I avoided forums growing up because from what I've witnessed there was a lot of verbal abuse and so on, but I was into "communities" (basically closed social network long before I heard of myspace or facebook).
For example, I listened to a lot of hip-hop as a teenager. there was no meta algorithm feeding me garbage, but there was a hip hop community website :) It felt more intimate or homegrown if you will.
can you elaborate? or should I assume that means I can't follow "communities" from privacy instances?
I was so fed up with IG and explored mastodon/pixelfed for a bit, and it felt like a lot of weight off my shoulder when looking at the feed(s) knowing that there is no machinery feeding me straightup BS. The "feed" was behaving exactly as it used to during the days when RSS was a thing (remember those?).
like.. wow... I have control over this! and I don't have to spend too much energy filtering off BS. That convinced to explore alternatives like Lemmy.
I joined today. :)
Ooooops, I didn't realise @[email protected] meant _piracy_🏴☠️ it was late when I replied.😅
Anyway, thanks for letting me know!