Subj : Re: BBS Population
To   : Ogg
From : boraxman
Date : Fri Oct 07 2022 22:38:24

 Og>  cl>> Og> I think FB has been largely successful because it gives people
 Og>  cl>> Og> a sense of control over their content and emulates a kind of
 Og>  cl>> Og> personal website.  BBSes don't offer that for its users.
 Og>  cl>> Og>
 Og> 
 Og>  b> Less control than MySpace offered.  Facebook offers little
 Og>  b> control actually.
 Og> 
 Og> I *did* say "SENSE of control", and less fuss and bother of  
 Og> building a personal website.
 Og> 
 Og> 

It is easier, definately.  Well, sort of.  I administered both a FB page and a website once, and the FB page/group was a PITA.

I must be missing something, but when I see an organisations FB page, it always seems so, bare, plain, and scant.  But I'll admit bias, I've personally found FB to just be irritating in almost everyway

 Og>  b> It's used because of a Network effect.  [...]
 Og> 
 Og> That too.
 Og> 
 Og> 
 Og>  b> Facebook by and large sucks, is pretty lousy.  IT really
 Og>  b> only has one killer feature.  You can find other people you
 Og>  b> know there and its kind of easy to use (though I found it
 Og>  b> quite difficult myself).
 Og> 
 Og> Yes.. looking up and finding other people who are hopefully  
 Og> using FB is a plus. BBSes don't have that. Maybe if BBSes had  
 Og> something similar to looking up a name or alias, then people  
 Og> might like to enjoy participating on the same BBS or meet in  
 Og> similar echos.
 Og> 

That is one thing I did find useful, I could look up, and get into touch with old school colleagues.  It didn't really result in much, so in the long run, it was nothing which changed anything.  The downside of this, is that to be found, to find people, we all have to feed Zuckerburgs panopticon.  The idea that we have to give an American Silicon Valley behmoth our personal data so we can be sold ads, manipulated and tracked just to chat to people we went to school with is horrifying.  It's like selling your soul to the devil.

I don't think that BBS's could do that, unless you pooled user lists, but then, that is a privacy issue, and people like me and you use aliases anyway.

The problem could be solved by having a distributed system, ie, people hosting their own personal servers, which share a common protocol, where people can be indexed and found.  I've thought of each house having like a Pogoplug or Raspberri Pi device with a Social Media server.  It could even be installed on your router.  Register with an index server and people can search you, and you can "allow" then access to your server.

It wouldn't work of course, because we developed a culture where people default to being passive consumers of product and services, instead of building their own world and helping themselves.  In which case, I'm happy to say that I'd rather then that Social Media didn't exist at all, and this would be better than what we have now.

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

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