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   Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒 (killyourfm@layer8.space)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:25:34 JST Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒

   I know this Discord nonsense has a lot of people searching for alternatives (like Matrix, Stoat, etc), but we need to go back to discussions and knowledge being searchable on the open web!

   I say bring back the forums. It's time.

   • Gianmarco Gargiulo repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒 (killyourfm@layer8.space)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:35:38 JST Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒

     in reply to

     • Mohammed Ismail :unverified:

     @myTerminal That's heartbreakingly true, and as someone who has managed many community, I totally get it. It just sucks because the communities get more and more fragmented.

   • Embed this notice
     Mohammed Ismail :unverified: (myterminal@fosstodon.org)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:35:39 JST Mohammed Ismail :unverified:

     in reply to

     @killyourfm Across all use-cases like being able to communicate 1-on-1, broadcast messages to your group, being able to share thoughts with the "web", and more, what often ends up happening, at least for me, is that I keep an account at all of these places, because you can't convince people to switch over, and you have to be where your audience is.

   • Embed this notice
     dash (flwwhtrbt@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:41:20 JST dash

     in reply to

     @killyourfm

     Gardiner and I discussed this, reigniting his forum. But...we've ended up on Matrix

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒 (killyourfm@layer8.space)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:41:20 JST Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒

     in reply to

     • dash

     @flwwhtrbt Honestly, that's a bummer. There's still a fairly tall barrier to entry for quote/unquote normal users. Also, when I worked at Thunderbird, I can't tell you how many times we all ended up on Slack (our backup) because the Matrix instance was either down or not syncing or otherwise borked.

     Not to mention using it on multiple devices can be a serious pain point.

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒 (killyourfm@layer8.space)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:45:56 JST Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒

     in reply to

     • Mohammed Ismail :unverified:

     @myTerminal 🥺 I've never understood the appeal of WhatsApp groups, not to mention despising the parent company.

   • Embed this notice
     Mohammed Ismail :unverified: (myterminal@fosstodon.org)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 13:45:57 JST Mohammed Ismail :unverified:

     in reply to

     @killyourfm And because I am usually that one person who is often heard talking about "the next perfect" platform for the group, people tend to start ignoring me after a couple of "painful" switches, eventually going back to their #WhatsApp groups.

   • Embed this notice
     narcolepsy and alcoholism :flag: (hj@shigusegubu.club)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 16:51:38 JST narcolepsy and alcoholism :flag:

     in reply to
     @killyourfm fediverse is the forum tho
     Blurry Moon likes this.
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     DaCool (dacool@layer8.space)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 17:34:08 JST DaCool

     in reply to

     @killyourfm I still visit the refuge of what once was the Facepunch forums do this day.

     I also set up Stoat for my friends if they want it, which they said they do, and because Stoat is receiving a "Voice v2" overhaul (and is thus inoperable on self-hosted according to my experience and understanding) I set up Jitsi which disconnects me from calls in a few minutes.

     Why is Voicechat for Open Source so hard, arghhh.

   • Embed this notice
     Gianmarco Gargiulo (gianmarcogg03@mastodon.uno)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 19:20:14 JST Gianmarco Gargiulo

     in reply to

     @killyourfm to avoid having to make a new account on every forum you want to post on, it would be cool to have an ActivityPub Single Sign On system. Another idea (which I believe Discourse has already?) is to implement ActivityPub in the forums directly, so that you can post on any forum from your main one.

   • Embed this notice
     Gianmarco Gargiulo (gianmarcogg03@mastodon.uno)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 19:26:18 JST Gianmarco Gargiulo

     in reply to

     • Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸

     @Natanox @killyourfm just have a chatroom embed on a page of the forum, like one of those web IRC clients.

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     Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸 (natanox@chaos.social)'s status on Wednesday, 11-Feb-2026 19:26:19 JST Natanox 🇺🇦🇵🇸

     in reply to

     @killyourfm I'm still wondering: why not have both, a public forum that's also accessible through a client that has chatrooms and voice channels for that community built-in?

     It's all web tech anyway, literally nothing is stopping anyone from implementing things this way. We can have our cake and eat it too. How did we end up in this mess, with Discord enshittified but no properly working, comprehensive alternative (which isn't "go back to have 5 different apps").

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒 (killyourfm@layer8.space)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 00:15:49 JST Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒

     in reply to

     • Gianmarco Gargiulo

     @gianmarcogg03 oh that's genius, and would definitely solve one of the most annoying paper cuts!

   • Embed this notice
     Mohammed Ismail :unverified: (myterminal@fosstodon.org)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 09:48:15 JST Mohammed Ismail :unverified:

     in reply to

     • Morten Juhl-Johansen

     @mjj @killyourfm I have a similar approach where I'm almost everywhere my people are (unfortunately including #WhatsApp), but for the ones like us, it means carrying a sizable baggage for something that most people: (a) get done with only one platform which is often WhatsApp, and (b) do not even have to think/worry about.

   • Embed this notice
     Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒 (killyourfm@layer8.space)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 09:48:15 JST Jason Evangelho 🐧🎒

     in reply to

     • Morten Juhl-Johansen
     • Mohammed Ismail :unverified:

     @myTerminal @mjj That mental "baggage" is real. I have to stay on Messenger for my aunt and grandmother. I have to stay on WhatsApp for 2 of my friends. Etc...

   • Embed this notice
     Morten Juhl-Johansen (mjj@mstdn.dk)'s status on Thursday, 12-Feb-2026 09:48:17 JST Morten Juhl-Johansen

     in reply to

     • Mohammed Ismail :unverified:

     @killyourfm @myTerminal I have arrived at the conclusion that if someone I know enough for that kind of communication suggests a new *sensible* platform I am not already using, that is fine, I will use it. You have taken up Session or SimpleX: Cool. Let's do that. Even between Signal, Matrix, Delta Chat, Nextcloud Talk and Threema, I have a pretty good idea where people are. Of course, all this is for private communications, so not on a huge scale.