part of it. This happened to us in the 2016 elections, we had a /civ/ board that destroyed the website for a year or so, people came in because of /civ/, not because they loved Lain, and in time they soykafposted about javascript on λ, asked how to become a hacker everyday on /sec/, etc... You can't moderate them out, technically they're not breaking any rules, they're just trying to be a part of this community in whatever way they know how, which is fair. I don't think the answer is to be rude to new people, that's just plain dumb elitism; believing we are somehow superior or special. Instead we should not have areas for off-topic conversations, for example, in a computer science forum if you have a /b/ or a lounge, people who don't give a soykaf about computer science can still be a part of the community, and in time they will decrease the quality of other subforums just because they don't really care about computer science, it's just a curiosity for them, not the reason they're there. If you keep the forum focused *only* in computer science, this community can grow endlessly. Off-topic conversations will always happen naturally, people will always create irc/discord/skype chats to talk about other stuff because they grew close to others within that community, but the core community shouldn't offer the option. And i think lainchan has the perfect balance because we don't have a specific topic like computer science, we have a very abstract culture that holds us together and somehow we managed to stay on topic in all our boards. We don't have a /b/ or a /civ/ board, if you're here, you're here because you learned to love Lain and you probably want to be around people like that. So if you wanna create a community, i think that is the way to do it, have a focus, don't allow off-topic discussions to grow. Unless you're trying to milk money out of people, then just create 4chan/reddit/facebook/twitter, everybody will join, nobody will be on the same vibe, all you gotta do is keep them there to sell ads/data.

>>14795 This is definitely a good point. For a board to be consistent in quality, it needs a way to keep people not interested in the primary content out

>>10093 >piratebox hilarious story, I set one up, my neighbours tried to steal the WiFi, and then asked me for help when facebook got hacked.

I've just re-read the thread for the sake of this summary, and to encourage us to regroup on common ground so that we can begin to develop a refined suggestion. It seems that most of us here agree that imageboards get lots of things right between the text driven interface, anonymous posting, linear conversation, lack of a subscriber/follower model, and lack of a voting systems. We also seem to agree that over time post quality declines in imageboards (and the vast majority of other places) as posers become a dominate force. There have been several solutions proposed ranging from stricter moderation, to distribution, discussing things that require some skill, moving away from www, being aggressive to outsiders, being disturbing to outsiders, being a invite only community, having accounts, etc. The problem with many of these solutions is that they either don't allow for newcomers, encourage posers, or simply haven't worked in the past. of these the ones that seem possibly functional (keeping in mind past experiments) at keeping away posers are: stricter moderation, distribution, and being invite only. Distribution seems a bit if-y because it's new and the actual effects of it can't be known in our format or in the long term (I honestly don't know enough about it to be able to pass judgement anyway). Additionally the question of how to maintain a proper moderation staff to enforce said strictness is another thing in need of a solution. All three of these likely require or otherwise benefit from some sort of account system as well as a skill dependent conversation but these things alone wouldn't save a community so they weren't included. I think distribution and invite-only are mutually exclusive, meaning likely one or the other would need to be selected. so what do you think, or do you want to mention something I missed? Do you think distribution has more potential than invite-only or no? >strictly moderated, distributed anonomous imageboard, with accounts, on skill dependent topics >strictly moderated, invite-only anonomous imageboard, with accounts, on skill dependent topics

>>14809 not sure if the anonymous imageboard format would make sense with an account system. Might as well create a normal forum and add in anonimity.

>>14810 would you mind sharing your reasoning lain? I can't really respond well without knowing why you think that.

>>14811 i don't really have any clear justification, it just feels wrong, but i'll try to explain. Why would i create an account on an imageboard if i won't need to keep my data anywhere, i have no use for that account, only the staff does. It's an unecessary extra step that makes sense in a forum with identity because not only i'm accessing the knowledge accumulated there, but i'm creating an identity, without an account i don't have the identity. On an imageboard the dynamics are completely different, there is no accumulated knowledge, the posts aren't really all that interesting most of the time, so the lack of commitment in these communities is an important factor into making people come back and give a soykaf about it. If you want the extra steps, you gotta have a reason why, and the meta reason of keeping the quality of posts isn't really justifiable, specially for new users who don't give a soykaf about the quality of that community. Not only that, but will it really keep the quality high, or will it just create a insider trade of 12 people who resent other communities who got to grow more than they did? Lainchan already is as high quality as it can get for an imageboard, i think.

>>14812 >Why would i create an account on an imageboard if i won't need to keep my data anywhere, i have no use for that account, only the staff does. It's an unecessary extra step that makes sense in a forum with identity because not only i'm accessing the knowledge accumulated there, but i'm creating an identity, without an account i don't have the identity. I think it's sort of like private trackers right, you don't sign up to express yourself you sign up because it offers a better service than those which don't require a signup. As was mentioned a couple times in passing in the thread Tsukichan had(has?) a sign up and the signup was generally well liked. I understand it might not be for everyone though. >On an imageboard the dynamics are completely different, there is no accumulated knowledge I think that's a reasonable critique, would a archive system solve this problem for you? >the posts aren't really all that interesting most of the time, so the lack of commitment in these communities is an important factor into making people come back and give a soykaf about it. This seems like a bit of a chicken and egg, people don't care about your site because the quality is low, so to make them come you have to remove all barriers to entry which makes the quality low. Also I think the reason many people like imageboards is because they feel constrained by identity, and the identity of others, they see these things as restricting conversation and truth: see the second paragraph of >>10162 >If you want the extra steps, you gotta have a reason why, and the meta reason of keeping the quality of posts isn't really justifiable, specially for new users who don't give a soykaf about the quality of that community. Not only that, but will it really keep the quality high, or will it just create a insider trade of 12 people who resent other communities who got to grow more than they did? Lainchan already is as high quality as it can get for an imageboard, i think. To all three of these things I say I don't know but I don't think so. Tsukichan was able to disprove the first, and perhaps the second despite its problems, and as for the last I'm always suspect when anyone says the way we currently do something is the best we can possibly do.

>>14813 >I think that's a reasonable critique, would a archive system solve this problem for you? At that point, why would an imageboard make more sense than just a forum? >Also I think the reason many people like imageboards is because they feel constrained by identity, and the identity of others, they see these things as restricting conversation and truth Yeah but what you're describing me sounds a lot like an anonymous forum. Your idea as a forum has the advantage of correlation between a user's account and his posts over time (even if the user itself won't see this backlog), that would allow you to find good mod candidates and make better judgement when moderating. Also solves the problem of knowledge accumulation, new users would have a long backlog of interesting material to read instead of just having to lurk more. On the other hand, your idea as an imageboard.. the format of imageboards offers nothing that can't be attributed to anonimity, regardless of format. >and as for the last I'm always suspect when anyone says the way we currently do something is the best we can possibly do. I just haven't seen any other IBs do it better in many years. Dont let me keep you from trying though.

>>14814 >I just haven't seen any other IBs do it better in many years I haven't either. >Yeah but what you're describing me sounds a lot like an anonymous forum. Your idea as a forum has the advantage of correlation between a user's account and his posts over time (even if the user itself won't see this backlog), that would allow you to find good mod candidates and make better judgement when moderating. Also solves the problem of knowledge accumulation, new users would have a long backlog of interesting material to read instead of just having to lurk more. Maybe I (and I guess the thread) just wants a anonymous forum with imageboard aesthetics for the sake of familiarity or personal taste? This moderation system was certainly something I was thinking would be useful in this system, it's one of the reasons I was thinking accounts would be useful to create strict moderation. A system of persistence also sounds very useful and wasn't a problem that I recognised (I don't think anyone else mentioned it in the thread either). So I really appreciate your criticism. I'd like to hear what other lains have to say about this as I'm not really trying to dictate things so much as unify what the lains of the thread want. >strictly moderated, distributed anonomous forum, on skill dependent topics, with imageboard aesthetics, and persistance >strictly moderated, invite-only anonomous forum, on skill dependent topics, with imageboard aesthetics, and persistance >strictly moderated, distributed anonomous forum, on skill dependent topics, with imageboard aesthetics, and truncation >strictly moderated, invite-only anonomous forum, on skill dependent topics, with imageboard aesthetics, and truncation

>>14816 I guess I never expressed my personal preference: >strictly moderated, invite-only anonomous forum, on skill dependent topics, with imageboard aesthetics, and persistance This makes the most sense to me just because it's more or less a system composed of well tested parts. We know the effects of invite-only systems (lobsters), we know the effects of a account system with a imageboard (tsukichan), we know the effects of having stricter moderation (lainchan), and we know the effects of having skill dependent topics (/lambda/, lobsters, hackernews, etc), persistance likely has no effect but is simply a nice convience.

>>10088 >>I Don’t Know How to Waste Time on the Internet Anymore What a depressing and relatable thought

>>10088 Holy fuarrrking holiness. I made that first thread, because I had the exact same feeling as you for a long time now. (btw, archived in: http://archive.vn/r75Bf) Although I made that particular thread about chan and politics, I've experienced all the other stuff too, the decline of internet culture as being actual *internet* culture and not just an extension of real life, and all that implied. I hold on to chans because there is still a bit of that feeling, specially less popular chans like lainchan (or even leftypol). I see how memes I made myself are posted back at me. And the weird fact that you just posted my thread from other chan as a piece of reference shows how a bit of cross-chan community still exists. Even in how divided we are ideologically, there is a still a certain different quality to the way to talk in chans compared to somewhere else. A bit I specially like is that all chans have such a similar structure that you can just append "/mu/" or "/a/" to the domain and jump to a subject of discussion of your taste. It's like not having a home, but every building by that architect feels like home.

