IMO, Charles, FidoNet is, with the exception of some of the garbage that gets imported from Usenet, one of the only places you can go, read and post to your heart's content without fear of being snooped on by
whatever entities are busy gathering and scattering your personal data.
There's a large user base that's looking for that, as they abandon Facebook
and their ilk. But none of them seem to know that FidoNet, or FSXNet, or the like, still exist. Heck, most seem surprised that USENET still exists. :/ And so rather than come to BBSes and FidoNet, they go to public-access *nix
systems like SDF or Grex, or completely reinvent the wheel (Hashbang, the "Tildeverse", et al), spreading an already fairly small audience/user base
even thinner.
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A39 2018/04/21 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Twinkle BBS # (1:317/2)