Given that we have a posting population that skews past 70 years of age and remembering that they wasted thousands of hours posting about every word uttered by Trump and his cronies for the past four years, I would predict that the board implodes after the majority of posters are found slumped over their keyboards, their hearts having given way from the strain of keeping up with new outrages.
Hey, I’m only 65. I can keep up with any amount of outrages without a welfare check. 
I certainly don’t get that impression from Dumbass Donny. He sounds like he still doesn’t even know what a president is half the time;
But this isn’t just a thread about Trump, is it? This is a thread about how the Politics of Trump and his devotees might effect the members of this message board, the moderators of this message board and the owners of this message board…and I personally don’t think all three will be effected the same way, and they definitely aren’t effected the same amount.
I don’t think another Trump presidency will affect the SDMB at all. Although only two Republicans have been President during my almost 24 years here (Bush II and Trump), we made it through.
If there is a concern that Trump would shut us down somehow, then the solution is simple: move the SDMB to a host that is outside of the US. Pretty sure that a suitable host could be found in Canada, the UK, Australia, or other locations that are out of Trump’s reach. It wouldn’t stop him from threatening American ISPs, but I understand that there are workarounds for that.
At any rate, when you get right down to it, we’re pretty small potatoes compared to Reddit and Quora. We’d probably fly under the radar of a Trump presidency.
Nothing will really change. We’ll have plenty to talk about, that’s for sure.
Good point.
I*'m pretty sure the actual owners of the site will just drop it if it becomes too much of a hassle.
Yes, if this site were owned by an individual, it might move. But it’s owned by a large corporation that is barely aware of it. If the site becomes a hassle, it will be shut down.
My own thoughts on this is Trump will put a chilling aspect on free speech, and posts as he sees to be against him will be subject to retaliation. This is more possible with AI, the ability to scan for such posts on a mass scale and with the ability to identify posters, and also automate processes to punish people on a mass scale. Things like IRS audits, bank account freezes, no fly lists, and it may also carry over to releasing your identity so fraudsters can use it. Trump’s plan is clear, worship him as the people of N Korea worship Kim. Trump wants to be king, not president.
That would be a vast improvement.
From what I gather, googling, SDMB is indirectly owed by Chicago Public Media (owner of the now-nonprofit Chicago Sun-Times). Here’s the Wikipedia summary of what Project 2025 would do in that space:
What portion of Chicago Public Media revenue comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting? Probably not much. But authoritarian governments go after critical media AKA the enemy of the people. And, I think, critical media that is even a little bit under government auspices is liable to be taken down before privately owned entities. I am fuzzy on the step by step of how authoritarian regimes actually do this, and it well might take more than four years.
The result will be EVERY thread will have anti-Trump posts.
Example:
I can’t stand Thursday Night Football. I’d rather they put that game on Sunday morning for us early risers.
Reply
I can’t stand how President/Criminal Cheetoe is fucking up this country.
???
I’m not proposing that the Moderators will go away.
…or doxing us so his brownshirts do the follow-up, unofficially, of course.
Honestly, it’s hard to imagine much of what we’re saying as coming to pass. I know about “It Can’t Happen Here”, but we wont go from where we are today to the “People’s Republic of North America” overnight, right? Right?
I had a direct impact experience during Trump’s 2017-2021 term. Executive Order 13950 essentially made it illegal to post information that might make white people and other majority group members feel uncomfortable, in educational settings within corporations who sell to the US government. At the time I lead an Employee Resource Group (ERG) in my company that promoted being good allies in the DEI sense. We had a strong online presence with discussion and reference facilities, organized meetings and presentations, and gave courses. We had to largely shut it down and mothball our materials. We started it all up again they day after Biden’s inauguration (we didn’t wait for him to reverse the order because we believed its enforcement was already at an end).
So, yeah, the first Trump Presidency hugely affected our message board. I grant that it wasn’t public, but I can imagine ways they would expand a similar brand of censorship to public message boards, and ways they could make it happen legislatively rather than just by an EO.
Much like 2016, the only significant change will be the BBQ Pit will become an endless whinge about Trump this and Trump that.
Hopefully this time around the mods will have the foresight to set up a sub pit titled The Trump Dump to collect those threads.
The latest news:
Thus Chicago Public Media may cut what it considers marginal activities like Straight Dope. Thoughts?
I found their 2024 financial statements on the WBEZ website.
It looks like they had a total operating revenue of $74 million in fiscal 2024, of which $1.5 million was from a Community Service Grant from the CPB.
So, not minimal, but also not a large proportion of their income. On the other hand, losing 2% of their total revenue – assuming that any support from CPB is being zeroed out, and they aren’t able to replace it with donations and corporate support – will certainly make them take a close look at which expenses are no longer worthwhile spending.
From what I’ve heard on NPR and PBS, the big urban stations are much less reliant on government funding than the rural ones. In some rural parts of the country, the public radio and television stations may be the only source of news. This is a transcript
of an episode of the public radio program On the Media about how the cuts will affect public broadcasting. It describes one perhaps extreme case, that of KYUK, the public radio station in Bethel, Alaska and the only broadcast source for hundreds of miles, including dozens of Alaska Native villages.
OK, so let’s say the Sun-Tribune does decide to cut all Straight Dope funding. Do we go black immediately? Or is there some sort of monthly subscription and we’d have 1-3 weeks to migrate to a different place?
Is the Giraffe Boards about to become…a lot more serious?