>>14994 >leftypol /leftypol/ never recovered from the influx of liberal burgers pretending to be socdems in the last US election. It makes me very sad. >there is a still a certain different quality to the way to talk in chans compared to somewhere else. Do you think like other lain's mentioned that this could be conversation free from identity, or do you think it's something else worth preserving? >It's like not having a home, but every building by that architect feels like home. I also enjoy this aspect of imageboards. Do you have any thoughts on the following: >>14816

>>10102 >HackerNews >censorship and political bias Not knowing enough, would you describe what goes on in both subjects, and more if possible?

>>10108 >dog whistle lainons, what would be in your opiniong the perfect dog whistle for lainchan?

>>10167 >Actually You said it like anyone here would disagree Does anybody think such is not the case?

>>10294 >>10291 >monetization >"asymmetric" social dynamic All that youtuber and e-celeb soykaf is something I always noticed and complained about, but I never before put my attention to that important point: THE CONTENT DYNAMICS. This is key. The asymmetric flux of content (specially cultural) from central figures to the masses has reshaped the internet. From twitchers, instagram whores to Ray Williams Johnson and soykafty facebook meme pages. Even though users' interaction is important (from reading comments on camera, to randos submitting a variation of an overtrodden facebook meme), there's always this central figure(s) running soykaf, creating or merely curating the content, replying, choosing, censoring, giving exposition. It's the diametrical opposite to chan culture; we hate moderation and central figures. On moderation: Ok, we also demand moderation, but it's always in the form of pruning bad elements, and we want moderation only as long as it fits out tastes. We expect mods to fall in line, and sadly we often throw a hissy fit when mods don't follow suit. Although personal decisions do happen, more often than not I feel like chans self-regulate, because mods not only listen to the community (or simply bend to presure), but because they are part of the community, and more often than not respect that. Even moot was more a victim or taraget of memes of 4chan than the converse. Polemical, but even his most controversial culling actions happened because he shared an opinion with a large part of the community. On central figures: People rise to the status of central figures just for their memetic potential. We are not here for anybody, we didn't suscribe to soykaf. We have no suscribe button; on the contrary, we have filters to hide unwanted subjects or people. >Jordan Peterson >Terry Davis >eggman >Trump >is tall man all there because people love them or love to hate them, and we do share their content when it interests us, but it's such a different dynamic than watching let's plays. p2p content creation or sharing dominates chans Thoughts?

>>10493 >This will turn the Internet for EU into a bastartized version of TV. nice analogy

>>13185 >literally any substantial discussion of anything It's simply not the case I was the OP of that thread, and I wasn't even complaining about politics, but things do turn political in a not "any substantial discussion of anything" way, but actually honest to god political discussion. The examples I mentioned were the immediate gateway to mentioning pure politics and real candidate names. You are plain wrong, it's not just "substantial discussion", it's talking politics. Threads offtopic into politics a hell more often than a decade ago. I'm surprised you even put this into question, being so prevalent

>>13188 >I'm LGBT This is a weird identity. Why do you prioritize mentioning a large category of people instead of saying you are gay/trans/whatever?

>>13702 >being a nerd got co-opted 2011/2012 was the time it was strongest The spread of "gamer culture" with Mario Bros t-shirts, glasses became cool, and being a geek was suddenly cultural capital

>>15035 Love for Lain is a good dog whistle, I guess..

>>15038 >The asymmetric flux of content (specially cultural) from central figures to the masses has reshaped the internet. >From twitchers, instagram whores to Ray Williams Johnson and soykafty facebook meme pages. Even though users' interaction is important (from reading comments on camera, to randos submitting a variation of an overtrodden facebook meme), there's always this central figure(s) running soykaf, creating or merely curating the content, replying, choosing, censoring, giving exposition. I mean really you could think of the internet as originally being a subscriber follower model, I make a site, you bookmark or save the url to a text file. I think you are correct though that in the domain of online social interactions this has had a negative effect and this deviation from the norm is one of the contributers as mentioned throughout the thread. >It's the diametrical opposite to chan culture; we hate moderation and central figures. Imageboards love to select central figures, it's just they're contrarian choices so people think they're individuals separate from the whole. Something unique is that these central figures don't directly interact with the communities though. Larger imageboards tend to dislike moderation but I think this is partially because the model is poorly suited to moderation at scale due to the difficulties of selecting new moderators, this in turn tends to attract individuals who dislike moderation among other things. >Ok, we also demand moderation, but it's always in the form of pruning bad elements, and we want moderation only as long as it fits out tastes. We expect mods to fall in line, and sadly we often throw a hissy fit when mods don't follow suit. All moderation is this way, it's just a matter of differences in "our tastes". >Although personal decisions do happen, more often than not I feel like chans self-regulate, because mods not only listen to the community (or simply bend to presure), but because they are part of the community, and more often than not respect that. Even moot was more a victim or taraget of memes of 4chan than the converse. Polemical, but even his most controversial culling actions happened because he shared an opinion with a large part of the community. Larger imageboards are more unregulated than self-regulated, mainstream social media tends to be much more obsessed with self-regulation due to origins in the problems with forums in the 2000's. This was actually why the follower subscriber model was ported to forums and why social point systems were adopted as well.

>>10493 There should be another opportunity to block the passing of this new law, but it will most likely pass... Decentralization is becoming a must and you'd be surprised how much tech illiterates are in favor to these concepts (it's just they don't know anything about it) It's also typical EU, the EU doesn't have much or even any real legal power however a lot of countries (mostly France, Germany, Belgium,Sweden, Netherlands )are very quick to lick the EUs ass and do as they propose. Don't forget that the EU isn't filled with the most bright or best politicians as those mostly stay in their home country to take care of their dynasty. And about those filters... it is just not feasible as an idea, filter everything? Really? You will filter petabytes of content automatically? Google Facebook and friends try to implement filters and those don't work well at all. It's annoying to say the least, rich sheltered people deciding about soykaf they don't have a clue about mostly because they're scared of losing power. We have to take control over the internet, I don't know how but there are loads of people who are smarter then me who might have ideas, we have to give up dependency on governments and enterprises, we need to take care of ourselves in a doable manner.

>>10097 It was also publicited in 4chan and some subreddits

>>15128 Supposedly this was lobbied primarily by a german news publisher who also spearheaded similar attempts before. The EU is just a vehicle. They ran the same tactic before with the law on saving meta data. Germany internally outlawed it so they went over the EU to override the internal ruling topdown.

This topic has been on my mind for quite a while. I grew up with the internet and have very fond memories of past online communities. I was lucky enough to have a dad that introduced me to the internet at a young age. I was pretty into video games, so the first community I remember being part of was GameFAQs. A lot of the discussion there was pretty low quality to be honest, but it introduced me to a lot of games that I wouldn't have found otherwise. If you knew where to look though, there were boards there discussing every topic from life to lucid dreaming and drugs. Getting turned on to lucid dreaming definitely contributed to introspective aspects of my personality that I still value heavily. I eventually stumbled onto some hardware hacking boards. Spent most of my teens hacking electronics, building potato cannons and various other sciencey contraptions that would probably draw a lot more sideways looks these days. I learned a massive amount of knowledge playing around with linux and hacking my game consoles. I attribute almost all of my success as a young adult to these experiences and I find myself feeling out of place on the internet today and wondering what the fuarrrk happened. The internet is feeling increasingly sanitized and I don't think future generations will be able to enjoy the absolute freedom of information and sense of wonder that we did. I recently found lainchan by chance clicking through web 1.0 soykaf on wiby.me and finding lainzine. I'm a fan of Lain and the environment/topics discussed here felt like home right away. I think the main issues with current internet communities are: -People migrated from small communities into centralized, corporate controlled communities -Ease of access to the internet brought a lot of uninformed busybodies who only want to see content they find acceptable -Change from content displayed based on activity to content displayed based on voting systems that reinforce viewpoints and are trivially easy to manipulate -Everything has become increasingly political. I think this is in large part due to amplified political division in the US but the larger communities/voting systems really don't help I think other lainons have hit the nail on the head when they said that the technological barriers of the early internet helped keep communities healthier. I don't think exclusive, more heavily moderarated communities are a good solution because that can easily be ruined by power-tripping admins; it would only work if done with care. On the other hand, communities posing themselves as anti-censorship also seem to attract the soykaftier parts of larger communities before they attract quality users. I too wish that communities like lainchan were more active but I also wonder if it is even possible to have a large community that feels like lainchan does now. I like the idea of SSH boards; people have to go out of their way enough to look for those. This seems to select for more invested users. I really haven't been able to think of any possible solution these issues myself but I'm really happy to see the discussion here. I hope we'll find a way to forge a better path forward.

