I wonder-At what point are we supposed to worry about the right coming after this board…and will this point you are waiting for come too late to do anything about it?
It’s not just about the size and scope of the site.
All it takes is something - one of our regulars does something horrible like, I dunno, assassinate someone liked by The Regime - and suddenly this site is under the spotlight.
I agree, most likely we’re too small to come to anyone’s attention and most likely the end result is the site is just summarily shut down and deleted. But the Oval Office is currently occupied by a spoiled toddler and surrounded by sycophants. Doxing is a possibility.
Again, I think we’re way, way, way down on any List. They’ll be rounding up members of the Democratic Party and scrubbing the big social media sites for “un-American" postings first. Most likely.
This is the likely outcome and as we have seen, the fascist take over of America had been incredibly fast moving. If/when it happens it will just be one of dozens of outrages we have personally experienced from the collapse of America.
It doesn’t even have to be something we actually do or don’t do. If something is said by a right-winger it will be believed, true or not.
There is also the chance that Chicago Reader will exercise self censorship and just shut us down.
The sad fact is that nobody is paying the owners near-enough money to mount even a slight resistance, and any serious resistance on our part can only hasten the process. Sometimes you lose, and the only thing possible is to forestall the inevitable for as long as possible…and try to be proud of at least that much.
I doubt that this message board costs even $1000 to operate each month. That is not political clout. Some young Johnny accountant will eventually point that out to whoever is paying the bills, and that is when the SDMB will go away.
I’m guessing it’s on the balance sheet as “message board maintenance” and it’s some really small amount, and they assume it’s cleaning up physical boards where people put messages, or maybe fixing electronic message boards they have around the building. And it’s some relative pittance, as you suggest, and they figure it’s part of what the janitor gets paid along with emptying trash cans and replacing toilet paper.
They had a snitch website collecting names, until it was deplatformed by the host. Somewhere I read they already had 20,000 names. Those are not all celebrities. All it takes is a troll or RWNJ who got banned to decide they want revenge.
Don’t project rational motives on these goons. They get a little stiffy from every libtard they grease. It could happen.
I mean, if we really care, we could put together an investment group and offer to buy out the SDMB.
That would just change the target from the current owner to us, and without lawyers we would be an even easier target to take down.
Consider, also, that most of the people on this message board are also on X, Facebook, or other large social media platforms, and most of the folks who are critical of Trump here are also critical of him in those other places. If they do start rounding up critics of the Regime, then they’d literally never get to the SDMB as a whole, because even if they ever did get that far down the list, the board would already have died the death of a thousand paper cuts.
As soon as another message board or social media’s membership gets doxed and punished by the regime for merely criticizing it, any of us with an ounce of sense will abandon this board and effectively kill it.
I bet ecg has a kill switch.
If my posts here gain the attention of Donald Trump, such that it comes back to me…
I’m going to go loud - call the media! And I’ll see you in court.
I may end up seeing a firing squad, but we’ve really gone to extremes at that point.
Until then, I don’t really see a reason to worry.
To kill whom?
…
It’s for
Kinda doubt they’d come after a relatively minor message board. Larger sites like Reddit, Wikipedia, etc, might garner more interest, but unless we manage to make a real stink, we should be fine.
I think it would be a trivial matter to have AI generate a long list of websites with ‘subversive’ (ie, anti-Trump or insufficiently lickspittle posters) content as defined by this administration.
But, yeah: I doubt we’d merit much action, unless there were some broad-based and wide-scale ‘purge’ (or legal action at Trump’s behest), simultaneously targeting multiple sites, that would rock the boat materially.
It’s not like they would ever go after an easy target.