Subj : Re: SSH on BBSes
To   : Andre
From : boraxman
Date : Tue Apr 05 2022 22:48:53

-=> Andre wrote to boraxman <=-

 bo> Correct, the effect was the same. If I posted a message to a friend on
 bo> Paranoimia BBS, or even engaged in thread, it wasn't the same as tweeting
 bo> it to the world.

 An> There's a fundamental difference between your position, and even those
 An> who would agree with you about privacy (it's important) and large
 An> corporations (unethical and run by morons).

 An> We always understood that posting on message boards was not private. In
 An> fact, in the early days it was worse in some ways because you knew some
 An> of those people in the real world, and they knew people that you knew.
 An> The things you wrote could have personal implications. Now? It goes
 An> into your uber provile and you get more invasive advertising, and
 An> potentially in the future financial insurance, healthcare, or
 An> government effects.

 An> But of all the things you and your household do on the internet... your
 An> searches, the pages you view with your shared IP, the tokens that track
 An> all of your phones when you leave the house and use the internet, all
 An> your data that is sold and shared, your map/wifi data, etc. ..... What
 An> you write on Fidonet is smaller than a drop in the bucket. It's more
 An> like one molecule in the bucket.

 An> BBS software has always been massively insecure. Passwords have always
 An> been stored in plaintext. Sysops have always had full access to your
 An> personal mail. Not much later, posts were sent all over WWIV, Fidonet,
 An> DOVE-net, and many more. There is simply no expectation of privacy and
 An> there never has been any.

 An> As for gating your posts to the internet? Again, it's been done for
 An> decades. You are posting on a "public" forum... that's literally the
 An> point of a BBS. I would expect that my private BBS email/netmail isn't
 An> put on the web interface to be crawled by search engines, but that's
 An> the extent of my privacy expectations.

Indeed, the situation today is rather poor.  There have been people trying to
argue against me by simply describing the current situation.

The status quo you describe, while true, is not one people should settle for,
and people are concerned about privacy, they just don't really have many
options.

This is why the 'fediverse' is exciting, and I saw the potential of using the
technology we are using here as an addition.  Yes, it would require changing
how passwords are stored, linking BBS's engaged in an other net with encrypted
communications, but I note with Mystic it can already be mostly done, aside
from the Sysop having God Mode.  But that may not be an issue if the community
inside trusts each other, or have nothing to hide from each other.

This isn't to say that BBS's MUST be private, they were in the past generally
open to sign ups to anyone who could sign up.  But there is value in both, and
both could be on offer.  Giving humanity a choice with how they can engage in
say, online debate, discussion of politics and other issues, can only be a good
thing.  You can have private discussion forums, centrally controlled, but you
could also have a federated message board, a kind of hybrid.

What is important is people have options, and that people have knowledge when
they engage with a service where their data goes and how visible it is.  That
is, people can have a choice because there ARE choices, and the service is open
and clear what is visible to members and non-members.

This is what we should be working towards.  Does this involve BBS's?  Maybe,
maybe not.  A BBS which is open to all involved, but invisible to others is
indeed possible.  Is this a future model, who knows?  But we should at least be
discussings ways we can ameliorate this rather poor state we are in at the
moment.
 
___ MultiMail/Linux v0.52

--- Mystic BBS/QWK v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

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