The old internet shows signs of quietly coming back

Its still running and still functioning as a social network.

The Internet is only as strong as its protocols, which is to say it is extremely strong because there are more than one protocol to use for the purposes of communication.

The crazy thing is, the cyclomatic complexity of dealing with communication over email versus through some web-based interface, is pretty much not comparable. Email is much easier to use - if you treat email with the respect it deserves. But I think so many generations of Internet users were taught to use email derisively, or non-productively, so it 'feels' like a downgrade to go back to text-based email. Top-quoting vs. bottom-quoting, rich text versus plain, X-headers versus custom .sigs, there is a huge list of things that can go wrong with email-based social networking, but ultimately the proof is in the pudding: we're still running. We still have occasional flame wars and the odd exodus of favourite members, but we also have regular returns of long-lost members who make their way back to the mailing list after a few years of hell on the other networks.

So, for 30 years, we've been doing the social networking thing just fine.. Functionally, we have the same degree of internal communication in our group as any Facebook groups - only, we're 100% in control of our own data and no third party can (easily) shut down the discourse. I consider this one of the factors for why we've survived 30 years as a group without implosion - there is no control point besides the mailserver itself, and that is protected by an admin whose understanding of human interaction precludes interfering when things get toasty ... so when people leave, they leave. We don't care, its not part of our business model to capture eyeballs, etc.

That said, we are pretty small and don't get many new members popping in, although we welcome it. Perhaps thats a blessing, maybe its a curse. We'll see in another 30 years, I'm guessing ...

" ...imagine you live in a town which has a high street filled with shops trying to sell you things, and a public library filled with books trying to tell you things. If you want to buy something you go down the high street to look at the shops, and if you want to read something you go into the library to look for a book. Both activities can co-exist - good libraries do not put shops out of business or vice versa. But you don't want both activities to happen at the same time - you don't want a library filled with salespeople trying to get between you and your books, because that would be distinctly unhelpful at best and downright annoying at worst. The problem is that the internet has turned into a city that is all shops and no libraries. Not even local independent shops at that, just giant out-of-town retail malls... "[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25454867