Did this in Compuserve by calling my handle Compu$erve and in IRC too. Never had anyone trace calls back to me and then sending death threats… I guess in the old days they didn’t treat death threats like a felony today.
I got in trouble in middle school sending email on Prodigy to my science teacher filled with words that schools do not want you to say… principal said if she had filed charges I would have been in jail.
UseNet is still used a lot for piracy.
Personally I think IRC is great.
All of these companies have moved on to what amount to basically paid, walled garden, versions of IRC. Like Slack, where once you cap out your message limit, you have to pay to search your history. Tech firms are mostly scared little followers.
I don’t know if they still do anymore. I know when I did my university of Phoenix they did everything on USENET. From lessons, to assignment submission, etc… But I imagine by now they have their own server sided web app.
I used to do all my forum things on USENET and then stuff like phpBB came along, and USENET died.
You can still click through and read the individual messages and responses on each board in a normal web browser using the link given above, so you don’t need any special software unless you want to post messages.
However, registering for an ID is difficult (and may have been limited even more in the last few years). Membership is generally University focussed, so you need to have a university email address, or possibly can apply if you have an email address at a big, well-known Taiwanese company. They generally won’t let you join with a free email addresses like Yahoo, Gmail etc. Also I think you need to give your ID card number and maybe other evidence of your identity.
(I once managed to get an account many years ago, but lost the password or possible my account expire through lack of use, so I can no longer access.)
I am guessing has to be a Taiwanese university right? So I can’t join using utexas.edu addresses?
Okay, I’ll bite: What’s PTT? Forumosa definitely seems to skew far more old, male, and radical right (current US Republican style) than the real life expats I meet in Taiwan. I’ve wondered if there is a more representative online group these days.
Yes, currently it looks like you can only join if you have an NTU account.
For background:
Basically they suspended all new registrations in 2018 (maybe because of upcoming election cycle). And this article states that they reopened registration, only for NTU mailbox holders, since March 2020.
Thing is I find taiwanese aren’t so plugged in like they are in the states. I mean ptt is old technology, at a time when taiwan had the same per capita as some poor african countries, so very few used computers back then. It’s kinda like how most companies in taiwan has no website, and if they had any it was really 1990s style. In fact most companies website in taiwan consists of scanned pages of their catalog and that’s it.
So if you wanted a good representation of taiwan, this will not be on the internet.
PTT is a local text-based BBS/forum type system. Not aimed at foreigners at all. It’s all in Chinese.
I’d say it’s fallen out of fashion, as it seems much less active than it used to be. Most of my local friends stopped using it a while back.
Yes! It’s strange that most Taiwanese companies (and banks, government etc) seem stuck in a time-warp on the web. No design, limited functionality.
It’s a pity, because they could generate more business leads or sales and their business could be a lot more efficient if they used the technological tools available, and got some good designers involved, but no one seems to bother.
Maybe it’s because vast majority of their business happens on whatever platform (word of mouth, phone, fax, industry contacts, etc.) that they see website as unnecessary expense, unless their primary business is online (for example Yahoo, Ruten, etc.) they simply do not see the need for it.
It’s kinda like really big companies in the US that operates mostly in the background (for example, Mondex, Proctor and Gamble, etc.) where they really don’t need a web presence except to let the world know they sorta exist, or needs a presence for investors, etc… And unfortunately most big companies in Taiwan falls under this category. Basically their entire business is OEM manufacturing so they get plenty of business with contracts, so they don’t see the need for websites.
They’re too busy changing the URLs every year to actually improve functionality. After all, wouldn’t want those old bookmarks to work.
And the OP is asking the difference between that and an English-language forum for expats?
Yeah that seems a much more important difference than age or gender.
“Both” is only a possibility when there are two. Both out of three isn’t a thing.
So you understand the objectives of swaying public opinion in one country but not another?
it can be both of two out of three.
That’s correct .
USA has a lot of sway on the world stage. Taiwan not so much. Young people aren’t going to be swayed into siding with the Chinese any time soon based on social media posts. Chinese bot farms would be useless. Being sexist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc has what basis in Taiwan for a bot farm or things like these?
I personally don’t think it is a big deal here but feel those posts are actually the personal views of people that feel enabled by their anonymity rather than any coordinated effort.
Yes, my meaning