[lee-rhapsody]

Going back to forums locked behind accounts would be a good first step.

[ASalazarMX]

Forums worked (and still do) because they're small niches, like the budding Internet. As soon as they become big, they lose their sense of community, and become profitable to spam.

So, maybe we have to choose between isolated human islands vs. an ad-and-SEO-infested world?

[skhameneh]

> Forums worked (and still do)

They worked and they often worked quite well. Unfortunately, many of those “working” forums I frequented are now inactive. It’s tough to visit some and see it’s been many years since the last post on some - and those are just the ones that are still online.

[pajamasam]

> isolated human islands Good point. But how does one find these? Through word-of-mouth, I guess?

[onemoresoop]

> Going back to forums locked behind accounts would be a good first step.

How do you ensure the accounts aren't AI bots or people who scrap and serve it all back to the AI soup pot? The identity seems to be quite a problem online.

[muzani]

Charge an entry fee like Something Awful does.

The entry fee let them be a lot more chaotic too - people who go too far and piss someone off would get kicked out and forced to pay money to rejoin again. But it put a price tag on trolling, unlike platforms like Instagram. So people could do it and somehow get better at it until it turns into comedy.

[selfhoster11]

Invite-only, the way private torrent trackers still do it. Which has its own problems, but if you limit the number of invitees a given user can bring in and other such restrictions, it makes it practically impossible to for bots to make up a good chunk of the userbase.

[JohnMakin]

Yes, and account creation automation is quite trivial in the majority of cases.

[jay_kyburz]

I imagine people will soon have AI post here and other logged in forums on behalf of them. Try and rack up Karma or build reputation.

[hinkley]

I am unaware of any ways in which my stupid pile of karma has changed my life for the better.

None of you see it, and doesn’t even change how dang behaves toward me when I’m hangry.

[onemoresoop]

I think some are already doing this.

[pajamasam]

Like Reddit, you mean? Or with some extra authentication mechanism?

[egypturnash]

hahaha god Reddit is fucking full of people who are clearly using AI to write or edit their posts, I get so many people trying to glaze me like ChatGPT does now and it's so fucking creepy.

[burnt-resistor]

Sounds about right. Prove you're a real human through some sort of identification verification process. Probably would lead to better conversations, especially if each person could have only one account.