Re: Re: Back at it
By: Abbub to Adept on Fri Apr 28 2023 07:52 am

I think CompuServ at it's peak was...3 or 4 million? I think AOL was 10 times that. AOL *definitely* had its fair share of trolls, but I think in both cases it wasn't quite the same as it is today. Anyway, I'd much

CompuServe felt much more professional; I was on it thanks to a support forum my company had, we got a couple of unlimited accounts to play with. With WinCIM, their GUI software, I really liked it for technical info.

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Abbub wrote to Adept <=-

I think CompuServ at it's peak was...3 or 4 million? I think AOL was 10 times that. AOL *definitely* had its fair share of trolls, but I think
in both cases it wasn't quite the same as it is today.

Compu$erve had a fairly steep learning curve for the time as well as a pretty steep cost. That kept most of the trolls out.

AOhelL was intended to be easy to learn and was much cheaper, hence more trolls.

That was the only place I had a troll directly attack me. tl;dr; He goaded me over many weeks. I responded nicely, but he wore me down and I told him off. He threatened to "complain and get me kicked off". When I told him that I kept a record of all the messages he sent, he was gone. Probably off to bother someone else.

But that gets us to something like Facebook. Easy to use. Cost $0. That immediately allows huge numbers of trolls. But Facebook doesn't do much about them because on Facebook, we, the users, are the product and they deliver our eyeballs to the advertisers.

They want as many people on their platform as possible and only hold the trolls down to the point where others don't leave.

I think a good number of us can remember no longer calling a certain BBS anymore because the trolls were out of control.


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I think a good number of us can remember no longer calling a certain
BBS anymore because the trolls were out of control.

I think I may have dodged that particular experience because both of the
places I was living during the 'BBS era' were pretty small places. I suspect that larger populations had a) more boards and b) more users for the boards that would create the kind of BBS you're talking about. ...or maybe *I* was running the board that no one called. I hope not! :D

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Dr. What wrote to Abbub <=-

Compu$erve had a fairly steep learning curve for the time as well as a pretty steep cost. That kept most of the trolls out.

I'd forgotten about dial-up Compuserve. The GUI apps were pretty nice.

As I mentioned, I got access for free because my company hosted a
support forum on CI$. That was great, because back then I was a Novell
admin, and Novell's support forum back then was primarily on CompuServe.





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Abbub wrote to Dr. What <=-

I think I may have dodged that particular experience because both of
the places I was living during the 'BBS era' were pretty small places.
I suspect that larger populations had a) more boards and b) more users
for the boards that would create the kind of BBS you're talking about.

I suspect you are correct.

On the BBSs, trolls came and went. When the sysop noticed them, he would lock their account so they couldn't call anymore. On systems with networked message bases, we used offline mail readers and they often had a twit-filter.

I think AOhelL was the when the trolls really started to gain traction since AOhelL didn't want to kick them off as they were paying customers.


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poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dr. What <=-

I'd forgotten about dial-up Compuserve. The GUI apps were pretty nice.

I never even knew Compu$erve had a GUI at some point.

As I mentioned, I got access for free because my company hosted a
support forum on CI$. That was great, because back then I was a Novell admin, and Novell's support forum back then was primarily on
CompuServe.

I think my first try at Compu$erve was when I got a free month with the modem I bought. I cancelled just before the month end because it wasn't worth it (actually, I probably couldn't afford it).

Later, I did try again for a few months, but I think Compu$erve was in decline by then because I found that the BBSs I called offered more, and often better, information.


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I never even knew Compu$erve had a GUI at some point.

Yeah, I have no memory of that, either. I remember AOL and Prodigy. I
remember driving up to northern virginia to visit this girl my roomate
was interested in who lived in one of those DC suburbs. She was ridiculously cute, and her family owned a PS/1 and had a Prodigy account, which she showed us. My impression of Prodigy was that it was exactly the kind of on-line service I'd expect someone who bought an IBM PS/1 to use. lol. I think it was
a 286-based model...in like...1990.

We used to cycle through 'free' trials of AOL and leech files off of them. I also got slightly addicted to an early (the first?) MMORPG called
'Neverwinter Nights' (no, not 'new' franchise, but a on-line low-res affair that AOL had, which I believe was based on the SSI Goldbox engine. It was
very similar to those games in look and feel. I think that lasted until I got the first bill.

