Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 330 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#31

Post by knowledge-clay »

The solution to a lot of problems is simply to not scale platforms past something like 1000 users. At that level, you can have a community that is guided by individual people and their relationships, rather than anonymized and centralized. And the infrastructure is much simpler to set up and maintain: we just need more tools tailored to being easy to set up and administer at this scale.

m15o has built a ton of examples along these lines. There are other communities and tools too, loosely referred to as the "small web"/"smol web"

https://lipu.li/?u=m15o&p=projects

https://runyourown.social/

https://github.com/cblgh/cerca

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#32

Post by mlyle »

knowledge-clay wrote: post #31

The solution to a lot of problems is simply to not scale platforms past something like 1000 users. At that level, you can have a community that is guided by individual people and their relationships, rather than anonymized and centralized. And the infrastructure is much simpler to set up and maintain: we just need more tools tailored to being easy to set up and administer at this scale. m15o has built a ton of exampl…

The problem is that then platforms come along and vacuum everything else up.

Reddit and discord sucked in and destroyed a whole lot of phpbb.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#33

Post by ilyt »

WallyFunk wrote: post #16

Usenet was kind of sketchy though (and still is). If you browsed long enough you started discovering very niche and outright illegal shit on your travels. Then you had Usenet proxy services who censored that stuff, and for the better. I don't want to access sketchy shit accidentally or have it anywhere near my hard-drive.

That's inevitable price of freedom of speech.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#34

Post by knowledge-clay »

mlyle wrote: post #32
knowledge-clay wrote: post #31

The solution to a lot of problems is simply to not scale platforms past something like 1000 users. At that level, you can have a community that is guided by individual people and their relationships, rather than anonymized and centralized. And the infrastructure is much simpler to set up and maintain: we just need more tools tailored to being easy to set up and administer at this scale. m15o has built a ton of exampl…

The problem is that then platforms come along and vacuum everything else up. Reddit and discord sucked in and destroyed a whole lot of phpbb.

Sure, they vacuum things up, but people have agency. They choose to use platforms. They can choose to use different ones. I can't influence every person's choices, but I can choose how I invest my time and social energy, and present an alternative for people who are alienated with existing platforms (a very large and growing population)

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#35

Post by scrame »

shadowgovt wrote: post #20
scrame wrote: post #12

1) usenet was a kind of opt-in syndication that ran through uucp jobs that often went through whitelists at the local level, often over low bandwidth modems. pirate and other binary channels were frequently not rebroadcast. 2) A decentralized usenet like you're describing is an email list with an archive. 3) Absolutely not. you're describing realID and Facebook. 4) Absolutely not you're describing the powermod proble…

In the post-truth era, (3) will become increasingly vital because reputation is the only tool we have to distinguish signal from noise.

and reputation is what, reddit karma? fb likes? prom king? blue checks on Twitter? FORMER bluechecks?

Its the opposite of an open platform to rank people by the same social media stuff that OP is saying doesn't work because it still wants a centralized form of reputation.

You can't resurrect the old usenet the way OP is talking about because he doesn't know what usenet was.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#36

Post by indus »

shadowgovt wrote: post #20
scrame wrote: post #12

1) usenet was a kind of opt-in syndication that ran through uucp jobs that often went through whitelists at the local level, often over low bandwidth modems. pirate and other binary channels were frequently not rebroadcast. 2) A decentralized usenet like you're describing is an email list with an archive. 3) Absolutely not. you're describing realID and Facebook. 4) Absolutely not you're describing the powermod proble…

In the post-truth era, (3) will become increasingly vital because reputation is the only tool we have to distinguish signal from noise.

Choosing to be anonymous is one thing but not verifying the identity is another.

Why do we favor content from anonymous identities that disrupt the flow—-is a big question running as mods for communities.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#37

Post by dheera »

joezydeco wrote: post #4

Usenet thrived in a time where most of us trusted each other, traffic was an order of magnitude lighter, trolls were few, spam was unheard of, and moderation - if any - was cheap and painless. I honestly believe those times are past us. And I say that as someone that loved Usenet back in the day. What you're asking for, for free , isn't possible.

> where most of us trusted each other

I think the "trust" back then was really just because only people with a certain amount of money could afford a computer and internet access. Most people on the internet at that time were middle class folk with proper day jobs, or in my case, a child of the aforementioned.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#38

Post by ilyt »

uLogMicheal wrote: post #3

How do you get the users? The third-party apps had the opportunity to collaborate and start with a massive userbase, but instead they choose to shut down. Odd.

Not enough time to spin off an alternative. And I wager most of them thought reddit will back off.

If it was known to be inevitable and unchangeable for last few months I can see few of the apps cooperating to run alternative.

Re: Ask HN: Is it time to resurrect a Usenet clone?

#39

Post by robomartin »

I wonder if some of those commenting actually used USENET. I did, for years. Don't remember how long.

USENET had many excellent corners as well as places where you could witness or, if desired, participate in, full-on fecal matter throwing contests. Not sure why people think it was some idyllic environment different from anything seen today.

The key thing to understand is that people are pretty much the same. The masses have some really unique personalities that seem to come out and flourish in front of a keyboard.

I used to think that anonymity was the culprit. It obviously isn't. I have seen some awesome (not in a good way) feces throwing contests on Facebook in groups devoted to our neighborhood and town. In other words, people who are not at all anonymous and very likely run into each other and even send their kids to the same schools.

Mark Twain's observation still holds true today:

“The more I learn about people, the more I like my dog.”

Post reply on HN