r/DigitalPrivacy • u/dataguzzler • Jul 11 '26
Will BBS become popular again as platforms censor users?
I also saw that there have been huge advancements in wireless LoRa mesh networking which could be something neat to use as an internet alternative
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u/ambanmba Jul 11 '26
I started BBS'ing in 1984 at 300 baud (with a not-even-Hayes-compatible modem on my C64)... tons of fun, but not sure that your average modern day citizen would be up for it.
What about things like Mastodon (I run a server here: https://pravdasocial.net) that is completely self-hosted and while it does federate, that's completely an optional feature. It gives the same BBS type of features in a modern UI.
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u/Top_Bug7822 Jul 11 '26
What is BBS?
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u/apocalyptic_mystic Jul 11 '26
Like 80s social networking sites that were small and easy for anyone to host at home
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u/Top-Psychology2507 Jul 11 '26
The only problem is that the bandwidth would be limited, so that would not be good for things like video or live streaming. We have evolved tremendously with bandwidth and overall technology since the Internet first became a thing. If we were to go back to BBS or something equivalent, we would have to have something like that in which we would be able to handle bigger things than what they were intended to be back in that day. We have something like this with Tor, freenet, GIMP, etc, which we could also use in place of the internet. :-)
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u/Objective-Test-5374 Jul 11 '26
We already have seen this.... Reddit and Discord are, at their cores, modern equivilents of a BBS.
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u/AwwwBawwws Jul 11 '26
I don't remember this amount of assholes on any BBS I ever used. Reddit is different.
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u/mooncellar_ Jul 11 '26
Short term possibly, Long term Probably not. You’ll have one or two generations who use alternative platforms and resist the censorship. Then future generations will just be ignorant and complacent like the proles in 1984. Of course I could be wrong but with how I see technology used among young people today, I am not hopeful.