I wonder if it is sort of back in the form fediverse/activity pub. It's interesting to me that fedi admins often use relay feeds to help in kick starting nodes. Fedi has a more distributed interaction model then usenet but I wonder if more fedi feeds will end up serving a similar purpose as usenet aggregations. I have been a user of both and an admin of neither so these may be incorrect observations.
Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
#12If you wanted something equivalent to usenet to come back, you'd have to solve the moderation problem across a number of incompatible governance frameworks, which can not be done in a single hierarchy, no matter how hard you try. Having multiple moderators of content, and multiple dimensions of moderation (think tags with attached scalar multipliers) could possibly work. Each host of the feed could then just not stor…
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Re: Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
#13Because it became full of spam, obscene and illegal material. For all their faults, big tech do mostly moderate their sites to the extent you won't find illegal things there.
Better than 24h ads and mind manipulation. I can address scam and spams better than consumerism burning my soul.
Are you sure? The real picture is significantly worse than what you see in your inbox.
About half of all email messages are spam nowadays (https://www.statista.com/statistics/420400/spam-email-traffi...), and that’s less than ten years ago.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
#14My guess is people don’t want to deal with the learning curve. If it’s not a website or an app people can just start using, it ends up being a non-starter these days. The pain of big tech is not bigger than the pain of the learning curve for most people.
Actually there are a few web interfaces to Usenet that make it easy to jump in, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit...
I operate one of these myself at https://newsgrouper.org .
Re: Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
#15Because it became full of spam, obscene and illegal material. For all their faults, big tech do mostly moderate their sites to the extent you won't find illegal things there.
There's a lot less spam since Google Groups disconnected last year. Good text-based providers like https://www.eternal-september.org/ also filter out spam and don't carry the binary groups where porn and piracy is found.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better than 24h ads and mind manipulation. I can address scam and spams better than consumerism burning my soul.
Are you sure? The real picture is significantly worse than what you see in your inbox. About half of all email messages are spam nowadays ( https://www.statista.com/statistics/420400/spam-email-traffi... ), and that’s less than ten years ago.
Yeah, and I use email for work everyday, and it's used as the main way of authentication in the free web... anyway!
I guess it will change now with this "age verification" thing that will put a barcode and a chain on your neck and bring you to the Trumpywood Teslapark dystopia they're sorta building.
Re: Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
#17Why is Usenet not coming back? It likely will. Give it some time for more internet screws to be tightened around the world. Once people see the screws had Loctite applied they will find more alternatives and revive older transports protocols. Usenet is still the vastly superior medium for automatically sharing massive amounts of multimedia content if one filters on pre-shared subjects preshared secrets, GPG signed me…
Yeah, but that’s not what I was referring to. I know Usenet is nowadays mainly used for sharing “massive amounts of multimedia content”, but I was referring to the text-based content. Discussions, stories, proposals.
Yes, I have seen all that on Usenet. I am that old.
I’m not being nostalgic here, but when I think of the pre-spam Usenet, it might be what we need again.
Maybe with a more modern UI? Lemmy, maybe? A federated forum system like Reddit, 4chan? Does that exist at all? A web UI which shows threads from all kinds of servers all together in a phpBB-like interface?
Re: Ask HN: Why is Usenet not coming back?
#18Why is Usenet not coming back? It likely will. Give it some time for more internet screws to be tightened around the world. Once people see the screws had Loctite applied they will find more alternatives and revive older transports protocols. Usenet is still the vastly superior medium for automatically sharing massive amounts of multimedia content if one filters on pre-shared subjects preshared secrets, GPG signed me…
Yeah, but that’s not what I was referring to. I know Usenet is nowadays mainly used for sharing “massive amounts of multimedia content”, but I was referring to the text-based content. Discussions, stories, proposals. Yes, I have seen all that on Usenet. I am that old. I’m not being nostalgic here, but when I think of the pre-spam Usenet, it might be what we need again. Maybe with a more modern UI? Lemmy, maybe? A fed…
Web UIs exist with a variety of interface styles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web-based_Usenet#Web-based_sit... . The now-defunct novaBBS was probably the closest to phpBB in style, but the new go-pugleaf is aiming in a similar direction.