>>15170 >-Change from content displayed based on activity to content displayed based on voting systems that reinforce viewpoints and are trivially easy to manipulate >Everything has become increasingly political. I think this is in large part due to amplified political division in the US but the larger communities/v The biggest issue might be the rise of astroturfing. Today extensive tools using bots and people exist to spread the correct opinion and they are used for politics as much as for promoting products by companies. The greatest challenge is to fight this infestation. Even in the absence of voting systems there are still means like thread sliding (you keep other threads more active on top to dump the target into obscurity) to steer information flow without getting caught easily. You can somewhat counter this by being too obscure to be a target but this comes also at the cost of influence. Any place that holds influence is today a warzone for the public opinion.

>>15171 >You can somewhat counter this by being too obscure to be a target but this comes also at the cost of influence. Any place that holds influence is today a warzone for the public opinion. I think individuals tend to over value influence, they often value it even at the expense of being free themselves.

>>15173 What do you mean by free? It's easy to avoid participating in the conflict by but it's hard to escape the consequences of it shaping politics & markets.

>>15170 >On the other hand, communities posing themselves as anti-censorship also seem to attract the soykaftier parts of larger communities before they attract quality users. I've noticed this, and there's been times where I feel like, you know, it's just a little too convenient for the admins of the larger, heavily-moderated communities, who might feel that their "monopoly" (for lack of a better word) on the community's topic or format is getting threatened by a more laissez-faire alternative. Plus it doesn't do much of a favor for the general reputation of anti-censorship, when every platform promising freedom and lighter moderation gets flooded with the same unsavory crowd.

>>15205 >What do you mean by free? It's easy to avoid participating in the conflict by but it's hard to escape the consequences of it shaping politics & markets. In this case I mean free thinking, but it applies just as well to freetime & to some extent physical freedom. My point was the 'cost of influence' perhaps shouldn't be viewed as a cost to the individual. To some extent this is wrapped up in a personal view (developed due to reading too much group phycology) of change in change as occurring only in response to a relative catastrophe rather than personal action, and even then it seems groups just broadly select something different rather than making a educated choice based on the events and the current thing.

>>15171 >The biggest issue might be the rise of astroturfing God yes, It's gotten ridiculous and this is my biggest issue with sites like reddit, their up and downvote system make it so easy to manipulate it's crazy. But smaller sites get hit too, there was a bot constantly spamming soykaf about gun control, the end of the States, Obamas 3d term,... the admin said it seemed to be posting from China. This was on a fairly small imageboard (bit more active then lainchan) and people were smart enough to realize it was a bot but it's activity could be seen on stormfront like sites were people where actively engaging with it, soykaf is crazy. Look at the creator of the documentary "gasland" when his movie gained popularity loads of slander sites came online, probably by big oil but innocent til proven guilty am I right? People are so easy to manipulate over the web, I think it might be because everything you read, you read in your own voice so you'll automatically consider it true.

>>15171 >>15258 I hate to keep pushing these, but do you think being invite only like the following would solve the problem of astroturfing, or would it take more such as a ban (or isolation) of product discussion. Perhaps just a /con/sumer board? >>14816 >strictly moderated, invite-only anonomous forum, on skill dependent topics, with imageboard aesthetics, and persistance >strictly moderated, invite-only anonomous forum, on skill dependent topics, with imageboard aesthetics, and truncation

>>15265 Dude, just make soykaf, go with your gut, adapt according to necessity and observation. Getting a pool from 2 people who visit this thread once in a blue moon isn't necessarily a frame of reference anyway.

>>15266 >Dude, just make soykaf, go with your gut, adapt according to necessity and observation. I have a couple larger projects (due to how far along they are more like a little over one) I need to finish before I'd like to start on this but it's likely I will once they're done. A concern of mine is that I tend to be a bit guarded with my time, and that in this way I might be a bit too selfish to nurture a community. I guess we'll likely see. >Getting a pool from 2 people who visit this thread once in a blue moon isn't necessarily a frame of reference anyway. It's already helped me add a additional design question that I'd need to consider, and perhaps a additional problem with the most recent part of the thread.

>>15265 >being invite only like the following would solve the problem of astroturfing, Sure, it would help for that certain small site depending how hard it is to get invites. But it wouldn't be a real solution, it would only help tiny groups of people, I personally think the time of putting our heads in the sand is over. We're all in this mess together and I feel like astroturfing is just another side of the whole societal mess we're in. >or would it take more such as a ban (or isolation) of product discussion. That might be a okay idea but it seems very vague, at what point will it be a ban? If I make a picture and you ask me what lens and camera I used, will I be derezzed for naming the brand?

>>15288 >Sure, it would help for that certain small site depending how hard it is to get invites. But it wouldn't be a real solution, it would only help tiny groups of people, I personally think the time of putting our heads in the sand is over. We're all in this mess together and I feel like astroturfing is just another side of the whole societal mess we're in. This sounds like something I would write, the difference is you're assuming it will get better if we all just look around. The truth is that this is the world most want to live in (bar some small tweaks around the edges), the masses lack the mental capacity to envision anything better and the will to do anything about it if they were capable of seeing it. It seems to me the best we can do is set a example for others to follow, show them what their minds are incapable of rendering. Communication is just a particle of a better world, foundational, yet insignificant, perhaps with it a group will be able to create a more substantial example. >That might be a okay idea but it seems very vague, at what point will it be a ban? If I make a picture and you ask me what lens and camera I used, will I be derezzed for naming the brand? I think it would be more like the individual asking would get their post deleted, as well as any responses if they happened to exist. You'd probably only want to derezze repeat offenders for things as small as this, and even then only for short periods of time.

>>14513 The fediverse is really feeling like the old internet. I already made a lot of friends, even though no one uses real names. There are a lot of memes but the low quality shipost is kept to a minimum.

>>15366 This was an update on my old post, forgot to mention.

>>15006 >Do you have any thoughts on the following: >>14816 I simply don't Maybe we should stop thinking about how to make the perfect forum and just admit that our unfulfillment with the internet is just that. Maybe we just should stop feeling that we need to make a virtual home for ourselves.

>>15385 >Maybe we should stop thinking about how to make the perfect forum and just admit that our unfulfillment with the internet is just that. Maybe we just should stop feeling that we need to make a virtual home for ourselves. I loathe the vast majority of the internet and use it quite selectively, I have no problem admitting this. I think there might be a difference in objectives here though and this is why you suggest this (I should've realized this in your first post, sorry about that). I'm not interested in a virtual home, I'm interested in a platform for competent anonymous long form discussion so I can test ideas and discover new ones. If you're interested in a real virtual home might I suggest something in the tilde verse or one of the similar gopher systems, they seem like exactly what you want.

>>15388 It came to my attention that what I seek is what Nietzsche called freinds. Antagonist higher men which push one another.

