@wjmaggos @blamellors @Bunnyslope @nam

I know it was before your time, but who do you think used BBSes?

It was a wide range of people. The Houston Museum of Natural Science got astronomy students calling. The Medugorje people convinced thousands of Catholics from all walks of life to call. Schools used them. Some were for horrorscopes, some were chats, some were porn, and so on.

In short, ordinary people used BBSes. USENET was standard for people on the internet back in the day, mostly college, telecom corp, and military. But these were normal people too.

There is no reason to differentiate the audience here.

A world where everybody feels welcome on the fediverse is one that excludes anything but happy opinions welcoming everyone.

That is both itself a type of lie, in that it is not representative of reality, and discriminatory.