Slack has a free option (it limits message history retention) with no maximum number of users. However, its single-threaded channels would rapidly become unwieldy with our population. And in a world where the SDMB has come to the attention of malicious powers, Slack will definitely be subject to official monitoring. But as a private fallback emergency meeting point, it wouldn’t be a terrible (very temporary) solution.
Trump is not coming for this message board, the amount of Trump delusion here would be funny if it were not so sad.
However, this is an old style message board with old style posters. Many users use the same user name across several domains, the same on every site they go to, and often the same name as a knickname in other organizations. I have stumbled across the real identities of several posters here without trying, including pictures. If the government wants to know who you really are, it will be easy.
I will not comment further or be acussed of doxing someone.
I misread the thread title as “What happens when Trump comes on the SDMB?” (as a posting member)
And I thought, “Boy oh boy……he’s going to be in for the biggest Pitting of all time.”
He’s not coming for this message board, but it’s not ridiculous to think he might come for Chicago Public Media, who owns the SDMB. Their tagline is “strengthening the well-being of our communities and our democracy through independent local journalism.” Does that sound like something Trump likes?
Take a hypothetical:
- Trump sends the National Guard to Chicago, as he has threatened
- CPM publishes criticisms of this action
- Trump or local Republicans notice and decide to “look into” CPM’s funding and activities
- CPM proactively axes things that might cause them trouble and that they don’t really care about
Which step in there seems delusional?
I expect the corporate entity that ultimately owns this forum would comply with the supoena.
At which point many of us are screwed.
I mean, I have 25 years of posting here and tens of thousands of posts with no means of scrubbing my content. Let’s just say I have not been flattering towards Donald Trump.
I expect to be harassed in the future because of posts I’ve made here and elsewhere. But it won’t be by the secret police. AI will be able to find everyone who has made disparaging posts about Trump. Then connect those names to their tax or social security info (info we know is no longer protected). It can then tweak those things and make your life miserable while you attempt to “fix” the problems using their uncaring and hostile bureaucracy. No longer being able to post here will be the least of our problems.
That’s alarming. But there’s no chance they’d bother going after a a small message board.
This, on the other hand, is unfortunately plausible.
The UK government is currently discussing banning VPNs, in our own smaller process of creeping authoritarianism. But I don’t know whether Trump would bother going after editors in other countries.
From what I remember of mandatory GDPR training, it’s illegal for an org to use data for purposes other than that declared when they collected it. You’d have to ask permission of each user, and only scrape the email addresses of those who gave it. It would probably be pretty hard for the EU to enforce its laws on a US business, though.
It still might be worth doing. You’d have to find a way to ask permission from people that they’d notice, but wasn’t too intrusive. And only target accounts that had been active within a reasonable time.
This is how it could happen. I hope the powers that be at least think about this as a potential threat.
We’re only 7 months in, people. The bad stuff has barely started.
At the moment, Chicago Public Media’s government funding has been zeroed out for the coming fiscal year (along with every other Corporation for Public Broadcasting-related affiliate), so there’s only so much left Trump can do. Pull a broadcast license? They can go internet-only.
That being said, I have little doubt that if CPM thought they could get some heat off by throwing SDMB to the wolves, they’d do it ln a heartbeat. But unless they haven’t been paying attention the last few months, someone there has to know that no amount of Danegeld will appease Trump and the MAGAs.
It’s public record that I maxed out my donations to the Harris/Walz campaign. That puts me on the shit list long before they discover I wrote unflattering things about the president on a relatively obscure message board.
I’m a (blue) state employee. If Trump’s goons are coming after me it’s because of that. The last thing I’m worried about is a message board.
I doubt very much that Trump and/or his minions will come after the SDMB. We’re small potatoes compared to other sites, and message boards are fading in the face of Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, and so on.
I also think that we regulars have built enough off-board contacts that should the SDMB be shut down suddenly, we would be able to stay in touch via e-mail and telephone. It would be awkward, but we’d manage.
I’ve personally met many Dopers with whom I stay in touch off-board. And many more whom I’d like to meet and stay in touch with. I don’t think that Trump can break those ties just by shutting down our message board. We will survive, in our own way.
You’re probably right, but I would not be surprised if a few of the more extreme right-wingers or Trump defenders who have had their asses handed to them on this board have found theirselves a job in the new regime. With enough pull and a big enough grudge, one of them might make it their mission to take down this board and dox its members.
We tend to ascribe all of the gross abuses to Trump personally, but much of it is the result of people he has empowered to settle their own personal scores.
If the Trump regime comes after the SDMB directly I think it will just be random bad luck. What makes one thing go viral and a similar thing die in obscurity?
Shutdown of SDMB will occur for two main reasons. External factors destroy CPM, and a successor to manage the SDMB is never sought after or found. Or, new laws and internet policy make it untenable for CPM to continue managing SDMB, and they close it. Both of these problems also exist for Discourse, whoever they’re using for hosting, and on up the stack.
Examples of factors destroying CPM are the general Trump war on the media not in his pocket, such as the closing of CPB and extorting CBS.
Examples of external laws are things like age verification (now constitutional in the US) and the Take It Down Act. Both of these may create more legal liability than CPM is willing to be exposed to.
The absolute best option, and I’d even say doing it preemptively is a good idea, would be to move hosting of SDMB outside of the US. Canada and Europe are the obvious options, with the EU’s strong privacy laws probably making it the preferred choice.
By far the hardest part will be extracting a dump of the SDMB data from CPM, and getting a non-exclusive license to use the Straightdope trademark and other IP. That will require both someone at CPM who wants to make it happen, and lawyers for both sides.
Spinning up a Free-SDMB in exile, without the old messages or IP, at a non-US hosting provider on a self managed Discourse would be trivial from the technical side, and cost in the €20-100/month range. By far the largest issue with this would be convincing members to come over. The board lost quite a few with the migration to Discourse, which was made about as easy as it could be.
Lol, love the advice given to the Trump administration in this very thread on how to track us. Good going, team. 
I’ll make it easier for them. My name is John Thornton, I live in San Antonio, and if you (the Trump admin) care, I posted my undergrad credentials here: Knock-on effects of Biden's $1.9 Trillion Pandemic Relief? - #46 by JohnT
I’m sure it would be a straightforward case of the Trump admin suing the current owners (Chicago Sun I believe) and then the SDMB shutting down. We’re not worth the trouble.
Could they go after people based on their usernames and IP’s? Never say never, but again, fascist tactics are about intimidating others. If they made an example out of me, the general public would go “they arrested who from the what?”. That is, if they ever heard about it at all. So again, I don’t think we’re worth the trouble.
No, we’re just further on down the list…and everyone that capitulates or quits moves us up that list.
^ This.
We’re on the list, just not on the top of the list. This list is an escalator, and eventually the step you’re on rises to the top.
Which is why, as Niemoller wrote, you want to speak out for the first people on the list…
Consider for a moment the very tiny reach of this website, and the enormously large social media machinery commanded by the fascist apparatus, and ask yourself what the world looks like if we ever reach the point where the SDMB is the foremost critic of the Trump admin, enough to even approach the reach of X or Facebook. It’s too dire for any of us to imagine, the internet environment as we currently know it will have ceased to exist.
This board is not on any kind of escalator. We are not on any list.
The likeliest outcome is one of our disgruntled conservative posters gets affronted that we’re not showing sufficient reverence to the memory of Charlie Kirk, reports it to of of the snitch sites that’s popping up, someone sends a threatening email to the Chicago Sun, leading to an unceremonious shutdown that same day. And that will be the end of it. This seems fairly likely the more I think about it.
Because we’re not worth the trouble.