Looking at the symptoms of the decline >discourse and content are increasingly taking place under a handful of omnipresent corporate platforms, many of which are publicly traded Why is this bad? Publicly traded companies CAN'T say "fuarrrk off, we moderate as loosely as we want," for fear of losing shareholder value. Their sole motive becomes profit. Duh, moving on, had to be put in writing for the sake of completeness. Why is the handful part bad? Casual bleedover, as discussed previously in the thread, for one. The more fragmented the internet, the more one actually thinks before trying to join a different community. However, it's also bad in terms of privacy: most users will not separate multiple interests into multiple accounts; that defeats the entire purpose of the larger website. Be it scrapers or cookie tracking or whatever else, these sites can more easily build a doxx-able picture of users - and so can anyone watching them. >discourse is becoming increasingly status-seeking Upvotes, likes, reactions, replies, notifications, and other low- or non-content responses all encourage a groupthink more insidious than the typical "trying to fit into the board/site culture" groupthink. While the latter encourages caution and lurking in a community, the former encourages tossing a low quality, SNL-reject pun or other quip into the void, as many as possible, to get another notification. Can't remember where I saw it but there have been multiple exposes on how notification icons and noises are designed to cause addiction. Even worse are quantitative negative reactions: go against a "popular" view, even if you have a good argument for doing so? Go against a prominent member? Watch as the horde tank your meaningless imaginary points, creating a subtle emotional backlash against thinking in that way. Even worse, some sites like reddit actually tie in your posts' score to whether or not they are displayed. >discourse is becoming increasingly low-quality in ways other than the aforementioned status-seeking I noticed something when I typed this: after clearing my cache, the reply box is fuarrrking tiny. I had to drag it out just to be able to organize my thoughts. These UI elements actively deter the lazy from typing more than they absolutely must, leading to lower and lower character, word, and eventually thought counts. And it happens on a hardware level for smartphone users, whose on-screen keyboards take up half the screen anyway. Looking at what might have caused that: My theory is twofold: >any chance of a good internet died when monetized, impure search indexing was born. Search indexing itself is a tricky thing. In trying to present the results a user might want be looking for as an information reference, the engine MUST decide what to present first. That influences the user. Larger websites, or websites with more traffic, are by definition more probable to be the "correct" result. That leaves some enthusiasts out in the cold, but what if it didn't? Why not tailor make an enthusiast "community" for everything, gaining search engine ranking and visibility in the process? Oh well. The sites that would actually go through with that don't care. They're just in it for the money. The little passion project communities that have genuinely better discourse (and those that don't, too) should have thought of the internet as a zero-sum game, too bad. When search indices started taking money for ranking/placement, they ensured that large communities would grow larger, small communities would struggle more, and that the quality of discourse (what counts as "large?" Post numbers? Unique IPs? Certainly not content quality.) would suffer. Don't forget, people were lamenting the "old" internet well before 2007. >any chance of discourse being the standard disappeared when smartphones were popularized I've touched on it above, but screen space for commenting isn't the only problem. There's also the fact that most people use their phones in seconds-long bursts, which leaves nearly no time for thoughtful or lengthy communication. Apps and push notifications exacerbate the previous notification problem, while also trying to worm their way into your phone's memory, call history, contact list, and more. What can be done about all this soykaf: >barrier to entry and preventing bleed-over from the plebian masses As so many religions and cults have discovered or used to their advantage, having skin in the game make people more serious about the topic at hand. What skin is appropriate? I'd argue against invites, those would to a degree limit the scope to those willing to at one point or another reveal some information about who THEY are. Invites also make infiltration by malicious actors easy: rather than by allowing those who prove themselves as individuals, participation is secured just by knowing someone (or finding a link). I'd argue against required registration to post, as while it typically (not always) comes with publicly visible usernames (which distract from content and encourage power-users to power-trip), it ALWAYS comes with a degree of insecurity, since so many people reuse passwords and it's not really an actual barrier anyway. I'd argue against super-stringent moderation, it's easy to delete everything remotely off-topic but that prevents organic conversation. And everyone has their own ideas as to how a site should be moderated. Self-moderation has worked for me on larger chans. It lets me decide what I'm interested in seeing, and prevents me from giving attention/post bumps to things I don't find interesting, such as an incessant stream of new generals. As others have suggested, not implementing off-topic sections and limiting each site to a single narrow topic or range of topics to dissuade hangers-on seems like a good idea. Caustic discussion works to a degree, but, as others have mentioned, fails to fully remove those who are just posting to be edgy. The main advantage to caustic discussion I see is that by insulting anyone for being whoever they are, identities are supplanted by ideas. People are dissuaded more when their identity is attacked than when their idea is attacked. They separate their identities from their ideas. Followup: "my ideal," or putting some of this together, none of which matters anyway because I'm too lazy and poor to host anything in the first place >attracting other posters Advertising doesn't work. Invites are a non-starter. Dropping the link or name in a related community might work, but what about dealing with the inevitable disappointment that a tiny niche imageboard isn't as active as 4chan? I think that all comes down to format. Chat rooms are thought of as either active or dead, with little if any in-between. Chat rooms should be supplementary to a community rather than its primary hangout. Imageboards are much more user-friendly to newcomers than forums thanks to the lack of egomaniacal power-users, but some might disagree. I'd prefer another imageboard to another forum, especially given the client-side scripting already available. However, something must be done about mobile posters to attempt to bolster post quality. I'd block all mobile user agents from even viewing my imaginary site. Maybe have it redirect to paid advertising if I wanted to collect some nuyen to offset hosting costs. Maybe allow certain static ads as well. I'd likely try to block index crawlers from seeing anything beyond the homepage. Moderation would be on a thread-level except for spam or illegal content: either the thread topic is allowed, or it isn't, and god help the spammers. This would hopefully allow discussions to drift on- or off-topic naturally while punishing those who join in on blatant off-topic threads. As an almost-aside, I think sadpanda does a great job gatekeeping the community. It allows a taste of what is, while not-even-hiding the way to get into the full site. Trivially easy to get into if one bothers to do their five minutes of research, three of which are spent masturbating.

>>15464 I disagree. I think that the problem arise from the bad architecture of the web: the server/client model imply a gerarchy, someone have the high ground. P2p is the way to go; unfortunately freenet and zeronet have too few users and the ubiquitous of standard web relegate that services to illegal, niche contents for the majority of them. In my opinion, the only disadvantage of zeronet is the use of javascript, while the only one of freenet is the "internet 0.5" feeling. That was for the infrastructure part, for the content part there is nothing we can do, apart from trying to create interesting content. On the other hand keeping the difficult level of creating something, low, permits everyone to express something: we'll may be filled with junk, but I bet that interesting content will arise. TL;DR: I think that decentralization and easiness could form a better web NB. Sorry for the bad English, is not my first language.

>>15464 >>15467 Both these suggestions sound completely absurd to me. On the one hand you have a poorly moderated imageboard which blocks webcrawlers, and phones. On the other hand you have distribution (not decentralisation) with not even a suggestion of design other than it should be easy to fill it with garbage. The only thing either of these does is make a nice big soykaf for a bunch of degenerates to roll around in while yelling that no one can tell them what to do.

>>15468 > On the other hand you have distribution (not decentralisation) with not even a suggestion of design other than it should be easy to fill it with garbage. Then, don't fill it with garbage... Or you do suggest to censure internet for all who you don't like? > The only thing either of these does is make a nice big soykaf for a bunch of degenerates to roll around in while yelling that no one can tell them what to do. Never heard of free speech? Or maybe you do think that interesting content arise from a controlled medium? Let's delegate that to government then, or corporations. Go back.

>>15469 >Then, don't fill it with garbage... Or you do suggest to censure internet for all who you don't like? How to not fill it with garbage is the whole point of this thread. I don't care what's on the internet I care about having a place (could even be a quite small place) to freely communicate with individuals capable of thinking. Just because I want this quite small place to exist doesn't mean I want to hunt kill and torture everyone incapable of thinking or whatever. >Never heard of free speech? Just because I want academic freedom doesn't mean I want to invite toddlers raised on mountain due and video games to be a part of a lecture series. >Or maybe you do think that interesting content arise from a controlled medium? Not a medium but a platform, like a soapbox (as apposed to every other soapbox) which only lets philosophy professors speak, instead of the afore mentioned toddler. You really like dichotomous thinking.

>>15464 >Even worse are quantitative negative reactions: go against a "popular" view, even if you have a good argument for doing so? Go against a prominent member? Watch as the horde tank your meaningless imaginary points, creating a subtle emotional backlash against thinking in that way. Even worse, some sites like reddit actually tie in your posts' score to whether or not they are displayed. This reminds me of another problem with modern websites, in that the system itself greatly amplifies the voices of popular users while preventing unpopular ones from ever being heard. On imageboards and traditional forums, everything is linear. Posts are shown in the order they were made, and as a result everyone's voices are roughly equal. Sure, people might be more inclined to agree with a popular user than an unpopular one, but at least the latter people's posts are still there, just as visible as everyone else's, able to be read by anyone. The only thing that makes a post less visible is if it's in the middle of a long thread, but even then, there was still a point where that post was new and highly visible. Compare that to modern sites. On social networks like Twitter and Tumblr, your visibility is directly proportional to the amount of followers you can gain. If you're a cult of personality with thousands of followers, then nearly anything you post will be shared by thousands of people and seen by many times more. If you're a nobody with just a few dozen, then your posts may as well not exist. This means that a popular user can spew all the bullsoykaf they want and it'll be spread far and wide. A less-popular can call them out on it, but no one will see their response unless someone is actively looking for it, or unless the OP or someone else popular posts a rebuttal (or a profile screencap/meme/non-sequitur/etc. to epically own them). On "comment section"-style sites like Reddit, it's even worse like you mentioned. People can vote brigade posts they like or dislike in order to bring it to the very top of the list or completely bury them. It wouldn't be so bad if people didn't try to use these platforms for discussion, because they're ill-suited for it. Really, the only platform I can think of would be traditional, linear-format sites like messageboards and imageboards.

>>15470 > How to not fill it with garbage is the whole point of this thread. I don't care what's on the internet I care about having a place (could even be a quite small place) to freely communicate with individuals capable of thinking. Just because I want this quite small place to exist doesn't mean I want to hunt kill and torture everyone incapable of thinking or whatever. But the architecture of something you use, dictate, a bit, the content created. The fact that we are talking here instead of reddit means something. > Just because I want academic freedom doesn't mean I want to invite toddlers raised on mountain due and video games to be a part of a lecture series. You can't pretend to know if a content is valid if you censor it. And toddlers are the next generation of people that will live in this world, you want it or not. > Not a medium but a platform, like a soapbox (as apposed to every other soapbox) which only lets philosophy professors speak, instead of the afore mentioned toddler. As if being a professors is an indication of mental maturity and intelligence. Eliminating the possibility that random people interact limits the possible knowledge. I study physics of the complex systems and in technical terms the Markov chain of knowledge needs to be ergodic to move in the entire phases space. If you create a social bubble you can't have innovations. > You really like dichotomous thinking. You are right, sorry if I was ambiguous.

>>15473 >But the architecture of something you use, dictate, a bit, the content created. The fact that we are talking here instead of reddit means something. Of course, and that's a good thing, it means we have potential. Reddit is a significant regression from traditional forums, its only desirable quality is its ability to survive. Imageboards are a progression because they remove problems of identity. >You can't pretend to know if a content is valid if you censor it. And toddlers are the next generation of people that will live in this world, you want it or not. Governance is always a heuristic, but I don't want to censor to the "right opinion" I want to screen individuals for acceptance and force discussion to remain on topic. That way discussion can be both free and intelligent, either one alone would never lead to enlightenment but together they have potential. Just cause toddlers are the next generation doesn't mean I'm going to enter a philosophical discussion with them. >As if being a professors is an indication of mental maturity and intelligence. just a example. >Eliminating the possibility that random people interact limits the possible knowledge. I disagree, the intellectual collaboration of an idiot and a genius rarely grows knowledge faster than a interaction between two geniuses or even a genius working alone. >I study physics of the complex systems and in technical terms the Markov chain of knowledge needs to be ergodic to move in the entire phases space. If you create a social bubble you can't have innovations. I'm not sure what your point is here. Knowledge is progressively built on old knowledge? As to your second comment, restricting access to ideas naturally limits the development of new ideas, as I mentioned though I'm not interested in restricting ideas. >You are right, sorry if I was ambiguous. You weren't being ambiguous.

