Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned • Hacker News Board

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#31

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:29 PM UTC

sgt wrote: post #29

jcranmer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

comp.lang.c is a Usenet forum, that Google Groups provides access to. You can access it from any NNTP server that provides the core of Usenet without using Groups, and it's better not to use Google's horrible interface anyways.

At some point Google will ask themselves why they are spending money on running Google Groups in the first place. They may just decide to pull the plug.

That's the default trajectory for most things that google acquires. It gets ingested with a lot of fanfare, then gets integrated in some half assed way, you get a lot of funny colors you never cared about in the first place and eventually it just withers. Dejanews used to be a fantastic resource, and beat the pants of the likes of stackoverflow.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#32

Post by Silhouette » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:34 PM UTC

mnd999 wrote: post #21

jcranmer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

comp.lang.c is a Usenet forum, that Google Groups provides access to. You can access it from any NNTP server that provides the core of Usenet without using Groups, and it's better not to use Google's horrible interface anyways.

I guess I’m getting old but I’m always amazed when people don’t know what Usenet is. Or at least aren’t able to spot a Usenet group by name.

Every ISP I used a decade or two ago had its own Usenet server.

No ISP I have used in recent years does. They have all been switched off, with the ISP citing low levels of use.

It's hard to blame them, with modern Web-based discussion forums able to do better in almost every way, but that's a lot of freely available information and insight about a lot of subjects that is being consigned to history. Maybe one of the official national libraries is at least keeping an archive of old Usenet content, though I'm not aware that any of them is (at least, not making the archive publicly available at present).

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#33

Post by zafiro17 » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

On behalf of Usenet users everywhere, this is excellent news, and I wouldn't be surprised if Usenetters begin stuffing other useful newsgroups with crap in order to removed from Google as well.

Google's assimilation of Usenet content had promise at first but quickly turned into a dystopia and the general consensus on Usenet is that Google has been a disaster for Usenet.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#34

Post by john_moscow » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

I am wondering if we could solve the current madness with arbitrary content policing by waiving copyright protection for monopolistic platforms and enforcing interoperability.

Imagine if anyone was legally allowed to create their own fork of Reddit, or Google Groups, preserving the original content, and even being able to post new content through the fork, as if they did it directly. If google decided to ban some content, the fork could easily show it from a backup, leading the users to quickly flee the over-restrictive platform to the fork with the most reasonable moderation.

As a nice side effect, this would kill the rotten ad-based revenue model where everything is free, but your data is sold to the highest bidder. Ad-blocking forks would quickly take over the originals, so in order to be profitable, the original platforms would have to charge the costs to the users directly (or to the forks that would pass them to the users with a possible markup for their added value).

That said, it would be completely against the interests of the VC crowd that wields considerable political influence, so I cannot imagine this happening in the U.S. Europe is another story though.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#35

Post by _kst_ » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:40 PM UTC

zafiro17 wrote: post #33

On behalf of Usenet users everywhere, this is excellent news, and I wouldn't be surprised if Usenetters begin stuffing other useful newsgroups with crap in order to removed from Google as well. Google's assimilation of Usenet content had promise at first but quickly turned into a dystopia and the general consensus on Usenet is that Google has been a disaster for Usenet.

Google had the most complete archive of comp.lang.c (and the rest of Usenet). That archive is now inaccessible.

Users posting to comp.lang.c through Google Groups were a problem -- especially with the recent bug that caused GG posts to comp.lang.c++ to have the "++" quietly dropped.

If Google made its archive of all Usenet newsgroups available, I'd be fine with them dropping the posting interface. (And some users actually managed to post to comp.lang.c through Google Groups without breaking things.)

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#36

Post by jorams » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

john_moscow wrote: post #34

I am wondering if we could solve the current madness with arbitrary content policing by waiving copyright protection for monopolistic platforms and enforcing interoperability. Imagine if anyone was legally allowed to create their own fork of Reddit, or Google Groups, preserving the original content , and even being able to post new content through the fork, as if they did it directly. If google decided to ban some co…

Monopolistic platforms don't own the copyright on user-generated content. The users do, and they license it to the platform.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#37

Post by marcus_holmes » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #32

mnd999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I’m getting old but I’m always amazed when people don’t know what Usenet is. Or at least aren’t able to spot a Usenet group by name.

Every ISP I used a decade or two ago had its own Usenet server. No ISP I have used in recent years does. They have all been switched off, with the ISP citing low levels of use. It's hard to blame them, with modern Web-based discussion forums able to do better in almost every way, but that's a lot of freely available information and insight about a lot of subjects that is being consigned to history. Maybe one of the o…

Last time I used an actual usenet group must have been around 2000 or so.

I have no idea how I'd set up NNTP and get to a group now. Not that it wouldn't take me long to work it out, but I'd have to start from first principles.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#38

Post by u801e » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #14

chmod775 wrote: post #6

If that group was relying on Google, that's on them at this point. If you use any Google product, you better have an alternative ready. There's no telling when Google will either shut the product down, or just ban you.

comp.lang.c is a Usenet forum, that Google Groups provides access to. You can access it from any NNTP server that provides the core of Usenet without using Groups, and it's better not to use Google's horrible interface anyways.

But if you want to find a particular post, it really depends on the retention policy of the server you use. Free ones may have a year of retention. Commercial one's have 12 years or so. The only one that I know of where one can find posts further back than that is Google groups.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#39

Post by zabzonk » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

To be honest, the unmoderated (those not ending in .moderated) usenet groups were always a bit a home for flame fests - nothing particularly to do with Google.

Speaking as a contributor (not to flames, or at least I hope not much) way back when.

Re: Comp.lang.c Google Group has been banned

#40

Post by cbm-vic-20 » Sat, Feb 13, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #32

mnd999 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I’m getting old but I’m always amazed when people don’t know what Usenet is. Or at least aren’t able to spot a Usenet group by name.

Every ISP I used a decade or two ago had its own Usenet server. No ISP I have used in recent years does. They have all been switched off, with the ISP citing low levels of use. It's hard to blame them, with modern Web-based discussion forums able to do better in almost every way, but that's a lot of freely available information and insight about a lot of subjects that is being consigned to history. Maybe one of the o…

That, and the fact that the bulk of Usenet traffic is encoded binaries of copyrighted media and porn of varying levels of legality. The amount of traffic in the "big 7" hierarchy (like comp.*) is tiny compared to that.