Are political forums a thing of the past?

[Tragic KingdomII]

Forums were the pre-social media platforms where online debates were had. They were fairly well moderated and allowed for anonymous long form nuanced debates. Are they now a thing of the past? I'm aware of a few somewhat popular forums built around extremely niche ideas...not much besides that. Discuss.

[John Galt]

yes, this is outdated. either go to reddit and shitpost about the headline, or go to facebook and just spew whatever diarrhea exists in your brain onto the screen seems to be the choice of people these days. even though we may go on weird tangents here, in general people stick to topics and actually discuss them, which is not What The People Want. people want their views validated, they don't want to actually discuss them. you get downvoted to oblivion for contrary views of whatever subreddit you're on, because the downvote button while they say isn't a disagree button is only used by people that way. it is very rare for a nuanced view to ever percolate to the top, more often than not it's zingers that get gilded by 50 people

[Tragic KingdomII]

[Philly]

Communities like this one are probably most closely recreated in modern terms by things like discord servers.

[exploited]

I think that as more and more people drop out of social media, forums could make a comeback. Not ever going to be as popular as they were, but sensible people who are dedicated to a hobby or interest will look towards these older models for an outlet.

The problem right now is that forum software is brutally outdated and generally looks old and unappealing. While the basic format of threads and posts would remain, stuff like phpBB is in a huge need of a redesign from the ground up.

[Philly]

u do it then bitch

[exploited]

Nah Galt should do it

[Saz]

Most websites have comments now and you can kind of scale that depending on how big a community you want to interact with. Reddit/Youtube are large, maybe there is some niche blog or website thats much smaller. Discord is not ideal for lengthy political screeds. Actually you can post those on major new outlet comments like NYT and they will regularly feature you if you toe the party line or manage to get enough votes. I think this will be the future - high quality unique bit not unintelligent comments are a commodity in today's media landscape and I suspect in the near future you will see "premium" commentary ie premium account statuses, paid or earned, at major media sites only available to premium accounts. Fundamentally a new article with comments is not much different from a thread with a topic and related comments. Forum is verbatim from latin - a forum is a forum, the forum need not be that specific. So yes, political forums will exist and I think in the internet age with mass connectivity they have more value than anyone suspected. But of course it takes MEGACORP to reach a mass audience like that (no offence Uber[admin not taxi]) and there are negative externalities like every 70 iq dipshit broadcasting to the world, so I think the real question is can the general public be trusted to adequately consume the content of a truly open and global political forum, or will it cause the general public to spiral into insanity and to start believing aliens and pedophiles are running a secret plot to destroy the world where only reality TV star can save us? It's a rhetorical question, of course. Anyone who has shopped at Walmart since the turn of the century would be able to tell you giving the general public a global forum would be an absolute disaster. We live in a country where are any given time one third of people can be convinced of any given thing. It's not a suprise we have voting majorities in some places who think the US government is captive to a plot run by aliens and pedophiles, which only a reality TV star can stop. The rest of us will pay a $15.99 subscription to Fox News +, or the NYT Pro, to avoid having to share the same fora with this incoherent trash and will shout into the digital ether while our subscription fees fund the subversion of the democracy that was supposed to keep the idiots from running the show in the first place.