Instead of a music section with a few hundred files of downloads we have a radio station with more than 50,000 tracks of legally sourced music, all hand curated. I would have thought that counted for something… anyway is it email addresses you’ve lost? I could try to restore a copy of your private messages if you’d like?
[quote quote=1259684]And the music.
Find the download section again, I know that if it can be done, I’m confident that you are the person who can do it.
I think some of us liked the forum as it was just because it was always the same, no trying to figure out how to navigate, locating the friends we ones had and the messages which in some cases were nescessay to use other forums and places on the internet, it’s all gone 
I had numbers and addresses of members I needed, personal conversations with good friends. Starting all over sucked because some of them were gone and I have no chance of locating them again
Maybe it’s just me being old fashioned and trying to grab on to what once were, a place I could turn to when things were fucked up. I feel I was made use other places because this one died[/quote]
Some posts went by about UK Hippy closing too recently. Although I think they’ve now tried to pivot into a second hand bus / vehicle sales web site of some kind. Can’t say I’ve been on any these other web sites you mention. And much as I use it to keep in touch with friends and family I really do loathe Facebook, and how everyone’s worst predictions of intrusion and spying have born out. Things are so bad on the internet as a whole from government and corporate interference point of view these days, I see increasing numbers of people becoming disillusioned with the internet as a whole, just as was feared all those years ago when companies and money started flooding in years ago into the early academic networks. Anyway I really hope things improves but it’s hard to see how… 🙁
[quote quote=1259683]Another forum I am on about vintage electronics had same issue with software change (they also use a modified wordpress core now), it took quite a while for their core users to return but they did, and I am one of the youngest there (most are aged 70+!)
But of course hobby electronics isn’t normally controversial/illegal (unless you’re making pirate radio transmitters and the Dutch forums for these are still doing quite well 
)
A lot of alternative minded people aren’t actually on the big social networks like farcebook or Twitter but places like Mastodon (and other activity-pub based things known as the Fediverse), but from being on there nearly 2 years now I think some things have changed in society worldwide.
In many countries EDM isn’t as big a scene as it once was, it now more often seems to be used as filler music with computer games than events in themselves (due to backlash against drugs and younger people not actually taking as much as they once did even if the substances are stronger).
Computers and other tech are still popular but due to lack of time/energy I haven’t been doing as many more interesting experiments (compared to work stuff) or music related stuff as before so haven’t been contributing as much…
I’d wondered about making posts about retro stuff/experiments/memories that are too big for Mastodon (500 char limit) and trying to attract cool people here…[/quote]
