> It is entirely possible, even likely I would say given how often it has happened, that lots of people think it is easier to build a forum that scales than it is.
I'm an awful programmer and I could build a reddit clone pretty trivially if I really set my mind to it.
Then I'd have to figure out how to attract users, how to handle spam and abuse, how to filter content, how to age restrict things, what tools users need, how to host media content cheaply, how to hire people to help me keep the site online and scaled, how to.... probably a thousand other things.
Building a forum is easy, building a business around a forum.... difficult.
And not even a business, the other things you're describing are things you have to solve even if you want to provide the service for free (well, for cost at that point. Because if you're providing media content and hiring people, the whole thing costs you more than labor). And the other things you've described are table stakes... Filtering content and handling abuse in particular, if you get large enough for anybody to care you exist. No government is going to sit idly by and let a service just become the next CSAM haven.
At the end of the day, most people don't want to put the labor in. If they did, we would have seen fediverse take off ages ago.
I'm an awful programmer and I could build a reddit clone pretty trivially if I really set my mind to it.
Then I'd have to figure out how to attract users, how to handle spam and abuse, how to filter content, how to age restrict things, what tools users need, how to host media content cheaply, how to hire people to help me keep the site online and scaled, how to.... probably a thousand other things.
Building a forum is easy, building a business around a forum.... difficult.