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"More local" may not be the perfect description. When I wrote it I was thinking of things like AIM where, for the most part, you knew everyone you were interact

"More local" may not be the perfect description. When I wrote it I was thinking of things like AIM where, for the most part, you knew everyone you were interacting with. The more I think about it, there were plenty of chatrooms and forums at that time though, so yeah, probably not a good word to use. I think "trust-less" is more what I'm getting at though. In the 90s and early 00s the whole, "don't reveal anything personal, assume anyone you don't have a history with as if they might have malicious intent" was still very prevalent. That only changed when the early versions of social media really started to catch on. My mental mile marker for that switch happening has always been when Facebook no longer required an edu email to sign up (2005), but I'm sure you could argue it happened a few years earlier. There are plenty of reasons we should go back to that mindset and AI bots making it incredibly hard to verify that you are talking to an actual human maybe the thing that pushes us back toward that mindset.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Having been online since about 1983, I never had this "trust-less" experience. I can understand what you're saying though, because by the time my kids started to be online in the 00s, I was generally trying to convey to them the same point that you're making.
- superfrank 4y ago
  Different strokes for different folks I guess. I've had many conversations with many people my age (mid 30s) about how we went from "don't post anything about yourself" to "post your entire life online" around when Facebook got big, so I don't think it's something that only I experienced. There's another commenter on this post saying something similar and I remember being taught about "internet safety" in middle school, so maybe it's a generational thing.
  - corford 4y ago
    I'm from the same cohort as you and can corroborate this. I definitely remember how strange it felt to me when social media became a thing and the taboo of attaching personally identifiable info to your web presence suddenly disappeared.
mikrotikker 4y ago
Yes I remember when a local direct connect hub had a LAN party and many people met IRL for the first time. I continued to meet these people in later years in normal life even after the hub was shutdown. That was semi closed and people were generally trustworthy.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

Having been online since about 1983, I never had this "trust-less" experience. I can understand what you're saying though, because by the time my kids started to be online in the 00s, I was generally trying to convey to them the same point that you're making.

superfrank 4y ago
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I've had many conversations with many people my age (mid 30s) about how we went from "don't post anything about yourself" to "post your entire life online" around when Facebook got big, so I don't think it's something that only I experienced. There's another commenter on this post saying something similar and I remember being taught about "internet safety" in middle school, so maybe it's a generational thing.
- corford 4y ago
  I'm from the same cohort as you and can corroborate this. I definitely remember how strange it felt to me when social media became a thing and the taboo of attaching personally identifiable info to your web presence suddenly disappeared.

mikrotikker 4y ago

Yes I remember when a local direct connect hub had a LAN party and many people met IRL for the first time. I continued to meet these people in later years in normal life even after the hub was shutdown. That was semi closed and people were generally trustworthy.