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Ya don’t say…
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Would it be possible to get some more specific details on what we can expect here?
Even in the best-case scenario, this is going to be (at the very least) extremely disruptive to the community, and it is coming at one of the most terrifying junctures in history that any of us have experienced in our lifetimes.
People depend on the community. For some of us, it is the only community that we have. There are times when the community is what gets us out of bed in the morning. I have shared things with this community that I have not told even close friends and family members, and I do not think that I am alone on that. It is a rare thing that we have here: a community of people from all walks of life, held together by nothing more than our conversations with each other.
I really do not want to even contemplate the idea that the impact on the community was not duly considered when this decision was made. I believe Ken when he says that the pros and cons were carefully weighed. We know what the cons are. What are the pros? Aside from an ad-free experience, what do we have to look forward to from BoingBoing moving forward? What are you envisioning when you talk about realizing the BoingBoing that you always wanted?
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I don’t want another subscription. 
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Exclusivity is meaningless.
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Finally the release of sweet death.
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I would happily pay to support the community and experience we have here, but I’m not going my to pay for a far worse experience that completely destroys this community.
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Yep. The idea is you’re subscribing for the discourse, not the articles.
It’s just like X, but free users are completely excluded vs. being lower-caste.
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That’s something many of us would have done (for a capital D Discourse).
But Substack does not have the features and functions needed to enable discourse as we have been used to it. It does enable comments / feedback to authors, of course (and only that, crudely). I’m not going to pay a subscription for that.
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I do not like the spin BB made on the trolley problem!
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That is what concerns me. I’ve enjoyed my time here on the BBS, and if they wanted to make commenting privileges here a subscription, I might consider it. Substack’s commenting features are nowhere close to the BBS.
Substack also has some questionable ethics. They decided to not kick out all Nazis, so they are now a Nazi bar. I’d much rather use the website. I use Adblock everywhere for general privacy reasons, so I don’t see ads, but I might consider supporting the BBS.
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Well, it’s been good run. Lots of cool people on the BBS. And a sort of emblematic slide from BB being the hip tech site with the cool kids/authors who say “you know what to do” turning into a site monetized with chum ads and sketchy posts and un-marked affiliate links, even going so far as to automatically turn user’s links in BBS posts into affiliate links. (Not to mention the whole sketchy advertorial BB store kerfuffle…) It’s been a bit of a microcosm of the decline of the internet as a whole as BB has been shaped over the years by changing economic forces on the web.
I hope the re-boot goes well. It’s much of what people have been asking for, even as BB has been insistent that such a paid model was not sustainable and can’t pay the bills.
I hope that the editorial content can go back to being more like classic BB and less like the more recent content.
I’ll consider subscribing depending on whether the BB editorial content goes back to having a bit more wonderful in it.
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I mostly post snark, but I read a lot on the BBS because the commentary here provided a lot of thoughtful and diverse perspective on the articles, and on other happenings in the world. This place felt like a community, and with the help of the mods, a community that cared about itself and the people in it.
I’m sad to see it go, but I suppose that’s always the risk of not owning the infrastructure. It was a party in a rented room, and the landlords have ended it.
Y’all were wonderful to read and chat with, and together you made a really good place in an internet and a society that doesn’t reward that like it should. Thank you all, and I hope and wish you all the resources to build, or the luck to find, another one like this.
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You can say this all you want, but at the end of the day you’re voluntarily putting BB alongside Nazis and giving money to people who, at best, don’t find the fact that their customers actively want to kill people in this community a dealbreaker.
There’s a reason the saying isn’t “If you have 10 people and 1 Nazi sitting a table willingly, you have 11 Nazis, unless one of them at some point said they don’t endorse the viewpoints of the Nazi, then it’s fine.” When we’re talking about the basic rights of people to exist or not, we’re not talking about a difference of viewpoint.
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Wait, what? When did this start? I never noticed it, but then I’m not usually looking at links that can be affiliates.
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If they pull the lever a large contingent of regulars refuse to patronize Substack.
If they don’t pull the lever they keep losing money.
(I personally think there’s more than two options btw, but since we’re talking about trolleys now…)
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I’ve been here close to 20 years and I will say that the comment section and regular posters have created an echo chamber. It’s been many years since I have even bothered to put out a differing viewpoint. What’s the point when you know you are going to get lambasted, called to the principals office, then have your account suspended for a few days, and all posts pruned?
I certainly can understand the desire for a “safe space” away from the drive by tr0lls. I can also appreciate the amount of work that goes into moderating the amount of posts that are generated here everyday. But if the views are all the same I’m not sure what more constitutes an echo chamber.
I have enjoyed my experiences here and it has broadened my knowledge and interactions with groups of people that I don’t get to interact with on a daily basis. I’m still on the fence if I will make the jump.
I will say, this thread has some of the best turn out I’ve seen in years!
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Thank you for all of the interesting topics and discussion over the years; it was an enjoyable ride! 
I always thought of the posts on Boing Boing as more or less a “soup stone” for discussion; the posts could be interesting on their own, but it was the discussion that was the meat and potatoes of the soup.
I understand that the current advertising funded setup is no longer viable these days – the heavy, often less than relevant ads that severely disrupted the user experience on Boing Boing clearly hadn’t been sustainable for some time now – so I genuinely wish the site the best in its experiments with a different business model.
It is a shame that the online advertising industry largely headed away from relevancy based on quality content and instead toward the invasive and parasitic by trying to target and follow individuals with little thought of the long-term consequences. It essentially has destroyed publishing. 
Of course, posting quality comments is a contribution of time, so it will be interesting to see how many are willing to contribute not only their time writing insightful comments but also their money to have the option to write them.
There have been some users on here who I would like to stay in touch with; some have emailed directly from time-to-time, usually related to travel in Tokyo. I’ll try to dig up some of those and email directly as time permits, but before this BBS goes dark, you can email here. You might also like to read my writing about Tokyo (and other cities), all human written and mapped out based on actually wandering around on foot; perhaps a quaint idea in the era of AI. 
Best wishes for new ideas; may there be more of a return to the wonderful regardless of the business model or location! 
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So if anyone wants to take on running this community its possible to set up a cloud instance of discourse on Linode or DigitalOcean etc
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An interesting read on the whole Substack Nazi fiasco
Though I have to say I’m rather mixed on BB moving on there. There are probably reasonably good alternative platforms, but my very limited experience on Substack so far is I’m being promoted writers who are clearly anti-nazi (likely because I’m already subscribed to BB). On one hand some platforms that BB is already on bans nazis (Youtube), while others don’t (X). On one hand Substack clearly takes money from Nazis, on the other… I guess my money isn’t being given to nazis. On one hand, being on a platform that has nazis on it feels more than a little icky, on the other hand being on any platform to promote strongly anti-nazi views is a good thing.
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