Subj : Re: Long Day
To   : boraxman
From : Arelor
Date : Mon Jan 24 2022 08:42:59

  Re: Re: Long Day
  By: boraxman to Avon on Mon Jan 24 2022 07:11 pm

 > My children on holiday befriended some other children who were staying in th
 > same apartment complex.  They wanted to keep in communication after the holi
 > ended, but my wife and I, as well as their parents, are reticent
 > about allowing them onto things like "Kids Messenger" which is a Facebook
 > "service".  Sure, they can e-mail, and that is OK, but this distrust
 > highlighted a major problem.  The problem isn't that we don't want children
 > communicating electronically, the problem is privacy.  Can you trust the app
 > Do you want them on Social Media (No!!)  I thought of how cool it would be f
 > them to just be able to log into my BBS, chat, message there.  Or play "Food
 > Fight" against each other. None of these privacy issues, or concerns about w
 > someone might do with the data exist.  Sure, the Sysop (me) can see, but you
 > want parental oversight, so that is a good, not bad thing.  You can even lim
 > their online time by simply setting a suitable allowable amount of time per
 > day.
 > 
 > There are other ways to achieve the same thing, or something similar.  Such 
 > Matrix, which it seems you can create your own private set up, though I'm no
 > too keen on an Electron based client and I'm not quite sure how you can
 > federate with others, while keeping that federation itself quarantined.  FTN
 > networks can do this (provided people cooperate).  It does appear that Mysti
 > is easier to get up and running.
 > 
 > Most people kind of have accepted as a given that if you want to talk to oth
 > online, you must do it on someone elses territory, to their rule and whims, 
 > subject to their exploitation of everything you do and say.
 > Doesn't have to be that way.

When it comes to children, I am more concerned with Internet predators and
scammers than I am about private data harvesting. Not that private data
harvesting is harmless, but classical criminals are a couple of steps up in the
threat scale.

I don't think it applies to your use case, but I am organizing a brithday party
for my group so I have set a Mumble server for voice chat and a FOSS game
server for playing Terraforming Mars online. In theory you could set a web
interface for Mumble so everykid would be able to chat online from it. My
friends and I use dedicated clients instead.

If you want to get regular kids to use the service you need something simple. A
mailing list would do. FluxBB would do. You need something they can use with
tools they are already familiar with or they won't get to use it. The only
reason why somebody installs a client for some odd protocol they don't use
anywhere else is because they absoñlutely need it (such as, none of my friends
uses gopher, but some have installed a gopher client because of some content I
offer which is not available under other protocols).

As you are interested in friend-to-friend networks, I will say that Retroshare
deserves an honorable mention. It is resource hungry and not trivial to use,
but it offers filesharing, chat and forum-like features in a distributed
manner. It is intended so each node connects only to nodes designated as
trustworthy friends.

Also, setting an IRC server with a web interface and a ZNC is an option :-)


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