Why I think that #NodeBB's latest release can be a game changer for the #Fediverse

For years, before social media came along, forums were the main place to discuss with others on the internet. Communities were built, thrived, a few survived, most were swallowed by Reddit and Facebook groups.

But there are still many websites/organizations/collectives who need an online space to talk with their members! Newspapers, workers unions, anarchist collectives, football fan clubs - all of those might already be running a forum, or would be open to running one. And now we have a great fedi solution for this, which is primarily a forum, but is also a gateway to the rest of fedi! Especially with the recent crap going on on mainstream social media (Zuckerberg's rightwing turn and Musk openly going full on nazi), I believe there is now an opportunity to suggest this to whatever kind of community you are involved in: "With this platform, we can have a forum for us, but also escape corporate social media!". It is a great idea.

I am a little jealous, to be honest, as this was what I've been saying for years now, what I suggested back in #Firefish, and what we wanted to do with #Catodon - but I'm not a dev and the projects I've been involved in haven't managed to do much in this direction. @julian got there first - well done!

Check out NodeBB, it's very nicely done, and I'm sure it will only get better, since they just released their first version with ActivityPub support. Think of any group/team you're in touch with that might consider hosting a (federated) forum, and suggest it to them! IMO federated communities are far more suitable and make much more sense for the Fediverse, instead of trying to conceptualize it as a kind of Twitter replacement, and they can serve the target of decentralization much better. Let's spread this!