I think federation and decentralization work well for email and text-messaging platforms like XMPP and Matrix because those platforms inherently benefit from being decentralized. They work almost seamlessly with federation.

Forums, on the other hand, don’t really need a federated system. Just look at Lemmy and how many communities defederate from one another because of ideological disagreements. When there’s that much defederation, the entire concept starts to feel pointless. Suddenly, you can’t use your account across “Lemmy” because several instances have decided they don’t like each other anymore.

If this much fragmentation is going to happen naturally, how is federation supposed to be the sustainable future of forums?

I think this is a fair criticism of federated forums. You don’t see this same level of fragmentation with email or text messaging.

Centralized but well-moderated forums are what really matter. Federation doesn’t protect good or useful speech, quality moderation does. And by its nature, Lemmy lacks that.

I don’t know if this is the right community, but I suppose it’s close enough.

You can’t even make posts like this on Reddit anymore, Reddit has become such a hog on the internet traffic it’s ridiculous. It wouldn’t be a problem if Reddit didn’t take such precious internet space.

They censor people, regular people who aren’t even doing anything too controversial. Reddit’s automated filters constantly remove people’s posts, only conformist content is allowed there, and so nothing of value remains. Just generic conformist post after another generic conformist post.

Why is this platform still popular is honestly just beyond me at this point. No really, can someone please, please explain to me why do people keep using this broken website anymore?

I don't know if this is the right community, but I suppose it's close enough.

You can't even make posts like this on Reddit anymore, Reddit has become such a hog on the internet traffic it's ridiculous. It wouldn't be a problem if Reddit didn't take such precious internet space.

They censor people, regular people who aren't even doing anything too controversial. Reddit's automated filers constantly remove people's posts, only conformist content is allowed there, and so nothing of value remains. Just generic conformist post after another generic conformist post.

Why is this platform still popular is honestly just beyond me at this point. No really, can someone please, please explain to me why do people keep using this broken website anymore?

Relevant to SteamOS and open-platform gaming, it proposes a different paradigm for Linux-based distributions and operating systems, one that could address compatibility issues on alternative platforms that Windows users often take for granted.

EDIT: added a QnA section that tries to answer some of the questions posed here.