>>15467 >I think that the problem arise from the bad architecture of the web: the server/client model imply a gerarchy, someone have the high ground. This is generally a good thing in my opinion. Imagine being somewhat responsible for moderating every single site you choose to browse or interact with. Not having the choice to self-moderate, but needing to participate in the moderation as a matter of infrastructure. It would attract even more trolls, and these trolls would be given direct input in site moderation. While decentralized communication has its place, that place probably isn't an anonymous imageboard. Chan culture and the (perceived, not actual) lack of consequence brought on by anonymity would invite brigading any decentralized site once it became even mildly known. Not to mention the spam. >>15469 >The only thing either of these does is make a nice big soykaf for a bunch of degenerates to roll around in while yelling that no one can tell them what to do How much should anyone be told what to do? As long as the conversations start on topic, let them drift off-topic as the thread goes on, or be dragged back on topic later. That's how most human interaction works, it's very rare outside of some sort of business or political environment to say "we're only going to talk about [this specific subject], nothing else can happen here." Often, people with one shared interest will have other shared interests, and using a single interest as a gathering or starting point is a perfectly appropriate way to run a social forum

>>15483 I like the "feed/trust" model: you can delegate moderation to some person you personally trust to moderate well, and you would see the media *as they have moderated it* (excepting important things like admin announcements). This would mean that moderators are only a) people who want to moderate and have the time for it, and b) people who have been explicitly picked by the people they are moderating for.

>How much should anyone be told what to do? As long as the conversations start on topic, let them drift off-topic as the thread goes on, or be dragged back on topic later. That's how most human interaction works, it's very rare outside of some sort of business or political environment to say "we're only going to talk about [this specific subject], nothing else can happen here." Yes, only in productive environments, or at least environments with purpose does conversation stay on task. There are many different thought on how much the freedom of the individual should be limited, it's primarily wrapped up in your moral view. For example one could say "people ought to have as much freedom as increases aggregate pleasure and reduces aggregate pain." if you were a utilitarian; however, in this case everything's entirely voluntary, no one is forcing you to go to this particular forum meaning you have freely chosen to be regulated. >Often, people with one shared interest will have other shared interests, and using a single interest as a gathering or starting point is a perfectly appropriate way to run a social forum I agree with this, it's just that these shared interests shouldn't be in the same thread/board. Also you should be conscious of the type of person each topic attracts.

>>15035 >>15043 yeah... "let's all love lain!" or glitched out images bathed in scanlines. i've noticed fellow travelers whistling in the dark like that before.

I don't believe anonymous imageboards can ever be a good medium of communication anymore, especially now that the internet has become this popular. The idea of completely unmoderated free speech doesn't work when you can use your army of paid lackies or endless ideological cult members to just drown out all other voices. The ultimate problem is that it's easier to spread bullsoykaf than to fight it, I guess. Small decentralized p2p networks are probably the only way to go forward for the "internet". It simply doesn't work at this scale when it's this centralized. Everyone is paranoid and hateful. You can see this behavior in pretty much any major community now. (imageboard, forum, etc.)

>>15513 >I don't believe anonymous imageboards can ever be a good medium of communication anymore, especially now that the internet has become this popular. The idea of completely unmoderated free speech doesn't work when you can use your army of paid lackies or endless ideological cult members to just drown out all other voices. Imageboards are moderated, just to varying degrees; however, this is a sound critique of communication. Astroturfing can't necessarily be easily removed, but it can be easily isolated, even at scale. It's quite rare to find a individual, someone who has freed them selves from the collective and thinks along their own path. To some extent it's impossible because we're all wrapped up in this collective mess, we speak and think in the same language, with the same metaphors, with the same categories, with the same media, we recognise a common history, and a common intellectual cannon. The "ideological cult members" can't be easily removed because that's what most of us are. Most of us consume what we're told and regurgitate it on command should anyone question it. >The ultimate problem is that it's easier to spread bullsoykaf than to fight it, I guess. Small decentralized p2p networks are probably the only way to go forward for the "internet". It simply doesn't work at this scale when it's this centralized. Everyone is paranoid and hateful. You can see this behavior in pretty much any major community now. (imageboard, forum, etc.) I don't think "decentralised p2p networks" really do anything to solve this problem at all, but certainly "small" helps.

>>15513 Another problem with anonymous boards (or at least large ones) is how easy it is to false-flag, so to speak. There's always been people going to larger chans like 4 and 8 to make some zany post in the hopes of getting screencapped and posted to someplace like /r/4chan or someone's twitter, but now it seems like they do it particularly to paint a strawman of whatever kind of person they don't like. I see all these "lol look at how mad the dudebros on 4chan are at [thing]!!!" type posts online and it's always like... one or two posts in the screencap, which could have been easily made by the same person who took it (and if you go to the board archive you'll find that most people either don't care or have valid criticisms of the thing). Removing the (You) is as simple as reopening the page in private mode or another browser. Either people don't realize this or they just refuse to acknowledge it since it gets in the way of jerking each other off over how superior they are to imageboard randos. And what's even worse is that the more they do this, the more it attracts actual morons, degrading the board quality. You know, just like that one "any place that gets its laughs by mocking idiots will be overrun by them" quote that people misattribute to Descartes. And it wouldn't surprise me if this was ever done on purpose, as an act of sabotage. Anonymity really is a double-edged sword the more you think about it. Sure, it lets you escape all the highschool-tier clique drama. It lets you speak your mind and only be criticized on the basis of what you just said, as opposed to your identity, your post or follower count, the fact that you like something harmless yet cool to hate, or something terrible you said many years ago when you were younger and dumber. But the tradeoff is constant, constant soykafflinging and a community that's easy as hell to astroturf.

>>15519 >Anonymity really is a double-edged sword the more you think about it. Sure, it lets you escape all the highschool-tier clique drama. It lets you speak your mind and only be criticized on the basis of what you just said, as opposed to your identity, your post or follower count, the fact that you like something harmless yet cool to hate, or something terrible you said many years ago when you were younger and dumber. But the tradeoff is constant, constant soykafflinging and a community that's easy as hell to astroturf. I don't think imageboards are dramatically more susceptible to astroturfing than say twitter, and I think brewing soykaf can largely be removed by being strictly moderated and invite only. The true power of anonymity is to liberate a community from the larger society's social norms. Whether the bondage of social norms was holding a community up or holding it back just depends on the community, and that to me is the true double edge sword. With the ability to transcend comes the risk of descent.

>>15519 if rules 1&2 aren't followed, the culture of the board decays into normaldrekkers upboating eachother

>>10115 Fun fact, they also run a Tor service for the DoH and TCP transports.

>>10093 >The decline of quality of posts is linked to ease of access. Back in the day you already needed some level of technical knowledge just to go online and find these communities. Many had some level of self obfuscation, for example 4chan used edge and nazi imagery to scare the new users away. This of course backfired when 4chan gained media notoriety, however there are still plenty of great communities out there, they may be small yes but they're surviving. >A lot of it comes down to having a slight barrier to entry, keeping away the lowest level of visitors. Essentially this is a really simple way of making sure the people participating actually want to be there for sincere reasons, because they had to put in some level of effort just to get there. Examples include: >>ssh chans >>private communities where you need to know someone on the inside to gain access >>old school UI to deter phoneposters and kids >>decentralized or distributed systems >>niche topics requiring specialist knowledge to participate >>local networks like a piratebox >>i2p, tor, freenet >It's all happening but it's changed. I make a hobby of exploring the wired to find these cool little places still managing to cling to survival against all the odds. Facebook, twitter, google, smartphones, in some sense they killed what the internet was. That surface level is never going to be the same again. But beneath the surface, in the dark corners there is still some semblance of quality, and to be honest that's cyberpunk as fuarrrk.

2006chan running kusuba X when

>>11876 Freenet does have some potential for a hobbyist landscape similar to that of 90's wild web internet, as being able to easily publish freesites for free, while still being too limited for Googles, Reddits, Facebooks and infinite scroll flat responsive smartphone soykaf to exist was a big reason for users to give it a shot. (asides from censorship evasion, of course) Unfortunately, as a platform it seems to be pretty unactive and almost dead right now for whatever reason. Not even legit net veterans looking for something like earlier internet seem to be interested. Probably because of the whole "SCARY DEEP WEB MYSTERY BOX STORIES *NOT CLICKBAIT*" cancer that's ironically probably giving darknets more attention from pedos and drug traffickers.

>>17440 >Not even legit net veterans looking for something like earlier internet seem to be interested. The big problem with Freenet is a purely practical one. The ideal computer running Freenet should be actively connected to the internet 24/7. It's murder on both capped mobile data plans and on batteries. It was conceived of in an era where people's main computers were classic desktop systems. Ironically, I can't use one of the more secure darknets because - due to security concerns - I don't leave any of my systems (desktop, NAS, etc) powered on when I'm not physically present.

