Depending on what you have a taste for, I seem to remember seeing this in Emacs:

https://github.com/magit/forge

As @Arcidias@lemmy.world mentioned - cloudhiker.net seems quite nice.

Also - do you have any particular recommendations for sites on Neocities?

Sure thing!

I think one reason the [IM|microblogging|forum|other communication style] is not yet fully decentralized, but email is, is because:

1. Email existed and had wide adoption before Eternal September.
2. It had and has a clear business use, and being interopable with other companies’ choices of email service has clear value.

The lesson from USENET is rather instructive. Like email, it is defederated, had a standard protocol, and long predated Eternal September. Unlike email, there is no clearcut business use-case, and even though both systems suffered massive amounts of problems of spam and porn, there was no clear (financial) incentive to deal with spam on USENET, other than leaving it up to the end user to use kill files and so on.

I think IM could be solved much like email, like you say. There is obviously a good business case for it (companies spend untold amounts on things like Slack). When it comes to things that are social media-ish, I think it’s more complicated, as you point out, and probably why it remains in the state that it is.

Interestingly, the plugin (I used DontBugMe for FF) didn’t seem to load anything, but going to the page does find logins for that domain. shrug

Thanks, ended up going this route. Bugmenot plugin didn’t seem to find anything? Already use VPN, so I set up duckduck plugin and generated a new burner email.

Thanks for the video link.

My word, yes. This.

Ever since the 90s, I’ve wondered this about IM. IRC is good for many uses, but too complicated for many, so all these private options popped up, and continue to still be with us instead of an open protocol for IM. Jabber/XMPP tried to do it. Matrix, too.

And yet, we still use all this cruft like Slack and Skype and so on.

IMHO, nearly every other type of communication should figure out how to do it like email, including IM and microblogging and Reddit-like things.

Maybe Space Karen might end up actually resulting in innovation and adoption of good tech, but just not in the way that he had planned. XD

I pretty much thought federation was about trying to bring email-like qualities to other things where there was a gap being filled (and held back by) private enterprise, such as IM (Matrix, XMPP, IRC).

Email is an example of a lot things done right as far as being decentralized. Sure, there are entities within Big Tech that have been working to fuck all that up…but there is a reason email is still here.

Right, I would expect the form they take and the medium they use to (possibly) be different. For instance, and especially after Covid, using videoconferencing in addition to/instead of an in-person speaking circuit.

Lol, I remember when nearly everyone was talking about that, but the moral scolds were busy telling everyone they should not talk about it. One of the biggest stars, slapping one of the biggest names in comedy: no one should comment on it because something something reasons. Lol, as if.

Thank you! I’m checking it out right now. Pretty cool you can try it out without even signing up.

If you remember, please let me know. Maybe someone will recreate it on Lemmy, or I can browse via safereddit…

My co-worker just wrapped up a Masters in Comp Sci, and he’s nearly (or is) 60.

Oh right, forgot all about this. Thanks. I’ll poke around…

Ha ha, a bit verbose, I guess. :) The fact that I posted twice did not help. lemmy.world was very very slow at that time and I waited and waited to see if the first one was going to show up and I did not see it. I guess I did not wait long enough…

No. And don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, either. I’ve been doing this for decades, and I still have to learn something new on the regular. The one constant in life is learning new things, IMHO.

I miss it as well. They are still in my RSS feed. I took a big time out from reading or trying to engage in comments (not for any particular reason but laziness) - I’m not sure for how many years - and a some point, I tried to engage again, and…WOW. The comments are moderated, so at least there is that. But absolutely no deviation from the groupthink is permitted. None. Your comment will be gone so fast if you disagree - especially if you make one of the regulars look stupid by puncturing their logic. There seem to be a handful of people that have deep personal trauma and seem to be working it out by destroying the commenting system on a once-great site. I’m sure they think it’s great - they have a little in-group, along with moderation powers, and they can trade giphys with each other as they dunk on anyone hapless enough to disagree with them. I think more than a few times I saw them bashing Mark F. (one of the owners/founders) because of his identity/age.