#social_networking — Public Fediverse posts

The world's first social network?

I think the following block will suffice to speak for itself. Most of you reading this will have no idea what's going on, and that's a shame, really.

Anyway, when you 'finger' it out, feel free to finger me at SDF.org or tilde.team ⛵

From [email protected] Mon Feb 19 21:32:35 1990
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Message-Id: [email protected]
Date: 19 Feb 90 1831 PST
From: Les Earnest [email protected]
Subject: re: Greetings...
To: [email protected]
Status: R

[In reply to message sent Mon, 19 Feb 90 16:02:17 EST.]

I'm glad that you are enjoying the C3 articles. I need to write another
one soon.

Here is a response to your conjectures, mostly regurgitated from an
article that I posted on Human-nets in 1985. Feel free to forward it to
alt.forklore.computers, or I can post it there if you prefer. I haven't
been reading that newsgroup, but a quick look indicates that maybe I
should.

Finger was named for the act of pointing. I recall that sometime after it
became popular I received a message from a system administrator who
thought that it should be renamed so that users would not have to use a
"dirty" word. I gave his request all the consideration that it deserved.

I created Finger around 1971 to meet a local need at the Stanford
Artifical Intelligence Lab. People generally worked long hours there,
often with unpredictable schedules. When you wanted to meet with some
group, it was important to know who was there and when the others would
likely reappear. It also was important to be able to locate potential
volleyball players when you wanted to play, Chinese food freaks when you
wanted to eat, and antisocial computer users when it appeared that
something strange was happening on the system.

The only tool then available for seeing who was running on our DEC-10
computer was a WHO program that showed IDs and terminal line numbers for
people who were logged in. There was no information available on people
who were not logged in. I frequently saw people running their fingers
down the WHO display saying things like "There's Don and that's Pattie but
I don't know when Tom was last seen." or "Who in hell is VVK and where
does line 63 go?"

I wrote Finger and developed the supporting database to provide this
information in traditional human terms -- real names and places. Because
I preferred to talk face to face rather than through the computer or
telephone, I put in the feature that tells how long the terminal had been
idle, so that I could assess the likelihood that I would find them there
if I walked down the hall.

The program was an instant hit. Some people asked for the Plan file
feature so that they could explain their absence or how they could be
reached at odd times, so I added it. I found it interesting that this
feature evolved into a forum for social commentary and amusing
observations.

Finger was picked up by a number of other groups with DEC-10 computers
that were connected to Arpanet -- software flowed in all directions around
the net in those days. It later migrated to Un*x, probably via U.C.
Berkeley. Somewhere along the line the idea arose to provide a network
Finger service. I don't remember who suggested that but it seemed like a
good idea at the time so I stuck it in. Some other anxious people wanted
to be able to verify that their mail was delivered to specific addressees,
so the Mail feature was also added.

While I was somewhat surprised by the popularity of Finger, it has not
been as successful as an earlier program that I invented -- the spelling
checker. It too was created to fill a personal need that many others
apparently share. We didn't think about commercial development and
software protection in those days, but if we had we probably could have
made something out of it. On the other hand, I enjoyed the comradery
of those gentler times and have no regrets.

-Les Earnest ([email protected])

tl;dr: Yeah, in case you're wondering, and would like to kick the tires and take it for a spin, on Debian it's as simple as:

# apt update
#apt install finger

if you want to play with the daemon, that would be available to you by installing either efingerd or cfingerd. For #Slackware users, finger is already installed HERE, and the daemon is just #fingerd; finger listens on port 79.

Enjoy! 👋🤠

#tallship #FOSS #finger #social_networking

@toddsundsted @liaizon @mkljczk

Honestly Todd, I'm not seeing anything more pernicious than one would have in their face just taking a casual stroll through Usenet or FidoNet - Truly; you could call them "curmudgeonville" and the comedy would spill until those vitriolic malcontents realize they're the butt of the joke... And by that, I mean these people too:

wrath regularly directed at “those who don’t conform” even if they diverge in trivial ways.

Those, lolz... wrathful ones.

I've seen so many well intended, ill-fated schema claiming to be closer to some imaginary ideal that satisfies the moderation needs for everyone, universally. Nope. nonesuch, I say. After decades administering listserv forums, y'know, the ezmlm's and majordomo's and Mailman mailing lists; or a coordinator for FidoNet, and participant in Usenet over UUCP even, all I can say is it will always, ultimately befall, as a responsibility the matter of moderation, to the individual participant themselves - as it has always been.

There's litterally no panacea, and this thread is evidence that the relatively nacent newcomer IFTAS really has nothing new to offer that hasn't been rehashed in one form or another.

The saddest thing I've noted has been the shift in web based forums since the demise of MySpace. Yes, really. Oh, for a while, sure you could post on Faceplant that you were sitting on your porch, picking your burgers from your nose and watching the grass grow and it would receive gufaws and 'likes' and the now retired +1 for those using Gplus; but eventually, there was a snide remark here or there and the descent into cacophony proliferated.

I hear people say these same things you noted, but about Bsky, or Threads, or you name it, there's that element of malignant nihilism that eventually becomes more pronounced the more it is fed.

People have more than enough tools, without abdicating their own responsibility to someone else's sensibilities, to moderate their own incoming mail, chat, forums, microblogs, commenting feedback systems. As if the actual spammers themselves aren't the most discouraging already. It's easy to mute or block miscreants, but for some reason people want to have someone else do it for them and capitalize on their own imagined frailty and feeble constitution.

There was a time back when USEnet was the main interchange of discourse along with Compuserve and The Well (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, among other contemporaries of the time) when it was simply understood by all that:

"The earth is not a safe place and there are no safe spaces"

That's never going to change.

Contrary to what those who refuse to accept responsibility for when it comes to going outside for a walk, bad actors abound, and they have always been everywhere throughout recorded history.

Some will claim that it's possible to turn over personal responsibility to some kind of bot or automated reputation model, and you yourself cite that people will dogpile other people who diverge, from sort of mob mentality in vogue at the moment.

An individualist eschews belonging to such ridiculous measures that would have one cede responsibility for their own welfare to nebulous machinations they don't themselves manage - when there's a very simple way in virtually every online system for the end user themselves to filter content stemming from personalities they don't wish to hear from twice.

Maybe I'm just wholly unimpressed with the feeble nature of modern enmity, because from where I'm sitting, it doesn't even begin to compare to the pernicious ad hominem of decades past.

Or maybe it's just become popular to play helpless and hapless victim and pretend to be gravely offended when some bad actor awards them the opportunity to claim offense? If so, and like every other fad, This too, shall pass.

#tallship #Fediverse #forum #social_networking #moderation

@briankrebs

I'm pretty sure that the #Fediverse is one of the first social networks I've been on that didn't ever ask me to betray any of the people in my address book.

#tallship #FOSS #ActivityPub #social_networking #DeSoc #Privacy #Pleroma #Friendica #Soapbox #Calckey #PeerTube #Misskey #Akkoma #Hometown #Mitra #Epicyon #Foundkey #Socialhome #MicroblogPub #Quanta #FunkWhale #Castopod #Hubzilla #Takahē #Bonfire

⛵

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