>>10088 I only just now saw this thread (im usually only reading /lambda/) so I wont read it all, just for OP: I think nostalgia clouds your mind. 4chan was always crap. And before 4chan, somethingawful was always crap. There is a screenshot from /b/ with a double digit post number where moot anounces that despite the lack of insight as to the topic of the thread at hand, he now is the proud owner of an errection (to put it a bit prosaically). And guess what, way before any of that, the Usenet, that has also been crap since 1993, the "eternal september" when the hordes of newbie came and never left, courtesy of AOL distributing its first "free internet" CDs (well floppies back then). This is not to say that there is not a great deal of fluctuation in quality over time, but to simply say that "its not as it used to be" ignores reality I believe. I have used Zeronet and Retroshare for about a year and while both are as niche as it gets, they are not particularly good. Not because of nonfat-soykaf drinkers flooding them, but simply because of the lack of content, good or bad. I have this issue here too, to a lesser degree: Nothing happens! Very few new posts, very little content. Take the "cork in the anus of the internet" 4chan's /b/ where brewing soykaf is practically mandatory. And yet among this ocean of diarrhea some gold nuggets are produced. In fact they are produced with a certain regularity. Most memes or funny pictures that end up on reddit and later in your grandma's facebook feed originate on 4chan. Final example the community "the well": The first community in the internet, the first "internet marriage" happened there, they were basically the *chans, reddit, slashdot and facebook before any of those existed. The well closed many years ago: Not enough users barely enough content. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL barely 3000 users from 1985-2012. This is not meant to disagree with OP, just to show another side with its possible drawbacks.

>>11953 I've found that the small Discord (yes, Discord) communities I hang out in have been fulfilling my needs much better than chans did; nevertheless I think that it's more of a supplement to imageboards than a replacement.

>>17465 Think the kind of community we want and maybe feel nostalgic for needs a decent amount of OC continuously. Lainchan is in theory great, but in practice it never goes beyond discussing news or a few topics of debate, so not only it lacks activity, the activity it has you can have it in more popular sites. What you say about 4chan in the past being crap is correct, but it has a long history so people remember those glorious moments when good OC was created and it was so useful or so entertaining at the time. OC doesn't mean this innovative creation stuff (that would be fantastic though) but simple activities to make the users get more involved will do, that's why I think some are finding on small discords, which I guess encourage talking more than an IRC channel, a ok-ish replacement. The possibilities for engagement, be it playing a game or doing some nice project are just better in such places.

>>10088 2007 killed the internet. the iphone, facebook becoming public the formation of twitter, youtube forcing real names was the final straw. There is no such thing as subclture anymore it's all out in the open normalized, packaged to be easy to swallow and marketed. Anime doesn't really have the edge or quality that it did ca. the early 2000's most of the studios that made great shows and movies have split up or lost their soul. I'm not saying anime is soykaf now just that the culture that existed in the west that led to the rise of 4chan is gone. Whether we want to admit it or not 99% of the communities on the internet were always referrential to real world events, and for a long time there was a divide between the real world and online. This is gone now that everyone has access. New users flooded in and the nuance of everything has been lost. You can create a new community but it won't bring back that culture. It has survived to a certain extent in smaller slower moving communities like this but you still have the issue of new user influx. Reddit is hated primarily because they lack all nuance and water down memes with their hamfisted attempts to fit in. They pander to everyone else and usually stay in the eternal state of not really understanding what they see or what they post. Lurk more is no longer parroted and I think that's a mistake, elitism allowed 4chan to keep the nuance longer than other sites. But back to what I said about communities being referrential to outside events, what is there even to be elitist about anyways? Can /a/ be elitist over the latest moe blob show? Are there any boomers who cant into internet for /b/ to make fun of any more? >don't mess with football >hackers on steroids Most people know to not attack 4chan head on now so the only people they can make fun of are the blue checkmark virtue signalers on twitter and buzzfeed. Which are all shallow wins. Eternal September 2.0 (implying eternal september ever ended)... I never expirience the early 90's internet but maybe someone older can give their 2 cents. I feel that the internet could have been so much more, like a new frontier, now all the frontiers are gone, we moved west, we entered space, and the internet has been ruined by corporatism and a flood of new users. You know it's bad when now everyone needs to monetize their "content" when people used to just do it for free because they enjoyed it. It's no longer I want to be youtube famous so that I can be popular/viral/for the hell of it, it's I want to get 1 million subscribers so I can live off youtube ad revenue, patreon and selling out to sponsor shitty products to my cattle fanbase. It's disgusting and there are only a handful of active communities left that aren't infected with this virus either being entirely based on it or filled with mindless bugmen who support it with their own brand of rationalization and mental gymnastics. so that this post isn't just me bitching here's some good or at least comfy communities I've found: /tea/ sushigirl.us bus stop (sorry I don't have the link right now) this site usenet alt.cyberpunk 4chan /g/ can be mildly decent most of the time 7chan /b/ is where all the old users of 4chan /b/ went as far as I can tell the cyberia irc is pretty good wiredchan is good but pretty much dead now feel free to add more, I might think of some later too.

>>17465 >4chan was always crap. And before 4chan, somethingawful was always crap. At least it was funny back then.

>>17641 >>4chan was always crap. And before 4chan, somethingawful was always crap. >At least it was funny back then. I was always more of a PoE (and later, PoE-news) guy. I sometimes wonder what happened to Binro. Oh, Binro... But I do feel somewhat proud of being specifically mentioned on the ED page for PoE in the "Hoi Polloi" section. My write-up is vicious, but also funny and largely accurate, so I can't complain.

Nowadays only sites with strong rules can retain quality, even with the touchy subjects https://onezero.medium.com/wikipedia-shows-how-to-handle-political-polarization-a553404f00ac More than refusing entry it's about refusing low quality with insane dedication (and of course producing quality, else you just have another graveyard) I find anonymous/pseudonymous greatly overrated when it comes to talking about quality, fear of being doxxed is pretty much the only advantage offered (important, but irrelevant to this topic). The very few times a site like 4chan was interesting wasn't due to being anonymous, it was because among the sea of dross a few people decided to provide great content there, same with something awful and those other legendary sites. No problem at all admitting a site like reddit or even quora just offers a lot more these days.

>>17644 wikipedia is the complete counterexample to correct handling radicalization. On every "touchy" subject all editors are 100% hardcore commies. Take the gamergate as example. It got so ridiculously bad that even Jimmy wales had to step in and tell them to tune it down a bit.

>>17647 >commies You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

>>17647 >>17648 There's really only three kinds of people who rant about "commies". 1. Baby boomers who, in their old-age dementia, think that it's still 1950 and Stalin's going to invade at any moment. 2. Trolls who just want to get a rise out of someone, and don't have any political stance aside from "fuarrrk everyone". (I think it's safe to say that this is the case here.) 3. The higher-income crowd who've forgotten that tax-funded social programs are highly effective guillotine insurance.

>>17648 >>17651 Here it means: Those fuarrrkers are explicitly calling for collectivization of all ressources, abolishment of private property, excecution of the rich and overturning of captialism. Is that commie enough for you?

>>17648 What a really formidable tactic, just throw questions at what the other people said as if you're the person of authority. Now, if the roles were reversed and someone said "fascist" would you question their choice of words? See how I used your tactic and just question you?

>>17684 that sounds lovely!

>>17702 You're fighting a strawman. Stop making assumptions, and more importantly, stop arguing for the sake of winning

>2017 >neurosuggesting

>>17651 I've actually met quite a few people irl who actively hate communism, and literally all of them have been immigrants from Romania who came to the US to escape the communist system that they experienced firsthand. Then again, I've never heard any of them actually use the word "commie," so you may still be right.

>>18257 >immigrants >why u no use english terms like us? ... To you everyone was a commie. To people in it the gap was normal people vs the party. In addition it wasn't really sharing is caring. As usual bottom ate soykaf while top got the good stuff. A simple way to get benefits was joining the party. So why would you call them commies? Communism TM as fanboys think of is and was a pipe dream. You don't seek power to give it away. Secondary everything bad that happened during that time is associated with it for the people who survived it. People landing in gulags because a neighbor didn't like them and framed them. Kids were also trained in school to rat out their own parents and they did not realizing the consequences until way too late. Party members with iq50 giving orders thanks to rank and fuarrrking production up which also contributed to food issues. It was a absolute soykafshow and that's why nobody who made it out want's it back.

>>18258 I mean people who ran away from it would have a worse opinion, otherwise they wouldn't have gone away, so that would bias your dataset.

>>18292 Meant "made it out" as survived. Soviet union is gone for over 30 years now anyway - recent immigrants didn't run away from it. Not to mention everyone has still their relatives in their home countries, didn't live it as a younger guy, just telling what entire family clan tells when visiting. And friends who are polish&russian say the same about their relatives.

cool pic man.

>>18294 I imagine they would roll their eyes if they knew some millennial upstarts threw the word "commie" at everyone with a different opinion than them.

>>10093 I'm not sure that barriers to entry give a full explanation for the change we've seen. A lot of good old communities didn't exactly have high barriers to entry, what happened instead is that there was a barrier to information. If you wanted information about a game, you'd have to check a bunch of decentralised fan-sites for example. Nowadays, you check the centralized wiki or subreddit instead. A lot of enjoyable communities sprang up basically due to an inefficiency in accessing information, like a town founded as a rest-stop for a trans continental railway that now finds itself slowly dying because flying that distance is more time efficient and comfortable. I find this a much less optimistic scenario though. It's easy to impose barriers to entry, it's much harder to enforce inefficiency like some kind of digital amish. I suppose there are niches that can be most effectively met by small-ish communities, and so long as those last we can cling on.

