Personally I think that this Reddit style is an upgrade design wise. And as far as recognising people goes, I'm using an app that lets you tag users (Summit) and this has gone quite a long way. It's also made the start paying attention to other usernames to an extent, so if I notice that someone often posts content that vibes with me or whatever, I can give them a ⭐ or something.

What I do miss from the days when forums were dominant is that people stayed in their lanes a little more. A particular forum or board or even thread is for a particular topic, and people who derailed or came along just to insult and shit on everything were dealt with, without this crying about 'free speech'.

Current day social media has spawned a bunch of people who feel entitled to say whatever they want to whoever they want in any space they want, and cry about blue haired SJWs or something if there's consequences. And they act like the internet used to be this place where forum moderators didn't rule with an iron fist, or like the 'real world' is somewhere that you can behave this way without being punched in the face.

I just think a lot of problems could be solved if jocks went back to discussing sportsball and cars and stayed in their lanes, instead of considering themselves to be experts on biology and sociology and vaccines. There's a fine line between 'free speech' and letting the inmates run the asylum, and the last 10 years have proven that.

Basically what I miss from the forum days is that back then, the conspiracy theorist idiots would've probably been banned, and would've stayed in the fringes of society instead of going mainstream.