This can’t be helped to feel like a calculated move to maximize the subscription using the most consequential election in recent memory as a bail.
I also don’t buy the subscription will prevent bad actors. Did people manage this site take a look at Twitter with its paid trollies? /S
People with bad intent will find ways. The only things that keeps this place sane were the admin/moderators and the community. It’s a two-way street.
Full credit to orenwolf. But as something not yet mentioned, we have always been told how important the community is to maintaining this space is too…and @Mjolnir, @Sekhmet, and @Community_Mod_1 all took it on themselves to volunteer as moderators because they thought it was worth their time and energy. I am sure others would have too if they knew it was needed. To instead have it abruptly shut down on them in favor of a place known to promote bigots feels like terrible thanks for their efforts.
I don’t post much, but adding my voice to the chorus here. I won’t go near Substack and am sad to be losing the BBS as one of my only social media platforms. As a child of the 80s/90s the old school internet forum format here has always felt comfortable, like your favorite neighborhood dive bar.
Taking this away days before a pivotal election is pretty shitty. The folks here have really helped me keep my hope, and provide perspectives from around the country. The election thread has been especially amazing for wading through the noise.
Miss y’all already. Stay safe out there. Punch nazis. Eat the rich.
First thing I do after reading post, and maybe even the article, is check the comments for interesting views. Been reading on the regular for a very long time, I cant be bothered to look at my bookmark archives to find out, cue melancholy thoughts as I wonder where my life has gone. Alas I don’t plan to subscribe, so this looks to be the end of the community as I know it. It’s been mostly fun! Good luck everyone!
Yes! I read so many different articles from so many different countries. I want to thank our following BBS friends who posted great newsworthy items from Germany, Finland, Scotland, England, Cumbria, Ireland, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Ukraine, and especially our cousins to the north who worry more for us in the US than most Americans. All of you helped to broaden our minds! 
That certainly would allow our group a venue in which we would either celebrate or commiserate together; that would be a worthy venue, either way.
Thanks for posting a response. It’s unclear if the move to substack required the simultaneous end of bbs. Given the option of paying for an ad-free BB and keeping the bbs going, I think plenty here would celebrate. If you don’t mind, I’m very curious whether freezing the bbs was required to move to substack or if they’re separate decisions
I’d imagine they’re joined at the hip, unfortunately. The BBS could probably continue on on its own without fresh articles just fine but the investment from the owners probably wouldn’t change much. Capitalism sucks.
Erm, that all depends on what is meant by “site”. The landing page on www.boingboing.net, sure. The individual article pages which now bid you to go to Substack which is paywalled, not so much.
Per Orenwolf in a comment above, they’ll be working with Substack to enhance the community features.
But well…
So now not only does TPTB at BB want us to give money to Substack they also want us to be defacto beta testers irt expanding Substack’s comment section to add more features and become more robust.
IMO BB can’t claim in good faith to just be one of the many regular people socializing at a bar that just so happens to be a Nazi hangout if they’re also literally helping renovate the Nazi bar.
As for alternatives, it’s been mentioned here already but easy to miss, there’s many out there but the most full featured would be Ghost.org
Ghost also is fee only and doesn’t take a percentage of revenue which is prohibitive for smaller newsletters but beneficial for larger ones, like BB.
But this however is assuming that BB didn’t strike a special deal with the Nazi bar.
That’s a shame. I’ll check out the Substack some time, but I don’t see myself paying for a subscription. I’ll drop into the homepage from time to time, it’s a regular read, but I’ll miss the community, the weirdness, the article threads. I’m sure the Substack comments section will be populated by commenters, but I’m guessing that you won’t be seeing nearly the traffic you got here.
All good things must end, it’s a shame, but that’s life. Thanks for the memories, BoingBoing! Hopefully we’ll see each other again, I’ll always hold out hope. In the immortal words of Jack Karlson:
Ta ta, and fare well!
I assume “orenwolf” is taken. Hmm. Who else might I want to become?
Huh…?
/time passes/
OMG! HEY GUYS! If you delete “BBS” from the URL, it’s like a whole different site! There’s an article about a remote controlled lamp that shines in 16,000,000 (million) colors and it is 87% off!
And a LIFETIME license to Microsoft Office 2024! Buy it now, and you can still use Office 2024 in 2074!
Wait, Do we need to transfer our accounts over there? Do we just lose all the community that is on this bbs?
Super sad in the way this was rolled out Mark. And to echo others, this feels like the very legitimate concerns/frustrations people have with this are falling on deaf ears. I can only guess you guys planned for a negative response based on the replies. I learned so much from so many people on the BBS. What a drag.
If there was no rss I would probably stop reading here.
so far as i understand, the bbs here will be read-only but accessible ( searchable and you can export and save your posts to your local machine if you want. )
you will have to create a substack account. you can use the same name and avatar you used here, but it will be a separate account from yours here. ( they have a thing called a “handle” which needs to be unique, but their names can be anything you want. so even if substack already had an @LurkingGrue you can use that again )
realistically, the community will fragment. substack isn’t the bbs. although substack says they want to add features to make it more like this bss, that will take some time i’m sure. and at least some people have said they don’t want to use substack.
i’m going to try it for a while and see, but i think the experience will be pretty different.
my understanding is that the boingboing rss will still exist. ( but not the bbs one, if there is such a thing )
Welp. That’s a hell of a thing.
I’ll reserve judgement until I see how the Substack looks after a couple months, but I’m not feeling overly positive. Then again, I stuck around for the Discourse migration, and the addition of ads way back when.
I came here because it felt like the next generation of counterculture- The next stop after Robert Anton Wilson and Tim Leary, Discordianism and the Illuminati and the various proud freaks and weirdos that made me who I am today. This was one of the first places I heard about 3D printing, lastest DIY technology, and the kind of open source, post-scarcity, distributed architecture that actually gives me some hope for a future. I’m super proud of the stuff I had published on the front page during the Market Basket revolution. Happy Mutants
Of course, I’m stuck with the basic dilemma of the modern world: Quality content is worth paying for, but it cuts into the food budget. If I supported all the creators I enjoy and think deserve to make a living, I couldn’t afford a place to live myself.
And like the rest of the modern world, I’ve been watching the BBS degrade into the same kind of politics as my Facebook feed and the Gaza Strip. I’ve tried several times to quit and think about some kind of positive shit instead, but the obsessive bit just won’t let go. Maybe this is finally it. Who knows. The only constant is change. Sometimes you move with it, sometimes you move away from it.
Thanks for the Discourse over the years, those of you that contributed, and I wish everyone a safe and prosperous future despite all likelihoods. Maybe we’ll cross paths on the next board.
Sláinte.
I was under the impression that your handle is what you will be publicly known by. Your name is your real name, which is why duplicates are permitted as people do have the same name as each other on occasion.
