Chat rooms, forums, comment sections of smaller, targeted, online magazines. I miss a lot of those. Centralized platforms pretend to replace and &quot;improve&quot; those technologies, but the end results are fake on many levels and ripe with problems that just weren&#x27;t there before.<p>Indeed, many forums are still there, and they&#x27;re living proof that what I feel isn&#x27;t just nostalgia. For me, they&#x27;re the only only online places that still feel like... well, places. With certain space and boundaries. With people having conversations. You can <i>get to know</i> people on a forum. Can&#x27;t imagine that happening on Reddit, especially on more popular subs.<p>-<p>I think that a large part of it is UI. &quot;Social&quot; media has marketing-driven UI, which might look cool, but encourages bad behaviors from users. Just look  at YouTube comments. Do you think they would be so horrible if there was more separation between different videos and more effort required to post something?