I'll tell you what happened. Everyone moved to the fediverse.
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@Pawlicker Even though imageboards seem to be dying, especially after the 8kun and webring shitshow, I don't think the fediverse could ever 100% replace imageboards due to one key thing: complete anonymity.
On something completely anonymous like an imageboard or textboard, you can make bad posts. People will tell you that you belong on Reddit or you should kill yourself, but you can never build a negative reputation for yourself (unless you use a name or tripcode, or make it obvious that all these posts are coming from you). Posts are judged by the content alone, and not by the user.
On the Fediverse, even if your account isn't linked to your real identity, you still have a reputation in the community and it reflects how people will respond to you. If you make enough bad takes people will eventually ignore (or outright block/mute) you. If you want to start at a blank slate, you have to go dark and create a new account while hoping not to screw up again.
Recently, I've started using imageboards again, and I can clearly see that there are advantages to imageboards that simply can never exist on the Fediverse.
Agreed. I think textboards still have a chance (see how fucking huge 5ch.net is still as opposed to 8chan.moe/8kun), the problem with imageboards is the sliding issue everyone keeps bringing up, and the bots spamming CP issue that follows every damn imageboard.
There's also the sharty, but it's essentially like rdrama is in the sense it's a board that got thrown off of 4chan making their own site.
@Pawlicker Only problem is that textboards never really caught on outside of Japan and if you look at the few English language textboards out there, they have a completely different culture (stormfagging is almost non-existent). The programming textboards in particular are full of non-sense shitposts that I have absolutely no idea what is going on.
I even brought up textboards as an alternative back when hosting companies were shutting down 8chan-bunkers (and by proxy, imageboards as a whole). Nobody liked this proposal because it would mean giving up creating OC on various events. Honestly, creating and sharing images and videos anonymously, is a huge part of anonymous internet culture in the West. Just look at all these viral images and videos that nobody knows who created them. They most likely originated on 4chan or any other imageboard. That can't happen on a textboard unless there is an anonymous image/video sharing platform that people can link to.
Also, I don't think 5ch and 8chan is a good comparison. I think textboards are pretty mainstream in Japan to the point that it's basically Japanese Reddit. And I don't think you can even use 5ch without using a Japanese IP address.
Anyway, I think imageboards might still have a chance. The problem is that the newer boards want to be like 8chan or even 4chan. I think they should fit a specific niche like anime, video games, politics, etc, and we can still use the same webring solution to "federate" them. If you were on the webring, you would notice that a lot of the popular boards were on Julay which even the owner admitted was a mistake. If you get enough sites, it would be hard to take the whole webring down.
I'm literally of this same mindset after what happened with Internet Archive deciding to host everything online as well, or KF drawing too much heat.