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BY: Abbub (21:2/145)


|11A|09> |10> I never even knew Compu$erve had a GUI at some point.|07
|11A|09> |07
|11A|09> |10Yeah, I have no memory of that, either. I remember AOL and Prodigy. I|07

I thikn https://thedayintech.wordpress.com/2021/09/24/come-online/ has a picture of it. It was called compuserve navigator if I remember correctly. I already had shell access at school and netcom for internet (mostly telnet and ftp) from home, by that time so it wasn't that interesting compared to what was free on mosaic with graphics.

|11r|09ushfan|07



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Abbub wrote to Dr. What <=-

account, which she showed us. My impression of Prodigy was that it was exactly the kind of on-line service I'd expect someone who bought an
IBM PS/1 to use. lol.

Same for me. To me, it seemed that Prodigy was meant for kids - not adults.

We used to cycle through 'free' trials of AOL and leech files off of
them.

By that time, I had a job and money. So I never thought about using the free trials and leeching files (good idea, though).

But I also tried the other services: Bix, GENIE. I think there were a couple of others, but they really didn't have the vibrant user base of the BBSs (which were free).

Goldbox engine. It was very similar to those games in look and feel. I think that lasted until I got the first bill.

I think that's where most people ended for these services. They just weren't worth it for many people.


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in both cases it wasn't quite the same as it is today. Anyway, I'd much rather be in charge of having to figure out how to moderate 35 million people than 3 billion people.

Yeah, and likely the smaller groups are more homogeneous, and therefore perhaps easier to moderate.

In any event, without getting political, I suspect that the real answer
is that people had more of a veneer of civility about them 30 years ago. Sure you had trolls, but to the bulk of the population being a troll was socially unacceptable. I'm not sure that the same is true today.

There are probably a variety of things that impact it, not the least of which is that everyone got used to the internet, and everyone started being able to minmax whatever they were doing.

Well, I'm sure people were minmaxing from the very beginning, but new tech means people hadn't quite figured it out.

And, sure, probably the populations have changed a bit, but, yeah, rather not go down the road of a "kids these days" or "darn older people" or whatever.

But hopefully we find a way forward. And maybe a few people can find their way back, to our version of social media with BBSs.

Not that that's a panacea against all negative things, of course.

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relatively small user base (even the big boards were tiny in
comparison to Facebook or Twitter) and a relatively proactive
moderator (the sysop) or group of moderators (message base
moderators). The trolliest boards I can remember

It's interesting how messed up the ability to scale can make things.

Yeah... I often get kind of stuck in that scaling mindset having worked on a few systems that needed to handle more load than a single server can manage. And while it helps to know why certain things with FB or Twitter can be goofy, it doesn't make it any less annoying when you notice.

On the other hand, I wonder how it was on Compuserv.

I think even Compuserv and AOL back in the day were relatively sharded in terms of groups/chat and while some areas may have been better or worse, it wasn't so bad. Even certain FB groups are pretty decent in terms of usability with generally self directed moderation.

But, these days, the mere fact that people aren't out there trying to get rich from BBSing makes things easier. Probably easier to keep things calm amongst hobbyists.

I think it does... though, there's still plenty of spammy posts to anything resembling Usenet or a web forum.



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In any event, without getting political, I suspect that the real answer is that people had more of a veneer of civility about them 30 years ago. Sure you had trolls, but to the bulk of the population being a troll was socially unacceptable. I'm not sure that the same is true today.

I think the locality of BBSing back then had a lot to do with it... You were just as likely to actually meet people that you got into flame wars with. Also the locality meant interacting with more of your "neighbors" and with more differing views, where most people wind up in clusters of interest groups or bubbles in terms of ideology today.


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Dr. What wrote to Abbub <=-

We used to cycle through 'free' trials of AOL and leech files off of
them.

I did love those free floppies, though.


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On 01 May 2023, poindexter FORTRAN said the following...

Dr. What wrote to Abbub <=-

We used to cycle through 'free' trials of AOL and leech files off of them.

I did love those free floppies, though.

it was awesome. free floppies for years, and then when they went to CDs i always had a fresh coaster on my desk

i also used to spend quite a bit more time with like rubbing alcohol / lighter fluid / whatever carefully removing stickers so i could put nice labels on them

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I did love those free floppies, though.

