email, usenet, fidonet, irc, phpbb, invision, bbses say hello
i ran forums of 10k users and “paying for it” was never the problem
we didnt stop hosting these because we got tired of it, we stopped because people ran off to centralized networks because so many were convinced being on the “same domain” is the best idea via marketing.
two big lies have been perpetuated on the modern internet:
running your own server is hard
only big companies can do it
nothing was wrong with the old system other than the fact that individual forums are not going to spend money to out-market valley VC’s
people either want systems that represent them, or they want to be on systems that represent others first. I don’t think they realize these are the decisions they are making, since most have no knowledge of what the internet truly is.