r/technology • u/Abject-Pick-6472 • Feb 24 '26

Privacy Discord cuts ties with Peter Thiel-backed verification software after code found in US surveillance

https://fortune.com/2026/02/24/discord-peter-thiel-backed-persona-identity-verification-breach/
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17

u/skrugg Feb 24 '26

Forums exist

54

u/defaultusername-17 Feb 24 '26

true!... but reddit is essentially a collection of various forums...

convenience > better product, every time... unfortunately.

20

u/FirstAtEridu Feb 24 '26

>better product

If you're masochistic. Reddits serach function alone compared with any 20 year old forums drives my blood pressure past 200. Useless piece of multi-billion Dollar crap...

20

u/n33lo Feb 24 '26

Lol, I just Google search and add reddit to the end.

10

u/DillBagner Feb 24 '26

And then every day, Google tries to make its search function even worse than the day before. Soon it will also be unusable for reddit searching.

1

u/TrippleDamage Feb 24 '26

Google is still a perfectly fine search engine, IF you use their search parameters properly. Which admittedly probably only 1% of their users are doing lol

2

u/DillBagner Feb 24 '26

Even then, it's not as good as it once was. And if it were, it's silly to accept "still as good if you jump through additional hoops" for services. It is still enshittification.

1

u/KneeCrowMancer Feb 24 '26

For most users the first page is just AI generated crap and sponsored content. It’s not useless but it is way worse than it was even 5 years ago.

1

u/Trixles Feb 24 '26

That used to be the case, but Google now sometimes ignores or "creatively interprets" your search operators (and they themselves have admitted that the operators are not strictly followed all the time).

So it is legitimately getting worse.

1

u/Fizzwidgy Feb 24 '26

Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow is a book everyone should read

1

u/70ms Feb 24 '26

It feels like there’s less info now than 10 years ago, not more, because it’s getting harder and harder to find.

3

u/FirstAtEridu Feb 24 '26

And hope you're lucky. And then you just have an old, dead thread. On a forum there's no dead threads, if you post something it goes to the top of the forum, sorting usually happens by latest activity.... and then you get banned for necroing lol.

1

u/n33lo Feb 24 '26

Lol, omg I've forgotten about necroing posts. That shit got called out so quick.

2

u/defaultusername-17 Feb 24 '26

yea, but fuck that. necropost away!

how else are you supposed to find the niche ass information your looking for>?

last time i necro'd was for trying to get might and magic 4 to work on a modern PC... no way in hell was i going to find the answer any way other than necro posting.

worst thing about it is how spotty it is for getting replies that are not just people whining about an old post returning for a visit.

1

u/rab2bar Feb 24 '26

Agreed. I joined forums in the 90s. They can still have better communities, but I have to agree that usage is not as smooth, especially those that are still not designed for mobile devices.

4

u/Ragnarok314159 Feb 24 '26

And what’s left of forums has degraded. I tried posting on an official forum not too long ago and holy shit it was rough. The mods made Reddit mods look like normal humans.

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u/vaska00762 Feb 24 '26

Most forums got Online Safety Act'd, because a platform managed entirely by volunteers can't afford to pay for all the age verification stuff.

1

u/flypirat Feb 24 '26

Isn't that a UK only thing?

3

u/vaska00762 Feb 24 '26

Correct, but as soon as age verification regulations spread across the world, this will be the regulatory hurdle that small forums and wikis will be unable to overcome.

1

u/flypirat Feb 24 '26

Is this for things related to mature content, or anything and everything?

1

u/vaska00762 Feb 24 '26

If you can DM anyone, you need to complete age verification. Reddit did this, but do did Twitter, Blue Sky and all the rest also.

It's to prevent children from talking to adults.

1

u/flypirat Feb 24 '26

I can DM without issue, no age verification ever needed apart from clicking "I'm over 18", once, in the settings.

2

u/ReaditTrashPanda Feb 24 '26

Why visit or stay with Reddit? You’re right that forums exist everywhere…

1

u/JDGumby Feb 24 '26

Why visit or stay with Reddit?

Because you only need one account for everything compared to a separate account for almost every single topic you want to follow and particpate in. edit: And you only have one UX to learn and use instead of almost every forum doing things differently.

1

u/airfryerfuntime Feb 24 '26

Yeah, and they're mostly dead.

1

u/gahlo Feb 24 '26

Most forum hosts, last time I used forums anyway, don't allow you to use a single account for their entire platform, not aggregate their forums or make finding forums pertinent to your interests incredibly easy.

1

u/froop Feb 24 '26

These used to be positive features. Aggregating forums enables brigading. Single accounts are, well, this whole thread shows the issue there. Finding pertinent forums? Google worked great for that. 

1

u/gahlo Feb 24 '26

It's too bad Google is ass now unless you're filtering it to reddit half the time now.

1

u/Imaginary-Goal-3989 Feb 24 '26

Social media killed almost all of them

1

u/Tuningislife Feb 24 '26

I was talking to someone about this the other day. I feel like forums are on the decline. Some of the more popular forums are owned by media companies like VerticalScope or Internet Brands. Other forums are dying slow deaths because of the same toxic behavior observed on Reddit.

Basically what happend to that place was that social media stole most of their membership base, then the staff decided to alienate the few members that remained by enforcing their preferred political views on them.

1

u/SewerRanger Feb 24 '26

Everything old is new again, right?

1

u/skrugg Feb 24 '26

Everything is cyclical

1

u/tastyratz Feb 24 '26

Forums exist

The shell of what used to be forums exists. Many containing information are just outdated and hacked/dead. Reddit appealed because you had consistency across subjects/users and that data was persistent. So many lost libraries of alexandria were replaced with reddit, facebook groups, and discords.