Yeah, I'm fairly certain that I had a...ahem..."backup" of Windows 3.1 that
was on a set of diskettes provided free-of-charge by AOL. :D

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Compu$erve had a fairly steep learning curve for the time as well as a pretty steep cost. That kept most of the trolls out.

On the other hand, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act came about because of politicians not liking the no-moderation that was Compuserve, and preferring the greater moderation of Prodigy.

Ignoring anything political there, I'm guessing Compuserve still had its rough edges, though maybe it wasn't so much with trolling?

That immediately allows huge numbers of trolls. But Facebook doesn't do much about them because on Facebook, we, the users, are the product and they deliver our eyeballs to the advertisers.

I saw a stat recently, that I'm not at all certain on the accuracy of, but that claimed that Facebook made more revenue per-user than Netflix. Which... yeah, I would find Facebook incredibly easy to cut if it suddenly cost as much as Netflix.

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poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Dr. What <=-

We used to cycle through 'free' trials of AOL and leech files off of
them.

I did love those free floppies, though.

And, later, all those shiny drink coasters.


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Adept wrote to Dr. What <=-

On the other hand, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act came about because of politicians not liking the no-moderation that was Compuserve, and preferring the greater moderation of Prodigy.

That doesn't seem right. The CDA came out in 1996. Prodigy died for good in 2001 (and was never really popular). And while Compu$erve still seems to exist today, it was pretty dead by then as well.

But then our "representatives" were never timely in their legislation.

It seems, though, that the CDA was aimed mostly at BBSs - especially the ones that wanted to move from hobbist systems to commercial systems. Thinking of EXEC-PC and Rusty & Edie's here.

Ignoring anything political there, I'm guessing Compuserve still had
its rough edges, though maybe it wasn't so much with trolling?

No. Guessing... More like private areas for illegal activity. Compu$erve was big enough that people could use it for illegal activity and not be noticed.

I saw a stat recently, that I'm not at all certain on the accuracy of,
but that claimed that Facebook made more revenue per-user than Netflix. Which... yeah, I would find Facebook incredibly easy to cut if it
suddenly cost as much as Netflix.

That claim would pass my BS filter. Facebook doesn't have to create content, so its costs would be much less than Netflix. And at "free", Facebook would have more users.


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Adept wrote to Dr. What <=-

On the other hand, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act came about because of politicians not liking the no-moderation that was Compuserve, and preferring the greater moderation of Prodigy.

Cubby vs. Compuserve characterized the online service as a distrubutor,
not a publisher of content - and therefore not liable for defamatory
content.

Section 230, in a sense, reinforces that ruling by providing some
immunity to computer services.

My opinion is that as soon as you provide content in anything but a chronographically sorted view or start selling ads based on content
gleaned from users' postings, you've crossed the line from distributor
to publisher and should be compelled to monitor content.

You shouldn't get to make money by manipulating what people see to
maximize revenue and claim immunity.




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On the other hand, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act came about because of politicians not liking the no-moderation that was Compuserve, and preferring the greater moderation of Prodigy.

That doesn't seem right. The CDA came out in 1996. Prodigy died for
good in 2001 (and was never really popular). And while Compu$erve still seems to exist today, it was pretty dead by then as well.

Yeah, it wasn't that section 230 was directly aimed at Prodigy and Compuserve, just that they both got sued, and Compuserve won because they didn't engage in any content moderation, and Prodigy had issues because they were being considered a publisher because of taking _some_ stuff down.

But, yeah, take a look at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
in the background and passage section

Since, yeah, it's kind of interesting how early online services that were not the internet impacted things. I guess they weren't BBSs, though I'm sure BBSs would still fall under a variety of these things.

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My opinion is that as soon as you provide content in anything but a chronographically sorted view or start selling ads based on content gleaned from users' postings, you've crossed the line from distributor
to publisher and should be compelled to monitor content.

Not agreeing or disagreeing, but, conveniently, that change would heavily encourage online places to sort in ways that are probably better for users anyway.

Though I'm sure you could still sort based on interactions. E.g., "you always like this person's posts, so this person's posts are higher in your feed" is content-neutral.

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