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

Comp.lang.c is now full of spam

groups.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: Comp.lang.c is now full of spam

#21

Post by b112 »

15457345234 wrote: post #18
Y_Y wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to hear someone explain how simple and how expensive. I think there would be quite a lot of interest, at the right price point.

The costs would depend entirely on the userbase; usenet was in heavy use during the 1990-2000 era so the software must be incredibly lightweight by today's standards. I don't know what ongoing development has taken place wrt usenet server software. The clients will all be hopelessly outdated, I imagine WinVN will still run but you probably wouldn't enjoy the experience much. The big issue would be preventing the serv…

Sadly, I think AI will force a complete de-anonymization of the internet.

No accounts without government ID, no connectivity without it either, open access points illegal, and so on.

Governments and police would love this, and with AI, spam (as you elude to) is going to rise to a new level.

And there are already issues, with most of the net's citizens, unable to detect fraudulent posts.

Countries have already had civil wars, thanks to Cambridge Analytics, and disinformation will only make this worse.

Long story short, accountability is impossible with anonymity, and so to sue, to charge with crimes, I sadly think the internet will soon change.

Re: Comp.lang.c is now full of spam

#22

Post by ksherlock »

Y_Y wrote: post #10
tgv wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically it's simple, but I don't think anyone is willing to pay for the required infrastructure. Nor is it going to be used a lot.

I'd like to hear someone explain how simple and how expensive. I think there would be quite a lot of interest, at the right price point.

If you just want "usenet without google", one line in the kill file (on the client or the server) will take care of it.

Re: Comp.lang.c is now full of spam

#24

Post by skrause »

deodar wrote: post #20

This may be due to moderator inaction. I moderate an Apache project mailing list and the amount of spam it receives on on some days is silly. However thanks to the good work done by the ASF infra team it takes very little effort from ML moderators to keep the spam from reaching subscribers.

Usenet works differently.

Moderated groups are their own category and quite rare. Every post to them has to be pre-approved.

The large majority of groups (including comp.lang.c) are unmoderated. "Moderator inaction" isn't a thing here because moderation isn't even technically possible.

Re: Comp.lang.c is now full of spam

#25

Post by PhasmaFelis »

WirelessGigabit wrote: post #17
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #3

Did something go wrong here? This spam doesn't look hard to filter.

I think it's more that they let it through. Google doesn't care. This is just a cost center for them.

I honestly didn't know anyone still actively used Usenet. I thought Google Groups was quite valuable as a tool for reading historical data from decades past, now that most ISPs don't include Usenet access. I wouldn't have expected spam blocking.

Re: Comp.lang.c is now full of spam

#28

Post by jk_i_am_a_robot »

baz00 wrote: post #2

Google stewardship in action. Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?

"Can we even go back to Usenet without Google Groups?"

No. Any group that doesn't have some kind of pre-post vetting idiom is going to have spam and abuse problems.

This wasn't always the case and I can't pinpoint exactly when the change happened or what it was.

Post reply on HN