I remember the countless days I've spent on traditional forums back then (particularly Gamespot and niche forums like Dissidia-Forums).
The internet did feel freer back then. And it's a little sad that I haven't felt that same sense of freedom for so long. For the past decade, the corpo-fication of every major social media just highlighted how much we needed platforms built for and by the users; platforms built for discussions and not merely for content consumption and advertiser-friendliness.
I'm glad I made the move, and I hope the fediverse continues to grow in the right direction.
I also choose this guy's dead lemmy-fiddy