We all know BBS is a little rough at the moment but things are progressing bit by bit so let's just ignore that it's a prototype for now and get down to the essential nature of the BBS Network and what makes it stand out from the crowd of established players.

Earning from your creative work

In the beginning of the project most people would likely have said that the ability to earn from your creative work was the thing that set BBS Network apart. The rewards were good and it attracted many spammers and scammers. The BBS Network isn't an endless source of free money so the tap had to be closed. It will likely get more and more difficult to earn from posting as all the revenue will have to come from actual advertisers in the ecosystem. 

Does the ability to earn from your creative work set BBS network apart from other platforms? No. Medium does it with their partner program.

Decentralization

Is BBS Network decentralized. There have been many discussions about decentralization and whether or not BBS Networks is decentralized. The platform has a central team setting overall policy and code. There are only a few operators currently that need to use the same core code but anyone can start a community and there are many communities.

Censorship resistance

Because anyone can easily start a community on BBS Network, this helps with censorship-resistance but resistance is key word. If you get banned from FaceBook for expressing opposing views you can start your own website but the reach of that website is going to be lower. Pressure and regulation could see the same power of governments to close down boards easily on bbs.market and shut out operators and boards who host on their own domain.  BUT...

Privacy

Is privacy the thing that sets BBS Network apart? First question to ask is, is BBS Network private? Absolutely not! It is the most public of all the social networks because every comment, transaction and post is recorded on the blockchain for anyone to see.  

If the ability to use the data on the blockchain is only available to corporates and institutions with deep pockets then our data can be misused as it is now.  If regular people have the ability to use that data with some easy to use tools like the promised SDK (Software Development Kit),  then the playing field can be levelled.

For instance, if a community is shut down, all their posts are available forever on the blockchain and could pop up somewhere else to keep that community alive.

Also with tools and education, people will have the same access to the social network data to learn what trends are there and how their data looks to other algorithms. This is powerful stuff. 

Corporate ownership

I believe the main thing that sets BBS Network apart is that it is not corporate-owned and the data is available to all (with the right tools and education).  It's possible that an operator could be corporate-controlled but there can be private operators too. The same for communities. Some communities could become corporate-sponsored through advertising but there will be other more voluntary communities that do not need corporate advertisers or even care about earning on their posts. 

What are your thoughts on what sets BBS Network apart from other social platforms?