It seems the Techlore forum has switched to ‘read only’ without warning. For what it is worth, a discussion forum is much more valuable to me than a content site.
I do understand their decision as forums can be tricky to manage, I am sure, but I liked having two (non-Reddit) places to discuss privacy, here and there, as the interactions, tone and even topics are different.
To be honest, I used to be on there a lot. But fewer people discussed things that elevated the privacy discussion in meaningful ways. Plus Henry himself rarely commented and engaged and that didn’t sit right with me.
Don’t get me wrong, I owe his channel and videos a lot and I’ve participated on the forum for more than a year too to give back and meet the vision and mission of Techlore to help others learn about the subject matter but the engagement was lacking still.
This is news to me so not sure if there’s a big change coming or if he’s going to announce the closure of the forum soon.
But I also feel in the niche area as privacy and cybersecurity can get from a privacy POV especially, having a forum like Privacy Guides should be enough. I don’t want to have fragmentation here where there are many places to discuss the same and you get different kinds of people telling you different things that leads people to believe and understand the subject matter incorrectly leading the misinformation and misguided people.
PG for me solves this problem and they are only getting better.
While I’d love to know the reason behind the closure and I’m sure it’s legitimate, I’m also not surprised because I didn’t feel like the forum was going anywhere throughout this year. And Henry not engaging as much as he should have added to that apathetic feeling about the forum.
My comments are not meant to offend Techlore or Henry. Just sharing my views here. I’m no authority on the matter.
This explains it.
I guess i need to prep for some influx of users. Thanks for heads up.
Wow and mad Henry plans on deleting all the content. That is pretty saddening. I suppose a lot of users there will miss valuable references.
There is some great info on there. But as time passes and tech changes, the value and accuracy of the info also depreciates.
That’s something to account for. But yes, sad. Though the change brings new things instead so I’m still glad he is upping his game here.
I disagree completely with this. It doesn’t have to be Techlore, but evolution has taught us variation is the best strategy for growth!
Are there no other privacy forums? I dislike Reddit now.
Well, I alluded to why I think so. But I respect your opinion. I can see why one can feel that way.
Any other? I’m not aware of any. Though other entities or publications in the privacy policy and tech space can make one to attract other voices and expertise to keep up with the interest and growth in the space.
There are a few lemmy communities
No comments enabled on the new Ghost site even, interesting. I am curious what his community thinks about this, but with these changes I have no way to know now! Maybe some of them will join here and chime in 
This is a very unfortunate direction for Techlore, not sure what to make of it. And his last video is about a proprietary hardware encryption USB drive, when those are pretty well known to be poor products in terms of both security in value? Hmm.
I can’t say I frequented the Techlore forum too often in recent months. I do feel like a lot of @anon57862721’s statements ring true in my mind. Maybe @anon39279085 will go off and start his own forum now 
I get a lot of mileage out of following Cybersecurity pros / Cryptographers on Twitter (hi @soatok!) / Mastodon / Bluesky. No shortage of LARPers throwing around 3 letter acronyms without knowing the second thing about applied cryptography there. So, you’ll have to know how to filter those out. But that’s true for this forum, too.
Even if narrower in scope, droids on the GrapheneOS forums are pretty knowledgeable.
Lemmy (Android, Privacy, and Selfhosted to name a few) isn’t all that bad either, though I only read there.
I’m disappointed to see it shut down, but it is what it is. It seems like Henry is refocusing on much more video content which I think is a good move. If you’re spread thin and need to prioritize, I think cutting the forum makes sense. Content creators are not obligated to host communities.
Regarding the move to Ghost, I was surprised by that because I though the website before was relatively new. However, I can see that also being the result of slimming down operations to be more lean. Less maintenance, still carrying forward a way for people to donate, things like that. Also it looks like supporters will be able to comment.
Honestly, there was a lot of duplication between that forum and this one so I don’t think it’s the end of the world. Less good for those who want options, but less fracturing of the community as well. Privacy Guides is a community project that leveled up into content creation, so I think the expectations and care put on something like the forum are different compared to the Techlore forum.
In the end, we get Henry making more videos and more people making this forum more vibrant, so I think that’s cool.
I preferred having two forums. The Techlore Forum was an excellent resource to point beginners to as it was a bit less technical and tended to be more learner friendly.
PG tends to lean a bit more hardcore than most people really need in my experience, and it can seem a bit more initimidating because of that.
Hey there Jonah!
It’s nice to finally meet you, and I hope that things are going well for you. Yeah, I recently just saw the Techlore announcement of his site transitioning. I wish Henry nothing but the best. I think if I recall, you were on his team at one point right?
That is correct. I wasn’t an employee but I did some contract work for him for a few years on various projects, including the Techlore forum
Just for some information.
Henry Fisher, the owner of Techlore actually did warn ahead in the signal group which is gated to Techlorians. But I suspected that users never had a warning which is kinda uncool tbh.
I do respect their choice of putting the forum read only but their reasoning wasn’t something I would agree nor support so I formally left for this reason (if you saw my bios on Mastodon and Bluesky you would see that I have removed my formal position as moderator).
Finally I got @jonah’s mention, uh probably, probably not honestly. I am not into the whole content creation yet not mentioning full time job makes me tired.
But it seems it’s an opportunity I finally tried again, Not mentioning the only form of privacy wins that’s left is NBTV’s. Now with my decision to switch to Redmagic for entertainment purposes only, I can finally feel like trying to record again this time with the 16 Pro Max
It might lose value over time, but six months is way too fast. He is not only erasing his own contributions but also those of other members who engaged in the forum. Making it read-only is fine, but completely removing it in six months is a terrible move.
Just found out about this today. Very sad news. Even though it was not as active as PG, I valued its community, and when asking for help there, I often had different responses than PG, which I appreciated. I’m gonna miss it!
There are a few specific forums like GrapheneOS, Qubes OS, Tor Project, Whonix, but they’re obviously quite different from Techlore and Privacy Guides.
Hello everyone! I used to be a regular on the Techlore forum. I’m a bit sad that the forum has shut down, but I understand the choice. I would have liked there to be a post where people could discuss the change, since now the forum members don’t have a place to talk this over. I expect many to join the Privacy Guides forum if they haven’t already.