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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)

#51

Post by renegade-otter »

jwr wrote: post #48

I don't think the OP actually used Usenet back in the day. The alt.* groups were always mostly a cesspool, there were very few usable ones past roughly 1995. The comp.* hierarchy was rather good and that's where the action was. I feel sorry that USENET is gone. The experience of using a good NNTP newsreader was way way better than the terrible phpBB forums that supplanted it. And the next generation of programmers si…

Good times. News Rover was part of my life back then.

I should note that the BINARY usenet is still on fire, if you know what that's used for, that is.

My first experience with the Internet was via WebTV, and WebTV had a gated Usenet - only the users had access to it.

It was just full of red hot, vicious flame wars. In retrospect, it was the harbinger of things to come with social media in general. Take away the barrier of entry, let the masses in without any moderation, and it will turn into a cesspool.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#52

Post by jwr »

renegade-otter wrote: post #51
jwr wrote: post #48

I don't think the OP actually used Usenet back in the day. The alt.* groups were always mostly a cesspool, there were very few usable ones past roughly 1995. The comp.* hierarchy was rather good and that's where the action was. I feel sorry that USENET is gone. The experience of using a good NNTP newsreader was way way better than the terrible phpBB forums that supplanted it. And the next generation of programmers si…

Good times. News Rover was part of my life back then. I should note that the BINARY usenet is still on fire, if you know what that's used for, that is. My first experience with the Internet was via WebTV, and WebTV had a gated Usenet - only the users had access to it. It was just full of red hot, vicious flame wars. In retrospect, it was the harbinger of things to come with social media in general. Take away the barr…

I was a newsadmin back in the day. I hated the binary side of USENET. It brought nothing but trouble, and even on the technical side was a big load on the server.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#53

Post by rhplus »

dredmorbius wrote: post #4
hsjqllzlfkf wrote: post #2

This 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 au…

Also:

It was insecure, there was no trust model and no encryption, so no proof of authorship, no proof of server identity.

It was too public. Not everyone wants their conversations out in the open.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#54

Post by gadders »

glimshe wrote: post #31

First the BBSs, then Usenet... I think that one good thing from these services was the relatively high barrier of entry. Today, online services are all about low friction signup, which makes a lot of sense in the highly competitive Internet of 2023. But when computers were somewhat niche and you really had to figure out how to get things working, users were a lot more committed and thus the quality of discussions was…

>>I think that one good thing from these services was the relatively high barrier of entry.

Talking of high barrier to entry, does anyone ever remember that hackers group that said you needed to hack something in your newsreader to make it not read-only so you could post?

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#55

Post by brettermeier »

rglullis wrote: post #23

> The most similar thing to newsgroups today is Reddit, and I really enjoy following some communities. Which in turn will die and give way to Lemmy (generally ActivityPub).

I just tried it. I created an account on a Lemmy instance. Now I also want to join other instances. But how to do it? I won't create an account for every instance, but I'm stuck now.

So... don't know if that will ever replace Reddit. You really have to be a bit tech-savvy, and most users of the internet aren't.

Edit: And the instructions how to do it are buried away somewhere around two-thirds of the way through the text on this page (https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/01-getting-started.html), with way to much text on it for normal users to read it all or to not stop caring.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#56

Post by taotau »

renegade-otter wrote: post #51
jwr wrote: post #48

I don't think the OP actually used Usenet back in the day. The alt.* groups were always mostly a cesspool, there were very few usable ones past roughly 1995. The comp.* hierarchy was rather good and that's where the action was. I feel sorry that USENET is gone. The experience of using a good NNTP newsreader was way way better than the terrible phpBB forums that supplanted it. And the next generation of programmers si…

Good times. News Rover was part of my life back then. I should note that the BINARY usenet is still on fire, if you know what that's used for, that is. My first experience with the Internet was via WebTV, and WebTV had a gated Usenet - only the users had access to it. It was just full of red hot, vicious flame wars. In retrospect, it was the harbinger of things to come with social media in general. Take away the barr…

Coincidentally, i bought myself a Synology NAS this weekend with the honest intention of using it mainly as a backup device, but while browsing the built in apps, i noticed a lot of the media download and streaming apps mentioned BT and NZB... took me a couple of seconds to realize what NZB referred to, but Im not really surprised that NZB has become an active protocol again, given how many consumer services make you jump through hoops to use BT.

I ran a local NNTP relay on my home phone back in the day. I recall spending quite a bit of time filtering out a lot of the binary groups.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#57

Post by PathfinderBot »

rglullis wrote: post #23

> The most similar thing to newsgroups today is Reddit, and I really enjoy following some communities. Which in turn will die and give way to Lemmy (generally ActivityPub).

I've read a saying that the Internet starts with a capital 'I' because, as long as two open standards exist, someone will find a way to bridge them, thus, there will always only be one Internet. With the move away from closed platforms, I hope that this will once again become true. We need an NNTP to ActivityPub bridge, and perhaps to a few closed platforms like HN, webforums and Reddit as well.

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#58

Post by tapland »

taotau wrote: post #56
renegade-otter wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good times. News Rover was part of my life back then. I should note that the BINARY usenet is still on fire, if you know what that's used for, that is. My first experience with the Internet was via WebTV, and WebTV had a gated Usenet - only the users had access to it. It was just full of red hot, vicious flame wars. In retrospect, it was the harbinger of things to come with social media in general. Take away the barr…

Coincidentally, i bought myself a Synology NAS this weekend with the honest intention of using it mainly as a backup device, but while browsing the built in apps, i noticed a lot of the media download and streaming apps mentioned BT and NZB... took me a couple of seconds to realize what NZB referred to, but Im not really surprised that NZB has become an active protocol again, given how many consumer services make you…

I get NZB but BT?

Re: Trying to find some life on the Usenet (2020)

#59

Post by tgv »

rglullis wrote: post #23

> The most similar thing to newsgroups today is Reddit, and I really enjoy following some communities. Which in turn will die and give way to Lemmy (generally ActivityPub).

Lemmy has quite a few negatives. It's small, highly fragmented, obscure to newcomers, and still has a vitriolic commenters, even in the more serious groups. And it doesn't have any PR/marketing. It's not going to take off.
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