sometimes i think about how one of the big social sites in taiwan is apparently a pre-internet style telnet BBS called PTT, at about 1.5 million users and 150k active at peak time at the time of whenever that was last updated to the wiki article, with an outsize cultural reputation comparable to 4chan (or 2ch i suppose). and i grimly wonder if something like that is going to end up being the final bastion of the free internet as every good website that provides a real service to people is squeezed out by operating costs and corporate competitors. i sort of doubt things will ever really go that far at large scale (as in i doubt even hardcore free net advocates are going to start re-adopting BBS en masse) but yknow.
