Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
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Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
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Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#2This isn't trolling, genuine question from someone who joined the internet after Usenet was already gone:
I keep seeing people wanting to build distributed this and distributed that. According to Wikipedia, usenet was already distributed. Why did it die?
Edit: follow-up question, what about freenet? Are they the same thing? Are they different, compatible, implementations of the same protocol? Are they incompatible but share some properties? Etc
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#3I guess alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die is dead.dead.dead.
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#4This isn't trolling, genuine question from someone who joined the internet after Usenet was already gone: I keep seeing people wanting to build distributed this and distributed that. According to Wikipedia, usenet was already distributed. Why did it die? Edit: follow-up question, what about freenet? Are they the same thing? Are they different, compatible, implementations of the same protocol? Are they incompatible bu…
1. It got spammed to death.
2. It lost control over its culture, and that culture was crucial to its functioning.
3. It was too problematic for ISPs (or others) to provide ready access to it: spam, harassment, child pornography, and copyright violations all posed massive concerns.
4. There was no viable business model for providing the service.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230603024330/https://old.reddi...>
(I'm author of that piece. It seems to hold up pretty well with insiders' views, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36200045>. That last link is from an earlier discussion on Usenet's demise, of which there are several in HN history: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=usenet>)
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#5This isn't trolling, genuine question from someone who joined the internet after Usenet was already gone: I keep seeing people wanting to build distributed this and distributed that. According to Wikipedia, usenet was already distributed. Why did it die? Edit: follow-up question, what about freenet? Are they the same thing? Are they different, compatible, implementations of the same protocol? Are they incompatible bu…
imo of course,but usenet had a hard time existing in a post-corporate internet exactly because it was difficult to wall off your users into your niche community, which became big in the early 90s and remains that way now.
AOL/compuserve/prodigy/whatever offered easy to use and understand UXs which drew a large crowd, and their large crowd was in a fairly walled off portion of the internet using foreign protocols and systems -- so they drew in their friends and so on.
same kinda thing fb does, among others, now.
when the crowd/discussion moved elsewhere that was that.
I think usenet saw a bit of a resurgence in popularity due to piracy, but the discussion has never really came back.
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#6"You know Usenet is almost-dead when there is not even spam in most groups."
"Spammers have decided "it's not profitable to send a few bytes to these open boards anymore" and if you think about it it's kinda sad"
As much as I hate spam, and I hate it a lot, yes, that's pretty damning evidence.
You know a new comms platform has arrived when the spammers, scammers, griefers, and propagandists do.
And you know it's dead when they don't even bother any more.
(afr-l notwithstanding)
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#7This isn't trolling, genuine question from someone who joined the internet after Usenet was already gone: I keep seeing people wanting to build distributed this and distributed that. According to Wikipedia, usenet was already distributed. Why did it die? Edit: follow-up question, what about freenet? Are they the same thing? Are they different, compatible, implementations of the same protocol? Are they incompatible bu…
usenet needs a hosting provider. And providers would usually mirror a subset of feeds so yeah you could think of it as distributed but it is a much simpler protocol. Freenet is more complicated, p2p, encrypted, anonymous medium and also the main difference is in the way the data is distributed on all participants computers instead of one central server.
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#8This isn't trolling, genuine question from someone who joined the internet after Usenet was already gone: I keep seeing people wanting to build distributed this and distributed that. According to Wikipedia, usenet was already distributed. Why did it die? Edit: follow-up question, what about freenet? Are they the same thing? Are they different, compatible, implementations of the same protocol? Are they incompatible bu…
> usenet was already distributed
From my limited understanding, it's not "distributed" as you think
It's "distributed" among ISPs. It's like one of the yourname@isp.com free emails,
To run a usenet server, you need a server with public IP with TCP port 119 open. It's like running your own email service.
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#9This isn't trolling, genuine question from someone who joined the internet after Usenet was already gone: I keep seeing people wanting to build distributed this and distributed that. According to Wikipedia, usenet was already distributed. Why did it die? Edit: follow-up question, what about freenet? Are they the same thing? Are they different, compatible, implementations of the same protocol? Are they incompatible bu…
Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)
#10This isn't trolling, genuine question from someone who joined the internet after Usenet was already gone: I keep seeing people wanting to build distributed this and distributed that. According to Wikipedia, usenet was already distributed. Why did it die? Edit: follow-up question, what about freenet? Are they the same thing? Are they different, compatible, implementations of the same protocol? Are they incompatible bu…
How do you add new features to a distributed system? Anti spam was the most needed tool, and it never arrived.
Even if you just offer the ability to have 3rd party clients to your closed system you still have the problem of distributing new features, that's why there's only 1.2 browsers now