Most interesting quote, as Twitter has certainly had ups and downs but most definitely never died. Forumosa, well,I don’t know the history, but it’s obviously still here and doing fine.
Wonder what it would have been if Milton actually bought it 
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I agree. Here is a Chart showing Monthly Pageviews since we moved the website to Discourse 8 years ago
Last month marked a new monthly record of 3.4M pageviews - that’s 10x the views of Sep 2016 (320,136 views) 
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August 2017 = 3,342,955
- August 5
- The UN Security Council unanimously approves fresh sanctions on North Korean trade and investment.[37]
- Mauritania holds a constitutional referendum for approval of proposed amendments to the constitution.
- August 12 – The Unite the Right rally is held in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, by a variety of white nationalist and other far-right groups; Heather Heyer, a counter-protester, is killed after being hit by a car.
- August 17
- The first observation of a collision of two neutron stars (GW170817)[38] is hailed as a breakthrough in multi-messenger astronomy[39] when both gravitational and electromagnetic waves from the event are detected.[40][41] Data from the event provided confirmatory evidence for the r-process theory of the origin of heavy elements like gold.[42][43]
- 2017 Barcelona attacks: 22-year-old Younes Abouyaaqoub drives a van into pedestrians on La Rambla in Barcelona, killing 13 people and injuring at least 130 others.
- August 18 – The first terrorist attack ever sentenced as a crime in Finland kills two people and injures eight others. Islamic terrorist Abderrahman Bouanane, a Moroccan man carried out the ISIS-inspired attack in southwest Finland.[44][45]
- August 21 – A total solar eclipse (nicknamed “The Great American Eclipse”)[46] is visible within a band across the entire contiguous United States of America, passing from the Pacific to the Atlantic coasts. The moon was just 3 days past perigee, making it relatively large.[47][48][49]
- August 25–ongoing – A military operation targeting Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar “seems a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.[50]
- August 25–30 – Hurricane Harvey strikes the United States as a Category 4 hurricane, causing catastrophic damage to the Houston metropolitan area, mostly due to record-breaking floods. At least 108 deaths are recorded, and total damage reaches $125 billion (2017 USD), making Harvey the costliest natural disaster in United States history, tied with Hurricane Katrina in 2005.[51][52]
March 2018 = 2,727,673
- March 4
- Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, are poisoned by the Novichok nerve agent in Salisbury, England.[29] UK counter-terrorism police investigate amid speculation the Kremlin was behind the incident.[30]
- The 2018 Salvadoran legislative election is held to elect all 84 members of the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador.[31]
- The 2018 Italian general election is held to elect all 315 members of the Senate of the Republic and all 630 members of the Chamber of Deputies.[32][33]
- March 6 – 2018 Russian Air Force Antonov An-26 crash: An Antonov An-26 transport aircraft operated by the Russian Air Force crashes on approach to Khmeimim air base in Syria, killing all 39 people on board. All of them were servicemen of the Russian Armed Forces, including Major-General Vladimir Yeremeyev.[34]
- March 9–18 – The 2018 Winter Paralympics are held in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
- March 9
- President of the United States Donald Trump accepts an invitation from North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for a meeting in May to discuss the denuclearisation of North Korea.[35]
- Princess Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum, a UAE princess, escaped Dubai with a group of other people. She was arrested by Indian and UAE authorities, a few kilometers off the coast of India. She was then taken back to the UAE.[36]
- March 11
- China’s government approves a constitutional change that removes term limits for its leaders, granting Xi Jinping the status of “President for Life”. Xi is also the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (paramount leader).[37]
- The 2018 Colombian parliamentary election is held to elect all 102 members of the Senate of Colombia and all 165 members of the House of Representatives of Colombia.[38][39]
- March 12 – Flight BS211 crashes and bursts into flames at Tribhuvan International Airport, Nepal, killing 51 of the 71 people aboard. The 20 surviving passengers were seriously injured from the impact and the fire.[40]
- March 13 – The 2018 Grenadian general election is held to elect all 15 members of the House of Representatives of Grenada, the lower chamber of the Parliament of Grenada and the New National Party won all 15 seats for the second consecutive time.[41]
- March 14 – In response to gun violence in the United States, and particularly triggered by the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, thousands of high school students across the country participate in an organized protest they called the National School Walkout.[42]
- March 18 – In the Russian presidential election, Vladimir Putin is elected for a fourth term.[43]
- March 19 – The world’s last male northern white rhinoceros dies in Kenya, making the subspecies functionally extinct.[44][45]
- March 21 – The 2018 Antiguan general election is held to elect all 17 members of the House of Representatives of Antigua and Barbuda, the lower chamber of the Parliament of Antigua and Barbuda and the governing Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party win 15 out of 17 seats.[46][47]
- March 23 – An Islamic terrorist attack in Carcassonne and Trèbes, France, kills five people, including the perpetrator.[48]
- March 24 – In over 900 cities internationally, people participate in demonstrations against gun violence and mass shootings, calling for stronger gun control in the “March for Our Lives”.
- March 25
- Qantas launches direct non-stop Boeing 787 Dreamliner flights between Perth Airport and Heathrow Airport, making it the first commercially non-stop service between Australia and the United Kingdom.[49]
- 2018 Kemerovo fire: At least 60 people are killed and 79 others injured in a fire at the Winter Cherry shopping mall and entertainment complex in Kemerovo, Russia.[50]
- March 26 – More than 100 Russian diplomats are expelled by more than 20 countries in the wake of the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal.[51]
- March 28
- North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong-un meets Chinese paramount leader Xi Jinping, leaving the country for the first time since assuming office in 2011.[52]
- At least 78 people die in a fire in the police headquarters of Valencia, Venezuela.[53]
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Based on the list of news events, I wonder if it could have been google pulling up Formosa pages for things that were suddenly being searched for on those days?
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So . . . people were looking for functionally extinct Kenya rhino details here?
The internet is an interesting place.
Guy
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Probably needs more granular data than the monthly totals. The August 2017 one looks to be a definite spike (ca. 50x) on August 23:
Whereas the March 2018 one is sustained over a couple of weeks:
There were similar peaks, with similar patterns, on August 8, 2016, and in March 2017:
Weird. Might it just be an artifact, or some bug with how Discourse calculates pageviews?
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Thank God forums still exist. The thought of this forum, and many others like it, going the way of Facebook, Twitter, tiktok etc styled absolute bullshit is quite depressing. I also note, not a single like for the original post. Probably because it is a dumb idea. Or because forums aren’t run solely on narcissism…case in point
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It couldn’t have gotten any likes until we switched over to Discourse though.
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I can’t like it now?
Or wont
Either way, keep doing what you guys are doing. I would hate to see an open platform go molders day social media. I love this forum for precisely this reason (long form conversation, even if 15 years old haha)
Edit. No idea what molders day is. And I forgot what I typed, but the auto correct is pretty cool, even if totally bat shit.
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Sure, anyone could have lately.
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You guys should monetize the site somehow.
If you don’t imma going to create a totally mirrored version of it.
Don’t make me do it. 
I remember the white rhino discussions for the March 2018 spike, but the real news that month has to be Xi removing his term limits, right?
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