>>11737 where is einchan now? Could not resolve hostname ein.blue

Since a few people have been talking about it here, how many here came from /leftypol/? It's fate is possibly most tragic than any other degenerated imageboard, at least that I know of. >>10337 >>10123 I don't think that's the point of the image. Rather it's trying to portray the expected or average user, and the "cultrue", during each period. But idk, I didn't use imageboards ten years ago.

>>21522 >It's fate is possibly most tragic than any other degenerated imageboard, at least that I know of. What happened there?

>>17647 >>17644 Wikipedia is just a different beast from forums or social media. However some users treat it sometimes, it is not about pushing your opinion or expressing yourself. Creating good encyclopedic content comes first. Within that framework there are real political disputes and simple editorial differences, but the social media tactic of persisting until your opponent gets tired of dealing with your bullshit doesn't work. Wikipedia's dispute resolution processes kick in fast ("3RR", the 3-revert rule, means that you can't revert others' edits to one article 3 times in 24 hours) and the content guidelines, though rarely properly followed, are stringent enough that they can often be used to temporarily end a dispute without prejudice to an ideological position by saying that one of the sides hasn't come up with enough reliably sourced factual backing, or that the entire text under dispute has no place in the article. You can't do that on a platform where people just saying whatever they want within reasonable limits is the whole point. The onezero article is mostly liberal journalist drivel but it touches on this: >For Evans, this spirit of collectivity contrasts dramatically with the segregated “echo chambers” of social media, where each dissenting voice can create its own version of reality. “If you disagree with what the Wikipedia page says about climate change, you can’t just create a new, alternative one,” he says. “Because there is a single page on each topic, you have to go to the talk page and try to convince the other editors of your position.” All this does mean that established editors know the policies, know you can't break 3RR, and are less likely to be summarily derezzed by a random admin for stepping a bit out of line on civility. So I do think the right-wingers are correct that they are at a disadvantage. Until very recently, ideological commitment to stuff like reason, debating emotionally sensitive topics, and preference for technical correctness over ideological agreement (either over the topic at hand or on a personal level) was pretty much the exclusive domain of liberals. Any project in the '00s that held those values as sacred, be it Wikipedia or new athiest forums or the Lesswrong-o-sphere, was by definition liberal (as opposed to conservative). Because of this, when the right-wingers started showing up to edit gamergate articles, it was largely out of nowhere with brand new accounts. Why would the established editors, who already skew liberal, give any leeway to a bunch of POV pushers who ignore established policies? At the same time, don't think that radlib types get their way either. Articles on gender, for example, follow the medical consensus, and while that's probably too liberal for many it's also not hip with the constantly shifting social media consensus. And I've heard about disputes between the Wikimedia Foundation's diversity initiatives and regular editors trying to enforce basic quality and notability standards.

As a past forum owner, I can say it is a known fact for many that social media killed the internet. Forum culture died entirely with facebook. Same is probably partially true for MSN and other similar 1on1 chatting software. People just started using facebook to chat with friends, because facebook included ALL their friends and was popular. People started using facebook to share their lives or ask questions instead of forums because they reached more people at once and because the UI was more intuitive/fun (liking posts etc.). They could also create their own groups & pages which rendered forums completely useless. Chan culture survived a little longer because of the anonymous nature being very different from how social media. What killed chan culture in my opinion was the gradual shift in the internet culture in general. It became more and more acceptable with time to share your information online, to not have privacy. It became more acceptable that content should be heavily regulated not only by the site owners but also by governments. Right now the few who support free internet are left in a weird position where they end up having to support facebook that they hate for invading privacy, so that government can't force facebook to regulate its content, delete "fake news" etc. Chans, and to be fair every website, gradually lose their independence. They are often more accountable on what gets posted on their website than the actual poster is accountable. It used to be if you didn't like a website's content, if people were talking bs etc. you would just not go to that website, now when that happens the owner of the website has to go to court. Chans get increasingly political because it is their only remaining use. People post their memes on social media, chat in social media, ask for advice in social media, argue in social media. They only go to chans for political soykaf that gets deleted. The social media giants became solid pillars of the internet and for the first time in history old politicians who yell at the internet can now yell at actual living people and can now control it because now the internet actually is owned by a few companies. I think the solution to this crisis will be big websites that let people create smaller communities that are a lot less moderated by the owner of the big website as the main responsibility falls on the owner of that small community instead. This already sort of happened with Discord. Chatting has been dead for years before Discord. The reason it worked was because it is one website, one environment, like social media giants, but unlike social media and more like old school forums/chats it consists of smaller communities that aren't really connected to each other. I expect a similar thing to happen for chans, or maybe even a resurrection of forums and blogs. 8ch was a semi successful implementation of this idea as well actually, by letting people create their own boards. Maybe the scale wasn't right and instead of letting people creating boards it should have given you the ability to create your own chan, and have a list of chans on the main page instead of list of boards. Either ways people are definitely starting to feel constrained by the internet getting smaller. The internet didn't smaller there is just less in it. It needs a lot more personalized content, a lot more variation in different places to visit, different UIs, different atmospheres.

>>21550 Any social site not focused on profit focuses has producing quality content as a main interest. What killed forums and other sites is how a content creator could also profit too putting their stuff on those places, but nobody replaced them and hence the forums and chans get filled with boring trash like conspiracies and "brewing soykaf" becoming the rule and not the exception. If Lainchan manages to retain above average quality for a chan is because admins don't hesitate to delete the crap most of the time, the contrast is clear with other sites that are just staying alive out of mere inertia and nostalgia. >>21552 It has very little to do with politics actually or that censorship nonsense, politics like religion just happens to be the subject that would get you most replies, you can see the same crap in Facebook and Twitter, the only difference is that the tone is less stupid (none of the soykaf that gets deleted is actually original, just more aggresive)

>>17684 Then you simply have no clue what you're talking about. I've spent more time than I care to elaborate following the major personalities around the gamergate article and running into them on other political articles. The ones with admin clique power backing up their article brigading are almost universally virtue-signalling identarian liberals, not commies. I think the communists of Wikipedia largely avoid those kinds of topics and stick to leftist articles because they're so pessimistic and cynical that they don't think it's even worth fighting over the "spectacle" of a topic like gamergate or political party soykafflinging.

>>21522 You mean bunkerchan? It's a shame those dumbasses killed their /tech/ board, but lainchan is way better for this discussion anyway. >>21550 >the social media tactic of persisting until your opponent gets tired of dealing with your bullshit doesn't work. I can only surmise you haven't followed a contentious Wikipedia article long enough to see the end result. That's understandable because it can take quite a long time. There's a decade-long edit war still being waged on the pitbull article for instance. The autistic (quite literally) devotion to their perspective that certain editors have ''does'' tend to eventually win the day by wearing out their opponents. People ideologically committed to a certain perspective simply tend to be more dedicated than people ideologically committed to neutrality and the truth. In spite of some illusory image of "the encyclopedia that anyone can edit", Wikipedia in fact has a massive hierarchy of unaccountable veteran-admin cliques that report and topic ban new users and IP editors alike on the regular on the evidence-free suspicion of "sockpuppeting" (editing outside of a pre-existing account). It's a situation where you're damned if you don't know the rules and damned if you do ("he knows too much, ban that sockpuppet!"). But really, you're damned if you oppose the house point of view established by an opposition with an admin clique on their side. >when the right-wingers started showing up to edit gamergate articles, it was largely out of nowhere with brand new accounts. It was about 50/50 old accounts and new accounts, and you need to establish somehow that they were "right-wingers". There's only a few accounts I followed that I could say with any real certainty had right-wing political positions. In fact many of the most dedicated anti-POV editors on that article skewed liberal, they just wanted a neutral article.

>>10095 > I don't think Lainchan is particularly well prepare in this aspect. You need a board culture that makes your community unappealing to the people you're trying to keep out. 100% agreed. I love Lainchan and think the people here are unique, but I want it to stay at about its current size. Especially with the recent spike in popularity of things like cyberpunk, trying to make this board bigger is bound to lead it to being reddit-tier psuedo-intellectual central.

>>21779 Virtue signaling identitarians are communists, lainon. Not liberal at all.

>What killed fora is that writers profit elsewhere. Additionally, their revenue source is advertisers. So a writer's incentive is to be most valuable to---not his consumers. Thus, fora are voided, and social media, washed.

>>10095 >You need a board culture that makes your community unappealing to the people you're trying to keep out. 4chan has survived for as long as it has because normal people don't want to see gore, nazi imagery, and crypto-ironic pedophilia. people didn't go to 4chan because when it first came out it anime was a obscure hobby for people for a long time for the early 2000's, which was it's main purpose. On that same note, /b/ was the death of 4chan as the reason for it's large growth in userbase was large "raids" the largest being "op scientology" or whatever they called it. wanting to appeal to gore, nazi imagery, and crypto-ironic pedophilia to disuades normal people isn't going to work, it will only attract the worst the internet has to offer. Instead focus on having the mods focus on enforcement of lainchan cultural norms of what is acceptable. this constant 08-09 /b/ is my sekret club meme was dead for awhile

Those who would give up essential gore imagery, to purchase a little moderation team, deserve neither fun nor mods. t. /b/enjamin Franklin You people clearly haven't seen any imageboard culture outside your anglo-american 4chan-derivative circle. Russian boards for example, had a very high degree of self-policing, influx of outsiders happened only when admins put ads on social networks or sold their asses to police in exchange for paid troll and bot posts that stir the discussion and inflate perceived traffic, individual boards lost their quality because of power-hungry underage mods who else would do this for free?.

