General Discussion

it is such a serious threat.

I love the web. I first got online before there was a real web, when there were separate online services and subscribing to a number of them at the same time for various reasons could really add up (business associates on one or more, family and friends on others, professional forums elsewhere...and this was back in the days when long distance calls could also add up and texting and calls weren't nearly-free alternatives to online communication). It was fantastic when it became a real world wide web.

I hate the way AI is threatening it now.

And the threat with AI scraping, not always clearly stated, is that if sites don't allow AI-using search engines, whether Google or OpenAI or Meta or others, to scrape that site as much as they want, that site will simply vanish from their search results.

Which is extortion.

Private forums also carry another risk, which I know from experience, having run forums that were both public and private.

Members of private forums can often greatly overestimate how truly private it is. And even when that's made very clear in the registration process, people tend to think it's okay to post personal information they would never post on a public website, not just identifying themselves (with addresses and phone numbers) but posting critiques of friends, family, employers. Posting about work done that might be reviewable elsewhere online including where it's sold, etc., by someone you might've offended in that private forum. It's just way too easy for them to reveal too much when talking with people they've come to trust - forgetting that anyone else in that forum can also see it.

Which is also a risk with chatrooms. One reason I'm glad DU doesn't have one. A chatroom large enough to accommodate very many DUers would also be very expensive.

If DU ever goes completely private, I would recommend that every sign-in, and maybe the page opening to allow users to post messages, include a reminder to keep information off DU that you would not post in a public message on a large social media platform.