On the issue of censorship and moderation. Most of you know I've been working on the internet or have worked on the internet before the internet became public and commercial (1989-2001), during my time with Sprint international that later became Alcatel. I created the JW mailing list known as The_folder. It was the second oldest JW mailing list on the internet. Most of the friends on the list worked and were heavy into technology; they knew how the technology worked. The membership exceeded 500. Many of the members were from different Bethels around the world; we had brother who had privileages and were prominent on that list some still are others dropped away.
Those were the good old days when we kept just spiritual guidelines and the people who were on the list are mostly as I mentioned before, engineers and technicians with a certain focus and mindset. I was an Systems Test Commmunication Tech and network administrator. Not like today's definition of the network administrator. I just managed to the technology of the internet of that time. (By the way, the name of the first JW list was called 'friends')
Before the web, there were other internet systems available to Academia, you had Bitnet that served universities and colleges, DARPA, and of course the famous free for All Usenet. There was also a system of communication called IRC (Internet Relay Chat). I digress. Of course when the internet went public and the World Wide Web came into existence new BBS systems were born tlike CompuServe and American online, Prodigy among others, more online JW communities came into existence.
Many of us engineers, technicians, etc already knew that once the internet was open to the public it was going to be a royal mess. Pornography was at the Forefront, and because of porn the internet tech advanced even more. The society or the organization or as we know it today, "The Branch" wasn't too happy with the internet. It feared association with the outside world. There are many articles about the internet, the articles per se did not demonize the internet, but many brothers did, and many articles were taken out of context.
It was so bad that even having a computer could land you into trouble I had to hide my work computer in the basement. Having a computer was almost synonymous with looking at pornography even though I use my computer for work and it belonged to my job (the good old AT). Then came an article and a supplement from the Kingdom Ministry of November 1997. Basically laid out guidelines for internet use and if I can recall individuals who manage email lists or groups were responsible for the content of the group before the Branch. Once again many individuals demonized the internet and they demonized the brothers who used it. The membership of the_folder dropped. Many went and created their own smaller groups in different languages.
Then came myspace, and the beginning of the social net reared his ugly head. Very few friends stayed in the email communities, and they started migrating towards social nets like Facebook, Twitter and others. End of Part 1
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