>>21795 >falling for moot's "i created 4chan for anime" meme You got tricked

>>21796 this. Imageboards like 4ch are weak, precisely because it's very easy to access them. I am not sure about russian imageboards, but polish ones tried(this is still the case, but since every normal person group on fb has "how to access the *chan" in their FAQ, it's no longer as strong) to keep stuff very isolated, to the point of not using DNS at all, replacing every post with bible quotes, writing the bitcoin miner into the js code and so on and so on. Tho, we still have massive dramas, attentionwhoring is horrible, at some point entire moderation was replaced with antidol-consuming, sex-having druggies, but hey! We don't have a normal person problem.

>>21795 >>21798 It's ancient history at this point but originally 4chan launched with only /b/ board, it was an extension of sociopathic culture of something awful forums from day one. Also, contrary to what Wikipedia says, it was Shii who provided the software.

>>21828 The first board was /a/, also don't forget 2ch. I wouldn't be surprised if many 4channers came from Something awful though.

>>21828 Unrelated, but does anyone know why Shii's website went down? I remember checking it out when it was still up. https://shii.bibanon.org/shii.org/knows/Everything_Shii_Knows.html

>>21883 Oh, man, I haven't thought about Shii's site in so long. That's a little sad- at least it's archived.

I'm pretty much bailing on the internet, slowly pruning sites from my daily usage since deleting my facebook a couple years ago. Finally killed my youtube account as I don't like the new tos. At some point you have to decide that it's not worth it anymore.

With the new TOS of YouTube you can see that the 2020's internet will not even be close to the 2010's. The internet is decaying pretty fast, just take a look at what Twitter and Facebook is right now. More than half of the communities that I've participated have died due to the new "Discord wave", and some of the remaining ones have significantly lost their posts quality. >>22052 >At some point you have to decide that it's not worth it anymore. I don't believe we will reach that point, maybe we'll move to a new form of internet services like ZeroNet. But hey, there will always be Lainchan.

>>22052 >new Youtube TOS What did those fuarrrkers change this time?

>>22068 https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/11/20955864/youtube-terms-of-service-update-terminations-children-content-ftc Just made clear they can delete whatever they don't want hosted on their servers. They are exercising their freedoms

>>22070 Also this: https://www.notebookcheck.net/YouTube-changes-Terms-of-Service-to-emphasize-it-can-delete-channels-that-are-not-commercially-viable.442636.0.html

>>22070 >>22076 rofl, wow. Better let everyone know on my channel that I'm moving my stuff to vimeo/bitchute already. More importantly you should back the fuarrrk up any videos you think are important, this is clearly going to be used for censorship.

>>21796 >You people clearly haven't seen any imageboard culture outside your anglo-american 4chan-derivative circle. Perhaps true. The best chan I've read in the past couple years is Hispachan. The vibe is just anons posting and having fun, not angry spergs and insincere demagogues wrestling in a psyop pit. >>21550 >>21781 >All this does mean that established editors know the policies, know you can't break 3RR > massive hierarchy of unaccountable veteran-admin cliques Bingo, you can make a lot of moves on Wikipedia if you know the policies very well and are very careful about citations, but the big change in policy has been the definition of a reliable source. Basically (and you'll see this to an almost comic extent if you look at controversial current events) they tilted the definition of reliable source away from independent and primary sources (even reputable ones published in academic journals) towards mainstream media sources. So if Gizmodo or NYT writes that pitbulls are good boys, or drumpf colluded with muh Russia, it will be cited in Wikipedia 12 hours later as <Pitbills are innocent creatures that are no more likely to rip a child's face off than any other dog. [13][14][26]

>>22481 & if you want to clean up Wikipedia, be smart, do your research well (go to the library!) and stay away from current events and the core of lightning rod topics. For example, instead of editing the pitbull article directly, edit other articles about animal behavior and psychology, articles about dogs and dog breeds in general, etc.

>>10139 Look at tilde.club or tildeverse.org for inspiration too. It's just Unix shells but with a focus on the community aspect. This is what Unix was originally designed for, multiple users sharing a machine, chatting, sharing files etc.

>>21796 In my experience most chans have the same culture worldwide. I'm not a native english speaker and most chans I know (or known) had the same culture. Chans in my native language are almost just copies of english chans. The only think different are "memes" used. But everything else is/feels the same. I remember when chans were banning /i/ (invasion) boards back in 2007(?). A lot of people made their own/fled to other chans. A lot of them were not english. It was exactly the same "culture" even on the ones that were not english. I don't have experiences with russian chans as I don't speak RU so I'm not telling you you are lying. But in my experience, as a "old user" of chans, they share the same culture even if they are not english. (most non-english users of chans do speak english and browse english chans on the side. So we see "the culture" on english chan and repost the same things on our non-english chans) >Russian boards for example, had a very high degree of self-policing, influx of outsiders happened only when admins put ads on social networks or sold their asses to police in exchange for paid troll and bot posts that stir the discussion and inflate perceived traffic, individual boards lost their quality because of power-hungry underage mods IN MY EXPERIENCE (again, I'm not telling that you are lying, I could be wrong) you are describing every (not big as 4chan) chan ever. The only difference here is law enforcement in the west are posting on chans without paying/asking the admins. And I bet russian LEA do the same too. Side note: I am and forever will be "into" the old chan culture. When memes were actually memes and not just some random movie screenshots with white text on it, being spread like fire on social medias by old people/companies. Maybe the chan culture you are talking about isn't the same as 'mine'. Maybe you are talking about the "neo" chan culture that came after medias did articles/report about 4chan. If it's the case, ignore my post. I will never be cool with the new culture, posting edgy soykaf on chans just because you saw someone else do it on TV. If you are talking about this "neo culture", then I may be wrong since I'm just a Lainchan user now that other chans are just dumpsters for 8chan refugees and you can't pass a day without seeing the N-world or "Jews are bad" as people want to be as edgy as possible, having "unpopular" political ideas just because it's cool or whatever. (Also back then, the word "troll" had meaning: We were not accusing every one of being a troll and trolls were actual trolls not people being just openly dicks and yelling "I'M TROLLING YOU BRO". Sorry I'm drunk I don't even know what the subject of the post was at first.

I've been working on a set of rules for a imageboard based off some past experiences and rule sets from my favorite imageboards. I'm curious what you all think of the following: 0. Do not discuss the spectacle. 1. Do not discuss identity. (where identity is a group association based on some social construct) 2. Do not respond to perceived wreckers. 3. Always post content in relevant existing threads before making your own. 4. Always argue in good faith and avoid using personal attacks. 5. Always elaborate on your opinions, and expand on your thread topics. 6. Always spoiler any NSFW content and make sure it's relevant to the discussion. 7. Do not post anything illegal in the country of Romania. (or wherever the host is located) This would effectively be a imageboard for discussing acts of creation that you are working on or ideas independent of the spectacle.

>>22490 What is your stance on funposting?

>>22491 There isn't anything in the rule set that would strictly ban fun-posting; however, it would be made fairly awkward. I suspect in practice it would force it off site and into things like IRC, GNU Social, etc. On a personal level, hopefully this doesn't sound too odd, but fun-posting has never really appealed to me, and the culture of the internet at large is a little too hedonist for my tastes.

>>22490 I see you are interested in hosting your board on a cock.li/cockbox.com VPS (it's actually just a server blade inside the romanian flokinet datacenter lol). Please don't. They got raided like 2 days ago, all servers mirrored etc.

>>22493 I don't plan on hosting a imageboard for some time, but https://flokinet.is was actually what I was looking at. I'd love to use https://www.orangewebsite.com but the prices are a little too much for me. Perhaps I'll make a VPS suggestion thread here in the future.

>>22492 Fully agree, funposting is what makes sites irrelevant From 4chan becoming meme central over anything else, reddit top becoming overused repeated jokes, twitter humor being basically templates of things, and so on. When I think of highlights of social sites I spent time on funposting never really comes on. That's not to say you can't have fun, but funposting pretty much erases intelligent , amusing, creative fun out of the question and leads quickly to the lowest forms of it.

>>22495 Good stuff.

>>10093 I've been exploring a bit after abandoning social media (even the alternatives) and I'm starting to find comfy places. I feels nice. >>10097 If there will be a future, it will be about things like blockstack.

>>22492 I like partaking in elaborate, high brow funposting that takes as much work as serious commentary

>>22492 >>22495 >intelligent So says you. Sometimes it's just meaningless chaos and the comedization of the entirety of our world in a way that just makes things meaningless and neutered. That does happen. But sometimes I think a big chunk of ѕһіtposting is actually a reaction to threads that are pseudointellectual, undeservedly pretentious, tedious, or made by certain types of people who use the mere mannerisms and superficial appearances of "smart" debate as a way of cloaking their terrible ideas in a shroud of legitimacy and forcing others who want to feel smart into engaging them.

>>22609 Fully agree with you. if there was no soykafpoosting on /sci/ it would shortly become unbearable.