Lawyers, platform moderation, and SEO have wiped it out. What’s left is boring drivel whose only purpose is to sell you a product or a course or avoid a lawsuit. I realize some have moved to private groups and there are still sites if you look hard enough. But is that enough?
Federation feels like the right place to bring that culture back rather than let it die or has that ship sailed?
The single most important thing we can do is try to instill a sense of the rich history of collaboration in computing. That the internet is really about DIY and not passive consumption. We are users, not consumers, who should be free to inspect and modify the software we use.
I still remember all the talk about the end of data scarcity in the early days. Lots of concern that we now have a new frontier that can replicate information endlessly but that they’ll try to lock it away behind paywalls and limit who can have what.