Seeing someone refer to a web forum as a “BBS" is another one of those fascinating little reminders that a lot of people are pretty fuzzy about the distinctions between the different overlapping early networked services
It totally makes sense, the "bulletin board" part shows up in the names of a number of early web forum systems. So the difference between a "bulletin board" and a "BBS" isn't really super clear if you didn't personally use the latter
@lion Yeah, that's also a good point. I feel like at a point where both were contemporary, "BBS" did definitely end up meaning both there in a way that's been less true in English. I've definitely seen it in Japanese as well.