On Sat, May 25, 2019 at 06:40:05AM +0200, Emanuel Berg via help-gnu-emacs wrote:

[...]

> ?#1: Do people still use IM? I remember
> ICQ (I Seek You; Israel 1996 [1]). Those were
> good days - at least if you only remember the
> good stuff!

They do use very diverse, monstrous mutations of IM, all
incompatible with each other: whatsapp, instagram, telegram,
heck, twitter is also a take in the IM theme.

Most of them go through a centralised, corporate-controlled,
risk-capital fueled service. Do I need to say more?

> ?#2: What do you mean "all the anti-patterns of
> the pre-Internet age emerge all over again." It
> sounds interesting anyway so do tell...

You had a fragmented landscape of "online services" (AOL,
CompuServe etc.) and you could only "see" the inhabitants
of your fragment of the world [1].

> No doubt they are good guys. Paying for
> a service isn't something I would never do for
> principal reasons, it is more like it seems
> like trouble doing it practically. I mean, how
> do you do it? Literally?

Bank transfer? Heck -- posteo does care that much about
your privacy that you even can pay in cash (for 12 months
in advance).

Cheers

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_service#History
-- t