censoring
its discussion groups. In their effort to maintain Prodigy's "family" status, censors deleted anything Queen Victoria might have considered
remotely inappropriate. An example: Members of the dog fanciers'
forum are not allowed to use the word "bitch" to refer to a female dog.
Eventually, discussion group members started using mailing lists to
send private, uncensored mail to their network buddies. With almost no
warning, Prodigy started charging extra for email usage, making the
mailing lists economically unfeasible for many users. Prodigy's explanation: "We never promised to maintain free email service forever."
For years Prodigy said it would never offer an Internet gateway, but in
1993 it finally broke down. However, Prodigy users are charged not
only for the Internet messages they send, but also for those they receive.
Users are not thrilled.
Despite these drawbacks, Prodigy has a large installed base -- over two
million users. (It's hard to track exact numbers because the service
Next Page ...
Previous Page
Contents ...
Index ... Netiquette Home
Copyright
© 1994-97 Albion.com
webmaster@albion.com