What BBS Culture Taught Us That Silicon Valley Forgot

I ran bulletin board systems in the 1980s. The communities were better than anything we have now. Not because of nostalgia. Structural differences made healthier interaction inevitable. Taiwan's PTT still has over 1.5 million registered users running on BBS architecture. What did we know then that Silicon Valley forgot?

This isn't "old man yells at cloud." It's pattern recognition from someone who ran boards for over a decade, starting in my teens. The problems we're struggling with now were structurally prevented by design choices that BBSs made by necessity. Harassment, misinformation, addiction, polarization. I've seen these problems emerge as platforms abandoned the design principles that worked. When we built these communities in the 1980s, we didn't have engagement algorithms - we had human judgment, and it worked better.

How BBSs Worked

For context: a BBS was a computer in someone's house connected to phone lines. You dialed in with a modem and connected directly. As IEEE Spectrum documents, BBS historian Jason Scott estimates that more than 100,000 BBSs were created in the decades after 1978. The SysOp (system operator) set up message boards, file areas, door games, and chat.

Key constraints:

• Limited connections: Most BBSs had 1-4 phone lines. That's 1-4 simultaneous users.
• Local call areas: Long distance was expensive, so most users were geographically close.
• Known identity: The SysOp often knew users personally, or knew who to call if there was trouble.
• Personal ownership: One person ran the system, set the rules, and was accountable for the community.

These constraints shaped everything about how communities formed.

The SysOp Relationship

On a BBS, there was a person in charge. Not an algorithm, not a moderation team, not a policy document. According to Britannica's history, bulletin boards allowed for the collision of broadcast-type mass media and formerly limited networked communities of many-to-many communication. A human being whose name you knew, whose phone number you had, who you might see at a user meetup.

Personal accountability: When someone caused trouble, it wasn't "report to the platform." It was "Jim is going to deal with this." Jim had a face, a reputation, relationships. His decisions were visible and attributed.

Known judgment: Over time, you learned what Jim would and wouldn't tolerate. Not from a terms of service document, but from watching decisions happen. The standards were human-shaped and context-aware. They were consistent because one person made them.

Relationship investment: The SysOp wanted a good community because that community was their creation. They lived in it. Their reputation was attached to it. The incentives aligned: healthy community meant happy SysOp.

Compare this to modern platforms where "moderation" means snap decisions on decontextualized posts. Content review teams follow policies written by lawyers and optimized for legal protection. When I was a SysOp, I knew my users - their context, their history, their relationships. The human connection is gone. (I explore this further in what modern platforms could learn from SysOp-era moderation.)

Local Communities

Because long distance was expensive, most BBS users were local. This changed everything:

Real-world consequences: If you harassed someone online, you might run into them at the grocery store. The person you were talking to was a neighbor, maybe a coworker's kid, possibly someone you'd meet at the annual BBS picnic.

Shared context: Local users shared weather, local news, local events. The conversation had grounding in physical reality. You weren't arguing with an abstraction in another city. You were disagreeing with someone who experienced the same local environment.

Network effects worked differently: BBSs didn't try to be everything to everyone. A local BBS served a local community. It was okay to be small. The goal wasn't maximum engagement, it was serving your users well.

Modern social media optimizes for maximum reach, which means conversations happen between strangers with no shared context and no prospect of real-world encounter. No wonder they go poorly.

Resource Scarcity

BBSs had hard limits: phone lines, disk space, CPU time. These constraints shaped user behavior:

Time limits: Most BBSs limited session length. You had 30-60 minutes, then someone else needed the line. This forced efficiency. You logged in with purpose, did what you needed to do, logged off. No infinite scrolling, no "just one more refresh."

Ratios: On file-sharing BBSs, you had to upload to download. You contributed before you took. This created investment - users who provided value earned privileges. Lurking without contributing had costs.

Message limits: You could only post so many messages per day. This forced thought before posting. If you could only say three things today, you thought about what to say.

Modern platforms optimize for maximum engagement, which means removing all friction, which means encouraging thoughtless interaction. The constraints that made people think were removed in service of engagement metrics.

No Algorithm

On a BBS, content appeared in chronological order. You saw what was posted, in the order it was posted. There was no recommendation engine deciding what would maximize your engagement.

You controlled your experience: You chose which message areas to read, which threads to follow. The system didn't try to show you content engineered to provoke reaction.

Outrage didn't spread: Without amplification algorithms, inflammatory posts reached whoever happened to be reading that board. They didn't cascade into platform-wide pile-ons.

Serendipity was real: You might read a message board you didn't usually check and discover something unexpected. Not because an algorithm showed it to you, but because you chose to look.

The algorithmic feed was supposed to improve user experience by showing relevant content. Instead, it optimized for engagement, which optimizes for emotional reaction, which optimizes for outrage and fear.

Identity and Reputation

BBS users had handles - pseudonyms they used consistently. You weren't anonymous, but you weren't necessarily using your legal name either. This middle ground worked well:

Persistent reputation: Your handle accumulated history. Other users knew you based on behavior over time. New users started with no reputation and had to build it.

Separation from real identity: The handle provided some separation from your professional identity. You could be more candid than you might be under your legal name, while still being accountable for your behavior.

Community memory: People remembered who helped them, who was knowledgeable, who caused trouble. This memory was human and distributed. More nuanced than any trust score.

Modern platforms either demand real names (Facebook's policy, since relaxed) or allow complete anonymity (4chan). The middle ground of persistent pseudonymity was lost. You could be accountable for behavior without exposing offline identity.

Taiwan's PTT: The BBS That Survived

PTT (批踢踢) is Taiwan's largest online community - and it still runs on BBS infrastructure. Founded in 1995, it has over 1.5 million registered users and 150,000 daily active users as of recent reports.

Why does it work?

• Board-based organization: Content is organized by topic, not algorithmically surfaced. Users choose what to read.
• Persistent pseudonyms: Users have handles they've used for years, with visible post history and reputation.
• Text-only interface: No images in posts, no video, just text. This eliminates image-based manipulation and forces substantive discussion.
• Volunteer moderation: Boards have moderators who know their communities and make human decisions.
• No engagement optimization: The platform doesn't try to maximize time-on-site. It just... works.

PTT has been credited with exposing public health information early in Taiwan's COVID response, organizing political accountability movements, and maintaining healthy civic discourse. A text-mode BBS outperforms Silicon Valley's engagement-optimized platforms at building functional community. (For more on the network protocols that connected these communities globally, see my piece on FidoNet.)

What Could We Bring Back?

We can't return to the BBS era. But we could design platforms that incorporate the principles that made BBS communities work:

Human-scale moderation: Communities small enough that a person can know the members. Federated structures where decisions are made by people with context, not algorithms or distant teams.

Friction is a feature: Slow down posting. Require thought before broadcast. The removal of all friction hasn't made communication better - it's made it reactive and thoughtless.

Chronological feeds: Show content in order. Let users control their experience instead of optimizing for engagement. Accept that this reduces "time on platform." That might be good.

Local and contextual: Communities built around shared interests, geography, or context. Not everyone needs to talk to everyone. Smaller, denser networks work better.

Persistent pseudonymity: Let people build reputations over time without requiring legal identity exposure. The middle ground between anonymous trolling and real-name exposure.

Reject engagement metrics: Measure community health, not time-on-site. Healthy communities might have lower engagement numbers and that's fine.

"A text-mode BBS outperforms Silicon Valley's engagement-optimized platforms at building functional community."