This post is great; I appreciate that you’re opening up this kind of dialogue and enriching it with such insightful responses.
I discovered the internet in the ’90s, and although I’m young (!), I consider myself something of a veteran of the web. I was familiar with its original philosophy, and as much as it pains me, I see its current decline — which aligns with the named points raised in this discussion.
Given how things have unfolded in recent years and with some understanding of the underlying issues surrounding centralization and control over data and information, I can envision two possible scenarios:
A) Discourse with much more integrated multimedia features, a hub format with interconnected communities that go beyond Discourse ID — which I think is an excellent initiative, if it weren’t for the problems one faces into when trying to link to other platforms (SSO, OpenID, SAML, or whatever) authentication systems.
I envision Discourse retaining the purpose and status it has today, as a tool used by both individuals and large corporations that would continue to value spaces for exchange in discussion forums.
B) Discourse that is exclusively part of the hard resistance, cypherpunk by obligation and maintained directly by the community, more decentralized, and featuring peer-to-peer (P2P) connections that ensure its continuity.
As is the case with private chats and forums that evade search algorithms, web crawlers, and the exploitation of human-generated data and content for the benefit of the handful of institutions that receive investments from debt-financed funds, a cycle that seems never-ending.
This may sound sad at first, but it’s actually quite the opposite. Books with purpose and meaning endure for thousands of years. Just like the TCP/IP protocol, P2P file sharing, and the need for human dialogue Both scenarios maintain Discourse as a space of resistance, except that one is transparent/public relatively consistent with its current state, and the other is hidden/private, hardened.