Subj : BBS Population
To   : boraxman
From : Ogg
Date : Sat Oct 08 2022 08:51:00

Hello boraxman!

** On Friday 07.10.22 - 22:38, boraxman wrote to Ogg:

 b> That is one thing I did find useful, I could look up, and
 b> get into touch with old school colleagues. [...] The idea
 b> that we have to give an American Silicon Valley behmoth our
 b> personal data so we can be sold ads, manipulated and
 b> tracked just to chat to people we went to school with is
 b> horrifying.  It's like selling your soul to the devil.

It is terrible how that info was processed. Cambridge-Analytica  
anyone?


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

The fidonet sysop at net 460 has a lookup that works like  
FILEFIND. It can search for anything in an echomail message.


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

In the end, it's probably wise to be NOT easily discoverable.   
Privacy is emerging as the single-most thing that we ought to  
have control of.

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
 * Origin: (} Pointy McPointFace (21:4/106.21)

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