Current Events > First post: A history of online public messaging

(+) Yeah! (+)

What a great article to read before work.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/first-post-a-history-of-online-public-messaging/

The PLATO environment hosted one of the first public message boards, called Discuss. In 1973, Discuss was home to the worlds first online free speech controversy, which threatened the future of PLATO itself. Richard Nixons firing of the special prosecutor had many Americans talking about impeachment. Stuart Umpleby, a graduate student and PLATO user, posted a message that some saw as a call for action across universities to support the removal of the president.

Knowledge of this post quickly reached the Pentagon, and the director of PLATO, Don Bitzer, was contacted by the National Science Foundation (NSF). He was told that the Nixon White House was threatening to cut the NSFs funding for both PLATO and the ARPANET. Bitzer stayed calm and said that while he hadnt read the message thread in question, he would allow it to continue only if it was at the level of educational discourse but not if it was a political call to action. The NSF agreed, and Bitzer added a disclaimer to that effect to the opening screen of Discuss. Umpleby later posted a response:

"It is hard to believe that a few comments in one program could cause such a reaction. What is also interesting, however, is that apparently on the basis of only one comment, the Pentagon understood the importance of computer-based communications media. Months and even years of talking and attempting to persuade social scientists had produced at best indifference. Such differences in reaction testify far more eloquently than a scientific article why those who are the establishment are there and why social science has been so ineffective."

I wonder how Fandom would have handled the above situation.


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