it is the trust and self-policing. We were on forums (even usenet) and got along.

I think it's because back in Usenet days, most people posted their real names, home addresses, work addresses, and telephone numbers as part of their signatures.

Now there is zero accountability for anything anyone says. Go ahead and lie. There is no reputational penalty.

Maybe what we need is a re-birth of forms, but with accountability. Something like Reddit, but with everyone's real names and contact information attached to each message. I bet everyone would be a lot more civil.

A lot of Facebook is people with their real names posting vitriolic bile in full view of their entire real life family and friends.

I don't think Real Name policies are the solve. It still doesn't matter when you interact with 1,000 random real names in the comments whom you'll never have to reconcile with in real life. The latter is the important part. The medium itself reduces people to content and encourages context collapse.

> Something like Reddit, but with everyone's real names and contact information attached

This is what some Europeans governments are effectively trying to achieve, although hamfistedly (as governments typically do).

We definitely need a replacement for Twitter/X for mainstream journalists, politicians, and other leaders, to interact in.

I don't know, in the mid to late 90s I was a child on BBS, and a lot of those were semi-anonymous. Perhaps it was just scale, for that. A couple hundred to a few thousand people at most seemed enough, but also mods did work. I guess there was a certain amount of effort to get going, and maybe that was also a gate. Even the speeds, perhaps, acted as a filter.

I mean, isn't that just NextDoor?