“Algorithmic steering” is okay as long as the algorithm is relatively straightforward, public, and well-understood.

The problem is when the corpos tweak it to suit their mass-market advertisers.

Awesome. That seems like the way to go then!

Are there good alternatives?

I feel like forums really fell behind the times, with shitty threading systems and awkward text formatting interfaces and the horror that is bbcode.

Meanwhile discord handles image embedding gracefully, with markdown formatting and previews.

What’s the next-gen forum system that’s keeping up with modern times? Is there a part of the fediverse that meets this?

Discourse seems the most modern, but not sure if it is open, let alone federated.

Lemmy almost fills it but tends to be too ephemeral and doesn’t handle multiple forums/channels for one broad topic.

People who don’t understand windows or the minimize, maximize, and close buttons. So they constantly close the window and then relaunch the program to get back to the main screen or switch tasks.

No. As you get older your social life will change and reboot as you find new friends and interests and move apart from the old ones.

The only constant is change.