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Maybe it's a case of only remembering the good, but I feel like usenet in the '80s and early '90s fostered discourse that was very different than what I see on
by hoistbypetard 7y ago
Maybe it's a case of only remembering the good, but I feel like usenet in the '80s and early '90s fostered discourse that was very different than what I see on reddit today. I agree that it's a fair comparison against what usenet eventually became... I was cringing because it is fair and usenet was once better.
- dredmorbius 7y agoI'd agree with that in at least part. Reddit is bad at fostering discussion, one of my major complaints against it. But its overall role is similar to Usenet: A space for topical discussion on a wide range of topics. Usenet in the late 1980s was small. 880,000 people with access, about 140,000 actually using (posting) to it, and a core group of probably only a few thousands. John Quarteman's book The Matrix includes Brian Reid's stats from DEC at the time. It grew some by the early 1990s, but the Eternal September still hit with force. Reddit's user stats are roughly 2,400x that, with 330 million MAU. Scale matters. As does design UI/UX, and a good newsreader >>> Reddit's Web interface.